10 ms·
On me, and the Media Lab
- skellera 7y agoWas the connection just that they took money from Epstein? Did they already know about the things he was doing when they took the money?
- bdcravens 7y agoHe was already a convicted sex offender at that point.
- etrevino 7y agoJoi Ito apparently knew Epstein personally and offered Zuckerman to meet Epstein in 2014, which was well after Epstein's punishment (such as it was) for pandering.
- msghacq 7y agoJoi Ito took money for MIT from Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender. He also allowed Epstein to co-invest in his startups and visited his houses (which were decorated with extremely provocative and possibly illegal photos). All investors do enough diligence that he would have known about the conviction before working and socializing with him.
- jessriedel 7y agoNo one is allowed to accept charitable donations from felons? Or they can, but are morally on the hook if the felon commits another crime?
- dekhn 7y agoI would say, in the sphere of public opinion, one should be cautious accepting charitable donations from felons. However, there's certainly precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken#Philanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken#Philanthropy
- msghacq 7y agoI would say taking money from, investing with and visiting the houses of a convicted child sex trafficker is a really bad idea if you want to keep your and your institution's reputation intact. It's also recently come to light that Epstein continued to rape children during this time period (post-arrest). Two new lawsuits were just filed against his estate for it.
- ceejayoz 7y agoI'd argue it's at least morally questionable to assist in a convicted and apparently unrepentant felon's attempts to whitewash their reputation via large amounts of cash.
- SolarNet 7y agoCharity and investments are two different things. Further there are felons who are particularly egregious, human trafficking of children for sex ranks up there.
- qntty 7y agoSounds like he was closer to him than just accepting his donations.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> No one is allowed to accept charitable donations from felons? No, but the charges merit diligence. The facts and circumstances of Epstein's settlement, even knowing nothing more than the suspiciously-short jail time, should have raised red flags.
- michaelt 7y agoOne of the downsides of hosting sex parties with trafficked minors is when you get caught all your guests come under suspicion, even if the party they attended had no sex at all Unless there's an official register of everyone who attended each type of party, which seems unlikely.
- goatinaboat 7y agoFortunately there is an official register or everyone who flew on the Lolita Express.
- msghacq 7y agoThere is, but unfortunately only one of three pilots recorded names in the flight logs. Still, there is a lot of documentation.
- skrebbel 7y agoI'm not sure that people who host parties with trafficked minors care much about the reputation of their guests.
- root_axis 7y agoWell certainly the type of felon matters, no? Epstein's crimes are particularly heinous.
- IOT_Apprentice 7y agoI'm wondering why you merely couch this as accepting money from felons, when you know full well that Epstein was not only a pedophile, but ran an international sex trafficking ring. We aren't discussing insider trading or possessing controlled substances. You would have to decide if you find it immoral to accept a donation from a specific person, based on your own moral code and how the person behaves and live with that.
- jessriedel 7y agoI'm trying to understand what general moral principle is that is being suggested. You can't accept money from sex criminals? Or only if you think they won't commit a future offense? "You have to personally decide what's moral" isn't a very good response when a crowd is gathering to punish someone.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoEpstein wasn’t just any felon. He was someone who was systematically using his wealth and influence to rape children and get away with it. If you accept charitable donations from him, you are increasing his influence and assenting that his crimes were not a big deal.
- coldtea 7y ago>No one is allowed to accept charitable donations from felons Of course they're allowed. It's a free country. We're discussing how reprehensible it is, and we focus on certain kinds of felons (not some guy who once did a victimless burglary or a DIU), and also on cases where they didn't just "accept donations", but visited the felons to their private lair...
- stronglikedan 7y ago> are morally on the hook if the felon commits another crime? In the Age of Outrage, yes, even though it's stupid.
- hwillis 7y agoLiterally the first sentence was that Marvin Minsky was implicated in his crimes[1]. > Did they already know about the things he was doing when they took the money? Clearly yes: "Joi asked me in 2014 if I wanted to meet Epstein, and I refused and urged him not to meet with him." The first cases against Epstein were in 2008 and Epstein's reputation has been well known since then. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...
- azinman2 7y agoLet’s not forget that it’s an allegation against Marvin Minsky, not a proved event. He’s not even alive to confirm or deny the charge. As someone who was around Minsky, I have a very very hard time believing this for a number of reasons. Our culture has gotten to the point where an accusation is enough in the court of opinion. It’s good that these issues have brought awareness to places where victims have been otherwise minimized in the past, or have been proof less of the action despite it happening. And that’s a tough thing. But occasionally these accusations are proved to be false. I think we’re getting carried away here, at least as far as Minsky goes.
