> Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008.
He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence.
Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and
he has acknowledged Epstein in his academic publications. While Professor Lloyd clearly
valued Epstein as a source of potential funding, he also told us he believed that, by continuing to
engage with Epstein post-conviction, he could be part of Epstein’s rehabilitation.
Professor Lloyd told us that, in 2005 or 2006 (before Epstein’s conviction), Epstein gave
him a personal $60,000 gift to support his MIT research that Professor Lloyd did not submit
through MIT. In possible violation of MIT policies and certainly in violation of MIT norms,
Professor Lloyd deposited the gift into a personal bank account and did not report it to MIT.
> Eventually, in July 2016, Professor Lloyd affirmatively contacted Epstein by email to ask for
funding to support his upcoming sabbatical. On June 1, 2017, Epstein emailed his accountant
and Professor Lloyd: “send 125 k to mit for seth lloyd from gratitude.”
My jaw dropped when I read page 9 of the report, it says "Professor Minsky (who passed away in 2016) had worked with Epstein to organize an off-campus conference on artificial intelligence that same year."
That's quite a charitable characterization! The conference in question wasn't just any "off-campus conference" -- it was held on Epstein's island.
Minsky had also organized a two-day symposium on Epstein's island several years prior (in 2002), a fact also totally omitted from the report.
> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch
Normally one would give the benefit of the doubt, but given the abhorrent acts people were perpetrating or turning a blind eye to in this case, I'm inclined not to. Hence this question of fact:
Unless there are credible witnesses attesting to the fact that he spent his few hours on that island eating lunch, the report should refrain from speculation and simply say "he visited Epstein's island for a few hours." We don't know what he was doing.
> Normally one would give the benefit of the doubt, but given the abhorrent acts people were perpetrating or turning a blind eye to in this case, I'm inclined not to.
I think this is a dangerous way to look at things... Just because there's a lot of shady people doing awful things, doesn't mean we should tar everyone who associated with the person.
Whatever other things happened with other people doesn't really matter. Instead we should look at the facts for each case (visited Epstein's island where bad things had happened, and accepted money from Epstein in an unusual way).
> I think this is a dangerous way to look at things
That's a fair point. I should have said "while a small technical oversight such as stating 'he went for lunch' as a fact (absent proof) would normally not be worth highlighting, the facts of this case make me feel that even such small technical oversights should be avoided or highlighted when they occur."
By "the facts of this case" I mean the facts that 1) Epstein appears to have been guilty of trafficking many underage girls and directing them to have sex with friends or business partners of his and 2) this guy who had other inappropriate/unethical dealings with Epstein went to his island, for a few hours.
Basically I'm saying they should just say "This friend of Epstein made a 3 hour visit to him on pedophile island" which are the only known facts. Not saying he did anything, but neither should the report claim he didn't unless they have evidence. Just stick to the facts.
Yes, imagine thinking that people who rode on a jet where children were routinely raped, or who associated with a man convicted of soliciting underaged girls for prostitution, might have been involved or known about it themselves! It's exactly the same thing as 17th century hysterics who believed women were possessed by literal demons.
> I think this is a dangerous way to look at things...
When I'm walking through my hometown and the tall grass next to me shakes, I think it's a rabbit or a dog or something. When I'm on the African plains in lion country and see the same thing, I think it's a lion. Bad association begets cynical assumption, because it's more often correct than incorrect.
Some people are saying that the safest place to deposit your paycheck is into my account! Great returns guaranteed. Which is to say that I will return to an island getaway and it will be great... for me.
I think the claim that he was stopping by for lunch is important to report on. But it should have been presented as a claim along with the source of the claim, rather than just asserted as fact.
Yeah he got $60,000 as an unreported funding gift that bypassed normal research funding mechanisms and went into his private bank account and was actually spent on ???, followed by a $125,000 donation that apparently followed the same route in order to "support his sabbatical", and this is on top of the $225,000 that Dr. Lloyd got through official channels from Epstein.
