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> 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 ins
by darawk 6y ago
> 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.
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.
- pcwalton 6y ago> 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. That carries the risk of ending up with a felony campaign finance violation like Dinesh D'Souza's. Epstein was evil, not stupid.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThere's no evidence he had even a basic understanding of science, never mind a genuine interest in 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.
- danans 6y ago> Invest in local politicians by making dinners, hosting parties, etc..and slowly work your way up the stack. 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.