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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Steven Pinker (it's Steven, not Stephen) wrote a letter that helped obtain for Jeffrey Epstein an 18-month sentence for child sex trafficking in which his cell was kept unlocked and he was allowed to leave the prison for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, to work from his own office. My point here being: maybe Pinker isn't the example you want to call out here; maybe we can argue about somebody with perhaps fewer reasons to be "canceled". Pinker is a complicated figure; he is not, as many would have it, a perfect example of a pure academic singled out purely for his opinions on culture-war issues.

I agree with you about the potency of his credentials; lesser academics have been driven out for much smaller roles in the Epstein saga.

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Alan Dershowitz wrote to Pinker asking "do you reckon this statute means X or Y?" and Pinker said "It obviously means X". So far as I can tell, (1) Pinker didn't know that this was specifically about the Epstein case, (2) Pinker gave an honest answer to the question, and (3) Pinker's answer was in fact obviously correct.

Epstein was an awful person who did awful things and should have spent the rest of his life in prison. But that doesn't mean that every specific attempt to put him in prison was legally sound, and it doesn't mean that anyone whose actions contributed to that specific attempt's failure is somehow complicit in Epstein's evils.

It seems to me that it's a positively good thing that when someone is accused of something awful, they can still get vigorous legal representation, and that the people providing that vigorous legal representation can solicit opinions from experts that they hope will back them up. Because 1. sometimes people who are accused of awful things turn out not to have done them, and 2. when they did do them we want the legal proceedings establishing that they did to be as watertight as possible.

In this particular case, the issue wasn't "did Epstein do X or not?" but "are the things Epstein did covered by this specific law or not?". It seems that they weren't. Again, I think it's a positively good thing that when someone is accused of something awful we only get to use a law against them if that law really covers what they did. Because if there isn't a general principle that you only get punished for things that are actually against the actual law then what we have isn't laws, it's excuses for the powerful to punish whoever they feel like punishing.

To be clear, it looks as fishy as all hell to me that Epstein didn't get a much harsher sentence in the 2006-2008 case. It looks, in fact, like some sort of corruption or cover-up. But in that case, I don't see how Pinker's letter had anything much to do with it. And, again, so far as I can tell what Pinker wrote was simply correct, and when he wrote it he didn't know it was for Epstein's case.

I'm not interested in rehabilitating Pinker, who appeared in Epstein's flight logs and has been photographed socializing with him. My point is simply that he tends to be a bad example when brought up in these kinds of discussions. He's treated as if he's simply a celebrity scientist caught in the limelight over political tweets. But he's not just that.

Maybe you know something about them that I don't, but to me it seems alarming that someone needs to be "rehabilitated" for those things.

"Appeared in Epstein's flight logs" = "went on his plane to a TED meeting in 2002", and "has been photographed socializing with him" = "was at a few parties where Epstein 'socialized' with everyone famous he could find", so far as I can tell. From Pinker's account -- which obviously might be self-serving -- they disliked one another. What do you think Pinker did that he could reasonably have been expected not to do, given the information available to him at the time?

Rubbish - Pinker is exactly the person that should be protected and there's no need to 'rehabilitate him' from anything.

Celebrities of various kinds interact with each other, that's how that works.

If you were invited to a conference and the CEO invited you on his plane because you had something interesting to say, and 10 years later we find he was a rapist, do we cancel you?

If you're going to tell me that Pinker was 'on rape island sleeping with teens girls' - then obviously that's another matter, cancel away, but as far as I know that's not the case.

This is exactly the kind of petty, toxic, vindictive posturing exemplary of bad cancel culture.

Funny, I can't think of that many other "celebrities" that contributed directly to Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart sentence in 2008, which enabled him to continue trafficking and abusing minors in the ensuing decade.

What do you think Pinker should have done when Dershowitz wrote to him asking "what exactly do you think this statute means"?

I genuinely hope both of you continue this thread, even as I think it's unlikely that you'll come to common ground. I'm finding it extremely helpful to clarify my thoughts on this type of situation.

???

You're making my case for me.

Pinker is absolutely, unconditionally a very reasonable and thoughtful person, who in absolutely no way shape or form should be contemplated for cancellation or even marginalisation.

He's a polite, thoughtful, conscientious guy with barely objectionable opinions, not only that, he's pretty smart and actually contributes to discussions.

He's maybe the last person on earth we want to cancel - but they have attempted to cancel him anyhow.

Pinker is the ultimate case of 'Cancel Culture is Insane'.

Epstein is perhaps the most obvious case of 'Legit Cancel Culture' - but we didn't need the modern form of Cancel Culture to cancel him. Child Rapists tend to be excluded from society without needing to argue about it.

That 'someone was photographed with Epstein' just isn't hugely material. People socialise, and take photos with one another. That's how that works.

My point is simply that there are issues other than Pinker's dalliances with racialist pseudoscientists that prompt objections to him; for instance, the fact that he contributed to Jeffrey Epstein's defense. That's all.

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