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

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

#401

Post by SomeOldThrow » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:48 AM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #335

ritchiea wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there inevitably people who want to do the mental gymnastics of assuming innocence for a man convicted of sex trafficking? I understand assuming innocence the first time someone is accused of anything unsavory because mistakes happen. But once you are convicted, serve jail time and are suspiciously behaving in the same manner... Who are we serving by assuming innocence? And let me remind you that in society w…

I get part of the impulse. The concept that attractive Eastern European women spending their time with a billionaire means that they were trafficked somewhat strips them of agency. Like "you wouldn't do this of your own accord". Maybe they would. Of course, in this case, the fellow turned out to be a monster. But Sir Richard Branson is on the level AFAIK and he hangs out with attractive women. Presumably they enjoy t…

> But Sir Richard Branson is on the level AFAIK and he hangs out with attractive women. Presumably they enjoy the company.

Isn’t Branson linked to the NXIVM sex cult? Seems like a hell of an assumption.

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

#402

Post by freyr » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

pryce wrote: post #340

p0llard wrote: post #108

Internal email this afternoon from President Reif: To the members of the MIT community, Last night, The New Yorker published an article that contains deeply disturbing allegations about the engagement between individuals at the Media Lab and Jeffrey Epstein. Because the accusations in the story are extremely serious, they demand an immediate, thorough and independent investigation. This morning, I asked MIT’s General…

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…

What is Xeni Jardin claiming? That she brought the story to the NYT but they buried it because Ito was on the board? Why didn't she take it elsewhere?

Edit: I was looking for a bit more context than a random tweet. Had to search through a bunch of tweets to find it, but apparently Xeni tweeted about Joi Ito's connection to Epstein weeks ago.

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

#403

Post by mirimir » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #391

mirimir wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epstein was clearly a pedophile. Even at the time in question, it was already quite clear that he was a pedophile. So that's what's so damning. Trafficking of young women from the former Soviet Union is a complicated issue. During the collapse, and well into the 90s and mid 00s, many people were desperate. Literally starving, with ~no public services. And many criminals took advantage of that, recruiting young women…

> So I guess that Epstein was just trying to maintain a pretense of legitimacy. Or just felt untouchable.

Right. Maybe not surprising, given who some of his friends were. Except that he ended up being not as untouchable as some of his friends.

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

#404

Post by acdha » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:51 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #397

acdha wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the article and https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-univer... and then ask yourself whether concerns about learning something retroactively are relevant to a situation where the problem was not just known in advance but established to the point that Ito had to circumvent MIT’s existing ban. Follow by considering whether bringing up generic distractions which don’t apply to this speci…

You appear angry at me. I didn't argue anything in bad faith or attempt to distract anyone. Nor do I think the thing I said is totally irrelevant. There is a generic thing to be said about the "criminal-philanthropist" concept, it is a topic that many of us have not considered until stories in recent years, which seem to be a trend of more than one such offender, brought it to the forefront.

Note that I said “read like” — nobody in this thread can know what you were actually thinking what I described is the most obvious way I saw that those comments would be interpreted in a down-vote worthy manner. It might be useful to clarify your intentions to avoid that, especially since there are a lot of people who feel betrayed right now.

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

#405

Post by rhizome » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #16

nickpinkston wrote: post #10

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

Neoteny was a concept within the smart drugs, pronoia, raver-woo mysticism in the early-mid US rave culture.

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

#406

Post by freyr » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #393

akhilcacharya wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember articles from when he was hired about how his last big leadership role was running a World of Warcraft guild

In my own memory, at the time Ito was best known for having a gee-whiz style tech blog. Then for some reason he got hired to manage MIT's Media Lab -- a real head scratcher.

You're both right, here's his blog entry on leadership in World of Warcraft:

https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2006/03/13/leadership-in-w.html

I'd guess by this point, he'd already made some money as a tech founder and CEO in Japan. He was apparently an early investor in Twitter, which was founded eight days after he wrote this blog post.

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

#407

Post by serf » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

IvyMike wrote: post #91

matz1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but doesn't mean they normalize the practice of child trafficking itself.

He was engaged in socially unacceptable behavior and yet was still socially accepted. I'm not sure how much more normalized it could get.

I believe normalization, in this anecdote, would be whether or not Epsteins' behavior encouraged other people to engage in similar or like behaviors.

In other words : normalization occurs when something is spoken of casually and without second thought -- nearly every illegal facet of Epsteins' behavior was done behind closed doors, a testament to everyone's knowledge that what he was doing was indeed against the law and abnormal.

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

#408

Post by dwaltrip » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:54 AM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #81

input_sh wrote: post #63

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...

I'm too lazy to research this, can somebody trustworthy give us a quick summary of what actually happened here?

Obviously, either way, it doesn't discount any of the current Epstein stories.

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

#409

Post by roenxi » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #325

roenxi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of rests on whether the women were 'trafficked' in any meaningful sense. If they were not then the media lab team were being judgemental and unpleasant even though they did turn out to be right about his character. If they were then everyone involved is potentially at moral fault, irrespective of who was accepting what. The greater story of this scandal has parts that should never have happened and parts th…

Why are there inevitably people who want to do the mental gymnastics of assuming innocence for a man convicted of sex trafficking? I understand assuming innocence the first time someone is accused of anything unsavory because mistakes happen. But once you are convicted, serve jail time and are suspiciously behaving in the same manner... Who are we serving by assuming innocence? And let me remind you that in society w…

> Who are we serving by assuming innocence?

Innocent of what? Nobody is accusing Epstein of trying to do anything suspect via the MIT media lab. Anyone who thought he'd be wandering around MIT dragging trafficked women around with him is probably hypersensitive. Or Epstein was outrageously foolish. Either way; the reasonable assumption is that those women were probably not trafficked.

The argument here is "nobody should associate with Epstine" vs. "We can isolate the good and the bad parts of Epstine's actions and keep them somewhat separate". There is no need for someone to resign because they happened to know Epstien in a professional capacity.

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

#410

Post by joewee » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

nickpinkston wrote: post #10

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...

Not sure what you are insinuating? Neoteny existed long before Joi had any involvement with MIT or Epstein.