The kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity? And actual charity at that, not Ellison style "Larry Ellison Research Foundation for Prolonging the Life of Larry Ellison and Getting Some Tax Breaks Along the Way".
These binary distinctions (mostly) don't work for people in the real world. It's not a book or movie where people are clearly either good or bad, in reality all people are a mix of both.
He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing.
The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines the good in this case.
> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief.
The actual lesson is not "listen to your mom", but "character matters". It doesn't matter how much someone agrees with you, how smart they are, how rich they are, how many great ideas they have etc etc. A rotten character will eventually rot everything around it. Techines/nerds/geeks get so enamoured with ideas they tend to not even see the kind of people ideas come from.
> adding: “perhaps you will know Jeffrey and his background and situation."
This is the most-interesting bit. The introducer put this up front. Maybe it's Nigerian-prince scame logic? Or maybe there really is that much sympathy for pedophiles in Silicon Valley [1].
Reading more charitably than is likely deserved, it could be "his background and situation (of knowing tons of rich people who might also put funds into this)"
> He has paid for college educations for personal employees and students from Rwanda, and spent millions on a project to develop a thinking and feeling computer and on music intended to alleviate depression.
Helping poor children from Africa, investing in AI, and burning CDs with dolphin sounds. A classic.
Feels mostly like "if you're responding to this you're already compromised", a bit like "I take it you understand that our Family expects its favours to be returned".
I think it's pretty well established now that powerful people in and outside the Valley considered to think that Epstein was a useful contact knowing his "personal situation" rather well and sometimes explicitly referring to it. Suspect it's possible to have innocently accepted an introduction to him or even advice from him in the 2010s because he wasn't that famous at the time, but it seems like they were motivated to minimise that possibility. Even easier to add people to the list you can blackmail in future if you don't even have to arrange island visits for them
Epstein was not nearly as famous at the time, and the little contemporary coverage that did exist (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/business/01epstein.html) substantially downplayed his crimes. In hindsight, of course, we know to read past the headline that just says "prostitution", and scroll down to the sixteenth paragraph where he got a massage from a 14 year old. But it seems plausible that someone doing quick vetting in 2010 might not have read that far.
(Aaronson, if I read the source article correctly, made the wise decision that any involvement with any kind of sex work is disqualifying. I feel the same way, but even today not everyone agrees.)
Excerpt from one of the related emails (written by JE):
"great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus
hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various
fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the
anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not involve defending against
interception, a key area for biological systems, if a predator breaks the code, it usually can
accumulate its preys free energy at a discount . self deception, ( necessary to prevent accidental
disclosure of inate algorithms. WE need more hackers , also interested in biological hacking ,
security, etc."
Damn! I once worked with a guy that was exactly like this. Not just writing but his style of speech irl was like that, incoherent loosely bound ideas around one topic. Ironically, the harder he tried to appear smart the more idiotic were the things that spewed out of his mouth.
We were working with GPUs, trying to find ways to optimize GPU code, he called the team for an informal meeting and told us dead serious, "Why can't you just like, ..., remove the GPUs from the server, then crack them open, turn them outside out and put them back in to see if they perform better". :O
I don't know if this has a name, I just thought the guy had schizophrenia. So glad I moved on from that place.
computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems,. He is confused about software/programming/hacking. Hacking absolutely involves intercepting messages e.g., man in the middle attack. I have no idea what he thinks biological systems is; does he think that bacteria/viruses intercept chemical messages that our brain sends to different organs in our body?
if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount. Free energy -- yuck -- that is what happens when scientists give a terrible name to "usable work" or "usable energy". Free energy is about the usable work you can get out of a e.g., coal powered steam engine. He is mixing physics/thermodynamics with biology.
i mean working in tech you haven't run into that CTO or vp eng who snowjobs the c-suite with a word salad of hot button technical terms that don't quite add up?
hell ive even interviewed developer candidates for positions who are like this.
When he was alive a lot of people said Epstein was really smart.
But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
I used to know someone wealthy whose continued wealth relied on working with local and state governments. This person's public correspondence in lawsuits and with local government officials was purposefully littered with spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization errors. When I asked them about it, their response was that it was on purpose so that they seemed less smart and thus less threatening, with the hope that they would get more favorable rulings and contracts by not seeming like "one of the big entities."