The $185,000 made as alleged gifts to MIT but which went into Lloyd's bank accounts won't be returned by MIT or donated to charity, nor will the interest they earned on their investments from the officially given $850,000 money given over the last 15 years or so. And was there other side channel off the books funding beyond the $185,000 to Lloyd? Was he really the only one that saw huge sums of cash magically appear in his private bank account?
All interesting. Will Lloyd return the $185,000 or donate it? Was any of that cash declared as income on his tax returns?
So he says oh I just flew out to a Caribbean private island renowned for pedophilia for a brief lunch and nothing more, nothing to it, what's the big deal. Yeah... maybe that's what happened. We'll probably never know, but everyone that went to that island has a black mark.
Why did Epstein transfer money to Lloyd though? If Lloyd was taking advantage of Epstein's island, wouldn't one expect money to be flowing from Lloyd to Epstein?
If you donate $5,000 to a university they will invite you to one or two events a year where they show you the kind of research donations have been supporting, some students who received bursaries say how it let them buy books and focus on their studies, and the head of the university gives a speech about their vision for the future of the school. Important-sounding academics and administrators will circulate and talk to you as a peer.
Or, from a more cynical point of view, they make you feel important/distinguished/part of their community, in hopes of soliciting further donations in the future.
I assume, if you donate $50,000,000 they knock that up several notches.
Maybe he connect Epstein with high end clients, some sort of finder fee. Or it could possible be a finder fee for women if you want to make those allegations.
To be honest it's not even clear that "for a few hours" is fact. It doesn't appear to be footnoted or sourced in the report.
Visiting a private island in the Caribbean from your home base in Boston is a full day affair. Total one-way travel time from MIT campus to that island is about half a day. Seems at least as likely to have been an overnight trip.
> Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008. He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence. Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and he has acknowledged Epstein in his academic publications. While Professor Lloyd clearly valued Epstein as a source of potential funding, he also told us he believed that, by continuing to engage with Epstein post-conviction, he could be part of Epstein’s rehabilitation.
The way it's phrased it isn't clear if this was a one time visit or multiple times. "He visited the island" is an ambiguous statement as regards one time or many.
It’s a 3 hour direct flight which can be a 3 hour trip in a private jet. But I don’t think you get to claim it was for lunch unless you can prove it. Why would someone go so far for lunch?
If the type of guy who will give you $60,000 to cover the cost of your sabbatical invites you to lunch, but this lunch will take 8 hours of your time, that's still an excellent hourly rate.
(If you're willing to overlook the sex offences, that is)
I really don't know how you live your life acting like that.
Is it your belief that response somehow changed the point? Or maybe you think that response changed human nature? That somehow reacting in that manner changes mankind such that no one would ever be flattered that a rich and powerful person thinks they're interesting enough to have lunch with.
What about their wives? Are the wives pedophiles too? They sometimes went to the island with whomever. How many degrees of separation is necessary before you become just a person who wasn't aware of this rich and powerful persons predilections?
Lets call it Pedophile Bacon. Everyone is at most 6 degrees of separation from Epstein, therefore it has to be a number between 1 and 6, otherwise everyone is a pedophile due to Epstein.
I think what kills me the most is the implication through all of this that Epstein was so important that everyone should have been aware. I certainly wasn't. Until all this shit came out, I had _no idea_ who he was, or that he had been convicted. I don't spend my time tracking pedophile, and I would consider it a bit strange for anyone who does.
Imagine if someone like me is asked to go to lunch by their employer. And then this shit hits the fan, and suddenly you're being accused of being a pedophile because the Pedophile Bacon is 3 or less and you're at 2.
Maybe the guy is a pedophile. But him having lunch with Epstein says nothing about his status of being a pedophile. Because having lunch with a pedophile is not, by definition, what makes a pedophile a pedophile.
But you come in here with this snide ass comment as if it changes any of that. I don't personally understand. Help me understand why you would muddy the waters surrounding pedophiles. How many Pedophile Bacon's does it take before someone once again is presumed innocent until proven otherwise?
