5 ms·

An End to Pornography, Sophistry, and Panty Raids: on Epstein's Edge.org (2019)

20 points by wahnfrieden 4y ago

throwayyy479087 4y ago
LN_is_a_scam 4y ago
HN_is_for_memes 4y ago
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  But what about their curious ideas? Do they deserve our shared attention?
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Good essay on the fallen nature of humans trying to one-up each other in ideas. Only critique would be on the focus on the Chinese Room near the end. Moore’s law making the room 10,000 larger than when it started probably had no bearing on the premise.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Right, it should have been recognized as a null argument even back then.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Corporate media has become little more that a propaganda system designed to protect the wealthiest elite from public scrutiny and bury issues like the rise of the artistocrat-serf divide in American society, and this article is just more of the same. Since class divides are off the table, this leads writers who work for the system with nothing to talk about but 1960s-era civil rights issues related to gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. To do this they have to avoid discussing the many successes of the civil rights movements, and especially the fact that many 'members of oppressed communities' work hand in glove with corrupt greedy elites to further their agendas. Case in point: this article makes no mention of Epstein collaborator and facilitator Ghislane Maxwell. Another defining feature of US corporate media these days is a deep reluctance to discuss foreign policy and imperial agendas - after all, why was Epstein so eager to make contacts with the upper tiers of business and government power, and introduce them to trafficked young women that he controlled? There's a lot of evidence that he (and Maxwell) were part of an Israeli-affiliated spy operation that was perhaps collecting blackmail material on, or just getting inside information from, the people that Epstein brought into his circle. Writing about those subjects, though - that would result in excommunication and the end of one's corporate media career.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Well-put context to the content of this article. I agree in this instance the writing on Edge is lacking, especially in proportion to the wealth of attention Edge itself is charitably given. Would appreciate references you have for sources that take the well rounded perspective you describe. Sometimes that perspective also gets called leftist and flagged for hardened political bias I find, because of the platform they're presented on.
- programmarchy 4y ago
  This rings true. A lot of the outrage these days is manufactured, and seems like that would only be done as a distraction, since it's so damaging to the social fabric. It must be worth it to have the "serfs" chasing scapegoats to keep the "aristocrats" out of sight from public scrutiny. It's dangerous for them, because class is an issue that both left and right can align on. In fact, we saw that alignment starting to happen during Occupy Wall Street in 2011, with progressives in the same camp as libertarians and the pro-labor right. If the country enters another economic downturn, it'd create the conditions for that to happen again. It'd be interesting to see how that would play out. There's a huge potential for change if people can tune out the outrage machine.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > In fact, we saw that alignment starting to happen during Occupy Wall Street in 2011, with progressives in the same camp as libertarians and the pro-labor right. And corporate media neutralized that movement, by selectively amplifying the loopiest weirdos to discredit the whole. Media coverage of Occupy Wall Street was the first time I ever heard of the "progressive stack", which the media explained, meant the illiberal ranking of speaker order by race and gender. This was surely poison to the American middle class who might have otherwise resonated with the discontent behind Occupy Wallstreet. I expect that if another Occupy-like movement happens again, the media will run the same playbook: Amplify the fringe to alienate the whole.
msackler1 4y ago
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Huh. Panty raids. In retrospect, the only other time I've ever heard of this concept was when Spongebob and Patrick did it with Mr. Krabs, unknowingly against his own mother. Somehow I don't think that episode would get greenlit anymore. Was that really a thing? Maybe a pre-internet porn outlet for unhindered men?
- mc32 4y ago
  I think there have been frat/party themed movies with that trope in them.
- greenyoda 4y ago
  > Was that really a thing? Wikipedia has an article about their history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panty_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panty_raid
bsaul 4y ago
That text is probably a bit too well-written for a non-native like myself, but did this person seriously suggest removing the well-known theory of the chineese room from books because its author likes to have sex with young adult women ?
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  No, they're critical of the theory and use that to reflect poorly on its champion, a weak point of the article not in how it's deployed but in their misunderstanding of the theory I guess
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> I had been taught that Searle’s 1980 theory of the Chinese Room closed the book on the possibility of thinking machines. In Searle’s view, minds must be made of biological dynamics. Computers, which Searle must have envisioned as non-networked computers of the Commodore era, can only simulate these dynamics. > In hindsight, to reprise this theory in 2016 was laughable, especially given some, let’s call them, changes in computing in the past four decades. The internet long ago turned a computer from a four-walled “room” to an infinite set of portals which lead to billions of biological and language-using minds, with which our computers work in continuous and limitless collaboration. Searle's Chinese Room argument has never made any sense to me, but this makes even less sense. How did the internet change anything regarding that argument?
- jfengel 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, Searle is a bit like Noam Chomsky: deservedly famous for work on language and also for his anti-war work. He then wrote an absolutely abysmal paper on artificial intelligence, and everybody got wrapped up in it. The Chinese room argument has no merit whatsoever, and should be forgotten. Millions of better things have been said on the subject. But Searle, being famous, gets the mindshare.
  - boole1854 4y ago
