19 ms·
The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> adding: “perhaps you will know Jeffrey and his background and situation." This is the most-interesting bit. The introducer put this up front. Maybe it's Nigerian-prince scame logic? Or maybe there really is that much sympathy for pedophiles in Silicon Valley [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/business/epstein-investments-palantir-coinbase-thiel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/business/epstein-investme...
- gpm 9mo agoReading more charitably than is likely deserved, it could be "his background and situation (of knowing tons of rich people who might also put funds into this)"
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoI'm struggling to read the word "situation" charitably in the context of an introduction.
- 1-more 9mo agoBest I can do is that the middleman took the sweetheart deal conviction for solicitation at face value, and did not know it was a plea down from crimes against children? IDK
- sonofhans 9mo agoBecause you’re not the audience. Clearly, in 2010, many people were still angling for Epstein introductions for the obvious reasons. The “warning” is a signal.
- gpm 9mo agoI'm reading "situation" as "engaged in the occupation of networking, but it's not a job" in the above... but yeah that's one part of why it's an overly charitable reading.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- notahacker 9mo agoFeels mostly like "if you're responding to this you're already compromised", a bit like "I take it you understand that our Family expects its favours to be returned". I think it's pretty well established now that powerful people in and outside the Valley considered to think that Epstein was a useful contact knowing his "personal situation" rather well and sometimes explicitly referring to it. Suspect it's possible to have innocently accepted an introduction to him or even advice from him in the 2010s because he wasn't that famous at the time, but it seems like they were motivated to minimise that possibility. Even easier to add people to the list you can blackmail in future if you don't even have to arrange island visits for them
- lifestyleguru 9mo ago> He has paid for college educations for personal employees and students from Rwanda, and spent millions on a project to develop a thinking and feeling computer and on music intended to alleviate depression. Helping poor children from Africa, investing in AI, and burning CDs with dolphin sounds. A classic.
- dathinab 9mo agoIMHO it's more like a disclaimer, if you hide it people will sooner or later still find out either if they do research (it was public), or randomly later. That then creates a situation of a "breach of trust" that "they where tricked to work with a evil person" etc. So given that it anyway comes out sooner or later it's better to be upfront about it as that can create a feeling of trust. It can create misconceptions like "if he where unserious he would have hidden that he works for Epstein" etc. At the same time it acts as filter, people with a upstanding moral compass will directly say no and you don't wast time on trying to recruit them. Lastly for people which some but not robust morals iff you can convince them to work with you and they start having doubts you now have the argument that "you told them upfront about the issue and they where okay with it, and bailing not would make them look like a very unreliable business partner affecting their carrier beyond this situation". To be clear I'm not saying that this is "true", but that this argument presented carefully in the right way at the right time can be effective to manipulate people _even if not true_.
- trhway 9mo ago>Scott Aaronson was born on May 21st, 1981. He will be 30 in 2011. The conference could follow a theme of: “hurry to think together with Scott Aaronson while he is still in his 20s and not yet a pitiful over-the-hill geezer in his 30s.” This offers another nice opportunity for celebration. may be somebody would train a model on the Epstein and his associates emails/etc. which would allow to research the workings of the such psychopaths' minds
- john-h-k 9mo agoI can see some risks with creating a hyper intelligent mecha-Epstein
- bamboozled 9mo agoIt's called Grok
- moralestapia 9mo agoExcerpt from one of the related emails (written by JE): "great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems, if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount . self deception, ( necessary to prevent accidental disclosure of inate algorithms. WE need more hackers , also interested in biological hacking , security, etc." Damn! I once worked with a guy that was exactly like this. Not just writing but his style of speech irl was like that, incoherent loosely bound ideas around one topic. Ironically, the harder he tried to appear smart the more idiotic were the things that spewed out of his mouth. We were working with GPUs, trying to find ways to optimize GPU code, he called the team for an informal meeting and told us dead serious, "Why can't you just like, ..., remove the GPUs from the server, then crack them open, turn them outside out and put them back in to see if they perform better". :O I don't know if this has a name, I just thought the guy had schizophrenia. So glad I moved on from that place.
- EFreethought 9mo agoWhen he was alive a lot of people said Epstein was really smart. But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
- astrange 9mo agoHe was probably dyslexic. I know people who type like that too but normal in person.