> There were lavish dinner parties with the likes of Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould during which Epstein would ask provocatively elementary questions like “What is gravity?” If the conversation drifted beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt, “What does that got to do with pussy?!”
It think it's fair to say anyone who was on his island, home or jet should be questioned by authorities about what they saw there. He was a child sex trafficker operating out of his homes and private jet. Those are crime scenes.
Not everyone who went there is guilty, but given everything we now know it's not unfair to question their presence in Epstein's orbit.
so elementary teachers are all pedophiles since they're around underage girls all the time?
A pedophile is a very specific thing. It's someone who is sexually aroused by underage children. More specifically, it's someone who acts on those desires.
that's it. That's the end. There are no other possible ways to get into that club.
If someone goes to lunch with a pedophile, knowing they're a pedophile, to try and get $60,000, they're morally corrupt. They're a shitty person. But until they start abusing these underage girls, they're not pedophiles themselves.
This is not a hard concept. There are 5 categories of people who went to that island.
1. unaware of his predilections
2. aware, and morally corrupt
3. pedophiles who were unaware of his predilections
4. pedophiles who were AWARE of his predilections
5. pedophiles who went to have sex with underage children.
The argument here is that the only reason you would ever go to that island is if you were 5. This is unreasonable, and it makes you kind of dumb.
> A pedophile is a very specific thing. It's someone who is sexually aroused by underage children.
Specifically, it's someone aroused by prepubescent children.
> More specifically, it's someone who acts on those desires.
No, someone who acts on those desires (for underage children, whether a pedophile in the strict sense or not) is a child sex abuser. A pedophile is a pedophile whether or not they act on their desires, and it's possible to act on sex desires that make you a child sex abuser without being a pedophile at all.
> If someone goes to lunch with a pedophile, knowing they're a pedophile, to try and get $60,000, they're morally corrupt.
I disagree, whether using either the actual definition or yours of “pedophile”.
Now, if you know that he's a child sex trafficker (and thus that in some way the funds would originated from the sexual abuse of children), then, sure, there's a good argument.
Lets not, sex with a 13 year old post-pubescent child will get the same laws slammed at you. The technical definition is irrelevant for this conversation.
> Lets not, sex with a 13 year old post-pubescent child will get the same laws slammed at you.
In many jurisdictions and details of the other corcumstancesthat's not true, it will get a subset of the same laws slammed at you, because their are additional offenses defined for crimes against younger children. But, in any case, I'm not the one who started the terminological games (“a pedophile is a very specific thing...”), just the one who insisted that if you are going to insist on the “very specific” meaning of terminology, you do it right. If you want to say “child sex abuser”, do that; don't use “pedophile” and insist that it has a very specific meaning which is both broader (by targeted age) and narrower (including only active offenders) than “pedophile” actually is, and exactly matching what “child sex abuser” is.
Which was enough contact for the Virgin Islands locals to start referring to Little Saint James as "Pedophile Island." How much did people who actually went to the island see?
Yeah, VI locals all call it that and have for a long time. It's hard to imagine anyone passing through to the island wouldn't have heard about the scene there. But who knows. Even when we hear stories from people who claim not to have participated they'll often have stories about seeing very young girls doing stuff like propositioning people. We know from the flight logs of the Lolita Express that young girls were on flights with major personalities who surely must have thought it odd and wondered what underage teen girls were doing on the flights as hostesses.
Harvard Professor Mark Newman also has similar shading dealings with Epstein. His own book, SuperCooperators [1], has nearly 3 whole pages dedicated to describing his experiences on Jeffery Epstein's Island, thanking him for all his support and basically sucking up to him by describing his (Epstein's) incredible intelligence. Stephen Hawking even makes an appearance in these stories with a talk about how Epstein rented a submarine so Hawking could experience being underwater. Epstein occurs so frequently in Newman's own book that he even is listed in the index (you can view the index on amazon for free). The book was published in 2011 after Epstein's first convictions.
