>Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent architect who helped found the lab in 1985, told the crowd that he had met Mr. Epstein at least once since Mr. Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and had advised Mr. Ito about the donations.
>“I told Joi to take the money,” he said, “and I would do it again.”
It's a tricky subject. I lean for taking the money. I used to work in the media lab and honestly, it seems like a decent place. Pretty much everyone there is giving up a much larger salary at a FANG company to work on interesting things.
Did the Media Lab help Mr. Epstein rape more children in any way by taking the money? Probably not. Evil people can do good things. The world is complicated.
If people really want to start tracking the provenance of funding, perhaps we should start with investigating larger sums. No one in Silicon Valley seems to have any trouble taking money from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
If Jeffrey Epstein had preyed upon the children of the coastal elites instead of the children of the poor, I suspect that the subject would be less “tricky”.
It doesn't change the moral argument from my perspective but if that happened, Epstein and many others may actually face punishment. I think I'd prefer that hypothetical.
It's not that tricky a subject. Yes, the Media Lab, and everyone else who participated in the idea that Epstein wasn't a complete fucking pariah after 2006 or so - or at the very least, in 2008 - did help Epstein rape more children.
In 2008, Epstein should have been put in a cage and poked with sticks. The fact that so many of the great and the good were willing to continue to cooperate with him was disgusting.
Also: I agree with you about the Saudis, but whataboutery doesn't excuse the fact that taking Epstein's money was morally imbecilic.
Epstein absolutely should've been locked away in 2008. I think it's more of a failure of our justice system than the Media Lab. I don't think the Media Lab did anything to assist Epstein in any way except enabling him to say he donated money to them. I hope the Media Lab took his money out of necessity rather than convenience but I don't know.
I wish we lived in a world where all of Epstein's assets were seized and allocated to victims (both specific and general), educational institutions and whatever else seemed appropriate. I wish the Media Lab took Epstein's money in this way.
Honestly, it's really a philosophical question. It's the classic debate between consequentialism and deontology. I'd argue that the consequences of taking his money were positive. I'd assume you'd say the action is inherently immoral.
We could go back and forth, talking about the trolly problem among many other contrived examples. Tt's a tricky subject.
Ultimately, I think we could agree that there are worse people out there, deserving grave punishment, involved with Epstein. I'd rather see this energy be prioritized to identifying and convicting the worst people first. After, I think debating the Media Lab's funding less than 0.3% of its budget morally condemns it.
There's a consequentialist argument to refusing the money, too: you're helping Epstein launder his reputation.
By accepting his money and continuing to work with him, you're basically telling Epstein that he's free to continue raping children — that as long as he can wriggle out of the legal stuff, he won't suffer any real professional or social consequences. And instead of helping to deter other would-be Epsteins, you're sending them a message that no matter how many children they rape, they'll still be greeted warmly.
Absolutely a good point. I'd say practically, the Media Lab didn't change much in this regard but it's impossible to know the full extent.
I do think you hit a certain line with donations. Many of the charities and hospitals he also donated to probably don't have the luxury of deciding who their money comes from.
It's a tricky situation but I think you make a solid point.
But Epstein didn't make his money by investing in MIT. He made is money being a pimp. You think he'd stop pimping if universities stopped taking his donations?
To me, the direction of the causal arrow is unclear. Was he able to throw money at MIT (and fulfill his fantasy of scientific/academic relevance) because he was a pimp, or did his involvement with these universities allow him to get closer to powerful people whom he'd manipulate with the offer of sex from young women? I agree that it's hard to definitely say because we're still unsure how exactly Epstein made his money.
Do places like Media Lab actually know (and really know well) the people they take donations from? This is an actual question, not me trying to be facetious.
We can trace all these things back in retrospect now, but it's a different situation than accepting money from someone in the moment without knowing what will happen to them in the future. Who knows what kind of person someone could turn into over time. For example, some world leader could donate a bunch of money to education at MIT and then commit genocide 10 years down the line. What happens then at the 10 years when the money is spent already?
Totally coincidentally, the Koch Cancer Research Center was wrapping up construction around the same time (https://ki.mit.edu/).
It turns out MIT isn't a morally guided institution (well maybe the professors and students are). It's run by a bunch of former investment bankers trying to maximize returns on a $16.5B endowment. There's a corporation and a university.
> Did the Media Lab help Mr. Epstein rape more children in any way by taking the money?
Yes it did. Epstein’s empire was built on high society connections which he established through his connections to influential and publicly visible leaders in science. Epstein’s support of the media lab allowed him to attract high profile pedophiles (royalty, presidents, more that we will probably never know) to his island parties where he developed the connections that protected him and kept him above the law.
> Epstein’s support of the media lab allowed him to attract high profile pedophiles
That sounds ridiculous and needs explaining. "Oh, hi, fellow super rich pedophile, I wouldn't have contacted you, but then I saw you donated to the media lab... let's get together on your private island". No.
When you take money from people like Epstein, there are always strings attached. Now he will be entitled to visit the lab, leverage your social network, review the project, make recommendations, have students do their dance, invite you out to dinner, out to his island, offer you gift of sensual message... it's not just a slippery slop, it is intentionally designed for you to slip off. So not really that tricky subject.
Negroponte really boofed up with the One-Laptop-Per-Child project. It had a lot of good intentions, but it's such a textbook example of misguided tech folks inserting themselves into an education setting. From this article, sounds like another strike for him.
I would normally never tell someone this because it's generally very unimportant... But, in this case I think it's probably warranted, so that you know for the future. The word "boof" [0] has come to mean something very different in recent times.
