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

nytimes.com

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

#421

Post by rhizome »

nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #15
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. >…

Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above. Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be…

I thought it would be more of a secret affair.

The world isn't TV, you might be surprised what people can get away with in plain sight.

When you're supplying these girls to British royalty, politicians at every level, certainly law enforcement of various flavors, and plenty of generic rich people (VC/finance, old money, Donald Trump, etc.), yeah, you might kinda get the idea that you're operating with impunity. Because you are, especially when you have blackmail material on all of them.

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

#422

Post by rolltiide »

crabasa wrote: post #378
freyr wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ito reminds me of Epstein in that I have no idea how either got their money. Wikipedia must be skipping over some important details, but it describes him as a two-time college dropout, a nightclub manager in Japan, (EDIT: nevermind, mystery solved! His MIT bio says he was the founder of Japan's Digital Garage and CEO of its first ISP [1]), then he's the president of MIT Media Lab, visiting Harvard Law School professo…

I believe Ito was instrumental in helping to launch Yahoo Japan. That may be where some of his wealth came from.

and/or a random portfolio investment of one of the VC funds he is an LP of

and/or a lottery ticket

and/or employment from multiple sources and picking stocks

and/or a particularly lucrative real estate holding

and/or it probably wasn't linear at all just like your wealth probably doesn't materialize linearly either

so doesn't that make this whole discussion rather odd and clickbaity? I saw similar articles regarding Epstein and thought "thats not how any of this works?"

if I was ever put under similar analysis nobody would know anything accurate, they would just google me and see a big crowdsale I was on the executive team of and saw that it collected several million dollars and assume "thats how I made my money" even though they have zero transparency on who was paid what and how, or how the organizations made its revenues or not, or the investing patterns and homeruns and leveraged losses I had - which resulted in a useful exemption from capital gains tax on my next homerun, and would have zero information about what partnerships I'm part of, what hedge funds I'm invested in, how any of those things perform, etc.

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

#423

Post by garmaine »

freyr wrote: post #367
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...

Ito reminds me of Epstein in that I have no idea how either got their money. Wikipedia must be skipping over some important details, but it describes him as a two-time college dropout, a nightclub manager in Japan, (EDIT: nevermind, mystery solved! His MIT bio says he was the founder of Japan's Digital Garage and CEO of its first ISP [1]), then he's the president of MIT Media Lab, visiting Harvard Law School professo…

Among other things, Ito co-founded Digital Garage which is a Japanese publicly-traded unicorn.

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

#424

Post by andrewflnr »

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…

Mental gymnastics to avoid assuming bad intent without evidence is the only way to avoid becoming a deranged mob. This is a healthy instinct and you damage our ability to have rational discussions by attacking it. Until we get more evidence, and given that there is plenty of actual evidence of wrongdoing in other areas, let's focus our attention there, shall we?

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

#425

Post by cg46 »

burtonator wrote: post #418
cg46 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable to agree that Epstein is a despicable person who should be maligned, ostracized, and punished for his misdeeds… while simultaneously believing that it's possible for there to exist a situation in which the good done by "maintaining ties" with this person could outweigh the bad. Of course, this depends on the nature of those ties: How much good are they doing, versus how much bad? If it's possi…

I think this is a good analysis. Makes me think that in the future these organizations are still going to accept the money but bring in a "fall guy" to accept the blame when the anonymous donor is found out. I don't think Joi would have done this personally. He's a smart guy.

> I don't think Joi would have done this personally. He's a smart guy.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying there's a conspiracy to cast Joi as the fall guy and he's going along with it? I highly doubt that's the case.

He may be smart, but that doesn't automatically make him ethical or socially aware. It also appears he gained quite a lot personally by dealing with Epstein.

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

#426

Post by breck »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #336
breck wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well one of my best friends and mentors was an “Eastern European model” who I think would be offended by this quote, which can come across as a patronizing attitude. She would say not to judge by appearance, and that perhaps Epstein is helping these women more than these women would. Don’t just a book by its cover.

Again, we're not talking here about a blanket judgment of "attractive Eastern European women" or even "attractive Eastern European women with a much older man." We're talking about this in the context of them showing up with a man who was a confessed and convicted pedophilic sex trafficker. That's why people were entirely in the right to assume that perhaps they didn't have their full agency in the situation. As a ma…

I read the article. These "concerned" staff "decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room." So they didn't allow these two women to participate in the conversation about science! From the facts in the article, it seemed to me they made a judgement about who these 2 women were based upon their appearance.