I find it very hard to believe all these scientist didn't know what was going on nor would I be surprised to find out they participated in it.
Yah-- Epstein did something nice for Hawking -- unknown if before or after the conviction-- therefore one can reasonably expect that Hawking knew Epstein was raping underage girls on his island and that Hawking participated. /s
I'll admit the Hawking part was poorly worded. I didn't intend to specifically point the finger at him. However Mark Newman's own descriptions of spending days on this Island, eating breakfast with Epstein and all of his guests. Well I'm very suspect.
Epstein was, by all accounts, absolutely obsessed with sex and abusing underaged girls. One of his victims described the abuse he and Ghislaine Maxwell committed as "a full time job."
So the question is, was he more or less restrained in broadcasting his proclivities in the early 2000s before his first conviction? And, was he more or less restrained on his private island which was essentially constructed for the purpose of facilitating his abuse?
You're correct about this but sadly getting downvoted. People have a hard time processing that their heroes very likely knew about Epstein's activities and at the very least looked the other way (some definitely participated themselves). Gates, Hawking, Groenig... all have their fans that will defend them to the death.
The evidence is there though for those that care to look. As you say, Epstein couldn't not talk about sex and young women, they were around constantly, everyone knew it was weird or they enjoyed the prospect of it.
I love that the charitable interpretation of Minksy's behavior is "an underaged girl propositioned him for sex on Epstein's island and he said 'no,' but then continued to associate and organize symposia with Epstein even after his 2008 conviction."
Wow, let's not go overboard with the guilt-by-association here!
There were definitely young women around when Hawking was there. I don't know if they were underage, but it I don't think it's safe to say Hawking knew nothing. By all accounts the island was full of girls and decorated with photographs of nude photos of them (some underage).
You can see Hawking surrounded by women on the island here:
> You can see Hawking surrounded by women on the island here:
I assumed from the description this was going to look like Stephen Hawking at the Playboy Mansion, but instead it's him at a bbq with two middle aged men and two middle aged women, and him in a submarine with a woman whose back is to the camera so you can't tell her age apart from not being gray-haired.
It's an interesting Rorschach test. I can see all kinds of things going on here, or nothing at all. The expression on the face of the nearest woman has a serious "not amused" vibe to it no matter how I try to look at the situation though.
She's got the same kind of name tag on as the guy to her right. I'd guess that they are both attendees of the conference that was going on at the neighboring island.
That could well be her "I'm a theoretical physicist presenting at an important conference, and the only reason that news photographer is including me in the photo is because I'm sitting at the same table as Stephen Hawking" look.
Why would a billionaire being surrounded by young woman be a red flag? Being a billionaire is enough to explain their presence without any hint of coercion.
Because it was supposed to be a professional event and that's not even remotely professional? There's a second hand account in this thread by someone who knows people who went to the island and were propositioned for sex there.
It's unprofessional at best but as we know know, many of these girls were sex trafficking victims and underage.
It's also known that Epstein's island residence was decorated with pictures of underage nude girls and a giant nude painting of Ghlisaine Maxwell. So yeah, I'd say there are quite a few red flags there.
I think the concept of "professional event" has changed considerably in the last few decades. So judging what should or shouldn't have been known by the guests based on modern standards is a mistake.
As far as nude pictures and paintings, were they clearly underage and non artistic? There's a lot of post hoc reasoning by those who want to spread blame around that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Wow. Seth Lloyd is a very well-known name in Quantum Computing. It's pretty shady that he's depositing $50,000 gifts from known sex offenders directly into his personal bank account...
The $60,000 gift in "2005 or 2006" is the only one the report says was deposited into his personal bank account. Because it was not sent to MIT, "this gift ... is not included in the $850,000 in" total donations the report indicates were accepted by MIT.
