The only reasonable conclusion you can draw about the man is that he was both legitimately interested in furthering science and interested in acquiring personal power. That doesn't make anything he did any better, and we shouldn't say things like "well, he did all this sexual abuse, but he also funded science". I'm not advocating that.
But I also think it's overly reductionist and cynical to say that he was funding science for the sole purpose of insulating himself from legal prosecution for abusing women. It's just a ridiculously inefficient way to do that, if that's your only goal.
My broader point is that I think we need to be better about handling moral, not ambiguity, but...ambivalence? Epstein is not a morally ambiguous character, but he did do more than one thing in his life. Some of those things were good, some of those things were bad. The bad things unequivocally outweigh the good things, but it doesn't mean we have to erase them, or find some way rube-goldbergian way to re-evaluate them as actually sinister.
Which is also not to say that we shouldn't think carefully about the kind of power/legitimacy conferred by Epstein's activities. I think that's a legitimate and important discussion. But i'd find the inability to handle multi-dimensionality in some of these discussions strange.
We're arguing that, in this case, the facets weren't actually separate.
Here is a quote from a New York Magazine writer, quoting Epstein when he (the writer) asked to interview him about his conviction for molesting a 14 year-old:
> "Have you managed to talk to many of my friends?" Epstein had been supplying me the phone numbers of important scientists and financiers and media figures. "Do you understand what an extraordinary group of people they are, what they have accomplished in their fields?"
This is an attempt to intertwine the two aspects of his life that you claim were disconnected. It was not the only similar attempt.
I think people here don't want to believe he legitimately liked science because they think of that as a "good" trait, and they don't want a "bad" person to have any "good" traits. And I think that way of viewing the world ends up doing more harm than good.
For example, from an article:
> The Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker said he considered Epstein as an "intellectual impostor”.
This would make claims about his "extraordinary group" of friends make a lot of sense. He might have associated with those people thinking that it made him feel and appear to be an interesting, intelligent, overall better person. Seems like exactly what an "intellectual imposter" would do, more than someone trying to build a personal shield.
Besides, we all know scientists have no political influence worth harnessing.
> This would make claims about his "extraordinary group" of friends make a lot of sense.
I don't know, it sounds like a slightly better worded version of "I know great people, they're the best people really, and I am one of them". They're extraordinary and they are his friends => wow, that must be quite the great guy, or he wouldn't have those kinds of friends.
Scientists might not directly have political influence, but especially the very successful ones are well-connected and have friends in the media. If you have lots of money to spend and you want to buy good will, wouldn't you just spread it? If a journalist ever thinks about you and talks about you at a private party, what better could happen than a science guy saying "oh I know him, he funded our important research" and an author saying "oh, yeah, that guy, he donated money to some literary program" and a finance guy saying "wow, yeah, he's very successful".
I find that a much simpler explanation that fits well into the picture.
All I was really saying was that maybe he believed this himself. Like his mum paid for an expensive party and invited the cool kids and they were mostly polite and now he thinks they like him and he’s part of the group. Key difference being belief in his own delusion, before bragging to others about being one of the cool kids.
1. He exploited his connections to obtain a very lax sentence which allowed him to continue to rape children.
2. It damages the integrity of the scientific research as laid out in the article.
I have a bigger issue with the first than with the second, but I don't see how the question of whether he also had a legitimate interest in science is relevant to either.
A major point in this thread is that that makes no sense. The integrity of the scientific research here is fine. Is the suggestion here that there is a paedophile agenda to promote science and technology? Do we expect to be able to identify paedophiles because of their unusual dedication to the advancement of human knowledge?
The answer is a pretty solid no to both of those questions. There is no link between paedophilia and science.
> 1. He exploited his connections to obtain a very lax sentence which allowed him to continue to rape children.
Harvard isn't a courthouse. It is probably illegal in some way for them to revise court decisions. If the court gives a light sentence Harvard has to respect that. This point isn't related to Harvard.
Please elaborate, and include details of how those ways don't involve currying favor (using money and other things) with highly influential people and the institutions they are associated with.
It's not so easy to bribe a public prosecutor, which is why the extremely wealthy in need of a reputation bailout purchase it from those who are currently publicly reputable by virtue of the institution they are associated with (i.e MIT or Harvard).
