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Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

vox.com

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Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#41

Post by bbanyc »

Alex3917 wrote: post #15
kyledrake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to hear your perspective on why Joi Ito is a hero.

He was an early investor in Six Apart and Technorati, was one of the top 100 bloggers, and was one of the first to clearly articulate the ability of the Internet to change society. He was also on the board of Creative Commons, ICANN, Mozilla, etc. Also his sister is one of the top Internet researchers, and iirc she has said that she became interested in the field because of his early entrepreneurial career.

Weird that of all the institutions of the 2000s tech scene, only BoingBoing.net comes out looking good.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#42

Post by seph-reed »

partialrecall wrote: post #40
seph-reed wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw another article like this about MIT recently. I have a really hard time taking the discussion as a whole seriously, because it kind of feels like bike-shedding as compared to "How are we going to grill some of the people who really, actually deserve it?" On the list of priorities, reprimanding labs and schools for taking donations seems like it should not be coming first.

The response needn't be serialized. That is to say, multiple actions may be popped off the priority queue at once, without waiting for the others to finish. See also: the reason we are talking about this at all when there are still hungry children in the world.

Hungry people are a growing and incredibly complex problem. Punishing even a single one of Epstein's clients seems much more manageable. And if we're going for impact-to-effort ratio queuing, this is likely a bit more of a gimme than world hunger.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#43

Post by cortesoft »

algaeontoast wrote: post #2

Nobody should be trying to cover for the Media Lab in any way or form. If you're a professional and you take money in this way you are complicit, period. An article claiming Epstein was a victim because pedophiles and rapists are "victims" would have been less vapid than what Vox focuses on in this article.

Did you read the same article I did? I feel like the article said the opposite of what you are saying it did... the article pretty strongly says that Media Lab was in the wrong and the argument that the donations were anonymous and therefore ok were completely wrong.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#44

Post by partialrecall »

seph-reed wrote: post #42
partialrecall wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The response needn't be serialized. That is to say, multiple actions may be popped off the priority queue at once, without waiting for the others to finish. See also: the reason we are talking about this at all when there are still hungry children in the world.

Hungry people are a growing and incredibly complex problem. Punishing even a single one of Epstein's clients seems much more manageable. And if we're going for impact-to-effort ratio queuing, this is likely a bit more of a gimme than world hunger.

The point is that society can address more than one problem (or more than one aspect of a problem) at once. The reasoning I responded to seemed to be following the tired cliche of dismissing any problem as not worthy of attention because children are still starving.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#45

Post by natalyarostova »

Of all the people to take Epstein's money or endorse him with their reputation, of all the slimy people, of all the career politicians, we've decided to mainly just fixate and ruin the life of one well-intentioned nerd who wanted to use the money for research.

I hope everyone feels fuzzy and warm with their self-righteousness. Evil is defeated once more -- and you all helped -- with your brave internet shaming and directed anger. Truly, we live in marvelous times, where we can all gather together online and use the decentralized social networks to conspire and destroy.

Of course, no one here could hope to destroy those who are truly powerful and deserving, so instead every once in a while perhaps we can pick off one of the weaker ones.

But he deserved it! And that's why we write and focus on it, right? What else do people deserve? What else could we have done with this time and energy? Anything greater? If so, why didn't we? Perhaps it's because destroying people feels good -- it's fun.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#46

Post by vernie »

natalyarostova wrote: post #45

Of all the people to take Epstein's money or endorse him with their reputation, of all the slimy people, of all the career politicians, we've decided to mainly just fixate and ruin the life of one well-intentioned nerd who wanted to use the money for research. I hope everyone feels fuzzy and warm with their self-righteousness. Evil is defeated once more -- and you all helped -- with your brave internet shaming and di…

You get to deflect and vilify academics, it's a twofer!

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#47

Post by nardi »

amluto wrote: post #35
tlb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think no theory of anonymity works. A villain isn't going to keep their pinky-promise to not tell everyone that your prestigious institution took their money.

It’s not particularly difficult to make a donation anonymous in a way that the recipient genuinely doesn’t know who made the donation. Just have a neutral third party handle it. This could be a donor advised fund or a trustee, for example. I suspect this isn’t particularly rare.

But then the donor tells the recipient that they are the ones who donated all of that money. And so they get all of the benefits anyway.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#48

Post by amluto »

nardi wrote: post #47
amluto wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not particularly difficult to make a donation anonymous in a way that the recipient genuinely doesn’t know who made the donation. Just have a neutral third party handle it. This could be a donor advised fund or a trustee, for example. I suspect this isn’t particularly rare.

But then the donor tells the recipient that they are the ones who donated all of that money. And so they get all of the benefits anyway.

I just gave you $10M. Can I have a private dinner?

Do you believe me? If an anonymous donation is done with some degree of care, you have no way to verify my claim.

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#49

Post by bbanyc »

natalyarostova wrote: post #45

Of all the people to take Epstein's money or endorse him with their reputation, of all the slimy people, of all the career politicians, we've decided to mainly just fixate and ruin the life of one well-intentioned nerd who wanted to use the money for research. I hope everyone feels fuzzy and warm with their self-righteousness. Evil is defeated once more -- and you all helped -- with your brave internet shaming and di…

When Ito turns out to have covered for some of Epstein's "customers", or to have been one himself, will you stop defending him?

Re: Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money

#50

Post by 8bitsrule »

"If a donation is anonymous, the theory goes — that is, anonymous to the public — the giver cannot accrue any prestige or social capital from it."

OTOH, it at least helps the anonymous 'givers' to feel a bit consecrated about their nefarious actions. Also it helps the prestigious 'takers', capable of ignoring the smell of it, to cloak their taint.

The rationalization that 'it's okay if noone knows' seems more like something for, say, a bank than for an academic institution. And the smell hangs around. It might lead to things like, say, rigged admissions standards. Or the unfortunate suicides of bright young stars.

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