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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

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this resembles what we normally call "evidence" at all. It's like accusing someone of being a Mossad spy because they're holding an iPhone, which relies on a bunch of Israeli IP. > "As you probably know I represent the Rothschilds". What would this have to do with Mossad anyway? It's not surprising that a Jew had some Jewish acquaintances. You probably have Jewish acquaintances too, does that make you a Mossa…

> None of this resembles what we normally call "evidence" at all. Who's 'we'? What's your definition of evidence? > evidence /ĕv′ĭ-dəns/ > noun > A thing or set of things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment. > "The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weighed the evidence for and against the hypothesis." > Something indicative; an indication or set of indications. > "saw no e…

You didn't answer my questions either. Again how is a business relationship with a wealthy Jewish family evidence of being a Mossad spy?

But okay, I'll respond to yours -

> he [probably] worked for both the US and Israel. Why else would Kash Patel and others have so blatantly lied all this time?

No idea. That might be evidence of some relationship with the US, not of being a Mossad spy.

> We know for a near-certain fact that there were compromising tapes on hundreds or thousands of powerful people. Where did they all go?

No idea, but even if we assume there was a blackmail scheme (which isn't the only explanation of inappropriate recordings), there's still zero evidence of Mossad involvement.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thermodynamics doesn't apply to the body in any meaningful way. It sounds like a 19th century idea of how the body might work that people repeat with no understanding. And, you not only need to get fuel from the food, but also the materials to build the engines, and for making spare parts and consumables. And everything that actually uses the energy. There will be no energy spent on lighting if you can't get the indi…

Listen to what you're saying. Thermodynamics doesn't apply to the body? So what, I'm a perpetual motion machine?

The mechanisms in the body are not heat engines. The stuff is so tiny that it works basically by reshuffling molecules, so the traditional concept of efficiency doesn't really apply, as the amount of stuff that happens is given by integral math. You get this amount of charges from reshuffling this amount of molecules. The type of stuff that can be done is limited by how hard the stuff sticks together.

Anyway, the core problem of obese bodies is that they can't produce energy. You can't outwill it, the reshuffling just isn't happening, and there is actually no great reason to believe that fat tissue is some kind of fuel tank, rather than a mass of broken cells.

Also, the body can just reshuffle the molecules in an idle mode. You don't need to spend the energy on moving around.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this resembles what we normally call "evidence" at all. Who's 'we'? What's your definition of evidence? > evidence /ĕv′ĭ-dəns/ > noun > A thing or set of things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment. > "The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weighed the evidence for and against the hypothesis." > Something indicative; an indication or set of indications. > "saw no e…

You didn't answer my questions either. Again how is a business relationship with a wealthy Jewish family evidence of being a Mossad spy? But okay, I'll respond to yours - > he [probably] worked for both the US and Israel. Why else would Kash Patel and others have so blatantly lied all this time? No idea. That might be evidence of some relationship with the US, not of being a Mossad spy. > We know for a near-certain f…

> there's still zero evidence of Mossad involvement.

Please, please learn the difference between evidence and proof. There's a lot of evidence, from circumstantial to testimonial to an abundance of hearsay.

Not proof, no. Proof is what follows from investigation - which hasn't happened. Are you familiar with the concept of "the dog that didn't bark"?

> how is a business relationship with a wealthy Jewish family evidence of being a Mossad spy?

Never said it was.

You claimed "This is just false" when my source [2] claimed that he worked for the Rothschilds, and now have moved the goalposts because he said so himself and there's thousands of emails backing that up.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer my questions either. Again how is a business relationship with a wealthy Jewish family evidence of being a Mossad spy? But okay, I'll respond to yours - > he [probably] worked for both the US and Israel. Why else would Kash Patel and others have so blatantly lied all this time? No idea. That might be evidence of some relationship with the US, not of being a Mossad spy. > We know for a near-certain f…

> there's still zero evidence of Mossad involvement. Please, please learn the difference between evidence and proof. There's a lot of evidence, from circumstantial to testimonial to an abundance of hearsay. Not proof, no. Proof is what follows from investigation - which hasn't happened. Are you familiar with the concept of "the dog that didn't bark"? > how is a business relationship with a wealthy Jewish family evide…

Okay, if you like, we can stretch the definition of "evidence of X" to "anything that has any bearing, however slight, on the likelihood of X".

By this absurd definition,

- Sure, Epstein having a Jewish client is evidence of him being a Mossad spy.

- Similarly if you have any Jewish acquaintances, that's evidence of you being a Mossad spy.

- If you've eaten at McDonalds, that means you're not an extreme BDSer, which is evidence of you being a Mossad spy.

- If you know even a couple words of Hebrew, that’s evidence of you being a Mossad spy.

