from Hacker News

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

by ehudla on 7/17/19, 2:57 PM with 20 comments

• by dang on 7/17/19, 8:15 PM

  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

• by nabla9 on 7/17/19, 3:31 PM

  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.

• by kevinarcher on 7/17/19, 3:51 PM

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

• by mr_puzzled on 7/17/19, 3:44 PM

  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.

• by tzakrajs on 7/17/19, 3:49 PM

  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.”