Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs

Fairly certain that when they refer to “documents” it means pages

What would Epstein get from Lloyd?

If Epstein was in fact blackmailing the rich and famous, or running a sex trafficking operation for profit, how does he benefit from supplying donations (and whatever else he allegedly supplied) to a quantum computing professor?

If you donate $5,000 to a university they will invite you to one or two events a year where they show you the kind of research donations have been supporting, some students who received bursaries say how it let them buy books and focus on their studies, and the head of the university gives a speech about their vision for the future of the school. Important-sounding academics and administrators will circulate and talk to you as a peer.

Or, from a more cynical point of view, they make you feel important/distinguished/part of their community, in hopes of soliciting further donations in the future.

I assume, if you donate $50,000,000 they knock that up several notches.

If the type of guy who will give you $60,000 to cover the cost of your sabbatical invites you to lunch, but this lunch will take 8 hours of your time, that's still an excellent hourly rate.

(If you're willing to overlook the sex offences, that is)

I find the whole Epstein thing to be full fledged Puritan Rage Culture.

Start with the crimes of the man himself. He had young women and girls around and gave them money in exchange for sexual acts. This is something society doesn't like to think about explicitly, but might these young females have actually chosen/wanted this? The typical answer is: They were underage and vulnerable therefor anything they did doesn't imply consent. That is a very condescending view. The age of legal consent in the US is 16 in many states and as low as 11 under some circumstances! In the charges against him it says:

"Once minor victims were recruited, EPSTEIN or his employees or associates would contact victims to schedule appointments for “massages.” As a result, many victims were abused by EPSTEIN on multiple subsequent occasions."

"To further enable him to abuse underage girls, EPSTEIN asked and enticed certain of his victims to recruit additional minor girls to perform “massages” and similarly engage in sex acts with EPSTEIN. When a victim would recruit another underage girl for EPSTEIN, he paid both the victim-recruiter and the new victim hundreds of dollars in cash. Through these victim-recruiters, EPSTEIN maintained a steady supply of new victims to exploit, and gained access to dozens of additional underage girls to abuse."

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/jeffrey-epstein-charged...

These account make it clear to me, that these girls were not helpless victims suffering at the hands of an abuser. That just doesn't scale. 100s of girls agreeing to be scheduled again and again (without use of force threat or violence), and to recruit other girls means that it wasn't that bad. I know this is something "you can't say" hence the throwaway.

I'm not saying that there wasn't any foul play, or that Epstein was a great guy. Far from it. But that he is very different from someone who physically abuses a helpless prepubescent child with violence. In a way treating both these cases as "pedophilic sex offences" is offensive to victims of the latter. My point is that society needs to re-embrace Proportionality.

We wrote this man off as pure Evil, so anything he touches must be Evil too. We don't allow any positive attribution to his actions. Any money he gives is tainted money only used to launder his reputation. Any person that has ever come into contact with him, let alone had any positive thought about him, is also Evil. Why is accepting donations from him frame the person or organization as endorsing child abuse? Why is having a photo with him, or being at a dinner party with him mark you as suspect? Why shouldn't have MIT accept donations from him? Should Apple (or your startup) not sell to "known sex offenders" or other convicted criminals?