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The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#41
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer if rich simply paid their taxes and contributions instead of spending money on fighting poor children in Africa.

That 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.

You'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.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#42

Excerpt 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 inv…

When 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.

I've found that problem solving intelligence and language skills are not that strongly correlated. He clearly had some kind of skill to keep his operation running, even before you consider the more cynical explanations in the other replies.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#43
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through

The 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".

Listen, billionaires just have to do three things to be beloved:

  1. Donate 5-10% of their fortune to random unobjectionable charities.
  2. Don't abuse children.
  3. Stay off Twitter.
It's not a high bar, we don't need to give a silver medal to those that fall short.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#44
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading 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)"

I'm struggling to read the word "situation" charitably in the context of an introduction.

I'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.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#45
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through

These binary distinctions (mostly) don't work for people in the real world. It's not a book or movie where people are clearly either good or bad, in reality all people are a mix of both. He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing. The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines t…

He uses philanthropy to force his ideology on everyone and his ideology doesn't work. His philanthropy makes things worse not better.

At some point it stops being a philanthropy when it makes lives of people he tries to "help" worse. Like his actions have a ulterior motives...

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer if rich simply paid their taxes and contributions instead of spending money on fighting poor children in Africa.

One of Michael Shellenberger's central theses is, I think, that the government's ability to invest in "extras" like overseas aid, science, the environment, space exploration, etc is directly a function of how large and healthy the middle class is because that's where the political capital to do these things really comes from . Basically the post-WWII period was a golden age for all of the above because the middle cla…

I mean literally taxing the literally rich. Most population by "taxing the rich" mean those earning >90k EUR/USD on employment contract. They see the real rich maybe few times in life from a distance on a yacht in Caribbean or Mediterranean but don't connect the dots.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#47
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through

The 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".

Jeffrey Epstein ran a child sex slavery operation for rich people.

There is nothing at all you can do that could ever overcome the harm of helping that man, participating in his business, and calling him a friend.

I don't care if Jesus Christ himself comes down and says Bill Gates is solely responsible for the ending of all suffering.

Raping kids is Bad. Enslaving kids to rape is Bad. This is as clear as you can get in real human society to being The Bad Guy, and Bill Gates spent his precious, limited time on this earth helping him, legitimizing him, and participating in his influence peddling and child rape and slavery

Bill Gates is a piece of shit.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These binary distinctions (mostly) don't work for people in the real world. It's not a book or movie where people are clearly either good or bad, in reality all people are a mix of both. He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing. The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines t…

You mean his philanthropy work that influences where public money goes, into companies like Monsanto and Cargill which his foundation profits from?

I don't think a healthy society has anything close to our level of wealth concentration, but even if he's made mistakes, he's saved many millions of lives.

Compare that to Elon Musk, who uses his Musk Foundation as a tax shelter, only spending from it for a private school for his children.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#50

> 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-investme...

> 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.

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