    > The Chinese room argument has no merit whatsoever, and should be forgotten. I have a different take on the argument. I believe it was widely misunderstood to be an argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence, when it was actually merely an argument that there is a logical difference between symbol manipulation and sentient understanding. Searle contributed to the misunderstanding by terming the position he was arguing against "Strong AI". He then argued that "Strong AI" was not possible on the basis of his argument. However, "Strong AI" has a different meaning to many people so that the "Strong AI" which Searle was trying to refute was not the same as the "Strong AI" that most people have in mind when they hear the term. For example, most people would probably say that a computer which could converse, write poems, compose novels, author novel scientific papers, etc. in perfect Mandarin, indistinguishable from a highly educated, human, fluent speaker of Mandarin, would be by definition a Strong AI. But Searle never refuted, or tried to refute, the idea that a computer could accomplish all of that, so he was not arguing against the position that most people would take to be "Strong AI". His point was to argue that having the qualia of conscious understanding is logically different than being able to accomplish the symbol manipulation required to achieve the tasks above.
wodenokoto 4y ago
Can we add (2019) to the title?
mitchbob 4y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/SWLwb https://archive.ph/SWLwb
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> It was one month before the 2016 American presidential election, and everyone at the conference was talking about it, yet Searle only dilated on Trump and sexuality. > How was he seemingly indifferent to Brexit—and Trump’s rise? Am I missing some nuance here, or are these two claims contradictory? I understand 'dilate' to mean enlarge. To 'dilate on Trump' would mean to make Trump greater and larger, or to speak about Trump at great length. That seems to directly contradict the subsequent claim that Searle was indifferent to Trump. If Searle was talking up Trump at length the author would accuse him of being a Trump supporter, not indifferent. Also, the part about Warner comparing the Braun/Apple industrial aesthetic to the lack of pubic hair in porn (lmao okay...) Then Searle asks if there are studies about the effect of this on people. Author characterizes this question as 'bad faith, plain and simple.' Am I missing something here? This whole article seems like a disorganized rant, trying to make sense of it is hurting my head.
- Terretta 4y ago
  in this case, dilate means comment at length, the archaic use connects expand and expound: to describe or set forth at length or in detail perhaps opining on Trump the person is different from implications of Trump's rise, but no idea; to me article mostly reads as if organized around poking in the eye
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    It's hard for me to square Searle talking about Trump at length, and Searle being indifferent to Trump. The two claims seem to contradict, cancelling out and leaving me with no firm impression about what Searle did or didn't think about Trump. Perhaps the point was to put Searle and Trump's names together in the same sentences, as a way of smearing Searle while not actually claiming anything of substance.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 4y ago
Among the questions raised by this incident, which I'd only consciously been aware of since earlier today, is whether or not HN should accept and post content from The Edge. That was suggested 11 hours ago by robot_head, which drew a response from dang which I find ... grotesquely insensitive, at the very least. The term "enabling" comes to mind. That's not the dang I generally encounter here. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901> I've made three replies so far to that thread myself. Dang's response is that "On HN, we generally go by article quality, not site quality: , and generally try to avoid guilt by association". That links a search on the terms "article quality" "site quality". The problem I have here is that the situation departs sharply from "guilt by association" to "willing and knowing partner in crime", where those crimes include rape, child trafficking, and worse. HN has seen at least 30 submissions from The Edge since 19 October 2020, based on its own "from site" feature: <https://news.ycombinator.com/from%3Fsite%3Dedge.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from%3Fsite%3Dedge.org> The state I'm referring to is archive here: <https://archive.ph/8adBm https://archive.ph/8adBm> I also noted to dang that The Edge nowhere carries any prominent mention, nor apology for, its associations with Epstein: <https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Aedge.org+epstein&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Aedge.org+epstein&ia=...> In this case, if the question is "should HN subject the Edge to Damnatio memoriae?", the defence would have an extraordinarily challenging case to make. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae>
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > The problem I have here is that the situation departs sharply from "guilt by association" to "willing and knowing partner in crime", where those crimes include rape, child trafficking, and worse. I don't pretend to know what Edge has been up to, but this article doesn't actually pin anything like that on Edge. The case presented against Edge seems to boil down to these points: 1. Funded by Epstein. 2. Brockman once made a 'slightly lechy' remark about the authors body, is full of himself, and hangs out with billionaires. 3. A 'subset' of Edge members are right-wing. 4. Searle is a creepy sex pest, and not as smart as people say. > The Edge nowhere carries any prominent mention, nor apology for, its associations with Epstein This does seem like a red flag to me as well, but I can't rule out the mundane explanation that they're too embarrassed to apologize about it, thinking that would make them look guilty or give them bad SEO or something. I think they should put a denouncement of Epstein on their website, but I can't take their failure to do so as strong evidence of complicity. It could simply be misguided ass-covering. You're talking about Edge being a knowing and willing partner in rape and child trafficking, but strong allegations like that should be backed with stronger evidence than what has been given.
dang 4y ago
I imagine that this was posted in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32978355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32978355 being on HN's front page, and in particular in response to the questions around that (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901). That's all fine. What's not fine is that you editorialized the title. The phrase "Epstein's Edge.org" appears nowhere in OP's title or even the article body. That's against the site guidelines, which ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. In this case you edited it to certainly make it more linkbaity, and arguably more misleading as well. We take submission privileges away from accounts that do that. We also, and especially, take submission privileges away from accounts that are using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's also against the HN guidelines, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. You've been doing that a lot lately. If you'd please stop, we'd appreciate it.