- throwjefferey 9mo agoHe was probably more impressive in-person.
- moralestapia 9mo ago
- soperj 9mo ago> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief. Doubt it would have changed anything for Bill. There's a pattern there and this is just a piece of that pattern.
- pixl97 9mo agoTurns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through
- decimalenough 9mo agoThe kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity? And actual charity at that, not Ellison style "Larry Ellison Research Foundation for Prolonging the Life of Larry Ellison and Getting Some Tax Breaks Along the Way".
- lifestyleguru 9mo agoI'd prefer if rich simply paid their taxes and contributions instead of spending money on fighting poor children in Africa.
- wrs 9mo agoThat made some sense back when the government used to use the taxes to help poor children in Africa, or poor children in the US for that matter. As of 2025 it seems to just leave that sort of thing up to Bill.
- refulgentis 9mo agoYou're absolutely right in a cold logical sense, even if it makes other people emotionally react to the comment. This was a kind way to react to a lazy false dichotomy, that it's either taxes or donations.
- mikepurvis 9mo ago
- Scotmicky14 9mo ago[dead]
- martythemaniak 9mo ago> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief. The actual lesson is not "listen to your mom", but "character matters". It doesn't matter how much someone agrees with you, how smart they are, how rich they are, how many great ideas they have etc etc. A rotten character will eventually rot everything around it. Techines/nerds/geeks get so enamoured with ideas they tend to not even see the kind of people ideas come from.
- fragmede 9mo ago> Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. Is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but probably has something to do with that.
- veunes 9mo agoCharacter matters but so does having people around you who are willing to call it early, before you've rationalized yourself into ignoring it
- gowld 9mo agoThe implied lesson is that moms impart character. Bill Gates's mother was self-dealing up nepo baby business contracts while Scott's Mom was warning him away from bad people.
- niobe 9mo agoGuily by (lack of) association!
- vee-kay 9mo ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 9mo agoThe claims in that article look weak. Out of 10 000, how many children usually die before adulthood?
- wewewedxfgdf 9mo agoIt would fit perfectly if Epstein was a Russian agent. - Where did he get his money from? - Who's interests are served by this whole dodgy setup? - The Trump connection. - The Trump Russia connection. Maybe I imagine but it all seems aligned.
- regularization 9mo agoHis e-mails show him trying and failing to get a Russian visa. Not much of a Russian agent. Actually the person who was trying to help him was until this week the UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson. He had to resign this week due to the emails. He previously spent decades attacking the UK Labour's left like Corbyn and trying to make the party more amenable to the type of people Epstein hung around with. Odd that this very American American, with heavy Israeli contacts and some UK contacts is claimed to be associated with Russia with little evidence. He's American through and through (or failing that, Israeli aligned).
- Der_Einzige 9mo agoJohn Kiriakou Openly claims he was mossad in recent interviews. Also look up Israel’s relationship with pedophilia (being a safe haven for the accused and convicted). You’ll find plenty of Jewish in isreal media sources reporting on this.
- vee-kay 9mo ago[flagged]
- leosanchez 9mo agoMy God, Your first link is horrifying.
- Nevermark 9mo ago[flagged]
- MrCurryCasino 9mo ago[flagged]
- stein1946 9mo agoWhile I understand that once one attains those short of connections, certain intelligence agencies will reach out offering lucrative opportunities for your co-operation. Disgusting nature aside, I can't help but be amazed as to how someone can be so well connected. What sort of skills did Epstein have that managed to have so many people on speed dial? How do you get in a position to correspond with presidents, royals, celebrities and getting them all hooked on you? Amazing indeed.
- lostlogin 9mo ago> What sort of skills did Epstein have that managed to have so many people on speed dial? The answer may be disturbing.
- gehsty 9mo agoWealth and the party scene (drugs and sex) as a carrot and then a stick. It is not amazing, it is vile.
- KoftaBob 9mo ago[flagged]
- navigate8310 9mo agoWhat triggered Mossad to toss their best informant?
- lifestyleguru 9mo agolook up their email as ask them yourself
- KoftaBob 9mo agoHim being in jail awaiting trial, which risked him exposing the details of the operation if he felt it could help him get a lighter sentence. If the choice for Mossad was either risk Epstein exposing that Israel was essentially running a state-sponsored underage sex trafficking ring, or kill him before he can do that, you know what they'd choose.
