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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   813 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026

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The other day, quantum computing expert(?) Scott Aaronson wrote about how he didn't meet Epstein and summed up in a comment something I had been thinking as well.

I had a further thought. Back in 2019, when Epstein became a central topic of conversation following his arrest and then death, and lots of my scientific colleagues were telling stories about their contacts or near-contacts with him, it struck me that there were zero stories about any scientist—liberal or conservative, male or female, morally naive or morally astute—saying, “no, of course I want nothing to do with you, because you’re friggin’ Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous mass rapist!”

So I concluded that, if anyone now imagines that they would’ve responded that way, it’s almost certainly pure hindsight bias. Indeed, even after Epstein’s first conviction, a short jail stint in one’s past for “soliciting prostitution” simply doesn’t sound disqualifying, according to the secular liberal morality that most academics hold, unless you researched the details, which most didn’t.

All of the pearl clutching about how powerful men (and women) who associated with Epstein must have clearly known what he was about and what he was up to as a convicted pedophile ephebophile, when it's almost certain that 97% of the population would have gleefully accepted an invitation to one of his parties filled with leading scientists from MIT and Harvard, heads of state, CEOs, inventors, billionaires, and the rest of the somebodys.

A man with that much social approval could easily say, if anyone ever confronted him, "oh, that. yeah, it was a thing with an escort. it was consensual. she said she was over 18. it got blown up into something. I paid my dues. trying to move on" and be happily believed. Due diligence: done. Very few people with the liberal morality to be condemning him for hiring an escort wouldn't have bought that excuse and gone back to dreaming of rubbing shoulders with the who's who and maybe getting a sweet private jet ride. "Can he really be such a bad guy if all of these other great people are hanging out with him?", thought all of the other great people hanging out with him.

The thing about the sort of Academic Experts who would have talked to or gotten money from Epstein is that due diligence just does not exist in that world. If Epstein had been tried for chopping up puppies with an axe, and it was national news, probably fewer than 10% of the professors etc. that he talked to would have thought to google him and respond with some condemnation of axe murder. It's a bit different for CEOs and university presidents, because their PA is supposed to do that, but I doubt many of their PAs actually do due diligence on routine meetings either.

From that link:

To be clear, I never witnessed illegal behavior and never saw anyone who appeared underage in his presence.

One of the things that it's impossible for anyone in authority to say is that Epstein was not Jimmy Saville. Unlike our resident UK paedo, he wasn't going around children's hospitals and asking to meet the nice little boys. And even with Saville there's a fascinating reddit thread asking what the hell happened:

When someone has done something to endear themselves to the public, it can be hard to see what is really be going on and sometimes difficult to change that perception.

He fronted Top of the Pops at a time when music was beginning to be a part of everyone's everyday lives. As he was introducing new, exciting songs, people naturally associated him with the music. You'd be sitting around the tv, waiting for your favourite song to be played, and he was there, introducing it to you. People associated him with good times.

He went on to build that idea up. Safety campaigns, the idea that he cared about your kids' safety, TV shows where he helped kids dreams come true, charity events where he donated money to those who needed it all helped to associate him with good things.

That protects against an allegation here or there. Or some odd behavioural traits.

As he continued working for his causes, he built up some powerful friends. Meeting the PM, having royalty as friends furthered the idea that he was essentially good, even if he was eccentric. That warm, nice feeling when someone is remembering back to their favourite song they saw on the TV on Top of the Pops is linked with him introducing it.

I've always found it interesting that his personal assistant steadfastly refused to believe what he was really doing. She couldn't accept that he was an abuser. It took a very long time for her - even when faced with facts - to accept that he was a paedophile. And she was working with him every day. She associated him with doing good things and that perception is difficult to change.

and

I grew up watching Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It, and I remember his 'Clunk Click Every Trip' road safety adverts, and seeing his charity marathons on the news.

With hindsight, he was working extremely hard to attach himself to things that were popular or worthy. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea but most saw him as an oddball not a creep, and Britain loves eccentric characters.