20 points by wahnfrieden 4y ago

throwayyy479087 4y ago

LN_is_a_scam 4y ago

HN_is_for_memes 4y ago

wahnfrieden 4y ago
But what about their curious ideas? Do they deserve our shared attention?

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Good essay on the fallen nature of humans trying to one-up each other in ideas. Only critique would be on the focus on the Chinese Room near the end. Moore’s law making the room 10,000 larger than when it started probably had no bearing on the premise.

ncmncm 4y ago
Right, it should have been recognized as a null argument even back then.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Corporate media has become little more that a propaganda system designed to protect the wealthiest elite from public scrutiny and bury issues like the rise of the artistocrat-serf divide in American society, and this article is just more of the same. Since class divides are off the table, this leads writers who work for the system with nothing to talk about but 1960s-era civil rights issues related to gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. To do this they have to avoid discussing the many successes of the civil rights movements, and especially the fact that many 'members of oppressed communities' work hand in glove with corrupt greedy elites to further their agendas. Case in point: this article makes no mention of Epstein collaborator and facilitator Ghislane Maxwell. Another defining feature of US corporate media these days is a deep reluctance to discuss foreign policy and imperial agendas - after all, why was Epstein so eager to make contacts with the upper tiers of business and government power, and introduce them to trafficked young women that he controlled? There's a lot of evidence that he (and Maxwell) were part of an Israeli-affiliated spy operation that was perhaps collecting blackmail material on, or just getting inside information from, the people that Epstein brought into his circle. Writing about those subjects, though - that would result in excommunication and the end of one's corporate media career.