- dataengineer56 9mo ago> For whatever reason, I forwarded this email to my parents, brother, and then-fiancee Dana. A very strange action to take for someone who claims to have no recollection of the meeting.
- navigate8310 9mo agoDepends upon how tight knit is the family, yes, it seems strange for me as well. Members in some families are unusually friendly. My family won't even trust me hosting them an Immich library.
- pfdietz 9mo agoThe Anna Karenina Principle: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
- prawn 9mo agoI don't know for sure, but from his CV, I'd guess I am similar in age to the author. He described remembering the venue (possibly separately to it being the meeting's venue) but not the meeting itself. I would have similar selective memories of business events from 10-15 years ago, amongst years of many meetings and opportunities. Sometimes I have a strong memory of one aspect, but no recollection at all of another. And I can identify with finding that email phrasing (about someone's "situation") being something that might prompt me to send it to people close to me as a sort of "look what happened to me today" thing.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- whatever1 9mo agoPower corrupts, end of story. Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease. Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.
- tirant 9mo agoFully agree on the root cause, but not on the solution. We should strive for extremely limited power by our public representatives, so their corruption impact is reduced to a minimum. But not only limited power, but also limited budget access, as an extension to limit that power. And that actually means reduced taxation. But at the same time, the budget for justice system needs to increase. It should be most probably the strongest branch of the government. Delayed justice is one of the most common ways of injustice. Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders. Government has no say in that. That is unless companies break the law, and that's why a strong Justice system is necessary. With a reduced size of the state there's also way less risk of private companies and individuals to corrupt public representatives. Monopolies are not always a negative outcome on a free market if the company in Monopoly situation reaches that position by offering better products within the law. However they can be specially dangerous when they're artificially created by the Government (e.g. allocation of a common resource to a specific company --> corruption almost always follows).
- gib444 9mo ago> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant I'll have some of whatever you're smoking. It's not that useful separating public and private when there are revolving doors and the people who run the companies bribe — sorry, lobby — politicians. It's an incredibly intimate relationship
- whatever1 9mo agoPoliticians also go to the private sector after they retire.
- MagicMoonlight 9mo ago[flagged]
- A_D_E_P_T 9mo agoI mean, it depends what you mean by "engagements." He was invited to meet Epstein via an intermediary -- but he blew off the invitation and never had any contact with Epstein. In general, Epstein was fond of "collecting" scientists who might entertain his clientele and house guests at parties.
- SauntSolaire 9mo agoEpstein has at least one email where he just lists the names of interesting people. So I suppose not being interesting is one way to guarantee you're not in the files.
- pfdietz 9mo agoIt worked for me!
- simgt 9mo ago> not yet a pitiful over-the-hill geezer in his 30s Hey. Fuck them. At least most of us are not greedy corrupt fucks. Or died in prison as a consequence of our own sins.
- mvc 9mo agoA cool thing to do by the way, when you have run over a hill like us. Is to run back over it the other way.
- direwolf20 9mo agoThe most surprising name in the Epstein files is Rebecca Watson also known as Skepchick on YouTube. She has been a thorn in their side for years and years.
- tdeck 9mo agoI've been enjoying her recent videos about this for sure e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoO9FZXUgv4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoO9FZXUgv4
- marai2 9mo agoI had no idea about any of this! Thank you for sharing this!
- cogman10 9mo agoShe was supremely harassed at one point (see: elevatorgate). Now I have to wonder how much of that was Epstein powered.
- direwolf20 9mo agoAccording to her videos, the timing lines up perfectly
- veunes 9mo agoSometimes (sometimes) it just implies that someone sent an email, got ignored, and left a paper trail behind
- bitmasher9 9mo agoJust being named in the files doesn’t mean you are guilty. In this situation being named in the files gave him an opportunity to demonstrate high moral character. “I turned down his money because he was scummy”
- cogman10 9mo agoYup. There's a few people like that in the files. But a distressingly large number of named people had ongoing correspondence.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- keepamovin 9mo agoI think it's obvious Epstein was engineered as a "control theory lever" over a global financial/political system, that despite the best wargaming/simulation, could never be perfectly predicted. The system was simply too complex. So, real politik, and Machiavellian necessity required elements of control to be injected into this system to provide definiteness where ambiguity dared reign. Ne pas comprende? That means that the blackmail was used to ensure definiteness of otherwise variable elements. If we were in Ancient Greece, it wouldn't be pedophilia (then, a "good") it would have been "chthonic excess"- or "ideological heresy"- based blackmail. The architects of this twistedness merely used the tools available that leveraged the age we live in. So, that bacchic excess (beyond such needed for blackmail)? Human nature in secret succumbed to unchecked desires, itself a predictable outcome. The OG plan was not "evil" per se (ensure predictability of unpredictable system), it was pragmatic, but the implementation, necessarily became evil and the evil was normalized and justified by the "importance" of the plan to the stability of the playmakers. The banality of evil, eh?