The dimensions of people's lives are not as independent as you suggest which is why we have the concept of the conflict of interest.
Invest in local politicians by making dinners, hosting parties, etc..and slowly work your way up the stack. It's true that Epstein did some of this, but from a pure power perspective, he would have gotten better returns by allocating his science money/time towards politicians directly.
> The dimensions of people's lives are not as independent as you suggest which is why we have the concept of the conflict of interest.
To be clear, i'm not suggesting that acquiring power/insulation was not one of the purposes of his science funding. What I am saying is that I don't think it was his sole motivation, and that describing it that way seems to me like an over-simplification designed to other him, so that we can all feel like he's completely unlike us. People on HN like science and technology, which means he shares something in common with us, and I think that makes people uncomfortable, so they want to deny it.
There's no reason to believe his "interest in science" went any deeper than creating social leverage - at best.
Cultivating scientists, philosophers, and other intellectually prominent people is a far less risky and far more directly rewarding strategy than cultivating politicians - although in fact he did plenty of that too.
But politicians are usually considered sleazy, and someone who is courting them is clearly playing a political game and likely to be sleazy themselves.
Courting scientists and academics is much cleaner and provides exactly the kind of cover you're attempting to justify.
And of course no one should have a problem with othering Epstein. Considering his record, he's about as other as it's possible to be.
That carries the risk of ending up with a felony campaign finance violation like Dinesh D'Souza's. Epstein was evil, not stupid.
No amount of dinner parties is going to get people with reputation to lend it to you to cover the kind of horrifying stuff Epstein did. That sort of reputation cover costs money, and lots of it.
The idea that all his science funding was an elaborate ruse to insulate himself from prosecution is just not a very well grounded view. His chosen method of insulation was terribly inefficient with respect to time and money. He would have gotten a much better ROI by investing in politicians directly, the fact that he chose to focus more on science than politics makes it pretty clear that he had a genuine interest/passion for it.
I don't see why he can't like science for its own sake and be a child abuser. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
Some recent research suggests he might not have been that great a scientist after all. The story goes that he was an impostor who got to his position mostly due to his influential father and whose main skill was managing others who did the actual work.
Here's a bachelor's thesis from 2018 and an interview with the author - both in German, unfortunately:
https://www.christopherlauer.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/C...
Yes, everyone knows that.
It was horrible.
But that doesn't tell us whether he had one motivation or two motivations in donating the way he did.
I could understand if you were saying "we should focus on his horrific crimes, and not care about what his motivation was in donating". But that can't be it, because you've also been posting in-depth about what his motivation was in donating.
So why are you making this post? I really hope it's not that you're trying to make it so awkward to respond that you 'win' the argument. But I can't think of any other non-hypocritical motivation.
Well I look dumb. Sorry.
But do you have any response to the other 99% of that post?
> I think I was plenty clear.
Normally people, especially those already in the reply chain, reply to the main argument of posts, so I don't think it was sufficiently clear. I would suggest quoting the part you're responding to if it's that small a section.
If you meant it to be more nuanced than that, maybe include that nuance in your comment.
He didn't finagle shit, his CIA handler finagled it for him. And that person will never face any consequences.
> *"Epstein found aid from star psychologist Steven Pinker in the form of a 2007 legal document"
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
(disclaimer: I know nothing about this and have no personal opinion on the matter)
And even so, any one of us can hire an expert witness to make a statement like that. Especially big-shot professors. They aren't cheap I bet, but they surely don't cost 6 million bucks per line.
Though Pinker himself has said he regrets having provided that aid, so I don't think he himself fully agrees with you if you want to argue against it being something he should not have done.
The problem people have with Epstein's "support for science" is that he spent his life collecting influential people, and, in at least once notorious instance but likely many others, deploying the influence of those people to his ends, which included the trafficking of minors for rape. One reasonably asks, "was Epstein actually trying to fund science at Harvard? Or was brokering donations for programs he could brag about having a hand in getting off the ground just an easy way to create social bonds with the world's most influential people?" One then looks at what Pinker did for Epstein in 2007 and, probably, quickly finds the answer to that question.
This was also the problem with the MIT Media Lab's policy of denying named donations for Epstein while allowing him to broker donations behind the scenes. They were getting money from powerful people, because of Epstein's work. But MIT and the Media Lab's management missed what Epstein was getting out of the deal.