To sort of avoid literature from such networks. Science is so vast. One does not need the output of Epstein associates.
I thought this was really lame:
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/professor-corina-tarnita-epstein-files-i-wish-i-had-never-known-him
I so don’t get women who could even stand to be around creeps this extreme. I found my last mentor ott and he was at least thoroughly respectable though I have frequently railed at him all over the net. He was not exactly the most thoughtful manager, but he means well. It has stressed me out to have a relationship more complicated than with my main mentor who exists in a different universe from this type of shitshow that elites live adjacent to.
I feel these oblivious systems force extra and very pointless effort.
This is gross:
https://www.science.org/content/article/meet-three-scientists-who-said-no-epstein
This is outright shameful:
Why didn’t Agus just tell Epstein why he was unwilling to meet?
“I don’t want to upset a powerful person,” Agus says. “It wasn’t my job to judge him, and I’m not a confrontational individual. I’m also not a moralist, and I don’t pretend to know the whole story.”
This is a time when many of us are considering balancing nuance and not being judgemental and overly moralizing with such options as exist re day to day living (e.g. : I dislike Effective Altruism, Reid Hoffman, EFF and Substack, but I still donate to EA affiliated non-profits (The Humane League via ACE); lefty groups I like such as “Indivisible” have received donations from Reid Hoffman; DU is represented by the EFF and I follow Yasha Levine/Lucien Greaves/Chris Ketcham and Matt Stoller on Substack. I shop from Amazon. I use WhatsApp).
And as such these corner cases are very useful to define the tails of distribution.
I semi-jokingly use this article. Mainly because I really like that author and well, that specifically no, but I am not unfamiliar with the thought process. This is too much virtuous for me:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/05/can-the-love-of-menswear-be-justified-in-a-time-of-global-crisis
And more seriously, I thought a few instances of mobbing were ott - Justine Sacco, Tim Hunt and Amy Cooper are three examples I noted:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
I did think Hunt’s remark was clunky, but at the time he made that remark I was the victim of an early attempt to slander someone who was reflexively protesting against the kind of sleazy technocratic surveillance state push (but probably sold with nice seeming justifications like “mental healthcare”, “open science”, “prison reform”) that is common now but was more shocking back in 2011. And all sans any meaningful IRB protocols or informed consent beyond grudgingly trusting my direct mentor, his lab and another malescientist, though I was and remain dubious about these various Prisoner’s /Porcupine’s Dilemmas.
That sleazy PMC class that writes hypocritical opeds in Nature etc and quickly condemns someone targeted by a net mob, BTS also just goes with the money and lawyers who paint every woman as “unstable”, “litigious”.
What they are good at are lame apologies that are insignificant in any real sense.
Importantly other female scientists supported Hunt and as far as I know there have never been any sexual harassment or other allegations against him.
He made a cringe-inducing joke that blew up on social media.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/women-scientists-defend-sexist-nobel-winner-rtm367wr6px
I have given Scott Aaronson a pass, mainly because he is an editor at Quanta Magazine which I enjoy reading and well..I did look a bit suspiciously at this. A bit overly wholesome, but to quote Titus from Tina Fey’s “The Unbreakable Kimmy”, “I’ll allow it”:
Instead of Googling Epstein, Aaronson, then 29, turned to what he considered an even more reliable source: his mother. She did some checking. “Be careful not to get sucked up in the slime-machine going on here,” she wrote back, adding, “Since you don’t care that much about money, they can’t buy you.”
Her wise counsel, Aaronson says, saved him from doing something he later would have greatly regretted. “If not for my mom, I might have gone and talked at a workshop to kick off the project,” he says. “I don’t think doing that would have made me complicit. But, you know, it would have been very embarrassing for me.”
Well..in fairness, the flipped version is that I invoke my dad vaguely attempting to conciliate conservative men. At least more honest and completely non-creepy men so I can streamline my messy conflicts with the men who have harassed me without randoms jumping in to support those guys. I hate using the net for what would in a well run system..actually not exist at all.
They should appreciate efforts like these, specially crafted for men!
“I am a lefty feminist but there is no need to be scared! My dad is conservative and we get along! I have met men and we can get along! My best friends are male! I am still filing complaints but if they aren’t about you they aren’t about you!”
I try to check male panic as I have come to fear male panic.
The worst part about these tech creeps ruining HR, the public sector and most systems with buggy ai or gig workers role playing ai is that it net increases the length of HR chores by increasing the amount of net interaction one is forced into.
They are not saving time or making science or healthcare more efficient in any real way.
It is a space grab and a sacrifice of my work time so some creepy men and their enablers have their rears better covered.
It is a terrible dynamic-mob theatre shit and awful systems that force communication on the communication averse.
I think I have communicated enough for now! Hopefully all that made sense! I must go offline to work!
So lame..
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