Slang as in the definitions given in the link I provided? No, that slang and the common usage of the word you see associated with it today online and in younger generations is not at all similar to 'fucked up' or 'screwed the pooch.'
Im thinking more of how the citations on the Wiktionary link start referencing _this_ usage of the word as happening around the turn of the century, but, sure. Though, I had no idea that (_this_ usage of the word or the apparent reference from his yearbook) was a thing, either, and I'm a Xenial.
edit/ Read an article about the yearbook. I don't know how I missed that when all of that was going down. Thanks for pointing that out!
If I was MIT, I'd be more worried about the connection between Minsky and Epstein. Money is one thing, but can MIT dissociate from a (renowned) faculty member who steered the field of AI?
Relevantly, Minsky is dead and Negroponte and Ito aren't. That means that the form of disassociating with him is different (they can't fire him/ask him to resign anymore, and there are no calls to do so), and moreover he's subconsciously judged as a "product of his time."
"Negroponte said that he prided himself on knowing over 80% of the billionaires in the US on a first-name basis."
He went to Choate, the prep school. "There is no door in this entire country that cannot be opened by a Choate graduate" - John Lupton, director of development at Choate.
If you are doing something that is a good cause, you should take money wherever you can get it without any ethical concerns. I would much rather have the MIT media lab to have that money than Jeffrey Epstein.
The only thing to watch out for is to make sure you are not rehabilitating an evil person's reputation. But if it donation is made anonymously or quietly, it should be okay.
Eh? He was convicted of giving money to children in exchange for sex.
There have been accusations that he got his start by embezzling from Wexner, but as far as anyone can tell so far, the bulk of Epstein's wealth is "legitimate".
I really hope you re-evaluate this comment. You italicized “giving”, I assume to imply something. This man was clearly a monster, and I don’t need a court to tell me that.
The implication I assume is that his money including this donation was not earned via child prostitution and was not as such inherently dirty or tainted.
It'd be an even worse look if MIT was directly using money earned from child abuse.
OK, how did he earn it? He didn't invest anywhere despite his claims to be running a hedge fund. Most of his assets were transfers from Wexler, or donations from leveraged associates laundered through charities. I've not seen any path through which he had any legitimate income or earnings at all.
As far as I know, no-one has any real explanation for where Epstein's wealth comes from. Apparently real hedge fund guys were baffled as to where his money comes from and the suggestion that the whole thing was an elaborate blackmail operation isn't beyond credibility.
It pushes the extreme limits of credibility. It would be a decades-long-running blackmail scheme, involving hundreds of millions of dollars. With dozens of people involved. Overseen by accountants.
It's just a bit too "made for TV movie". This story is under a microscope. If there was a conspiracy that elaborate, it would have come out by now.
I could be proven wrong, but I'm betting on "rich creep who thinks he can buy everything" rather than secret-society mastermind pulling puppet-strings.
Well, a lot of things about this push the limits of credibility - if you were an author who told me about Epstein in a novel ('private sex island', 'hangs around with royalty and famous scientists') I'd say you're overdoing it. Have a look at:
Anyone with enough money and libido can buy property and staff it with prostitutes. Anyone offering enough grant money can hang out with famous scientists. I don't see why that is hard to believe.
That article can be summarized as: "We don't know where he got his money from, therefore let's speculate". It's good entertainment, but reality is usually pretty mundane. It's easier to believe Hoffenberg's claim that Epstein made off with the proceeds of the Tower Financial ponzi scheme. But that too seems heavily investigated already.
Well it appears his main source of "income" was embezzling funds from a small number of "clients" over whom he had power of attorney and mysterious leverage that most likely was due to having conned them into engaging in serious felonies where minors were the victims. No one in the investment world did business with him or knew where he was supposedly investing his money and tracing back his assets most of them are transfers from clients over whom he held some kind of leverage. So, it does seem like he was abusing minors as part of a scheme to shake down people he got to abuse minors. Thus, he was earning money from sexually exploiting children, probably. Of course all the cases are being dropped and all his money and assets have been transferred overseas and vanished for the most part so we'll never really know.
And where exactly is this benefit of the doubt coming from?
Not just you, but a lot of people ITT are saying similar things suggesting his wealth is legitimate, despite now knowing that he is a child sex trafficker. Once someone stoops that low, all bets are off. From that point forward, claiming "he got his money from a hedge fund" is the far more extraordinary claim.
Epstein would use his connection to these institutions as cover with peers, and as a way to find clients. There's evidence this includes Marvin Minsky.
He died in 2016 at 87 years of age. Epstein's peak years of operation were in the late 90s? That makes Minsky around 69/70 when he would have been using Epstein's girls.
I wonder if Minksky just thought it was a run of the mill escort service?
And then three years later find yourself defending his character sincerely, because after all, he's given so much to help the great causes you have undertaken.
Yes, there were those indiscretions and terrible rumors, but surely you should encourage the good in this man!
> And then three years later find yourself defending his character sincerely, because after all, he's given so much to help the great causes you have undertaken.
Source? I tend to agree with OP that MIT is fine in taking the money. But if they went on and defended him later then obviously that's beyond the pale.
Taking the money will create a desire to defend the donor. In some idealized world, this doesn't have to happen, but in the real world, it will.
For instance, eventually the donor will come to town and want a tour of the lab he donated to, or dinner with the dean at the faculty club. You started out with money, and now you have a relationship. From all accounts, Epstein in particular was a master at this.
It also creates a link (which is bi-directional) between the prestigious institution and the donor. This association, after all, is part of the reason people give to institutions like MIT and not to their local community college. Some of the prestige "rubs off".
It's just the pattern that I've seen play out again and again, and which I can only assume happened here at least to some extent.