wahnfrieden 4y ago
Well-put context to the content of this article. I agree in this instance the writing on Edge is lacking, especially in proportion to the wealth of attention Edge itself is charitably given. Would appreciate references you have for sources that take the well rounded perspective you describe. Sometimes that perspective also gets called leftist and flagged for hardened political bias I find, because of the platform they're presented on.
programmarchy 4y ago
This rings true. A lot of the outrage these days is manufactured, and seems like that would only be done as a distraction, since it's so damaging to the social fabric. It must be worth it to have the "serfs" chasing scapegoats to keep the "aristocrats" out of sight from public scrutiny. It's dangerous for them, because class is an issue that both left and right can align on. In fact, we saw that alignment starting to happen during Occupy Wall Street in 2011, with progressives in the same camp as libertarians and the pro-labor right. If the country enters another economic downturn, it'd create the conditions for that to happen again. It'd be interesting to see how that would play out. There's a huge potential for change if people can tune out the outrage machine.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > In fact, we saw that alignment starting to happen during Occupy Wall Street in 2011, with progressives in the same camp as libertarians and the pro-labor right. And corporate media neutralized that movement, by selectively amplifying the loopiest weirdos to discredit the whole. Media coverage of Occupy Wall Street was the first time I ever heard of the "progressive stack", which the media explained, meant the illiberal ranking of speaker order by race and gender. This was surely poison to the American middle class who might have otherwise resonated with the discontent behind Occupy Wallstreet. I expect that if another Occupy-like movement happens again, the media will run the same playbook: Amplify the fringe to alienate the whole.

msackler1 4y ago

spywaregorilla 4y ago

Huh. Panty raids. In retrospect, the only other time I've ever heard of this concept was when Spongebob and Patrick did it with Mr. Krabs, unknowingly against his own mother. Somehow I don't think that episode would get greenlit anymore. Was that really a thing? Maybe a pre-internet porn outlet for unhindered men?

mc32 4y ago
I think there have been frat/party themed movies with that trope in them.
greenyoda 4y ago
> Was that really a thing? Wikipedia has an article about their history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panty_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panty_raid

bsaul 4y ago

That text is probably a bit too well-written for a non-native like myself, but did this person seriously suggest removing the well-known theory of the chineese room from books because its author likes to have sex with young adult women ?

wahnfrieden 4y ago
No, they're critical of the theory and use that to reflect poorly on its champion, a weak point of the article not in how it's deployed but in their misunderstanding of the theory I guess

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> I had been taught that Searle’s 1980 theory of the Chinese Room closed the book on the possibility of thinking machines. In Searle’s view, minds must be made of biological dynamics. Computers, which Searle must have envisioned as non-networked computers of the Commodore era, can only simulate these dynamics. > In hindsight, to reprise this theory in 2016 was laughable, especially given some, let’s call them, changes in computing in the past four decades. The internet long ago turned a computer from a four-walled “room” to an infinite set of portals which lead to billions of biological and language-using minds, with which our computers work in continuous and limitless collaboration. Searle's Chinese Room argument has never made any sense to me, but this makes even less sense. How did the internet change anything regarding that argument?

jfengel 4y ago
As far as I can tell, Searle is a bit like Noam Chomsky: deservedly famous for work on language and also for his anti-war work. He then wrote an absolutely abysmal paper on artificial intelligence, and everybody got wrapped up in it. The Chinese room argument has no merit whatsoever, and should be forgotten. Millions of better things have been said on the subject. But Searle, being famous, gets the mindshare.
- boole1854 4y ago
  > The Chinese room argument has no merit whatsoever, and should be forgotten. I have a different take on the argument. I believe it was widely misunderstood to be an argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence, when it was actually merely an argument that there is a logical difference between symbol manipulation and sentient understanding. Searle contributed to the misunderstanding by terming the position he was arguing against "Strong AI". He then argued that "Strong AI" was not possible on the basis of his argument. However, "Strong AI" has a different meaning to many people so that the "Strong AI" which Searle was trying to refute was not the same as the "Strong AI" that most people have in mind when they hear the term. For example, most people would probably say that a computer which could converse, write poems, compose novels, author novel scientific papers, etc. in perfect Mandarin, indistinguishable from a highly educated, human, fluent speaker of Mandarin, would be by definition a Strong AI. But Searle never refuted, or tried to refute, the idea that a computer could accomplish all of that, so he was not arguing against the position that most people would take to be "Strong AI". His point was to argue that having the qualia of conscious understanding is logically different than being able to accomplish the symbol manipulation required to achieve the tasks above.

wodenokoto 4y ago

Can we add (2019) to the title?

mitchbob 4y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/SWLwb https://archive.ph/SWLwb

