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I read a few more of Xeni's tweets, and wanted to get HN's honest opinion on them. It seems (to me) like a lot of people on Twitter (and HN?) are over-reacting.

• TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I think what’s interesting is the question of how powerful people may be knowingly covering for one another. We can’t say from them being at the gathering that they for sure aided in Epstein’s crimes, but it might warrant further investigation.
• cjbprime 7y ago
  > Steven Pinker, Marvin Minsky It just sounds like you haven't been paying attention at all. Are you aware that a woman has claimed that she was forced to have sex with Marvin Minsky by Epstein on his island? 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... Are you aware that Pinker has flown on the "Lolita Express" and helped with Epstein's legal defense, a legal defense that led to him avoiding a prison term in a manner that seems aptly describable as "corrupt"? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinkers-aid-jeffrey-epsteins-legal-defense-renews-criticism-increasingly https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-resigns-trump-jeffrey-epstein-plea-deal-latest-news https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-... If you were not aware of these things, please engage in some honest introspection regarding how you ended up decrying attempts to reach justice for them as overreactions on the Internet.
  • nullc 7y ago
    > Are you aware that a woman has claimed that she was forced to have sex with Marvin Minsky by Epstein on his island? Yet the her deposition does not actually make that claim, but rather that she was directed to approach Minsky for sex. A third party witness reports that that he turned her down and was apparently complaining about the incident. https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/ https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/ If you were not aware of these things, please engage in some honest introspection regarding how you ended up decrying attempts to constrain overreaction-- and potentially defaming an innocent person who isn't around to defend themself-- and allow a calm deliberative process to search for actual justice.
    • somebadguy 7y ago
      You sad pathetic incel
    • dclowd9901 7y ago
      I’m not worried about the privileged. They have every benefit and fortune at their backs. You should use the limited resources of your worry toward those more deserving and needful.
      • sergioj97 7y ago
        If privileged people go down like this even without enough proof or contradictory claims (I don't think this is the case, but the user you are replying to seems to believe that), then you certainly should worry about it. It may well happen to anyone else, privileged or not. It's not only a problem for the privileged.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    • paganel 7y ago
      I’m 38 and afaik nobody has ever sent me underage women for me to have sex with them, that way I could have boasted to an external third party that “I refused”. When you’re 88 years old (so when biologically sex is one of the last things you should be thinking about) and when one of your close friends “sends” you an under-age woman that only means that that close friend of yours knew what you liked and what you were into. And make no mistake, Epstein was a friend of Minsky. And I don’t buy this “it could happen to you, too”, because, again, afaik not me not anyone of my close friends has been sent “underage girls” as “gifts” (for one reason because we don’t befriend paedophile pseudo-billionaires).
• snissn 7y ago
  Are you a pro epstein shill account??? I think everyone is massively under- reacting to this story
• westoncb 7y ago
  Yes, it strikes me as overreaction. I've been shocked to see in the past few years how common it is for nothing more than the implication of some unqualified 'association' between people/groups to settle folks' minds on some issue or other. That some vague association exists between people/groups at most creates a demand for more information—it's a type of statement characterized by the giant hole in its front and center. Further, it's a type of statement whose information content is 100% latent until the hole is filled. It is a prompt for investigation—not an indictment of any kind. Note: I have no comments on the particulars of this situation (in fact everything I've read leads me to believe a lot of people with varying degrees of guilt are being rightly exposed)—I'm only commenting on the general structure of stance-taking, information sufficiency, and valid argument forms in general.
• creato 7y ago
  > This seems to imply that anybody at this dinner (that Epstein) was complicit. I was reading it the same way, until I got to this: > I attended some of them [the same dinners] and I can confirm! It seems like this person is tarring people for doing not more than she herself did.
• meerita 7y ago
  Yes, to my this is an excess of accusations.