Humans are world-class justifiers.
People here on HN largely recognize the tribalism effect, and once you've taken money, that will start to take hold. You've linked yourself to him and you will inevitably begin to identify with him as a result.
Note that if Epstein had genuinely been stricken by remorse, changed his ways, done his best to make amends to his victims, and was looking for a way to do good with his fortune, then I think taking the money makes perfect sense.
That's all well and good, but one day such a person will make a request and you will have to decide whether to now forgo their money, money that may now be supporting your good works. Imho if you are going to take money from such people you shouldn't do anything substantial with it. Buy everyone fancy hats. Get new furniture in all the student lounges. Don't spend it on anything that you will miss, anything that will cloud your judgement when the inevitable request comes.
but one day such a person will make a request and you will have to decide whether to now forgo their money, money that may now be supporting your good works
Look no further than George Mason University. It used to be an also-ran commuter college, now with a steady stream of income from the Koch family it's actually fairly respectable. You have to watch what you say, though, when you are on the faculty.
Epstein's influence was fairly confined, but the Koch sponsorship of unfettered capitalism and global warming denial continues to affect the planet. They are ultimately the greater evil.
I think you should actually look at what the Koch's actually believe and what they fund. They've been on the right side of history for a long time, and in fact the much hated David Koch took a stand and ran as VP of the libertarian party in the early 80s with key planks of his platform being drug legalization and the legalization of gay marriage.
The Kochs also recently funded with Soros a think tank in washington dc to help promote the idea of peace and stop the endless wars the US is involved in.
As far as I know David Koch didn't deny global warming, but strongly disagreed with the conventional ideas of how to combat it and the risks that it poses. There are many people who think that there are better ways to address it. For instance, addressing 3rd world poverty and increases the wealth of the world will increase the rate of climate change, but it will also benefit those suffering substantially and enable thier children (who are richer) to better handle it. I don't necessarily endorse or agree with his views, but I feel they're often mistated for political reasons.
That's a bad comparison to make. Epstein, by all accounts, actually hurt, abused, and enslaved real people. That is always worse than political activism, even if you find the politics highly objectionable, and even if the activism reached very far due to money.
If the transaction stopped at receiving the money, that would be one thing. However, ML donors visit the lab twice a year for sponsor weeks. It meant putting other sponsors, faculty, and researcher assistants in the same room as a convicted sex offender for several weeks of the year.
And he wasn't just a convicted sex offender, as in "streaked the incoming freshman class." He was a world class scumbug who (seemingly) got a sweetheart deal for ratting out some top brass at Bear Stearns. If he was little people, he'd be away for life and destroyed by inmates.
And in retrospect it appears he was even not a reformed offender.
It meant putting other sponsors, faculty, and researcher assistants in the same room as a convicted sex offender for several weeks of the year.
That was precisely the point. Epstein gave the money and bought legitimacy with it. Everyone in the room knew they were having dinner with a pervert and slaveholder, but he was a philanthropic slaveholder.
The number of people harmed was very small, the number of people who benefit from money -> research is very large, and the people accepting the money have no connection to what he did.
There is a long history of science being involved in stuff that was considered morally reprehensible and it turned out really well for generations of people. Medicine has a history of grave robbers, Chemistry has some real monsters in the closet, the Physicists may as well have blood on their hands for what they worked to enable and why not throw in Turing? He is unusual in that the standards changed so history remembers him kindly. Lucky man.
I don't see why the standard should change with Epstein and suddenly moral outrage trumps enabling academics. Let the law handle it, and let the universities take in money.
> And he wasn't just a convicted sex offender, as in "streaked the incoming freshman class." He was a world class scumbug who (seemingly) got a sweetheart deal for ratting out some top brass at Bear Stearns
Slightly off topic but do you have a source for that? Not because I don't believe you, but just because I hadn't heard that little detail before and it sounds interesting.
if you were to google "jeffrey epstein bear stearns" you would relatively quickly arrive at this page http://miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html but they don't link a specific source and all other results just repeat this information
Donate it to the opposite of Epstein, to a women’s shelter. Under no circumstances should MIT keep any of the money or use it in any way. Negroponte is completely wrong and moreover MIT doesn’t need the money. Indeed, they should double it before the donation.
Really? I'm more scared of the reverse: Sincerely well-meaning people who fail to fully consider their actions and therefore end up pushing terrible ideas with extreme force because they are so convinced that they're right. "Think of the children!" (destroys privacy, institutionalizes censorship) "Save the environment!" (switches to a product that turns out to have higher total impact) "Stop the pedophiles!" (organizes witch hunt and throws out burden of proof)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
---
EDIT: Realized I should point out - the dig at pedophile witch hunts isn't meant as a commentary on this article, it's just a generic example.
It’s a fair point and a genuine real phenomenon.
However, in my experience, people with low PCR-L scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent.
Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
It’s a fair point and a genuinely real phenomenon.
However, in my experience, people with low PCL-R scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent.
Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
> However, in my experience, people with low PCL-R scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent. Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
You have no such experience unless you happen to be a researcher on this very specific subject. And if you were, you wouldn't be saying stuff like
> Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
> people with low PCL-R scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent
Mass emotional behavior (arguably well-intentioned, for some definition of good we might not share) can last an extremely long time and do enormous damage- down to persecution, massacres and pogroms. And this is valid for every people, any country and any time, and any degree of damage.
The division right now isn't about the money, it's about Joi Ito and his decision to legitimize Epstein and invite him to be around the Lab. In addition to the risks he already took, there's the question of whether he can be trusted to exhibit better judgement in the future or not.
