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

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

#501

Post by cjbprime »

anon2947 wrote: post #472
pryce wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Xeni Jardin's claim below is true, Joi Ito needs to resign from more than just MIT: "I told the @nytimes everything. So did whistleblowers I was in touch with inside @MIT and @Edge. They printed none of the most damning truths. @joi is on the board of the NYT. THANK GOD FOR @RonanFarrow" EDIT: NYTimes is now indicating that Ito has resigned from NYT Co board, effective immediately [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/xeni…

I read a few more of Xeni's tweets, and wanted to get HN's honest opinion on them. It seems (to me) like a lot of people on Twitter (and HN?) are over-reacting. For example, Xeni's pinned tweet references this other tweet ( https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1165266579560521728 ), which implies that anybody who was ever at a dinner with Epstein should be considered complicit in Epstein's crimes. Take this quote, for exa…

> Steven Pinker, Marvin Minsky

It just sounds like you haven't been paying attention at all. Are you aware that a woman has claimed that she was forced to have sex with Marvin Minsky by Epstein on his island?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...

Are you aware that Pinker has flown on the "Lolita Express" and helped with Epstein's legal defense, a legal defense that led to him avoiding a prison term in a manner that seems aptly describable as "corrupt"?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-...

If you were not aware of these things, please engage in some honest introspection regarding how you ended up decrying attempts to reach justice for them as overreactions on the Internet.

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

#502

Post by jacquesm »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #332
coldtea wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This thread is amazing . Epstein could have confessed to personally trafficking children from the former Yugoslavia (an actual thing that Blackwater was involved in, btw), and if he showed up 5 years later with a couple of barely legal Eastern Europeans in tow, there'd be commenters ready to insist you never can tell for sure !

The amazing thing to me is and yet at the time nobody actually did anything. That is why he got away with it for so long, he could repeat the same thing that already got him convicted once with such impunity because everybody was willing to look away when confronted with the specifics.

Each and every one of those people underneath Ito who suspected something might be up had the opportunity to do something about it, including going to the board, and given their suspicions they should have. And yet, nobody did.

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

#503

Post by cjbprime »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #489
CrazyStat wrote: post #4

This seemed inevitable after the New Yorker article yesterday detailing how Ito and his team hid Epstein's involvement from the university, which had disqualified Epstein as a donor. Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia

The thing I don't understand is why, if you've been blacklisted as a donor, you would want to donate? Can you still declare it on your taxes?

> “Have you managed to talk to many of my friends?” Epstein had been supplying me the phone numbers of important scientists and financiers and media figures. “Do you understand what an extraordinary group of people they are, what they have accomplished in their fields?"

-- http://nymag.com/news/features/41826/

That's why.

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

#504

Post by jacquesm »

nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #303
liability wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do everybody else in this discussion a favor and read this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-univer... You already responded to a comment about that article, so you owe it to others, if not yourself, to actually read it.

My interest here was in how people judge other people, not in Epstein's exploits specifically. I don't see what I would gain from reading that article. I would be interested in what made the Media Lab guy do it. I suppose many people are confronted with an opportunity for "unethical gains" some time in their lives. Maybe the Media Lab guy simply weighted things in his mind and thought it was worth it, to keep the res…

> I would be interested in what made the Media Lab guy do it.

Money .

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

#507

Post by lopmotr »

asveikau wrote: post #22
CrazyStat wrote: post #4

This seemed inevitable after the New Yorker article yesterday detailing how Ito and his team hid Epstein's involvement from the university, which had disqualified Epstein as a donor. Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia

I remember similar stories about people who took money from Harvey Weinstein, for example there was an AIDS nonprofit he gave millions to. It all highlights the difficult job facing people tasked with taking money from donors in this way. They won't always have 20/20 hindsight. They may learn about sketchiness after they already took the money. They may be so blinded by what they see as generosity and good will that…

What's wrong with a charity accepting donations from someone naughty? It doesn't make them complicit in their offences. Criminals often donate money to charities and victims in an effort to get reduced sentences, at least in my country.

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

#508

Post by blub »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #3

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. >…

A model from Eastern Europe is someone that does fashion modeling and is from that area. Euphemistically it could be someone from EE that has sex for money, but you don't want to beat around the bush when describing child sex abuse.

So they should either clearly say underage-looking girls or remove that paragraph because it's irrelevant and confusing.

I mean this is a story about child abuse and the author didn't think to ask those women if the "models" looked underage?

This guy was having sex with underage teens and possibly pre-teens, not "models" and not "young women".

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

#509

Post by snissn »

anon2947 wrote: post #472
pryce wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Xeni Jardin's claim below is true, Joi Ito needs to resign from more than just MIT: "I told the @nytimes everything. So did whistleblowers I was in touch with inside @MIT and @Edge. They printed none of the most damning truths. @joi is on the board of the NYT. THANK GOD FOR @RonanFarrow" EDIT: NYTimes is now indicating that Ito has resigned from NYT Co board, effective immediately [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/xeni…

I read a few more of Xeni's tweets, and wanted to get HN's honest opinion on them. It seems (to me) like a lot of people on Twitter (and HN?) are over-reacting. For example, Xeni's pinned tweet references this other tweet ( https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1165266579560521728 ), which implies that anybody who was ever at a dinner with Epstein should be considered complicit in Epstein's crimes. Take this quote, for exa…

Are you a pro epstein shill account??? I think everyone is massively under- reacting to this story

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

#510

Post by westoncb »

anon2947 wrote: post #472
pryce wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Xeni Jardin's claim below is true, Joi Ito needs to resign from more than just MIT: "I told the @nytimes everything. So did whistleblowers I was in touch with inside @MIT and @Edge. They printed none of the most damning truths. @joi is on the board of the NYT. THANK GOD FOR @RonanFarrow" EDIT: NYTimes is now indicating that Ito has resigned from NYT Co board, effective immediately [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/xeni…

I read a few more of Xeni's tweets, and wanted to get HN's honest opinion on them. It seems (to me) like a lot of people on Twitter (and HN?) are over-reacting. For example, Xeni's pinned tweet references this other tweet ( https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1165266579560521728 ), which implies that anybody who was ever at a dinner with Epstein should be considered complicit in Epstein's crimes. Take this quote, for exa…

Yes, it strikes me as overreaction.

I've been shocked to see in the past few years how common it is for nothing more than the implication of some unqualified 'association' between people/groups to settle folks' minds on some issue or other.

That some vague association exists between people/groups at most creates a demand for more information—it's a type of statement characterized by the giant hole in its front and center. Further, it's a type of statement whose information content is 100% latent until the hole is filled. It is a prompt for investigation—not an indictment of any kind.

Note: I have no comments on the particulars of this situation (in fact everything I've read leads me to believe a lot of people with varying degrees of guilt are being rightly exposed)—I'm only commenting on the general structure of stance-taking, information sufficiency, and valid argument forms in general.

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