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Agree. People's response to all this is so strange. It seems clear to me that this guy was legitimately interested in supporting science, and was a sexual preda
by darawk 6y ago
Agree. People's response to all this is so strange. It seems clear to me that this guy was legitimately interested in supporting science, and was a sexual predator. For some reason people really can't handle the idea of him being both things simultaneously. The world is actually just complicated sometimes.
There is a long history of great scientific advancements being made by otherwise unsavory people. Werner Von Braun, Ronald Fisher, Francis Galton, just off the top of my head. By all accounts these people legitimately loved science and reason and also held otherwise abhorrent views, and in some cases took abhorrent actions. This is just an ambiguity we have to live with.
- ourcat 6y agoHis views on eugenics were particularly creepy, even from an academic perspective.
- darawk 6y agoEpstein? You could easily be referring to the other three I mentioned too, i'm legitimately unsure.
- strathmeyer 6y agoEpstein wanted an island of pregnant women raising his babies.
- gojomo 6y agoAnd yet, for someone who certainly had the resources, Epstein seems to have had... no children at all? (Or has he simply successfully hidden his parentage?)
- ChainOfFools 6y agoLarry Hillblom (the H in DHL) did just exactly that.
- ourcat 6y agoYes, Epstein. There's a few trustworthy articles out there which share a quote that he 'hoped to seed the human race with his DNA'. He had allegedly confided with quite a few people about it.
- MaximumYComb 6y agoIt's creepy by modern western norms but it's been a fairly basic drive in rich and powerful men for a long time. Look at the percentage of men who share Y chromosomes from Genghis Khan, or the sultans who kept large harems.
- ndespres 6y agoI don't understand why that's relevant. You should know that your comment reads as an excuse or an acceptance for the deeply creepy and awful things that Epstein said and did, not sure if you meant it that way so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
- MaximumYComb 6y agoWhich awful thing did I even remotely justify? My comment was in reference to the comment I replied to, which was: >'hoped to seed the human race with his DNA I then gave examples of powerful men attempting to seed the human race with their DNA. I make zero justification of exploiting/grooming underage girls, that's an entirely seperate issue.
- Alkhwarizmi 6y agoYOU equated the two and justified his intentions as equivalent to “other powerful men” not from west, further suggesting some sort of racial bias as well hidden in your comments. Stop while you’re ahead and don’t embarrass yourself like this again.
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- chromedev 6y agoAre you referring to Bill Gates?
- aeturnum 6y agoI agree that people are many things and that monsters can also do good things. People are complex. But... > This is just an ambiguity we have to live with. This just isn't true. I'm quite sure that Epstein supported what he thought was good science. I'm also quite sure that Epstein had opinions about why his treatment of girls was justified. We do not have to accept that people who have violated our basic ideas about humanity should be allowed to do science. The most obvious example is the controversy around what to do with the results of the Nazi / Unit 731 human torture / experiments[1]. Both the idea that Epstein should be allowed to fund research and the idea that he should not are ethical positions. We should not pretend we don't have a choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Modern_ethical_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Mod...
- vmception 6y ago> We do not have to accept that people who have violated our basic ideas about humanity should be allowed to do science. Science is permissionless. The ethical restrictions of the research are good enough to monitor and remain vigilant about. The idea of whitelisting transactions is misguided.
- newen 6y agoIt’s some kind of only those of pure heart may partake in our magic type mentality.
- fapjacks 6y ago... The centerpiece of which is "Your process/idea/thinking must consult our oracle of moral rightness and adhere to its adjudication" which is why it's so useful to woke culture proponents as a political tool, because it implies that it's not possible to write down the rules by which the oracle operates so that you don't need to consult it every time. You just have to keep paying into your political capital with the rent-seeking oracle of moral rightness and hope that it is merciful in its ministrations.
- sircastor 6y ago
- joe_the_user 6y agoPeople's response to all this is so strange. Sure, this article and "people's response" are indeed a reaction to terrible people driving science without any, uh, mediation. The development of science from the situation of renaissance proto-scientists requiring noble patrons to NSF grants being evaluated based on ostensibly objective criteria was a progressive development. The rise of direct grants by the very wealthy - for whatever they believe science should be - is a regressive development. It's a development that likely won't destroy science but one which has the potential distort it by moving results in the directions these very wealthy patrons desire.
- etangent 6y agoIs there any reason to believe the spontaneous consensus that arises among the kind of people involved in government institutions can't also be biased, in an unsavory way, towards certain goals that benefit them as a class?