Here are the results of some human trafficking research I did just now: Epstein was awful, everyone knew he was awful, and nobody in polite society should have associated with him.
OK, what do you want to do with the rest of the money? Develop an app that tells you not to pal around with pedophiles? Maybe we'll make a green laptop with an OLED screen and give it to children so we know who not to let the pedophile near? Seriously, what needs to be researched here? The gap is not a lack of research, it's a lack of moral resolve to do what everyone knows the right thing is.
Personally, I hate this Bowdlerization from the Times. It changes the meaning of the tweet, and it's not even the worst case where I've seen their desire for propriety interfere with their core mission of informing their readers about the world.
If their readers are uncomfortable with words like asshole, maybe a source like Time for Kids would be more appropriate for them.
Strongly disagree. It's ridiculous to see a prominent newspaper act afraid of writing a naughty word in an article related to Jeffrey Epstein, sex-trafficking, and other similar subjects.
It's worse that they changed someone's quote. If they didn't want to print "asshole" they should have either found a way to "bleep" it, or just not used that quote. Changing what someone said shouldn't even be considered.
Why would anyone direct their anger in regards to the Epstein case towards MIT? Surely, there are some billionaire child rapists more worthy of such attention.
I... kinda don't see what the big deal is? The article is kinda a mess and it's really hard for me to see what actual justification (or anti-justification) it's trying to push.
Yes, Epstein was a scumbag. Did Ito know he was a scumbag when he took the money? And even if he did, would taking the money put him, the Media Lab, or anyone who worked there in a compromised or awkward position in the future? Was the money itself tainted in some way, derived from scumbag activities? If not (I couldn't really glean whether or not this was the case from the article), then... so what? Money is money, and it's hard enough already to raise money for "out there" research, even with MIT's reputation. At the very least, you could know that a scumbag's money was being used to do something actually good.
This was after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for child prostitution (not to mention several civil suits for child prostitution settled out of court). Rumors of Epstein’s large-scale child sex ring were widespread.
> would taking the money put him, the Media Lab, or anyone who worked there in a compromised or awkward position in the future?
Many researchers don’t want their paycheck to come from a child prostitution kingpin who made a career blackmailing rich pedophiles who had raped his child sex slaves.
There are several ways to approach the matter. Negroponte took the worst possible way to approach it after Ito made a long speech.
>“I told Joi to take the money,” he said, “and I would do it again.”
That statement implies he doesn’t care at all. There are other ways to handle it, like he does care, but there’s nothing he can do about it, or have an excuse that Epstein had no control over the use of the funds (if true), but to say something like “Yeah, big deal, I’d do business with the guy again” is tactless.
Not necessarily, he might care and weigh options and consequences and come to a different conclusion than you, me or most people. If he still comes to that conclusion today, "I would do it again" is the obvious answer.
That is the difference of being in a position of authority versus the opposite. When people look to people in authority, there are expectations, that they are somehow responsive to an organization’s needs, that they make the best possible decision based on the facts.
Negroponte took an action that proves he is unsuited for his position of authority, by making the worst possible statement and also by rejecting everyone’s opinion on the matter.
Too late to edit at this point, but... damn. With all the recent news coming out, looks like Epstein was banned from any kind of donation to MIT due to his sex offender status, and Ito knew about everything at the time and did an end run around the ban in order to take his money. So yeah, nevermind, this is really bad.
>Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent architect who helped found the lab in 1985, told the crowd that he had met Mr. Epstein at least once since Mr. Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and had advised Mr. Ito about the donations.
>“I told Joi to take the money,” he said, “and I would do it again.”
Was that supposed to....help?
Negroponte also took Microsoft money fracturing OLPC initiative http://www.olpcnews.com/software/windows/windows_xp_on_the_x...
It's a tricky subject. I lean for taking the money. I used to work in the media lab and honestly, it seems like a decent place. Pretty much everyone there is giving up a much larger salary at a FANG company to work on interesting things.
Did the Media Lab help Mr. Epstein rape more children in any way by taking the money? Probably not. Evil people can do good things. The world is complicated.
If people really want to start tracking the provenance of funding, perhaps we should start with investigating larger sums. No one in Silicon Valley seems to have any trouble taking money from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
If Jeffrey Epstein had preyed upon the children of the coastal elites instead of the children of the poor, I suspect that the subject would be less “tricky”.
I wonder if previous uprisings against the elites were preceded by similar displays of callous indifference for the suffering of the lower classes.
It doesn't change the moral argument from my perspective but if that happened, Epstein and many others may actually face punishment. I think I'd prefer that hypothetical.
It's not that tricky a subject. Yes, the Media Lab, and everyone else who participated in the idea that Epstein wasn't a complete fucking pariah after 2006 or so - or at the very least, in 2008 - did help Epstein rape more children.
In 2008, Epstein should have been put in a cage and poked with sticks. The fact that so many of the great and the good were willing to continue to cooperate with him was disgusting.
Also: I agree with you about the Saudis, but whataboutery doesn't excuse the fact that taking Epstein's money was morally imbecilic.
Epstein absolutely should've been locked away in 2008. I think it's more of a failure of our justice system than the Media Lab. I don't think the Media Lab did anything to assist Epstein in any way except enabling him to say he donated money to them. I hope the Media Lab took his money out of necessity rather than convenience but I don't know.
I wish we lived in a world where all of Epstein's assets were seized and allocated to victims (both specific and general), educational institutions and whatever else seemed appropriate. I wish the Media Lab took Epstein's money in this way.
Honestly, it's really a philosophical question. It's the classic debate between consequentialism and deontology. I'd argue that the consequences of taking his money were positive. I'd assume you'd say the action is inherently immoral.