I'm not asking you to believe me on this, but sharing it more as an anecdote of: something on the surface is sometimes not the reality of what's underneath.
I've found that problem solving intelligence and language skills are not that strongly correlated. He clearly had some kind of skill to keep his operation running, even before you consider the more cynical explanations in the other replies.
> But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
I kinda assumed that was (at least partly) a "flex," basically doing something dumb to show you're such hot stuff you can get away with it. It's like Sam Altman writing in lowercase all the time.
I like using “astute businessman” as a backhanded compliment sometimes.
Usually meaning the revenues and results are there .. although everything about their personal or professional ethos disgusts me.
Eh. From time to time you’ll have that one brilliant but grossly tangential asset on a team who leaves you wondering if they’re manic or cracked out from the weekend.
Who’s in infrastructure and hasn’t sent a few sleep-deprived and cringey status updates out at 6am :D
Okay okay okay fine, it’s an internet comment section I don’t have to be PC. I think this one’s coke.
I think that ... given one specific topic, few people understand it while the vast majority is completely oblivious to its workings.
So they then hear someone who speaks like that, with a fast cadence and Andrew Tate's "Confidence" TM, and are inclined to think "yeah, the guy looks like he knows what he's talking about".
But for people who have minimal knowledge about the thing, it's evident that said person is just stupid.
>Scott Aaronson was born on May 21st, 1981. He will be 30 in 2011. The conference could follow a theme of: “hurry to think together with Scott Aaronson while he is still in his 20s and not yet a pitiful over-the-hill geezer in his 30s.” This offers another nice opportunity for celebration.
may be somebody would train a model on the Epstein and his associates emails/etc. which would allow to research the workings of the such psychopaths' minds
> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief.
Doubt it would have changed anything for Bill. There's a pattern there and this is just a piece of that pattern.
Same with Summers. He had reputation beyond Epstein contacts.
Turns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through
The kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity? And actual charity at that, not Ellison style "Larry Ellison Research Foundation for Prolonging the Life of Larry Ellison and Getting Some Tax Breaks Along the Way".
16 replies →
These binary distinctions (mostly) don't work for people in the real world. It's not a book or movie where people are clearly either good or bad, in reality all people are a mix of both.
He's still doing his work on philanthropy which is IMO a good thing.
The one counterexample to my point that I'd think of is Hitler. And _technically_ he did do good things for Germany as well, the bad just overwhelmingly outshines the good in this case.
5 replies →
Guily by (lack of) association!
> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief.
The actual lesson is not "listen to your mom", but "character matters". It doesn't matter how much someone agrees with you, how smart they are, how rich they are, how many great ideas they have etc etc. A rotten character will eventually rot everything around it. Techines/nerds/geeks get so enamoured with ideas they tend to not even see the kind of people ideas come from.
> adding: “perhaps you will know Jeffrey and his background and situation."
This is the most-interesting bit. The introducer put this up front. Maybe it's Nigerian-prince scame logic? Or maybe there really is that much sympathy for pedophiles in Silicon Valley [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/business/epstein-investme...
Reading more charitably than is likely deserved, it could be "his background and situation (of knowing tons of rich people who might also put funds into this)"
I'm struggling to read the word "situation" charitably in the context of an introduction.
3 replies →
> He has paid for college educations for personal employees and students from Rwanda, and spent millions on a project to develop a thinking and feeling computer and on music intended to alleviate depression.
Helping poor children from Africa, investing in AI, and burning CDs with dolphin sounds. A classic.
Feels mostly like "if you're responding to this you're already compromised", a bit like "I take it you understand that our Family expects its favours to be returned".
I think it's pretty well established now that powerful people in and outside the Valley considered to think that Epstein was a useful contact knowing his "personal situation" rather well and sometimes explicitly referring to it. Suspect it's possible to have innocently accepted an introduction to him or even advice from him in the 2010s because he wasn't that famous at the time, but it seems like they were motivated to minimise that possibility. Even easier to add people to the list you can blackmail in future if you don't even have to arrange island visits for them
Epstein was not nearly as famous at the time, and the little contemporary coverage that did exist (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/business/01epstein.html) substantially downplayed his crimes. In hindsight, of course, we know to read past the headline that just says "prostitution", and scroll down to the sixteenth paragraph where he got a massage from a 14 year old. But it seems plausible that someone doing quick vetting in 2010 might not have read that far.