  • disturbinttruth 7y ago
    It’s fact that Marvin Minsk’s was part of it
• paganel 7y ago
  Marvin Minsky was directly named by one of the victims in documents that were published a couple of days before Epatein’s convenient death, and those documents were mentioning that Minsky had directly sexually profited from an under-age woman. In other words he was a paedophile. I submitted an article detailing all this stuff on the day of Epstein’s death, it had reached the top links of HN in less than an hour but then it was ominously flagged. I lost a great deal of let’s call it respect for the people that keep this website up, apparently letting other people know that a now dead AI luminary was a paedophile is considered tabu.
  • disturbinttruth 7y ago
    Marvin was not a pedophile but had pedophilic tendencies which amplified with epsteins influence
  • jknoepfler 7y ago
    Did it concern you that the allegations might have been false? Or was that besides the point?
  • AndrewBissell 7y ago
    I have also noticed HN mods engaged in blatantly political flagging, probably driven by deference to YC's tech industry pals. My link to the Bloomberg article about all the WeWork CEO's utterly scammy self-dealing shot to #1 on the front page, then was flagged by mods as "dupe" even though another link to the article was nowhere to be found. Totally killed off the discussion.
    • scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
      Let's just be honest here, the only people experiencing fall-out from the Epstein case are not Je-yank
    • dang 7y ago
      You've noticed no such thing. Users flagging one of your submissions isn't "mods engaged in blatantly political flagging". The WeWork story has had numerous huge threads—two major ones have been on the front page today alone. With suppression like this, who needs promotion? Ditto for the Epstein story, our only relation to which is nausea and a desire to hold it at the end of a stick, same as everybody else. Please use the HN search box that appears at the bottom of every HN page and you'll have no trouble finding the major discussions that you're claiming don't exist here.
• jknoepfler 7y ago
  I think it's sad that to even engage in rational discussion about whether and to what extent people were complicit in this, you felt compelled to use an anonymous account. I don't blame you, either, mob justice is horrible.
  • throwaway2048 7y ago
    Almost as horrible as pedophilia being protected and normalized.
    • jknoepfler 7y ago
      Far worse, actually. Mob justice is the force behind almost every human on human mass slaughter in history. It's a far cry short of say diarrhea or malnutrition in terms of actually horrible things that kill millions of people every year, but as human-caused catastrophes go mob justice is many orders of magnitude worse that "pedophilia being protected and normalized." Sure, I'll die on that hill. "Oh but think of the children." It's very important to protect rational deliberation, dispassionate pursuit of justice, and truth-seeking behavior in general. Do you disagree?
• qazpot 7y ago
  It seems that a lot of people are of the opinion that Epstein did not get due punishment for his crimes and whatever jail time was given to him he tried everything to reduce it's severity by using his money. This is true but instead of acting or speaking out against these loopholes in the justice system which to be fair are exploited by every rich/influential person convicted of a crime, what is happening is that people have got out the pitchforks and they want to burn everyone who ever associated with Epstein. A mere association or even a suspicion of association is being equated to a crime. This is not justice this is a mere knee-jerk reaction to the inadequacies of the justice system and will do more harm than good.
  • onemoresoop 7y ago
    This is mob justice, I agree, but will do some good in the long run. It will serve as a reminder to self regulate in the future. If another Epstein comes along there will be visible distancing from him.
    • cwkoss 7y ago
      There wouldn't be a mob if the DOJ didn't cut him a sketchy plea deal. The failure of the institutionalized process is what has lead to distrust in the institutional narrative about Epstein.
  • AndrewBissell 7y ago
    The issue of the two tiered justice system which exists for the benefit of plutocrats is separate from and in addition to the issue of plutocrats associating with a known and confessed child predator, in exchange for god knows what favors. Whether or not they did anything criminal, these individuals' "mere association" with Epstein after his 2008 conviction demonstrates extremely poor character judgment at best, and makes it completely reasonable to wonder whether something more sinister was at work. Why did people like Gates and Hoffman, for whom the amounts Epstein donated were a rounding error, have anything to do with him in the first place?
• bbanyc 7y ago
  The world is a much more fucked-up place than any of us can imagine. I believe Xeni Jardin, completely.