I spent the next 2 years sporadically annoyed that someone got an MIT program director gig, seats on big fancy boards, & a TED talk when their big initiative was a toy version of tech that was already antiquated when I'd worked with nearly 20 years ago.
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When normal folks got the labcoat kink, they just roleplay it out at the local bordello or w/e. The difference is Epstein could actually afford entire labs, in addition to whatever power trip got him onto sex with young girls & "seeding the human race with his DNA."
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I think the best lens to understand what was going on here isn't just "reputation laundering." The Media Lab's leadership catered to a superiority fetish in exchange for cash. That's
sex
work
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And I want to be really clear that the problem here isn't that sex work was happening. If homeboy just wanted to play "seeding the human race with my DNA" with some honest hardworking grown-ass sex workers, THAT'S GREAT. Support your local artisans. God knows he had the money.
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The problem is, I mean, above & beyond his known record of trafficking minors, is that also eugenics is wrong. Taking science funding from "philanthropists" with a known interest in eugenics is BAD, DUH.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html …
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Let me repeat. This scandal is not just that MIT-ML took money from a known human trafficker. They took money from a known eugenicist. Don't let that get buried. They launched a "Disobedience Award" for "science that doesn't care about society's norms."


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And most of all, it kind of looks to me like they also might have tolerated obviously crap projects- because their business model was more about playing to rich men's fantasies about science than it was about actually doing science.
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Again, I don't know the specifics of that lab's underwriting. I don't actually think it's that likely that the food computer lab had much to do directly with Epstein money. But I wondered for YEARS how they got funding to just obviously dick around like that.
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Then it turned out to not only have a fatally flawed premise but was also straight-up fraud. You don't get that in a research institution with ANY kind of commitment to due diligence. The entire program was sloppy. 'Cause who needs discipline when you got sugar daddy money?
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The worst part is I let it get in my head. I KNEW I knew more than these folks about indoor ag. But so what? They were the ones with the board seats, the National Geographic Explorer position, the name recognition, the funding, the glass-walled office.
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I was pretty open about it to people I know, but I didn't exactly come out publicly and say "Hey world I think the MIT Media Lab food computer is a bullshit waste of money." What good would that have done? That'd just be some twitter rando yelling about sour grapes.
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But now that y'all have started seeing exactly what I've been seeing these past two years, I want to make sure we don't lose this teachable moment. Epstein didn't just wreck girls' lives. He didn't just try to popularize eugenics. He derailed science.
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*The wrecking girls' lives is definitely the worst part. I just want to make sure we don't miss the "derailed science" thing. Shit pretend science got ahead thanks to the lack of discipline he enabled. Good science that actually solves real problems got crowded out.
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We desperately need good tech on sustainable energy. Food. Clean water. Ecological renovation. Transportation. And this glamour-brothel of a research institute spent millions on a fucking toy box that doesn't even work. That is completely inexcusable.
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I can guarantee you there's a lot more where this came from. Epstein gave generously to Harvard and other unis that haven't even started to break yet. Pour one out for all the scientists who can't get real shit funded because administration's too busy strutting for sugar daddy.
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That's about all I've got to say about that. I just want to make sure that if you think a lot of the high-profile science world seems to be useless, stupid crap, YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. This is my best take on why that is. It's so much worse than it looks.
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Sugar Daddy Science is a disgrace and it needs to die. Pronto. The end.
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