- gowld 9mo ago"Charles Harper" is a common name. Is Scott referring to this Charles Harper, of the Templeton Foundation, dedicated to the science of theology? http://capabilities.templeton.org/2006/interview/c_harper.html http://capabilities.templeton.org/2006/interview/c_harper.ht...
- ntnsndr 9mo agoThat was my first thought too!
- praptak 9mo agoSince it's ultimately about morals, maybe it is time to reread CS Lewis' "The Inner Ring" from 1944[0,1]. It's about the same kind of choices but in situations which are much harder to extricate oneself from than just a random sleazeball messaging you out of the blue. [0] Link: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ [1] HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38696764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38696764
- andrewflnr 9mo agoIt's also one of the major subjects of his novel, That Hideous Strength. The novel is honestly a bit of a slog until it gets going, but I appreciated it more as I started feeling the same pull to be on The Inside. The speech linked above is simply very good.
- palata 9mo ago> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief. Well it looks like Bill Gates had his wife for advice, and apparently his not following it played a part in ending his marriage.
- 5o1ecist 9mo ago[flagged]
- roryirvine 9mo agoIf that happened, it would be classed as assault in the UK - is it the same in America? And, if so, is Gates likely to be investigated by the police?
- jMyles 9mo agoWith a bunch of specific exceptions, violence is handled by the states, so it depends on the state in which it occurred. My best guess is that it's some kind of criminal offense in all 50.
- anigbrowl 9mo agoIsn't use of the internet to facilitate crimes commonly cited as a reason for federal prosecution, on the grounds that all internet communications involve interstate commerce?
- cogman10 9mo agoThis is what makes so much of the Epstein files damning. They are correspondents that happen after 2008 when he was publicly convicted of prostitution. The fact that Scott here was able to find that information and cut ties shows how corrupt every powerful person that didn't do that was. Sorry billionaires and politicians, you don't come out looking clean being friendly to the known pedophile pimp.
- amirhirsch 9mo ago> S&S Deli in Cambridge Good lunch spot for a nudnik
- lenerdenator 9mo agoLinus Torvalds was found in Jeffrey's emails. A different Jeffrey, mind. Not sure how he's meant to come back from this.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mlmonkey 9mo ago> If only Bill Gates . . . had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief. That's assuming Bill Gates didn't know what he was doing. Sadly, it sounds like he knew exactly what he was doing.
- throw9235837 9mo ago[flagged]
- busterarm 9mo agoIt's a very different board than it was 10 years ago.
- throwaway77385 9mo agoValid point, but would be stronger if 'their' had been spelled correctly.
- throw9235837 9mo agoFixed. This is the type of comment that makes HN good. Fact-checking and spell-checking, and critical thinking.
- vee-kay 9mo agoSocial media forums are microcosms of humanity. You will find them to be quite reflective of humanity, with all its good and its bad.
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo agoLets remove the word 'Jews' and say the government of Israel. Israel LOVES when people mix up the two. I believe they even intentionally do it and promote it. It forces non Israeli Jews to identify with the government of Israel, expanding their power beyond their boarders. I genuinely feel bad for Jewish people. The government of Israel is happy to conflate the two at their expense.
- stickfigure 9mo agoDifferent stories attract different commenters. This topic unfortunately attracts a lot of crazies.
- sosomoxie 9mo agoWhat you're seeing is intelligent and rational people correctly assessing the information available. That it sounds like a "wild conspiracy" theory, is because it is wild (and really disturbing). Epstein and Maxwell have well documented ties to Israel and there are a ton of emails where he's talking about "goys"... Does that mean "the jews" are behind this? Absolutely not! I don't think anyone is insinuating that. He does however appear to be a supremacist with ties to Israeli state intelligence and high level government.