In contrast, the $125,000 is included in the $850,000, as indicated by the breakdown in the table on page 9. Thus, though not stated explicitly, the report indicates that the $125,000 was sent to MIT (to fund Seth Lloyd's research but not into his personal bank account).
(At any rate, the fact that he accepted a gift of any amount, especially into his personal bank account, is very concerning. Sounds like currently he has been put on administrative leave and we'll see what happens after they're done deciding what to do.)
Usually it means the professor is taking a break from teaching so they can focus on their research. There's no sabbatical police force though, so if the professor wants to hike the AT or backpack across Europe or something that's their prerogative.
Reif's e-mail [1] indicates he was forced into administrative leave, and that the leave was not Lloyd's decision.
> The actions of a senior faculty member have raised new concerns. In keeping with MIT practice on faculty discipline, I have asked his department head to consider any appropriate action. In the meantime, in consultation with the provost, dean and department head, I have placed him on leave.
Also I think administrative leave is different from other types of leave, which are all also different from sabbatical.
This is from 2020, the sabbatical GP and above are talking about was in 2017, as mentioned here:
> Eventually, in July 2016, Professor Lloyd affirmatively contacted Epstein by email to ask for funding to support his upcoming sabbatical. On June 1, 2017, Epstein emailed his accountant and Professor Lloyd: “send 125 k to mit for seth lloyd from gratitude.”
What does "ask for funding to support his upcoming sabbatical" even mean? Is that for research, or is it money for him to just go on vacation for a year?
Full-year sabbatical is the norm, but the home institution does not necessarily offer salary for that full year, so it's up to the professor to find funding for the rest of it from the host or some grant. According to their web site[1], MIT pays salary for half of the sabbatical year, leaving Lloyd to raise the other half himself. 125k sounds to me like a believable half-year salary for a full professor at MIT.
> Q: What steps is MIT taking to ensure that its fundraising processes and practices are consistent with Institute values?
See most people have never been faced with the position of making sure convenient sums of money offered to them are consistent with the values they represent
Tenured professors do sometimes take leaves of absence to work for a period with some company on a problem they think is interesting. And many do consulting on the side.
Tenured professor at an elite school certainly isn't a bad gig. But compensation isn't mostly at the senior engineer FAANG levels that people like to throw around. But then LOTS of jobs that people both enjoy and are useful to society aren't.
While I have a lot of critics for Academia in particular regarding code publication or reproducibility or the chase for the next conference paper, this is completely uncalled for.
Their real world constraint is publish or perish, and they do have a timeline: the next conference. And their requirements does not include usability and maintenance.
Also writing a good paper is a long endeavor, often frustrating, sometimes with politics involved.
Yeah but all of that actual work is typically done by grad students and then professors just put their name on the top of it. (Even the grant proposals are often written by grad students.)
> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch,
I live a fairly privileged life as a U.S. West Coast techie...and stopping at a private island for a few hours sounds crazy. Do non-billionaire people (active academics at that) really lead lives like this? `
In my upper-middle-class life, I’ve been an invited guest in some pretty mind-boggling old-money spaces a handful of times. Lots of kids growing up had stories from a week on their crazy rich family friend’s palatial vacation property or mega-yacht. At a highly selective university, the son of a teacher or an accountant might be dating the daughter of a household name CEO.
Those people do sometimes have friends like us & a desire to entertain.
> Do non-billionaire people (active academics at that) really lead lives like this?
If a billionaire calls you up and tells you they're sending their plane to pick you up if you're interested in going, then yes. That's fairly common, in terms of billionaires sending their planes to pick folks up they want to meet with, or letting others hitch a ride.
It is typical for academics to visit both potential and current sponsors to discuss research funding and collaborations. It is not typical for sponsors to own private islands, and I think visiting for a day is common but a few hours sounds short (but for a one-day visit, the discussions themselves would only be a few hours). These visits are generally paid for by the sponsor (flights, hotels).
