> As an outsider looking in I'm starting to wonder if this world is just a bunch of academically capable but socially stunted individuals being preyed on by socially voracious people like Epstein with no morals?

The present-day tech world seems like a pretty extreme version of this phenomenon. Many of our sociopaths (e.g., Musk, Zuckerberg) got a boost from actual technical abilities along the way, which I suppose is similar to Epstein—he seems to have been pretty talented at finance.

(Edit: Musk and Zuckerberg are not socially talented in the usual sense, but have still been extremely successful at getting other people to do what they want.)

On what basis do you say that Epstein was pretty talented at finance? This guy was a math teacher with no actual degree. The only reason he got his gig in finance was by schmoozing up the dad of one of his students, who was CEO of Bear Stearns.

The only talents Epstein really had were in cozying up the right people at the right time with the "right" stuff (which we all know about now).