If I'm tasking someone to move over a quarter million dollars in funds for me, you bet I'm gonna Google the living crap out of them first. I just can't believe someone as intelligent as Chomsky would be so blindly trusting. $270k is still a lot of money for a guy like Chomsky.
My perspective from watching people a generation older than me become elderly (parents, friend's parents, etc.) is that judgement is one of the more unfortunate and first things to really decline.
I've watched people taken in by online and phone scammers who would have been way more distrustful in their younger years.
I don't want to make excuses for Chomsky here on that basis though. Especially because I think his partner is doing him a disservice with this non-apology and also probably her role in these decisions. Being a partner or child etc to an elderly person involves caretaking this aspect and helping them make decisions.
In fact it's the whole of any spouse or loved one to help check the decisions of those they love.
$20.000 + $270.000 of which were Chomsky's own, somehow, as
Epstein "recovering the funds for Noam" ... whatever recovering means,
one suspects it's just Epstein's money but everyone was happy that it was "recovered" Chomsky's money.
the "we didn't know" trope is actually somewhat believable in the cases of people that casually met a socialite at the behest of others. Less so in the case of somebody like Chomsky who was getting emails from Epstein asking him about how to defend himself in the media and responding with commentary about "the hysteria that has developed about the abuse of women"
The nicest spin you can put on it is that it wouldn't be the first time that Chomsky had endorsed something without too much scrutiny because it aligned with his personal beliefs about who were motivated to manufacture lies, and the others involved politics rather than paedophiles
CodingJeebus|22 days ago
cmrdporcupine|22 days ago
I've watched people taken in by online and phone scammers who would have been way more distrustful in their younger years.
I don't want to make excuses for Chomsky here on that basis though. Especially because I think his partner is doing him a disservice with this non-apology and also probably her role in these decisions. Being a partner or child etc to an elderly person involves caretaking this aspect and helping them make decisions.
In fact it's the whole of any spouse or loved one to help check the decisions of those they love.
datsci_est_2015|22 days ago
KingOfCoders|22 days ago
Epstein "recovering the funds for Noam" ... whatever recovering means, one suspects it's just Epstein's money but everyone was happy that it was "recovered" Chomsky's money.
notahacker|22 days ago
The nicest spin you can put on it is that it wouldn't be the first time that Chomsky had endorsed something without too much scrutiny because it aligned with his personal beliefs about who were motivated to manufacture lies, and the others involved politics rather than paedophiles