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▲ The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein(scottaaronson.blog)
62 points by pfdietz 2 hours ago | 44 comments
▲soperj an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

▲watwut an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Same with Summers. He had reputation beyond Epstein contacts.

▲pixl97 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Turns out Bill is just actually a piece of shit through and through

▲decimalenough an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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".

▲dakiol 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

You can be both good and bad. Like, it's not an impossibility.

▲Lammy 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't get that rich in the first place without being a ruthless asshole.

▲saalweachter 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Listen, billionaires just have to do three things to be beloved:

  1. Donate 5-10% of their fortune to random unobjectionable charities.
  2. Don't abuse children.
  3. Stay off Twitter.
It's not a high bar, we don't need to give a silver medal to those that fall short.
▲ceejayoz 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity?

https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/ ranks him at #13 wealthiest in the world with $108B net worth.

He's donated about half his fortune, and 60% of that to his own org.

▲sobkas 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>The kind of piece of shit who donates basically his entire fortune to charity?

So he is no longer a billionaire? And donating to what charity, The Gates Foundation? The one that he controls? The one that he uses to push his ideological stances and repeatedly fails to help anyone? Just look how successful his work on improving education system in America was. What a sacrifice it was for him...

▲com2kid 9 minutes ago | parent [-]

They've admitted the US education work was a mistake. They are hardly alone in making that mistake, improving education in the US is hard.

Their work to clean water and cure diseases has saved millions of lives. They know what they are good at and they've decided to double down on that.

▲lifestyleguru an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd prefer if rich simply paid their taxes and contributions instead of spending money on fighting poor children in Africa.

▲mikepurvis 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

One of Michael Shellenberger's central theses is, I think, that the government's ability to invest in "extras" like overseas aid, science, the environment, space exploration, etc is directly a function of how large and healthy the middle class is because that's where the political capital to do these things really comes from.

Basically the post-WWII period was a golden age for all of the above because the middle class of returning soldiers was there, and it was as power and wealth consolidated in the 80s and onward that there was less and less interest and agreement about spending on stuff other the essentials (which turned out to be mostly just defense).

So really it's a two pronged thing:

* the wealthy need to pay much more, and the government needs to invest that in services that benefit the middle class (education, health care, energy & transportation infrastructure) and also which keep people from falling out of the middle class (social safety net, consumer protections).

* eventually there's a critical mass of middle class people comfortable enough to look out their windows and feel concern about pollution, the poor, etc, and then you ultimately get a combination of individual action, NGOs, and government programmes that meet the very needs that are noticed and lobbied for.

But I think the issue is that many advocates want to jump directly from "more taxes on the rich" to "gov't spends directly on my pet issue", and if you miss the second step, you're never going to get the willpower to either raise the taxes or direct the money into environmental initiatives or whatever else.

▲lifestyleguru 5 minutes ago | parent [-]

I mean literally taxing the literally rich. Most population by "taxing the rich" mean those earning >90k EUR/USD on employment contract. They see the real rich maybe few times in life from a distance on a yacht in Caribbean or Mediterranean but don't connect the dots.

▲wrs 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

That made some sense back when the government used to use the taxes to help poor children in Africa, or poor children in the US for that matter. As of 2025 it seems to just leave that sort of thing up to Bill.

▲refulgentis 9 minutes ago | parent [-]

You're absolutely right in a cold logical sense, even if it makes other people emotionally react to the comment. This was a kind way to react to a lazy false dichotomy, that it's either taxes or donations.

▲mrguyorama 2 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Jeffrey Epstein ran a child sex slavery operation for rich people.

There is nothing at all you can do that could ever overcome the harm of helping that man, participating in his business, and calling him a friend.

I don't care if Jesus Christ himself comes down and says Bill Gates is solely responsible for the ending of all suffering.

Raping kids is Bad. Enslaving kids to rape is Bad. This is as clear as you can get in real human society to being The Bad Guy, and Bill Gates spent his precious, limited time on this earth helping him, legitimizing him, and participating in his influence peddling and child rape and slavery

Bill Gates is a piece of shit.

▲stronglikedan an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay, a complete piece of shit with an undigested kernel of sweet corn stuck in it.

▲Insanity 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲sobkas 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

He uses philanthropy to force his ideology on everyone and his ideology doesn't work. His philanthropy makes things worse not better.

At some point it stops being a philanthropy when it makes lives of people he tries to "help" worse. Like his actions have a ulterior motives...

▲_whiteCaps_ 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean his philanthropy work that influences where public money goes, into companies like Monsanto and Cargill which his foundation profits from?

▲Insanity 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

They work in healthcare, education, gender equality initiatives, green energy..

I’m not a fan of MSFT but there are worse uses of the money he made from the company.

I think it’s a bit unfair to categorize all of his contributions to charity as “not charitable”.

▲martythemaniak 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

▲JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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...

▲gpm an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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)"

▲JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm struggling to read the word "situation" charitably in the context of an introduction.

▲gpm 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm reading "situation" as "engaged in the occupation of networking, but it's not a job" in the above... but yeah that's one part of why it's an overly charitable reading.

▲1-more 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Best I can do is that the middleman took the sweetheart deal conviction for solicitation at face value, and did not know it was a plea down from crimes against children? IDK

▲sonofhans 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Because you’re not the audience. Clearly, in 2010, many people were still angling for Epstein introductions for the obvious reasons. The “warning” is a signal.

▲notahacker 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

▲SpicyLemonZest 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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.)

▲moralestapia an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲rawgabbit an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲dnautics an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲moralestapia an hour ago | parent [-]

>i mean working in tech you haven't run into [...]

Yeah, it's on my comment.

▲lifestyleguru 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲EFreethought an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲lebca an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲PlunderBunny 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

I remember being told that many of the spelling/grammar mistakes in (English) menus for ethnic restaurants were deliberate to make the (English native speaking) customers feel superior.

(Also not saying I believe this at all, just relating an anecdote).

▲andrewflnr 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲palmotea an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

▲throwjefferey 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He was probably more impressive in-person.

▲razingeden an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲moralestapia an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲trhway an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

>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