> At the end of the discussion, there was a consensus, reached by Morgan, Ruiz, and
Newton, to keep Epstein’s $100,000 donation to the Media Lab and to accept further donations
from him so long as: (1) each donation would be recorded as anonymous, and Epstein could not publicize it; (2) the donations would be relatively small; and (3) the donations would be unrestricted.
Right, they thought really hard about it and their moral compass told them to sweep it under the carpet.
Then the emails from Ito to Newton and the others at Resource Development are interesting. Here is one, Ito tries hard convince others to let him keep the money.
> I’m actively developing the relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and I’d like to know your thinking on this. More important than this $100K is what happens if he is interested in a much larger gift. My previous understanding was that if it was not accounted or named—or if the gift might be given anonymously—it was likely to be OK.
He is dangling future bags of money in front of them. "Just think of all the funding we could be getting. And look, we've already hid it as anonymous before, surely we can do it again".
That's some very effective tactics. Epstein did that too, he started giving smaller amounts of money first to see how it goes. Those processed, people made excuses. Once that happened they were hooked into the scheme and ready to be roped in even more. Ito was using the same tactics.
this whole thread bothers me, but not for the usual reasons.
1) everyone is up on their high horses pretending that they somehow have an absolute moral compass that would prevent them from doing any wrong. To me it looks like people over at MIT are trying to do the right thing (with this external investigation) and maybe there will be some lessons learned from this whole episode.
2) everyone is outraged (rightfully) at what this guy/monster did but I believe we are missing a bigger point here: people abuse power every damn day. people fuck over people in a weak position - that cannot defend themselves - every damn day.
It sounds like some lives are more important than other when it comes to capturing the moral highground. What about minimum wage workers living in poverty, people that deperately need health care or civilians in war zones?
Nobody gives a damn about what has become the new normal, but we're outraged that some guy had assistants in their 20s and basically ran a prostitution ring on his island.
3) a subset of the same people that probably visited the island have decided to silence the guy because he probably knew too much. The same people that had no problem having sex with underage, sexually exploited girls, decided to abuse their power once more. And we're outraged that a bunch of MIT professors took donations to pursuit their research.
Honestly at this point I would just let law enforcement do their thing and would focus on preventing/exposing situations such of this vs being revisionists about what should have been done.
I agree with 2), but the Epstein case was closely related to the HN bubble, so it's only natural that people get worked up about it.
> Honestly at this point I would just let law enforcement do their thing
I don't think this will happen. Look at the phenomenal outcome of this underage prostitution case, which (from what we know) sounds pretty boring in comparison:
Right, they thought really hard about it and their moral compass told them to sweep it under the carpet.
Then the emails from Ito to Newton and the others at Resource Development are interesting. Here is one, Ito tries hard convince others to let him keep the money.
> I’m actively developing the relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and I’d like to know your thinking on this. More important than this $100K is what happens if he is interested in a much larger gift. My previous understanding was that if it was not accounted or named—or if the gift might be given anonymously—it was likely to be OK.
He is dangling future bags of money in front of them. "Just think of all the funding we could be getting. And look, we've already hid it as anonymous before, surely we can do it again".
That's some very effective tactics. Epstein did that too, he started giving smaller amounts of money first to see how it goes. Those processed, people made excuses. Once that happened they were hooked into the scheme and ready to be roped in even more. Ito was using the same tactics.