- iwanttocomment 9mo agoI was hoping the comments would be full of similar stories, in which a demon makes a half-hearted effort to pull you into his clutches, only to be naively blown off, then not thought of again until his true nature was revealed. Our story of this sort comes from when my partner interviewed at Theranos (!) long before the collapse or any public recognition, related the super-creepy interview process, and I was like "sounds like a big no to me." When the Theranos story blew up it was like "oh boy".
- tantalor 9mo agoWhat was creepy about the interview process?
- iwanttocomment 9mo agoKeeping in mind that I wasn't the interviewee and this happened over 15 years ago, there was apparently a combination of extreme secrecy about the organization and a massive disconnect between the largely military experience of the interviewers and the company's supposed product space. Partner left wondering "black ops or bullshit?"
- IG_Semmelweiss 9mo agoIts certainly not everyday that you are left wondering "black ops or bullshit?"
- randycupertino 9mo agoI interviewed and had an offer from Theranos. They were super slimey, and this was before they were known as a fraud. - Sunny asked me why I went to such an unprestigious academic institution for undergrad - Sunny flipped out at an extension cord going to the table AV setup in the meeting room. He called in 5 IT people and yelled at them during my interview about the extension cord and yanked it out of the wall. - Elizabeth and Sunny parked their Lamborginis in the handicapped parking spaces directly in front of the office - When I got the offer, the fine print noted the location my office would actually be located in was NOT at the fancy HQ in Palo Alto where they had recruited me at and showed me that I would be working, it was at a trailer park on the east side of highway 101 in Menlo Park (um, no thanks. Part of the reason I passed). - part of the hiring process was to go get your blood tested by them and my lab results were discordant with my lab results from Stanford so it showed their testing didn't actually work - security stood outside the restroom stall while I peed before the interview and came in with me while I washed my hands. - Elizabeth rescheduled my interview with her 4x, once with 18 minutes notice. Their entire process took 3 months and 7 rounds.
- Wistar 9mo agoThe names of someone close to me and his (adult) daughter both show up in the latest Epstein file release but for innocuous reasons. They both have published a lot and, apparently, Epstein was recommended some of their works.
- tzs 9mo ago> Last night, I was taken aback to discover that my name appears in the Epstein Files, in 26 different documents I'm kind of disappointed that my name is not in there. (Well the name is in there but not as my name. When you have a last name that has been in the top 5 in the US for over 230 years and a first name that was top 20 when people in the age group most likely to be in those files were born, you get a lot of false positives). The bar to ending up in those files for perfectly innocent reasons is pretty low. Epstein was involved in a lot of legitimate things, probably to draw attention away from the illegitimate things. Do some interesting research that gets some attention in the popular science press and Epstein might want to talk about funding you. Write an interesting book or article that comes to his attention and he might mention it in an email. Heck, write an interesting answer on Quora and you might end up in the files, because Epstein was subscribed to Quora's digest email. If even 5% of what 15 year old tzs planned to accomplish with his life had happened, I'd be in there in at least one of those innocent ways. It highlights how mundane my life turned out.
- BrokenCogs 9mo agoWhat's your Epstein / Erdos number?
- etothepii 9mo agoHow is this defined?
- BrokenCogs 9mo ago1 if you've been emailed or mentioned (cited) by Jeffrey Epstein. 2 if you've been emailed or cited by someone who has an Epstein number of 1, and so on.
- etothepii 9mo agoI ask because writing a paper with someone is a non secret operator. I suspect there is no way to establish, if one has an Epstein number >2, what it is.
- BrokenCogs 9mo agoYou have to self report of course. First we find all the 1s then we find all the 2s, and so on
- Seattle3503 9mo agoThis is interesting to me as it demonstrates that a normal person at the time could see for themselves that Epstein was someone you didn't want to associate. I've wondered if Epstein put up a good smoke screen that confounded ordinary judgements (rather than moral judgements). IMO this demonstrates that a normal person could see him for who he was, even in the midst of one of his charm offensives.
- matthewdgreen 9mo agoAs far back as 2008 a quick Google for Epstein's name would reveal Wikipedia and mainstream news outlining the charges. He was convicted for soliciting a 14 year old, but the charges covered many other girls and sexual assaults.