- If you have any encrypted messaging software installed, that’s evidence of you being a Mossad spy.

etc.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#625

While I understand that once one attains those short of connections, certain intelligence agencies will reach out offering lucrative opportunities for your co-operation. Disgusting nature aside, I can't help but be amazed as to how someone can be so well connected. What sort of skills did Epstein have that managed to have so many people on speed dial? How do you get in a position to correspond with presidents, royals…

He was a talented con artist. While I don't have the link offhand, I recall reading an in-depth article the New York Times published on Epstein's rise. He gained connections first by exaggerating his own credentials, and later by exaggerating the depth and nature of his other connections. He was very good at convincing people that he was someone they needed to know.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/magazine/jeffrey-epstein-...

Alternative link: https://archive.is/Q8Idm

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#626
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sortition may be what you're looking for: "sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e. by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample". No one can amass power because it's short term and random. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Do this but with technocracy. Also best of luck being random... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability) and The Problem of Priors.

Man, that video was disappointing.

My factory produces squares, and every square is between 1ft and 3ft in side length.

Now what is the probability that the next square it outputs will be between 1ft and 2ft long?

The probability is zero percent, of course. Because my factory only produces squares with a side length of exactly 2.5ft (to within a micrometer tolerance, hooray!), day in and day out.

And as anyone can easily verify, every single one of those squares is between 1ft and 3ft in side length.

Notice how I didn't have to even begin to talk about areas?

The video's thesis is simply that "Talking out of your ass when you have insufficient information has the capability of backfiring sometimes: oh the horror" and I find the subject approximately as uninteresting as the fact that different interpolation methods (nearest neighbor, bicubic, "ask AI image gen to fill in the gaps", etc) are capable of inventing completely different false details into an image or dataset.

But I probably only find it equally uninteresting due to the claims being isomorphic.

When you don't have enough data, guessing at what is missing can be incorrect, and guessing in different ways can be incorrect in different ways, and you have to allow that to wash out as enough genuine data arrives (which means washing out the differences between potential methods of interpolation) and maintain your error bars correctly in the meantime instead of throwing them away.

So to loop back to the start: the probability that the next square will be between 1ft and 2ft is 50% plus or minus 50%, which is just an over-engineered way of saying "there is literally not enough information yet offered to make a guess of any trustworthiness at this point".

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that situation is ridiculous and intervention is necessary. But don't paint it like it's just your feelings. The situation is objectively ridiculous.

What is it then if its not just my feelings? Can you give me some specific principle to go by? When is it OK for me to decide that someone else's possessions should be mine?

If you can justify it from behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance while taking the categorical imperative into account, and any other universal moral meta–rules that you may be aware of that I'm not

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#628
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create. I believe this attitude is pretty common in many parts of the world. That being said, I do th…

>...I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create. The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little contr…

> Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.

Not OP, but just look at a company town as an example in a bottle.

When the rich and powerful control the means of production so completely that they are the only people one can buy what one needs from, then in what way can the exchanges still be called "voluntary" and in what way is "mutual benefit" achieved vs the lesser of two evils: "perpetual debtorship that one must endlessly toil to slow the progress of" vs "abject starvation"?

At the end of the day consent and free will are actually really complicated topics, and they can be surprisingly easy to pervert by unequal power dynamics. The market cannot be free whenever feudalism forms to take its place.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they mean "taxation of the too rich" in that case. Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. The problem is this is a collective negotiation, not a discussion about what to ask the genie for when we rub the lamp. If the middle class wants to decrease their own taxes (which is the political issue that objectively affects them the most, and how they l…

> Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down. That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create. I believe this attitude is pretty common in many parts of the world. That being said, I do th…

I'm curious about your thoughts on voluntarily donating the excess wages that you perceive earning.. and perhaps not directly to the US government (which is — to put it simply — not in a healthy state of mind at the moment), but instead to charity organizations that you can vet and trust?

Obviously actually vetting these organizations to make sure that your dollar accomplishes what you wish of it remains a Very Hard Problem, but at least while making baby steps from where we are right now (with our dystopian government) increases in taxation would not constitute a small step in the right direction.

EG: a better environment might look like a healthy government being supported by higher taxes than we see today, but without that first "healthy government" component the latter cannot be a net positive.

Re: The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein

#630
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And how many people would have been saved if he didn't forcibly extracted that money from society to begin with? Because it's almost impossible to not help someone if he just throw wads of money at random. What important is how many people weren't saved because he decided to be a middle man in all of it?

Way, way fewer. Any billionaire you've heard of is almost certainly a net creator of a huge amount of value, by successfully leading a company in a capitalist system that made enough money selling products or services to make its shareholders worth billions of dollars. This isn't forcibly extracting money from society, this is exactly what net-value-creation looks like in the world.
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