I'm saying read this article with a grain of salt. There's a lot of B.S. in here. Instead of throwing stones at everyone, let's think about what the bigger pictures problem with the system are.

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

#427

Post by xenihn »

jacobolus wrote: post #321
xenihn wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how much scientists get paid nowadays? Don't even get me started on how most people who follow that career path just end up as lab techs at best, who earn even less. Everyone I know who majored in bio, chem, or physics has ended up in tech. For the money. And why should they have done otherwise?

It is a huge waste of talent and misallocation of resources that a large proportion of the smartest and best-trained scientists and engineers in the world get sucked into working in finance, business consulting, advertising/surveillance, etc. There’s nothing wrong with individual people making this choice (I have many friends in those fields). It’s just evidence of large structural problems in the society. (Of course…

You don't have to be smart or well-trained to get the big bucks. I don't have a STEM degree. The most successful engineers I know don't even have a degree at all.

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

#428

Post by chasing »

docker_up wrote: post #399
chasing wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will reserve the right to not do business with pedophiles and sex traffickers — even if they have served time in prison for their crimes. And I reserve the right to judge people who do harshly, especially since I know that horrible people sometimes use these sorts of donations to launder their reputation and I don’t want to be anywhere near that. Want to remain a part of polite civic society? Don’t rape kids.

I believe in your right to do so. But what about people who feel otherwise and think that by serving out his sentence he has paid for their sins? If those people associate with criminals who have served their sentence, are those people worse in your eyes? It seems like not only is redemption for criminals no longer allowed, but you're not allowed to believe in redemption for others as well.

I don’t know what we’re arguing. If you want to professionally associate with people who have raped and exploited kids from a position of extreme wealth and privilege, then I guess you’re probably legally allowed to, as long as you’re not putting people in danger. You have to decide where you’re at on that. I know where I’m at. I think most people do. Which is why they’re disgusted.

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

#429

Post by fromMars »

nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #254
coldtea wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise, please explain what special powers old rich men would have over young women. The power that comes from being rich, well connected, parading powerful friends (even judges, politicians, financiers, and so on), aides, bodyguards, the means to have them beaten or killed if you want to, and so on? The power to get them fired from their jobs? The powerful to do "Eyes Wide Shut" level shit to them and them know…

So you assume every time young women are staying with an old rich man, they have been extorted to do so? Sorry, that seems extremely unlikely. I find it shocking that you think that way. Just because somebody is rich also doesn't mean they can simply destroy other people's lives at will. Btw I have personally witnessed for example young women courting old professors, who certainly didn't have any power to destroy the…

Yeah, this all seems strange to think that young women are only coerced into relationships with old men.

I have seen many young women court older men for various reasons.

The term sugar daddy comes to mind.

One can question the basis of such relationships, but I think it's a huge stretch to suggest they always arise out of force or coercion.

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

#430

Post by leetcrew »

InitialLastName wrote: post #419
joering2 wrote: post #351

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? This is extremely good question that I continue to be unable to find an answer. Much bigger case than Epstein would be that of Donald Trump. Everyone knew he is a six-time bankruptee, posted record $1B (billion) dollar loss with IRS and haven't made any of his many business ventures suc…

> Yet the consensus of 2016 was that he is the only man capable of steering forward a budget of the most valuable country on the face of planet Earth. To be fair, more people who voted didn't think he was the best choice of a person "capable of ..." than thought he was. He only won thanks to a) a quirk of the American electoral system and b) his opponent also being historically unpopular, by nature of having been in…

> He only won thanks to a) a quirk of the American electoral system and b) his opponent also being historically unpopular, by nature of having been in the public eye on one side of the US political system for 25 years.

I can certainly agree with b) but a) is not a very useful way of looking at things. if you went back and changed nothing else about the election except making popular vote the win condition, hillary clinton would obviously have won. but this small modification would have totally changed the campaign strategy of every candidate. people who didn't bother voting might have voted. donald trump might have won anyway with a different strategy. we might not even have been choosing between trump and clinton in the first place!

not saying the electoral college is good, just that this isn't a strong argument to the contrary.

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