- coldtea 7y ago>Our culture has gotten to the point where an accusation is enough in the court of opinion That's true. On the other hand, out culture was for far more decades (nay, millennia) to the point that people could not care less about such accusations, and the power figures could do whatever they liked... Also, it wasn't just an accusation in the "court of opinion", but a deposition to an actual court. "In a deposition, Giuffre, née Roberts, claimed she was trafficked to MIT professor Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016 at age 88, as well as former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, ex-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and money manager Glenn Dubin, whose wife, Eva, is an ex-girlfriend of Epstein’s." Still, it's not proven and I'm against the "court of public opinion", at least in more shallow cases (e.g. Woody Allen). But here it's at Weinstein and worse level. I can see some fake-victim badmouthing a powerful figure to bring them down. Or to blackmail them. Or for revenge (e.g. from a bad relationship, etc). So I'd understand it if e.g. it was fake accusation just against one person. But it seems too much for a fake-victim to name names of several people, and powerful people at that, on top.
- msghacq 7y agoNathan Matias is also leaving for the same reason: https://medium.com/@natematias/leaving-the-mit-media-lab-ea3066dfeb21 https://medium.com/@natematias/leaving-the-mit-media-lab-ea3...
- xhkkffbf 7y agoI hate to be cynical but someone who is a "visiting" appointment is going to be leaving anyway. This is a great way to virtual signal without giving up anything.
- xhkkffbf 7y agoBTW, he already has a job at Cornell. He was already going to leave. I'm not sure he's sacrificing much of anything.
- strangeloops85 7y agoThe related Epstein-academia connection which deserves scrutiny is with Martin Nowak at Harvard. Certainly far more money involved in terms of donations. And many articles referenced him visiting with Epstein extensively, including his island.
- msghacq 7y agoI agree but this is also big. Joi Ito admitted to visiting Epstein's houses as well. He also let him co-invest in startups with him. It's unclear which startups in particular Epstein was an investor in though.
- strangeloops85 7y agoYes I agree as well - did not mean to diminish this news. MIT Media Lab and Joi Ito are definitely more prominent. And the timing (post-2008) is rather damning. His history was a google search away..
- api 7y agoI'm so sad to see Nowak involved given that his lab's research on evolutionary dynamics is outstanding. It's depressing too to see how many people Epstein influenced and was associated with. It's impossible that none of them knew about his sex abuse "habit." I guess it's just like with Ponzi-like financial bubbles and cooked corporate finance (e.g. Enron and now apparently GE): when the money is flowing people go along and don't ask questions. It seems to be even deeper though. I wonder if humans have a cognitive bias where when we're getting money/resources from someone we "un-see" things that could damage that relationship? There's a character I've read about over in the UK named Jimmy Saville that seemingly got away with serial sex abuse (of virtually all ages) for his entire life. Same explanation apparently: he raised and donated a lot of money and generally threw a lot of money around.
- seiferteric 7y agoMarvin Minsky is apparently another one.
- tptacek 7y agoI'd love a brief explainer on why exactly Joi Ito and the Media Lab are supposed to be such a big deal.
- facethrowaway 7y agoDo you ever read the New York Times? He’s on the board. He’s also connected to half of SV. Check his Flickr account for the portraits.
- nostrademons 7y agoDunno about Joi Ito - his biggest claim to fame prior to directing the Media Lab seems to be as a venture capitalist who invested in Flickr, Kickstarter, Twitter, Six Apart, etc. The Media Lab has a long history of innovations that you've probably heard of: E-ink, Formlabs (3D printers), RockBand/GuitarHero, the touchstick on IBM Thinkpads, OLPC, Lego Mindstorms, and Scratch were all developed there.
- neilv 7y agoThe red pointing stick in the ThinkPad was from IBM (or PARC), not from the Media Lab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick#History
- sam_lowry_ 7y agoIt's a short list, and some "inventions" are dubious at best. OLPC for instance.
- nwah1 7y agoIt is known that Epstein's main way of operating was blackmail, and it is baffling to think of what kind of motivation he had to blackmail academics. Media reports that at least some of the academics were involved in the sex crimes. I know he had an interest in transhumanism, but I still fail to understand the logic.
- adventured 7y agoA hook, go-between, for intelligence services - one in particular - that used Epstein and his blackmail ability as a means to get information from extremely powerful and high-up sources in politics, government, business and academia. One connection links to other connections, which links to other connections, making it possible to get to almost anyone and pull them into the blackmail web.
- joezydeco 7y agoHigh-profile academics have access to even more powerful people.
- roywiggins 7y agoHe thought he was smart, and wanted to have a collection of high-powered academics on hand to tell him how smart he was. It really could be as simple as that- he was a narcissist. Of course he'd want to be known as "billionaire philanthropist and renaissance man".