We could go back and forth, talking about the trolly problem among many other contrived examples. Tt's a tricky subject.
There's a lot of these situations out there like this Nazi anatomy book we still use: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49294861.
Ultimately, I think we could agree that there are worse people out there, deserving grave punishment, involved with Epstein. I'd rather see this energy be prioritized to identifying and convicting the worst people first. After, I think debating the Media Lab's funding less than 0.3% of its budget morally condemns it.
There's a consequentialist argument to refusing the money, too: you're helping Epstein launder his reputation.
By accepting his money and continuing to work with him, you're basically telling Epstein that he's free to continue raping children — that as long as he can wriggle out of the legal stuff, he won't suffer any real professional or social consequences. And instead of helping to deter other would-be Epsteins, you're sending them a message that no matter how many children they rape, they'll still be greeted warmly.
Absolutely a good point. I'd say practically, the Media Lab didn't change much in this regard but it's impossible to know the full extent.
I do think you hit a certain line with donations. Many of the charities and hospitals he also donated to probably don't have the luxury of deciding who their money comes from.
It's a tricky situation but I think you make a solid point.
But Epstein didn't make his money by investing in MIT. He made is money being a pimp. You think he'd stop pimping if universities stopped taking his donations?
To me, the direction of the causal arrow is unclear. Was he able to throw money at MIT (and fulfill his fantasy of scientific/academic relevance) because he was a pimp, or did his involvement with these universities allow him to get closer to powerful people whom he'd manipulate with the offer of sex from young women? I agree that it's hard to definitely say because we're still unsure how exactly Epstein made his money.
Do places like Media Lab actually know (and really know well) the people they take donations from? This is an actual question, not me trying to be facetious.
We can trace all these things back in retrospect now, but it's a different situation than accepting money from someone in the moment without knowing what will happen to them in the future. Who knows what kind of person someone could turn into over time. For example, some world leader could donate a bunch of money to education at MIT and then commit genocide 10 years down the line. What happens then at the 10 years when the money is spent already?
The argument is that his 2008 conviction should have been enough to make the Media Lab reject his contributions.
MIT had a similar internal debate about Saudi-affiliated funding, see https://thetech.com/2019/01/14/mit-cut-ties-saudi-arabia
Yeah. MIT also refused to divest fossil fuel holdings: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/21/mit-won-divest-...
Totally coincidentally, the Koch Cancer Research Center was wrapping up construction around the same time (https://ki.mit.edu/).
It turns out MIT isn't a morally guided institution (well maybe the professors and students are). It's run by a bunch of former investment bankers trying to maximize returns on a $16.5B endowment. There's a corporation and a university.
> Did the Media Lab help Mr. Epstein rape more children in any way by taking the money?
Yes it did. Epstein’s empire was built on high society connections which he established through his connections to influential and publicly visible leaders in science. Epstein’s support of the media lab allowed him to attract high profile pedophiles (royalty, presidents, more that we will probably never know) to his island parties where he developed the connections that protected him and kept him above the law.
Is that how Epstein’s business worked? It hasn’t been clear to me in the media that he actually made money on that.
I wasn’t referring to his business. I was referring to his child sex trafficking activities.
I feel like punishing MIT for taking money should really take a back seat to punishing literally anyone else involved in this case.
> Epstein’s support of the media lab allowed him to attract high profile pedophiles
That sounds ridiculous and needs explaining. "Oh, hi, fellow super rich pedophile, I wouldn't have contacted you, but then I saw you donated to the media lab... let's get together on your private island". No.
Except that it is pretty much exactly what happened...
Since he was well connected before that, you'll have to provide some evidence for the media-lab-pedophile-recruitment claim.
When you take money from people like Epstein, there are always strings attached. Now he will be entitled to visit the lab, leverage your social network, review the project, make recommendations, have students do their dance, invite you out to dinner, out to his island, offer you gift of sensual message... it's not just a slippery slop, it is intentionally designed for you to slip off. So not really that tricky subject.
Negroponte really boofed up with the One-Laptop-Per-Child project. It had a lot of good intentions, but it's such a textbook example of misguided tech folks inserting themselves into an education setting. From this article, sounds like another strike for him.
Talking to teachers I know, no one, especially tech people believes they know what they are doing.
I would normally never tell someone this because it's generally very unimportant... But, in this case I think it's probably warranted, so that you know for the future. The word "boof" [0] has come to mean something very different in recent times.
[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boof#Verb_2
Is this sort of slang not similar to 'fucked up' or 'screwed the pooch'?
Slang as in the definitions given in the link I provided? No, that slang and the common usage of the word you see associated with it today online and in younger generations is not at all similar to 'fucked up' or 'screwed the pooch.'
Where by “younger generations” you mean “people younger than 60” (source: Supreme Court Justice Boofing Bart O'Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook)
Im thinking more of how the citations on the Wiktionary link start referencing _this_ usage of the word as happening around the turn of the century, but, sure. Though, I had no idea that (_this_ usage of the word or the apparent reference from his yearbook) was a thing, either, and I'm a Xenial.
edit/ Read an article about the yearbook. I don't know how I missed that when all of that was going down. Thanks for pointing that out!
Indeed it is not, as the definition given for the word is not even it's colloquial usage anymore, although the new usage is related:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3fterm=Boof&=t...
If I was MIT, I'd be more worried about the connection between Minsky and Epstein. Money is one thing, but can MIT dissociate from a (renowned) faculty member who steered the field of AI?
Relevantly, Minsky is dead and Negroponte and Ito aren't. That means that the form of disassociating with him is different (they can't fire him/ask him to resign anymore, and there are no calls to do so), and moreover he's subconsciously judged as a "product of his time."