When he died, some of the press reports emphasised how he never married, lived alone, and was close to his mother - basically implying that he was a sad, lonely, closeted gay man. There was a bit of a backlash to that, with people who knew him talking about his wide circle of friends. There was no mention of any allegations.

It was another year before the story broke. The public had no idea. Even the people who worked in showbiz or the NHS and had heard rumours couldn't have imagined the scale of his crimes.

(That last isn't true. Hospital people knew to give him a special room and send the children in, and everyone in the BBC knew. Famously, the one joke that the BBC vetoed from The Thick of It was about "what they'll find in Saville's basement after he's dead".)

and

Hang my head in shame time. When it first broke i thought it was a cash grab by the victims and it was a shame as he wasnt here to defend himself. To me he was just Jimmy Saville. He was always there so he didnt seem weird. Should probably add i accept he was a monster now.

But in Epstein's case 'rich man surrounds himself with nubile girls, one or two of whom may have lied a bit about their age' is not something that's going to make people's alarm bells ring.

Savile was exactly who I had in mind. The guy was a literal child molester, and yet the only person who spoke out when he was alive was, as @FtttG wrote, a punk rocker, someone who by definition should have zero respect for the establishment.

Imagine being invited to Epstein's island. Having lots of RHRGs around is the sign of a any good party. There are literally dozens of other very important people at the party with you, some of them more important than you. One of the girls looks a bit too young to be 18. Well, there are many possibilities there:

  • She's 18, she's just cynically exploiting her looks.
  • She's not 18 and she's cynically exploiting her looks.

Well, maybe she's not 18 and someone here on the island might be violating 18 U.S. Code § 2423. But you're not a cop nor a lawyer. Surely the arrangement, if of dubious legality, is mutually beneficial: the girl wants some pocket money, ol' Jeff brings her to the island with no explicit expectations of illicit sexual conduct. If she lies to someone about her age to play hide the sausage with a celebrity, then it's her problem. Surely you can't be the first one to blow the whistle, surely someone else would've done that already.

The more I read about Savile, the more appalled I felt. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols once gave an interview in which he more or less stated that, within the BBC, it was an open secret that Saville was having inappropriate contact with children. This was in 1978, three decades before Savile died and all this bad business started to come out.

There is a Texas state rep who is one of the most conservative reps in the state house, with high approval ratings and strong support from the moral majority.

Thing is, he used to own a porn site. His campaign straightup acknowledged this and said it was ‘before he acknowledged Christ’ or something to that effect. He apologized but it wasn’t grovelling, he just said that before he was born again he regarded it as a business decision and now regrets it. 0 political liability running in a lane that wants to ban porn.

So yes, I believe this. Lots of people did things they’re not proud of and lots of people acknowledge that. Epstein slipped through the cracks by lying, and it’s a lie most people are willing to believe.

This is extremely confounded by selection bias. Sure the kind of person who ends up in that orbit ends up going along for whatever reason of being ok with it, accepting social signals instead of reasoning from other principles etc.

But to extrapolate that to 97% of the population is a farce. This is ignoring all the other decisions and avenues that a person who said no also would have taken to avoid (intentionally or more likely completely unintentionally) ever being in the place to “tell Jeffrey off” in the face of an invitation.

Plenty of people quietly lived lives that didn’t get them into his invitation list in the first place

I still have a hard time believing the average person would not accept an invite to a party at a rich guy's mansion if it had a few household names in attendance. And feel chuffed to bits if Epstein took a liking to them and wanted to introduce them to more people, and would easily look past his minor legal trouble.

97% is hyperbole but it would be high.

It's not the only case. Weinstein story was the same. Polanski story is still the same. Probably many others I don't recall right now. And I think there are likely dozens of other people with similar proclivities who didn't get publicly caught and are still treated the same way - "yeah, there are rumors about him, but that's not the reason to be impolite and make a scene! Yet less the case to refuse tangible benefits of associating with him."

That's why cancel culture is especially heinous btw - they don't even strive for purity (that would be terrible, but at least they'd be honest terrible fanatics!), they strive for performative purity expressed in peer-approved ways towards peer-approved targets, and only for that. There are no rules, there is only context.

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