- smacktoward 7y agoReports are that he liked to throw dinners and parties with glittering attendee lists. I could see a guy like him wanting to have a few pet academics at such affairs, in the same way he'd want to have some artists -- partly just to liven up the conversations, and partly to signal that he's cultured and respectable. And of course there are always some academics (like Ito, it seems) who can serve as bridges into other worlds, by doing things like bringing him into investment opportunities.
- nappy-doo 7y agoI don't like promoting conspiracy theories. Now that that's out of the way, here's a doozy: https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/jeffrey-epstein-money/ https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/jeffrey-epstein-money/
- asdf333 7y agoI will probably be tarred and feathered for this comment as well but: I think this whole thing has turned into a witch hunt / mob assault on anyone who has had any ties to Epstein. The attitude of many of the comments seem to essentially suggest that if one has been at the same party as epstein sometime in the past, such person must be a child molester. Now people are falling over themselves trying to one up each other on who can display the most moral outrage. It is an example of how public discourse has degenerated to the point where we are attacking people first and refusing to ask even some basic questions before branding someone as guilty by association. (edited out "come on it is ridiculous" as it seemed unnecessarily inflammatory)
- msghacq 7y agoJoi Ito wasn't at "some party" with Epstein. He raised money from him after Epstein was convicted for child sex trafficking. He also allowed Epstein to co-invest in his startups. He also visited his houses... During this time period Epstein continued to rape children (two new suits were just filed on Tuesday that state this). Joi Ito has a deep relationship with a child sex trafficker, people are rightfully upset.
- dev_dull 7y agoNot only that, but the accusations against Epstein wasn’t just that he’s a pedophile, but he was perhaps running blackmail on people using that disgusting entrapment scheme. We’ll see how much of that turns out to be true in the end. The DOJ has been very tight lipped on all of it. For the time being I’m being VERY cautious about any powerful people who associated with him regularly (or ever visited his island).
- goatinaboat 7y agoI don’t believe Epstein was blackmailing anyone. I think his associates were more than happy to give him whatever he wanted in exchange for the depravities he organised for them. That’s why they’re always smiling and happy in photos with him. They don’t look like blackmail victims. And even if they were... you cannot blackmail someone unless they’ve done something! It was the same with Weinstein.
- coldtea 7y ago>I also wrote notes of apology to the recipients of the Media Lab Disobedience Prize, three women who were recognized for their work on the #MeToo in STEM movement. It struck me as a terrible irony that their work on combatting sexual harassment and assault in science and tech might be damaged by their association with the Media Lab. Perhaps the anti-harassment movement should expand to also promote the fact that people's work (or person) should not be damaged merely by association?
- facethrowaway 7y agoOnce you read the Epstein interview with the New York Times writer, you start to understand that there’s probably more of these “unconventional thinkers” in tech connected to Epstein and his behavior than we are ever going to find out. The whole “being ostracized for an attraction to teenage girls is a very new idea” thing sounds exactly like a lot of what someone would hear at the late end of a Silicon Valley dinner party. Anyone who is apologizing for this behavior or who thinks this is a “witch hunt” may want to consider using a throwaway name, because these comments aren’t going to age well. And yes, we will remember.
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- draw_down 7y agoBlessed sanity. Thank you.
- HenryDavis65 7y agorequires login
- draw_down 7y agoI think "disgusting" is the appropriate word for how lenient and permissive some are trying to be around this (including the top comment in this very thread). As soon as it touches someone or some institution you care about-- oh, well, it can't really be that bad, can it? It's a witchhunt, everyone is overreacting, it was just child sex trafficking, what's the big deal. > Joi asked me in 2014 if I wanted to meet Epstein, and I refused and urged him not to meet with him. We didn’t speak about Epstein again until last Friday. This person was cognizant enough to understand what a horrible person Epstein was in 2014. If it was well-known enough for this person to not only refuse to meet, but urge others not to, then there aren't any excuses. I have no pity for anyone with any association to him, except I don't think it will matter much because I doubt much of anything will happen to them. Some reputations will be tarnished, briefly, perhaps.
- jackbravo 7y agoI like very much his addendum: > So thank you for all the kind words about bravery. Truth is I’m privileged enough to afford to be brave. For those of you who love the Media Lab and want to see it sail through these rough waters, please take time to reach out to people who may not be able to be as visible in their next steps. Make sure they’re doing okay. Support them whether their decision is to leave or to stay. So many of my colleagues at the Media Lab right now are hurting, and they need your support and love too. Hope we can redirect some of that love folks are sharing with me to them too.
- enjeyw 7y agoYeah, I'd previously only heard about Zuckerman in passing, but that post really gave me the impression of highly empathetic and considerate person.