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614264/mit-media-lab-jeff... has some more details about the meeting. Found it a slightly better read than this one.
MIT Technology Review article with more details about the Media Lab all hands meeting referenced in the Times story:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614264/mit-media-lab-jeff...
"Negroponte said that he prided himself on knowing over 80% of the billionaires in the US on a first-name basis."
He went to Choate, the prep school. "There is no door in this entire country that cannot be opened by a Choate graduate" - John Lupton, director of development at Choate.
That was already set up by the time he got to Choate; e.g. his roommate at La Rosey is now the Aga Kahn. He grew up embedded in that world.
Source: I used to work for Nicholas and in fact lived in one of his houses for a while.
Not exactly a brand new doubt/question, only for the record:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet
If you are doing something that is a good cause, you should take money wherever you can get it without any ethical concerns. I would much rather have the MIT media lab to have that money than Jeffrey Epstein.
The only thing to watch out for is to make sure you are not rehabilitating an evil person's reputation. But if it donation is made anonymously or quietly, it should be okay.
Taking money from a man that was convicted of earning money from sexually exploiting children makes taking money from a bank robber look virtuous.
Eh? He was convicted of giving money to children in exchange for sex.
There have been accusations that he got his start by embezzling from Wexner, but as far as anyone can tell so far, the bulk of Epstein's wealth is "legitimate".
I really hope you re-evaluate this comment. You italicized “giving”, I assume to imply something. This man was clearly a monster, and I don’t need a court to tell me that.
The implication I assume is that his money including this donation was not earned via child prostitution and was not as such inherently dirty or tainted.
It'd be an even worse look if MIT was directly using money earned from child abuse.
…what you just mentioned is still very illegal.
> the bulk of Epstein's wealth is "legitimate"
OK, how did he earn it? He didn't invest anywhere despite his claims to be running a hedge fund. Most of his assets were transfers from Wexler, or donations from leveraged associates laundered through charities. I've not seen any path through which he had any legitimate income or earnings at all.
I figured he took money from other people to let them abuse the girls.
As far as I know, no-one has any real explanation for where Epstein's wealth comes from. Apparently real hedge fund guys were baffled as to where his money comes from and the suggestion that the whole thing was an elaborate blackmail operation isn't beyond credibility.
It pushes the extreme limits of credibility. It would be a decades-long-running blackmail scheme, involving hundreds of millions of dollars. With dozens of people involved. Overseen by accountants.
It's just a bit too "made for TV movie". This story is under a microscope. If there was a conspiracy that elaborate, it would have come out by now.
I could be proven wrong, but I'm betting on "rich creep who thinks he can buy everything" rather than secret-society mastermind pulling puppet-strings.
Well, a lot of things about this push the limits of credibility - if you were an author who told me about Epstein in a novel ('private sex island', 'hangs around with royalty and famous scientists') I'd say you're overdoing it. Have a look at:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/hedge-funders-have-so...
Anyone with enough money and libido can buy property and staff it with prostitutes. Anyone offering enough grant money can hang out with famous scientists. I don't see why that is hard to believe.
That article can be summarized as: "We don't know where he got his money from, therefore let's speculate". It's good entertainment, but reality is usually pretty mundane. It's easier to believe Hoffenberg's claim that Epstein made off with the proceeds of the Tower Financial ponzi scheme. But that too seems heavily investigated already.
Your theory requires a explanation of how he became rich without any explicable business dealings or inheritance.
>earning money from sexually exploiting children
I'm not sure his income was as you described it.
Well it appears his main source of "income" was embezzling funds from a small number of "clients" over whom he had power of attorney and mysterious leverage that most likely was due to having conned them into engaging in serious felonies where minors were the victims. No one in the investment world did business with him or knew where he was supposedly investing his money and tracing back his assets most of them are transfers from clients over whom he held some kind of leverage. So, it does seem like he was abusing minors as part of a scheme to shake down people he got to abuse minors. Thus, he was earning money from sexually exploiting children, probably. Of course all the cases are being dropped and all his money and assets have been transferred overseas and vanished for the most part so we'll never really know.
And where exactly is this benefit of the doubt coming from?
Not just you, but a lot of people ITT are saying similar things suggesting his wealth is legitimate, despite now knowing that he is a child sex trafficker. Once someone stoops that low, all bets are off. From that point forward, claiming "he got his money from a hedge fund" is the far more extraordinary claim.
I guess I should quote more:
>a man that was convicted of earning money from sexually exploiting children
That is a pretty specific thing. I don't think it is a"benefit of the doubt" to say that no such conviction exists.
I predict we'll never know, because it won't be investigated.
This is dumb. If Charles Manson wants to give your institution money, take it and do something positive with it.
Epstein would use his connection to these institutions as cover with peers, and as a way to find clients. There's evidence this includes Marvin Minsky.
He died in 2016 at 87 years of age. Epstein's peak years of operation were in the late 90s? That makes Minsky around 69/70 when he would have been using Epstein's girls.
I wonder if Minksky just thought it was a run of the mill escort service?
And then three years later find yourself defending his character sincerely, because after all, he's given so much to help the great causes you have undertaken.
Yes, there were those indiscretions and terrible rumors, but surely you should encourage the good in this man!
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
> And then three years later find yourself defending his character sincerely, because after all, he's given so much to help the great causes you have undertaken.
Source? I tend to agree with OP that MIT is fine in taking the money. But if they went on and defended him later then obviously that's beyond the pale.
Taking the money will create a desire to defend the donor. In some idealized world, this doesn't have to happen, but in the real world, it will.