(Aaronson, if I read the source article correctly, made the wise decision that any involvement with any kind of sex work is disqualifying. I feel the same way, but even today not everyone agrees.)
Excerpt from one of the related emails (written by JE):
"great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems, if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount . self deception, ( necessary to prevent accidental disclosure of inate algorithms. WE need more hackers , also interested in biological hacking , security, etc."
Damn! I once worked with a guy that was exactly like this. Not just writing but his style of speech irl was like that, incoherent loosely bound ideas around one topic. Ironically, the harder he tried to appear smart the more idiotic were the things that spewed out of his mouth.
We were working with GPUs, trying to find ways to optimize GPU code, he called the team for an informal meeting and told us dead serious, "Why can't you just like, ..., remove the GPUs from the server, then crack them open, turn them outside out and put them back in to see if they perform better". :O
I don't know if this has a name, I just thought the guy had schizophrenia. So glad I moved on from that place.
Pseudo-intellectual aka bullshitter. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pseudo-intellectu...
computation does not involve defending against interception, a key area for biological systems,. He is confused about software/programming/hacking. Hacking absolutely involves intercepting messages e.g., man in the middle attack. I have no idea what he thinks biological systems is; does he think that bacteria/viruses intercept chemical messages that our brain sends to different organs in our body?
if a predator breaks the code, it usually can accumulate its preys free energy at a discount. Free energy -- yuck -- that is what happens when scientists give a terrible name to "usable work" or "usable energy". Free energy is about the usable work you can get out of a e.g., coal powered steam engine. He is mixing physics/thermodynamics with biology.
i don't think its schizophrenia?
i mean working in tech you haven't run into that CTO or vp eng who snowjobs the c-suite with a word salad of hot button technical terms that don't quite add up?
hell ive even interviewed developer candidates for positions who are like this.
>i mean working in tech you haven't run into [...]
Yeah, it's on my comment.
My brain farts are more cohesive, yet I'm never drunk enough while writing them down to use spaces before punctuation or after a bracket.
When he was alive a lot of people said Epstein was really smart.
But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
I used to know someone wealthy whose continued wealth relied on working with local and state governments. This person's public correspondence in lawsuits and with local government officials was purposefully littered with spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization errors. When I asked them about it, their response was that it was on purpose so that they seemed less smart and thus less threatening, with the hope that they would get more favorable rulings and contracts by not seeming like "one of the big entities."
I'm not asking you to believe me on this, but sharing it more as an anecdote of: something on the surface is sometimes not the reality of what's underneath.
1 reply →
I've found that problem solving intelligence and language skills are not that strongly correlated. He clearly had some kind of skill to keep his operation running, even before you consider the more cynical explanations in the other replies.
> But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
I kinda assumed that was (at least partly) a "flex," basically doing something dumb to show you're such hot stuff you can get away with it. It's like Sam Altman writing in lowercase all the time.
He was probably more impressive in-person.
I like using “astute businessman” as a backhanded compliment sometimes.
Usually meaning the revenues and results are there .. although everything about their personal or professional ethos disgusts me.
Eh. From time to time you’ll have that one brilliant but grossly tangential asset on a team who leaves you wondering if they’re manic or cracked out from the weekend.
Who’s in infrastructure and hasn’t sent a few sleep-deprived and cringey status updates out at 6am :D
Okay okay okay fine, it’s an internet comment section I don’t have to be PC. I think this one’s coke.
I think that ... given one specific topic, few people understand it while the vast majority is completely oblivious to its workings.
So they then hear someone who speaks like that, with a fast cadence and Andrew Tate's "Confidence" TM, and are inclined to think "yeah, the guy looks like he knows what he's talking about".
But for people who have minimal knowledge about the thing, it's evident that said person is just stupid.
>Scott Aaronson was born on May 21st, 1981. He will be 30 in 2011. The conference could follow a theme of: “hurry to think together with Scott Aaronson while he is still in his 20s and not yet a pitiful over-the-hill geezer in his 30s.” This offers another nice opportunity for celebration.
may be somebody would train a model on the Epstein and his associates emails/etc. which would allow to research the workings of the such psychopaths' minds
[dead]