That's pretty interesting, my only experience of the sort was the sponsor (DARPA) visiting the academic's ocean-overlooking mansion (with two teslas in the garage) with very nice hors d'ouvres. Of course this academic was very well known for owning a yacht and doing "experiments" on the yacht (to be fair the project I was on used the results of one of those experiments).
To be fair, my entire life story has been rather topsy turvy in many ways (went to an undergrad with more grad students, went to a grad school with no undergrads).
One day, in your setup, is 86bn (plus change). By Wikipedia data, the richest person is Jeff Bezos with 113bn. So who are the two-day-ers? Poorest of them must have almost 173bn, who are those?
> Putin and Gaddafi (before his death) have both been estimated to have 200 Billion in wealth.
This seems pretty unlikely. Putin has certainly done well being a corrupt leader, and probably has control over $200B, but I doubt he has holdings that reach anywhere near that level.
Gaddafi having that much money is a bit of a joke. It would require him having many multiples of the entire country's GDP in his own personal account. Perhaps theoretically possible, but hard to believe without better proof.
I think it's impossible to properly evaluate Putin's assets as they are not economical property in classical sense of the word. If Putin loses his power, his assets could very well be $0. If he doesn't, he probably could control a lot more than he nominally owns, and a lot of stuff he controls is owned by all kinds of figureheads. So we'd have to exclude autocrats and such from the equation - what they have isn't really what we mean as property, at least in Western world.
The friends of billionaires do, I would argue. Why would Epstein leave his private island to go to lunch in a public location in Boston when he can entertain his guest at his home?
From my experience, Academics do get around. I know a lot (mostly humanities) that are social butterflies and travel to a lot of exotic locations thanks to wealthier friends and benefactors.
I think there's this view that academics are quiet home body book worms, but that's flawed. Adjuntcs maybe, but definitely not tenured professors.
When I worked as a freelancer, in the dotcom era, I've participated in a number of projects led by some rich people. That included having meetings in their personal homes (some of them conduct a lot of business from their home office, apparently). For most of them, I had very vague idea who they are outside of the project I was in (some of them were rich enough so I tangentially heard about them before, some weren't) and if they conducted some nefarious crap in secret, I would never know. There weren't private islands involved, but I don't think it's too far out necessarily if you upgrade from a nobody IT freelancer to the leading MIT researcher.
So, if that lunch happened _before_ Epstein conviction, I'd give some benefit of the doubt. After, "not with a ten mile pole" is the appropriate policy and any other conduct is on him.
If Epstein was in fact blackmailing the rich and famous, or running a sex trafficking operation for profit, how does he benefit from supplying donations (and whatever else he allegedly supplied) to a quantum computing professor?
So your accusation is that Epstein blackmailed Seth Lloyd or converted him into an Israeli spy/consultant on quantum computing?
Many engineering professors consult with private companies for a fee. So it seems odd that a country would need to take a roundabout and scandalous approach like this to pick a professor's brain, when they could just work though a legitimate-seeming company as an intermediary.
We don't know what Epstein and his backers were after. Maybe Seth Lloyd had influence over someone or some other leverage they wanted. It definitely warrants further investigation though.
http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf
Professor Lloyd's dealings look very, very shady:
> Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008. He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence. Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and he has acknowledged Epstein in his academic publications. While Professor Lloyd clearly valued Epstein as a source of potential funding, he also told us he believed that, by continuing to engage with Epstein post-conviction, he could be part of Epstein’s rehabilitation. Professor Lloyd told us that, in 2005 or 2006 (before Epstein’s conviction), Epstein gave him a personal $60,000 gift to support his MIT research that Professor Lloyd did not submit through MIT. In possible violation of MIT policies and certainly in violation of MIT norms, Professor Lloyd deposited the gift into a personal bank account and did not report it to MIT.
> Eventually, in July 2016, Professor Lloyd affirmatively contacted Epstein by email to ask for funding to support his upcoming sabbatical. On June 1, 2017, Epstein emailed his accountant and Professor Lloyd: “send 125 k to mit for seth lloyd from gratitude.”