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Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

nytimes.com

211–220 of 770 posts

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He basically says that one can use critical thinking to "tell the difference" between the two categories, which is hardly a non-sequitur.

Is the critical thinking "Epstein did bad things. Therefore, everything Epstein did was bad"? Critical thinking can tell you there is a higher chance the women were sex trafficked considering the employer and his immoral proclivities. It can't tell you if they actually were or not.

No, the critical thinking mentioned, is:

1) If a powerful man who has been accused of sex trafficking

2) shows up with two girls less than half his age,

3) who are from eastern europe (while he is an American, not exactly where he'd get girlfriends or assistants),

4) he passes them of like his "assistants",

5) while they look like models,

6) and they make everybody uncomfortable to the point of telling them to signal whether they're there against their will

then critical thinking says he's more probably than not indeed sex trafficking, and there's something really shady in his relationship with the two girls...

Not, "they're surely just his assistants, nothing to see here, why would anybody consider anything else going on without some written testimony, a full confession and perhaps lab evidence?"

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” That same future president being quoted in an article about Epstein in 2002.

Great! Now do the one about Bill Clinton taking 27 flights on the Lolita Express! Or the one about Trump banning Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2008 when he started to suspect...

A cabal of child traffickers/rapists operating in government doesn't need to a partisan issue.

Additionally, Trump and Epstein appear to have split up after Trump got the upper hand during a property sale.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-and-jef...

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I live in the gritty real world. Now let me tell you about my international experiences with the ultra wealthy, you hick." How do you tell the difference between the sex-trafficked, forced-into-servitude eastern european model-assistants, and the eastern european models who see an opportunity to make a lot of money and a lot of connections, and take it?

> How do you tell the difference between the sex-trafficked, forced-into-servitude eastern european model-assistants, and the eastern european models who see an opportunity to make a lot of money and a lot of connections, and take it? There's not much difference between the two camps, especially if the "models" are just teenage girls from some Eastern European village or pre-adult girls (as low as 14) from broken poo…

Some of the things you mention are different from the others (drugs, maybe lies). But overall, in my opinion you are taking away too much agency from the women. It is too easy to blame somebody's actions on "manipulation". That would be a wildcard to accuse anybody of anything you want.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having young girl-friends is not the same as sex trafficking, though, or is it? I thought sex trafficking would be luring girls out of their country with false promises, then burning their passports so that they can't flee. I wouldn't consider it overly weird if rich guys have young girl-friends. Maybe it is just because Hollywood has groomed me to expect it, I don't know.

> Having young girl-friends is not the same as sex trafficking, though, or is it? I thought sex trafficking would be luring girls out of their country with false promises, then burning their passports so that they can't flee Well, that pretty much sums up what Epstein did. You don't even need to burn passports, you can psychologically manipulate, threaten, beat up, hook on drugs, pass to friends, parade your powerful…

"psychologically manipulate" - isn't that just a loaded way of saying "convince"? Did he actually do all those other things, beatings, threatening? Or is it such a stereotype that it is just assumed that it must have been this way?

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#215

Good. Here’s a particularly damning passage from Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article [1]: > According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room. >…

Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above. Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be…

If they didn't know he was sketchy why did they go to such lengths to obscure the origin of his donations? If you are rich and you really want to make an anonymous donation (perhaps out of humility, perhaps to avoid solicitations from other worthy causes) you hire a lawyer and direct them to submit the funds on your behalf.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#216
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I guess I am not cool enough to go to places where I can see old-guy billionaires with teen models from Eastern Europe in tow.

Really? My wife and I see it often enough that we've even labeled it: "the wife or daughter game". You observe such a constellation and try to figure out which one it is. Less often the answer is "escort".

I play this game as well but call it “daughter or prostitute.”

It’s pretty common to see old dudes with young women. I’ve rarely been able to actually find the answer.

The few times I’ve gone to fancy resorts or expensive areas, I’ve always seen couples like this. Only a few times did I see more than one woman.

I worked for a ceo once who always had a much younger (25 vs 65) assistant in the building.

I don’t think I would change my behavior if some rich guy had two models in tow for business meetings. I might assume they are prostitutes, but as long as they aren’t children I don’t know what action I would take.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#218
post #16

I'm not sure if this is self-aware or not, but Ito's fund is called:"Neoteny", meaning "the retention of child-like attributes through adulthood". Apparently, Epstein's funds / projects were named with innuendos. (edited) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neoteny#section-over...

No, 'neoteny' doesn't "usually" mean "animals with childlike features", but rather "the retention of juvenile features into adulthood". It's conjectured that a lot of humanity's advanced intelligence & culture has been achieved with the help of our species' extended retention of juvenile learning-capacity & neural plasticity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans

Et tu, gojomo?

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#219

> I don't get it. This is one of those things where somebody noticed that things just didn't seem right and the proper response to that is to raise concern and ask questions. Sorry, but a 60-something "finance" guy with an entourage of teen models doesn't add up. Sure some of these people have trophy wives half their age, and it raises eyebrows, but this is far beyond that and totally unacceptable once somebody looks…

She’s getting money, he’s getting ... something. (sex? youthful energy? sight of beauty?) As long as it’s legal, it’s a fair exchange.

Or do you object to young women (and otherwise beautiful men and women) acting in movies and things like Victoria’s Secret shows as well (well, you could object on the “encouraging body image problems” angle but that’s orthogonal).

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Epstein was problematic --- something that in essentially no doubt at this point after his indictment, imprisonment, and subsequent suicide --- was so well-understood to the Media Lab team at the time that they were considering intervening to help Epstein's escorts, on the off chance that they had been trafficked. That is not a position most people's bosses ever put them in, but it's what Ito did to staff at the…

I was specifically referring to the "most damning paragraph" claim, not an assessment of the situation in general. I guess it could be seen as damning that his staff thought that way, implying some unhealthy context - as you said, if I understood correctly. Or in other words, the damning part was not the young assistants, the damning part was MIT staff worrying about young assistants.

I can't edit the original comment, but to clarify: that passage is damning to Ito (and Cohen). The MIT staff were justified in considering the possibility that Epstein's assistants were trafficked, given his prior indictment and plea bargain admitting to procuring underage prostitutes. Ito and Cohen knew what they were doing was shady, as evidenced by their attempts to hide their dealings with Epstein from the university at large, which had placed him on a donation blacklist.
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