For instance, eventually the donor will come to town and want a tour of the lab he donated to, or dinner with the dean at the faculty club. You started out with money, and now you have a relationship. From all accounts, Epstein in particular was a master at this.
It also creates a link (which is bi-directional) between the prestigious institution and the donor. This association, after all, is part of the reason people give to institutions like MIT and not to their local community college. Some of the prestige "rubs off".
It wasn't meant literally.
It's just the pattern that I've seen play out again and again, and which I can only assume happened here at least to some extent.
Humans are world-class justifiers.
People here on HN largely recognize the tribalism effect, and once you've taken money, that will start to take hold. You've linked yourself to him and you will inevitably begin to identify with him as a result.
Note that if Epstein had genuinely been stricken by remorse, changed his ways, done his best to make amends to his victims, and was looking for a way to do good with his fortune, then I think taking the money makes perfect sense.
That obviously wasn't true here, though.
That's all well and good, but one day such a person will make a request and you will have to decide whether to now forgo their money, money that may now be supporting your good works. Imho if you are going to take money from such people you shouldn't do anything substantial with it. Buy everyone fancy hats. Get new furniture in all the student lounges. Don't spend it on anything that you will miss, anything that will cloud your judgement when the inevitable request comes.
but one day such a person will make a request and you will have to decide whether to now forgo their money, money that may now be supporting your good works
Look no further than George Mason University. It used to be an also-ran commuter college, now with a steady stream of income from the Koch family it's actually fairly respectable. You have to watch what you say, though, when you are on the faculty.
Epstein's influence was fairly confined, but the Koch sponsorship of unfettered capitalism and global warming denial continues to affect the planet. They are ultimately the greater evil.
I think you should actually look at what the Koch's actually believe and what they fund. They've been on the right side of history for a long time, and in fact the much hated David Koch took a stand and ran as VP of the libertarian party in the early 80s with key planks of his platform being drug legalization and the legalization of gay marriage.
The Kochs also recently funded with Soros a think tank in washington dc to help promote the idea of peace and stop the endless wars the US is involved in.
As far as I know David Koch didn't deny global warming, but strongly disagreed with the conventional ideas of how to combat it and the risks that it poses. There are many people who think that there are better ways to address it. For instance, addressing 3rd world poverty and increases the wealth of the world will increase the rate of climate change, but it will also benefit those suffering substantially and enable thier children (who are richer) to better handle it. I don't necessarily endorse or agree with his views, but I feel they're often mistated for political reasons.
That's a bad comparison to make. Epstein, by all accounts, actually hurt, abused, and enslaved real people. That is always worse than political activism, even if you find the politics highly objectionable, and even if the activism reached very far due to money.
If the transaction stopped at receiving the money, that would be one thing. However, ML donors visit the lab twice a year for sponsor weeks. It meant putting other sponsors, faculty, and researcher assistants in the same room as a convicted sex offender for several weeks of the year.
And he wasn't just a convicted sex offender, as in "streaked the incoming freshman class." He was a world class scumbug who (seemingly) got a sweetheart deal for ratting out some top brass at Bear Stearns. If he was little people, he'd be away for life and destroyed by inmates.
And in retrospect it appears he was even not a reformed offender.
Yeah money always comes with strings attached.
It meant putting other sponsors, faculty, and researcher assistants in the same room as a convicted sex offender for several weeks of the year.
That was precisely the point. Epstein gave the money and bought legitimacy with it. Everyone in the room knew they were having dinner with a pervert and slaveholder, but he was a philanthropic slaveholder.
The number of people harmed was very small, the number of people who benefit from money -> research is very large, and the people accepting the money have no connection to what he did.
There is a long history of science being involved in stuff that was considered morally reprehensible and it turned out really well for generations of people. Medicine has a history of grave robbers, Chemistry has some real monsters in the closet, the Physicists may as well have blood on their hands for what they worked to enable and why not throw in Turing? He is unusual in that the standards changed so history remembers him kindly. Lucky man.
I don't see why the standard should change with Epstein and suddenly moral outrage trumps enabling academics. Let the law handle it, and let the universities take in money.
Why is Turing lucky?
'He's not a criminal he wears nice suits and has soft hands'
> And he wasn't just a convicted sex offender, as in "streaked the incoming freshman class." He was a world class scumbug who (seemingly) got a sweetheart deal for ratting out some top brass at Bear Stearns
Slightly off topic but do you have a source for that? Not because I don't believe you, but just because I hadn't heard that little detail before and it sounds interesting.
if you were to google "jeffrey epstein bear stearns" you would relatively quickly arrive at this page http://miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html but they don't link a specific source and all other results just repeat this information
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hoffenberg
I dunno if it's true; the Epstein story seems to be a bottomless pit of corruption:
https://nypost.com/2018/11/28/pedophile-millionaire-dodged-h...
Donate it to the opposite of Epstein, to a women’s shelter. Under no circumstances should MIT keep any of the money or use it in any way. Negroponte is completely wrong and moreover MIT doesn’t need the money. Indeed, they should double it before the donation.
Say the media lab takes his money, and then decides that they don't want to be associated with him or his alleged activities.
Should they give it back? Should they set it aside? Throw it into a temple? Something else? Was it even really his (Epstein's) to begin with?
Genuinely curious, here.
The media lab is a self indulgent stain on an otherwise perfect institution, and secondly, take the money. This morality contest has got to stop.
I cannot think of anything more terrifying than high IQ sociopaths.