- s1artibartfast 6y agoOne could argue that this effect is negligible compared to the other influences at hand. The most significant of which is the profit motive. If you worry about a few rick patrons directing science, imagine what the r&d budget of every corporation on earth is doing.
- joe_the_user 6y agoOne could argue that this effect is negligible compared to the other influences at hand And "one" would be kind of engaging in "what-about-ism". You certainly have some corporations indeed attempting to twist results in areas like climate science or tobacco smoke. The main limit here is that companies spend based on semi-objective cost benefits so most companies want to look better hire public relations agencies rather than paying for science but see notable except above. Sure, I don't which different kinds of science distortion worst but it's certainly remarkable the different arguments which phenomena like Epstein's efforts aren't really a problem.
- 6y ago
- CPLX 6y ago> It seems clear to me that this guy was legitimately interested in supporting science, and was a sexual predator. That’s not clear at all. In fact it’s a quite reasonable interpretation to think all his involvement in academics was a way to impart credibility to himself, credibility which was then exploited to forge relationships with powerful people who helped him get away with raping minors.
- darawk 6y agoAcademia is an indirect way to acquire that power, though. The direct way is to befriend and donate to politicians. It's much more efficient, and someone as intelligent as Epstein surely knew that.
- johnmaguire2013 6y agoAnd much harder with the criminal record he had?
- super_scooper 6y agoIt doesn't seem clear to me at all that this guy was JUST interested in supporting science. Epstein's intrest in eugenics is pretty well documented. I don't think it's a stretch to think his special interest in funding an evolution research team at Harvard was directly related to his abhorrent views. Sure his funding probably has had some higher order positive effects but it seems incredibly silly to suggest that such a monsterous person was donating all this money becuase of his passion for science. His constant oversight suggests that he probably had an agenda and use in mind for the research and I find it incredibly hard to believe it was anything good/humanitarian. You also have to keep in mind this is not just a guy with bad views, this is a person who has wielded money and power to directly cause evil for a very long time.
- nyolfen 6y ago> Epstein's intrest in eugenics is pretty well documented. i don't think of myself as much of an epstein apologist, but as far as i can tell this traces back to him talking about wanting to have a bunch of children, which seems like a bit of a stretch to me
- super_scooper 6y agoI think the comment your referring to was a little less innocent than him wanting to just have a few kids. I did a fair bit of reading on this guy a while back and I seem to recall there being quite a bit of public documents and testimony that pointed out Epsteins weird interest in eugenetics.
- nyolfen 6y agocould you point me to them?
- beaunative 6y agoThere is no doubt that 'any' patron to science expect to see certain results, whether that someone or some organization's expectations matches ours is another matter. The difference should be drawn with fabricating results, not donation to science
- tptacek 6y agoIn 2007, with the support of luminaries like Steven Pinker and Alan Dershowitz, Epstein managed to finagle from Alex Acosta a non-prosecution agreement for human trafficking that ultimately resulted in a country club sentence that allowed him, during his short custodial sentence, to work from his own private office for 12 hours every day. 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.
- darawk 6y agoI agree that one may reasonably ask that. But there are much easier ways to acquire power and influence if you are extremely wealthy. 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.
- spicyramen 6y agoThis is very true, in politics specially things are not black or white, and in this case, common sense will just label him as a bad guy, despite the fact that he may have positive impact in science contributions. One specific situation that raises questions was his donation to Long Beach PD, for protection, while they also turn one eye blind for his behavior
- jojobas 6y agoThe core accusation is not that he was a sexual predator, it is that he was using minors to trap and control people, for as yet an unidentified beneficiary.
- srndh 6y agoPeople try to classify everything around them in binary. As its easy to just label people. But the fact they fail to understand is that no one is just "good" or "bad". You have to evaluate each of the actions and weigh it. This is tough and most don't do it. No one is black or white, they are just shades of grey.
- raxxorrax 6y agoMany invest in education to get influence and nudge research in a certain direction. Love for science is one thing, love for influence is another. Science at least demands to be critical here and taking a look at which fields he invested is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. For science. > individuals can pick and choose lines of inquiry It is not scientific to think that would not influence results. Of course his DNA might have been just a selfless offering for scientific inquiry and maybe the pope was right all along. Science can nurture naïveté to encourage impartiality. But sometimes you need to know when to drop it.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago"To us, Hitler was still only a pompous fool with a Charlie Chaplin moustache" - Wernher von Braun.