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> It was one month before the 2016 American presidential election, and everyone at the conference was talking about it, yet Searle only dilated on Trump and sexuality. > How was he seemingly indifferent to Brexit—and Trump’s rise? Am I missing some nuance here, or are these two claims contradictory? I understand 'dilate' to mean enlarge. To 'dilate on Trump' would mean to make Trump greater and larger, or to speak about Trump at great length. That seems to directly contradict the subsequent claim that Searle was indifferent to Trump. If Searle was talking up Trump at length the author would accuse him of being a Trump supporter, not indifferent. Also, the part about Warner comparing the Braun/Apple industrial aesthetic to the lack of pubic hair in porn (lmao okay...) Then Searle asks if there are studies about the effect of this on people. Author characterizes this question as 'bad faith, plain and simple.' Am I missing something here? This whole article seems like a disorganized rant, trying to make sense of it is hurting my head.

Terretta 4y ago
in this case, dilate means comment at length, the archaic use connects expand and expound: to describe or set forth at length or in detail perhaps opining on Trump the person is different from implications of Trump's rise, but no idea; to me article mostly reads as if organized around poking in the eye
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  It's hard for me to square Searle talking about Trump at length, and Searle being indifferent to Trump. The two claims seem to contradict, cancelling out and leaving me with no firm impression about what Searle did or didn't think about Trump. Perhaps the point was to put Searle and Trump's names together in the same sentences, as a way of smearing Searle while not actually claiming anything of substance.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 4y ago

Among the questions raised by this incident, which I'd only consciously been aware of since earlier today, is whether or not HN should accept and post content from The Edge. That was suggested 11 hours ago by robot_head, which drew a response from dang which I find ... grotesquely insensitive, at the very least. The term "enabling" comes to mind. That's not the dang I generally encounter here. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901> I've made three replies so far to that thread myself. Dang's response is that "On HN, we generally go by article quality, not site quality: , and generally try to avoid guilt by association". That links a search on the terms "article quality" "site quality". The problem I have here is that the situation departs sharply from "guilt by association" to "willing and knowing partner in crime", where those crimes include rape, child trafficking, and worse. HN has seen at least 30 submissions from The Edge since 19 October 2020, based on its own "from site" feature: <https://news.ycombinator.com/from%3Fsite%3Dedge.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from%3Fsite%3Dedge.org> The state I'm referring to is archive here: <https://archive.ph/8adBm https://archive.ph/8adBm> I also noted to dang that The Edge nowhere carries any prominent mention, nor apology for, its associations with Epstein: <https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Aedge.org+epstein&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Aedge.org+epstein&ia=...> In this case, if the question is "should HN subject the Edge to Damnatio memoriae?", the defence would have an extraordinarily challenging case to make. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae>

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> The problem I have here is that the situation departs sharply from "guilt by association" to "willing and knowing partner in crime", where those crimes include rape, child trafficking, and worse. I don't pretend to know what Edge has been up to, but this article doesn't actually pin anything like that on Edge. The case presented against Edge seems to boil down to these points: 1. Funded by Epstein. 2. Brockman once made a 'slightly lechy' remark about the authors body, is full of himself, and hangs out with billionaires. 3. A 'subset' of Edge members are right-wing. 4. Searle is a creepy sex pest, and not as smart as people say. > The Edge nowhere carries any prominent mention, nor apology for, its associations with Epstein This does seem like a red flag to me as well, but I can't rule out the mundane explanation that they're too embarrassed to apologize about it, thinking that would make them look guilty or give them bad SEO or something. I think they should put a denouncement of Epstein on their website, but I can't take their failure to do so as strong evidence of complicity. It could simply be misguided ass-covering. You're talking about Edge being a knowing and willing partner in rape and child trafficking, but strong allegations like that should be backed with stronger evidence than what has been given.

dang 4y ago

I imagine that this was posted in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32978355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32978355 being on HN's front page, and in particular in response to the questions around that (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32979901). That's all fine. What's not fine is that you editorialized the title. The phrase "Epstein's Edge.org" appears nowhere in OP's title or even the article body. That's against the site guidelines, which ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. In this case you edited it to certainly make it more linkbaity, and arguably more misleading as well. We take submission privileges away from accounts that do that. We also, and especially, take submission privileges away from accounts that are using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's also against the HN guidelines, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. You've been doing that a lot lately. If you'd please stop, we'd appreciate it.