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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   883 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.

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