A charitable person could argue that it's because the average AI researcher didn't know that Epstein was a convicted sex offender after his public trial and conviction in 2011, but I don't buy that. I was a dumb 20-something in 2011 and I knew about it. It was in the newspapers. It was on the news on the TVs at the gym
I really don't think this is true. In fact, you don't even remember the year correctly. It did have some news coverage but not much and basically nobody cared. The story started to pick up steam with the weird-online-right years later with pizzagate, it became a mainstream right wing talking point during biden but mainstream media continued to mostly avoid it until last year.
It's very possible that for those people Epstein was just this guy with access to money that knew everyone. He had served a sentence but he was fully discharged and it was for getting a massage from a girl he might or might not have known to be underage, so whatever.
Over the last few decades, utilitarianism really seems to have taken over popular discussions of ethics. Sometimes I wonder if that doesn't represent a failure of ethics in itself. As far as ethical systems go, Utilitarianism is easy to hack. Ignoring second order effects, choosing peculiar utility functions, using unrealistic time scales - it's all wrapped up together
Ethics its one of the most bullshit branches of philosophy. All ethics needs to conform to your gut feeling of what is right and wrong and since that's not based on any a priori simple rule system they all need to be malleable enough to be made to conform. Outside of completely irrelevant thought experiments they also all end up being homomorph. How about we pretend they were christian? It says in the book of virtues that rape is bad but you also have to forgive, he paid penance, he shows contrition, Mary Magdalene and shit. There you go.
At the end of the day many evangelicals vote for an adulterer who grabs em by the pussy, why? Because there are other considerations, more important things. Ethics needs to be flexible, to bend which ever way. This is a good thing actually. The worst people in the world were the ones that took ethics seriously enough to suppress their gut instinct.
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I really don't think this is true. In fact, you don't even remember the year correctly. It did have some news coverage but not much and basically nobody cared. The story started to pick up steam with the weird-online-right years later with pizzagate, it became a mainstream right wing talking point during biden but mainstream media continued to mostly avoid it until last year.
Even on google trends you can see that few were interested before he died. Bill Gates for reference.
It's very possible that for those people Epstein was just this guy with access to money that knew everyone. He had served a sentence but he was fully discharged and it was for getting a massage from a girl he might or might not have known to be underage, so whatever.
Ethics its one of the most bullshit branches of philosophy. All ethics needs to conform to your gut feeling of what is right and wrong and since that's not based on any a priori simple rule system they all need to be malleable enough to be made to conform. Outside of completely irrelevant thought experiments they also all end up being homomorph. How about we pretend they were christian? It says in the book of virtues that rape is bad but you also have to forgive, he paid penance, he shows contrition, Mary Magdalene and shit. There you go.
At the end of the day many evangelicals vote for an adulterer who grabs em by the pussy, why? Because there are other considerations, more important things. Ethics needs to be flexible, to bend which ever way. This is a good thing actually. The worst people in the world were the ones that took ethics seriously enough to suppress their gut instinct.
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