Really? I'm more scared of the reverse: Sincerely well-meaning people who fail to fully consider their actions and therefore end up pushing terrible ideas with extreme force because they are so convinced that they're right. "Think of the children!" (destroys privacy, institutionalizes censorship) "Save the environment!" (switches to a product that turns out to have higher total impact) "Stop the pedophiles!" (organizes witch hunt and throws out burden of proof)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
---
EDIT: Realized I should point out - the dig at pedophile witch hunts isn't meant as a commentary on this article, it's just a generic example.
It’s a fair point and a genuine real phenomenon. However, in my experience, people with low PCR-L scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent. Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
It’s a fair point and a genuinely real phenomenon. However, in my experience, people with low PCL-R scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent. Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
> However, in my experience, people with low PCL-R scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent. Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
You have no such experience unless you happen to be a researcher on this very specific subject. And if you were, you wouldn't be saying stuff like
> Genuine psychopaths, on the other hand, are incurable predators.
> people with low PCL-R scores who make bad decisions when in emotional states are likely to change their position when they realize they have inadvertently harmed the innocent
Mass emotional behavior (arguably well-intentioned, for some definition of good we might not share) can last an extremely long time and do enormous damage- down to persecution, massacres and pogroms. And this is valid for every people, any country and any time, and any degree of damage.
Sure the media lab can earmark the funds to human trafficking research. Got lemons? Make lemonade.
The division right now isn't about the money, it's about Joi Ito and his decision to legitimize Epstein and invite him to be around the Lab. In addition to the risks he already took, there's the question of whether he can be trusted to exhibit better judgement in the future or not.
Here are the results of some human trafficking research I did just now: Epstein was awful, everyone knew he was awful, and nobody in polite society should have associated with him.
OK, what do you want to do with the rest of the money? Develop an app that tells you not to pal around with pedophiles? Maybe we'll make a green laptop with an OLED screen and give it to children so we know who not to let the pedophile near? Seriously, what needs to be researched here? The gap is not a lack of research, it's a lack of moral resolve to do what everyone knows the right thing is.
> OK, what do you want to do with the rest of the money? ... Seriously, what needs to be researched here?
These efforts / organisations know and could likely use some help: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/justice-policy-center/p...
"he used an earthier term".
Nice phrasing. It gets the message across, but allows polite consideration. I hope we see more writing of this kind (again).
I'm left wondering what the term is
Edit: I did check the tweet. I was trying to point out that it's not clear what the "earthier" term is, in disagreement with the parent post.
The tweet they linked tells you:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Joi/status/770625716?s=20
Sorry, yes I checked the tweet. I was trying to point out that it's not clear what the "earthier" term is, in disagreement with the parent post.
"asshole"
Personally, I hate this Bowdlerization from the Times. It changes the meaning of the tweet, and it's not even the worst case where I've seen their desire for propriety interfere with their core mission of informing their readers about the world.
If their readers are uncomfortable with words like asshole, maybe a source like Time for Kids would be more appropriate for them.
Strongly disagree. It's ridiculous to see a prominent newspaper act afraid of writing a naughty word in an article related to Jeffrey Epstein, sex-trafficking, and other similar subjects.
It's worse that they changed someone's quote. If they didn't want to print "asshole" they should have either found a way to "bleep" it, or just not used that quote. Changing what someone said shouldn't even be considered.
Perhaps the nytimes is worried about being sued by rich pedophiles.
Why would anyone direct their anger in regards to the Epstein case towards MIT? Surely, there are some billionaire child rapists more worthy of such attention.
I... kinda don't see what the big deal is? The article is kinda a mess and it's really hard for me to see what actual justification (or anti-justification) it's trying to push.
Yes, Epstein was a scumbag. Did Ito know he was a scumbag when he took the money? And even if he did, would taking the money put him, the Media Lab, or anyone who worked there in a compromised or awkward position in the future? Was the money itself tainted in some way, derived from scumbag activities? If not (I couldn't really glean whether or not this was the case from the article), then... so what? Money is money, and it's hard enough already to raise money for "out there" research, even with MIT's reputation. At the very least, you could know that a scumbag's money was being used to do something actually good.
This was after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for child prostitution (not to mention several civil suits for child prostitution settled out of court). Rumors of Epstein’s large-scale child sex ring were widespread.
> would taking the money put him, the Media Lab, or anyone who worked there in a compromised or awkward position in the future?
Many researchers don’t want their paycheck to come from a child prostitution kingpin who made a career blackmailing rich pedophiles who had raped his child sex slaves.
There are several ways to approach the matter. Negroponte took the worst possible way to approach it after Ito made a long speech.
>“I told Joi to take the money,” he said, “and I would do it again.”
That statement implies he doesn’t care at all. There are other ways to handle it, like he does care, but there’s nothing he can do about it, or have an excuse that Epstein had no control over the use of the funds (if true), but to say something like “Yeah, big deal, I’d do business with the guy again” is tactless.
> That statement implies he doesn’t care at all.
Not necessarily, he might care and weigh options and consequences and come to a different conclusion than you, me or most people. If he still comes to that conclusion today, "I would do it again" is the obvious answer.
That is the difference of being in a position of authority versus the opposite. When people look to people in authority, there are expectations, that they are somehow responsive to an organization’s needs, that they make the best possible decision based on the facts.
Negroponte took an action that proves he is unsuited for his position of authority, by making the worst possible statement and also by rejecting everyone’s opinion on the matter.
Using a scumbag's money to help rehabilitate the scumbag's reputation is a pretty poisoned exchange.
Too late to edit at this point, but... damn. With all the recent news coming out, looks like Epstein was banned from any kind of donation to MIT due to his sex offender status, and Ito knew about everything at the time and did an end run around the ban in order to take his money. So yeah, nevermind, this is really bad.