Steven Pinker's Aid in Jeffrey Epstein's Legal Defense

[dang]

This submission is off topic for HN. Please post stories that gratify intellectual curiosity, and avoid stories that pile on the sensationalism of the moment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nabla9]

Suspicion of hypocrisy or even bad character should not affect the strength of scientist's arguments. It may increase the scrutiny of those arguments and decrease the fanboy attitude around them. There is nothing wrong with that.

If you take the default attitude that every academic is devil incarnate, then look at their argumentation separate from their character, you should be able to stay more objective.

[mc32]

No doubt Epstein is guilty of horrible crimes. And while he is a troubling character, defending troubling people hasn't usually been much of an issue (OJ Simpson, Bundy, Khalid Mohammed, etc).

So why the outrage over another bad guy? I think the obvious answer is some things are to the public conscience more terrible than others, at least at a given moment, specially if they are in the zeitgeist.

As for the weight of the testimony, that should be up to the judge and jury to decide whether it was valid. I mean, lots of these high dollar defenses rest on semantics rather than the spirit of things (tax cases, etc).

[kevinarcher]

Pinker's comments on his connection to Epstein: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/07/12/tarring-...

[shdh]

This is all you need to read.

[mr_puzzled]

This article is terrible. It tries so hard to paint Pinker as some sort of evil guy with the main argument being (what seems to me) how Pinker unintentionally helped Epsein a long time ago. They think somehow bringing in unrelated criticism of Pinker's work helps their case? Ridiculous.

To be very clear : Epstein is obviously guilty of some horible crimes. Pinker, seems like he crossed paths with Epstein and now people are out to get him.

[itsameta4]

Don't mind me, just unintentionally submitting an amicus brief to a pedophile's plea deal. Totally accidental, could have happened to any linguist.

[tzakrajs]

Pinker claims to now have known what the case was for. Fine.

[tzakrajs]

Adia Benton, an assistant professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, said that beyond Pinker and Dershowitz, “I think there’s a tendency for men to overlook the foibles of their acquaintances and colleagues. The shunning of assholes and creeps is just not done. Especially when it comes to sexual misconduct and misogyny.”