The Donald Trump Thread

Perhaps Mr. Epstein has lurked here at Skeptiko?

"But it is his covey of scientists that inspires Epstein's true rapture. Epstein spends $20 million a year on them -- encouraging them to engage in whatever kind of cutting-edge research might attract their fancy. They are, of course, quite lavish in their praise in return. Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1972 and now presides over the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. "Jeff is extraordinary in his ability to pick up on quantitative relations," says Edelman. "He came to see us recently. He is concerned with this basic question: Is it true that the brain is not a computer? He is very quick."

Then there is Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard. Epstein flew up to Kosslyn's laboratory in Cambridge this year to witness an experiment that Kosslyn was conducting and Epstein was funding. Namely: Is it true that certain Tibetan monks are capable of holding a distinct mental image in their minds for twenty minutes straight? "We disproved the thesis," says Kosslyn. "Jeff was on his cell phone most of the time -- he actually wanted to short the Tibetan market, because he thought the monk was so stupid. He is amazing. Like a honeybee -- he talks to all these different people and cross-pollinates. Just two months ago, I was talking to him about a new alternative to evolutionary psychology. He got excited and sent me a check."

Epstein has a particularly close relationship with Martin Nowak, an Austrian biology and mathematics professor who heads the theoretical-biology program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Nowak is examining how game theory can be used to answer some of the basic evolutionary questions -- e.g., why, in our Darwinian society, does altruistic behavior exist? Epstein talks to Nowak about once a week and flies him around the country to his various homes to deliver impromptu lectures. Over the past three years, he has written $500,000 worth of checks to fund Nowak's research. This past February, Epstein had Nowak over for dinner at the 71st Street townhouse. It was just the two of them (not including the wait staff), and Nowak, making use of a blackboard in the formal dining room, delivered a two-hour highly mathematical description of how language works.

After dinner, Epstein asked if Nowak wanted to meet up with his new friend President Clinton, and off they went to a nearby deli, where Clinton regaled the starstruck former Oxford professor with tales from his own Oxford days. "Jeffrey has the mind of a physicist. It's like talking to a colleague in your field," says Nowak. "Sometimes he applies what we talk about to his investments. Sometimes it's for his own curiosity. He has changed my life. Because of his support, I feel I can do anything I want."

Danny Hillis, an MIT-educated computer scientist whose company, Thinking Machines, was at the forefront of the supercomputing world in the eighties, and who used to run R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, thinks Epstein is actually using scientific knowledge to beat the markets. "We talk about currency trading -- the euro, the real, the yen," he says. "He has something a physicist would call physical intuition. He knows when to use the math and when to throw it away. If I had acted upon all the investment advice he has been giving me over the years, I'd be calling you from my Gulfstream right now."

On the 727 these days, he has been reading a book by E. O. Wilson, the eminent scientist and originator of the field of sociobiology, called Consilience, which makes the case that the boundaries between scientific disciplines are in the process of breaking down. It's a view Epstein himself holds. He wrote recently to a scientist friend of his: "The behavior of termites, together with ants and bees, is a precursor to trust because they have an extraordinary ability to form relationships and sophisticated social structures based on mutual altruism even though individually they are fundamentally dumb. Money itself is a derivative of trust. If we can figure out how termites come together, then we may be able to better understand the underlying principles of market behavior -- and make big money.""

Well maybe not..



I'm not saying he's not a pedo creep... Maybe he is... But he doesn't seem to be merely the 1-dimensional super villain which is the impression I've gotten of him from other sources.
No one is one dimensional. Smart guy or not, his actions are inexcusable. And the "closely held secret" of just how on earth he has the money he has should make anyone second guess this guy, and his apparently glowing reviews by fellow fan boys/girls.

Corbett actually introduced me to the controversy around Epstein, and I spent a fair amount of time looking into him and some of the people he relates with. What a strange trip down the rabbit hole that was.
 
No one is one dimensional. Smart guy or not, his actions are inexcusable. And the "closely held secret" of just how on earth he has the money he has should make anyone second guess this guy, and his apparently glowing reviews by fellow fan boys/girls.

Corbett actually introduced me to the controversy around Epstein, and I spent a fair amount of time looking into him and some of the people he relates with. What a strange trip down the rabbit hole that was.

I've heard "Epstein" and "pedophile" a lot, but never looked into it because I don't care to know anything else about a pedophile. Maybe I'll check out Corbett's reports on him.
 
I've heard "Epstein" and "pedophile" a lot, but never looked into it because I don't care to know anything else about a pedophile. Maybe I'll check out Corbett's reports on him.
Haha! I know, right!

I think my anger exceeded my disgust and the fact that he served on the Counsil on Foreign Relations and hobnobs with everyone who's anyone.

The whole thing: him, who he knows/hangs with/does business with, the orgs he's got his hand in; it all completely creeps me out.

It's really scary as shit when you start to see how closely tied the elite really are to each other. It causes a strong and immediate desire to bury your head and try to forget about what you know.
 
And BTW, while your there check out the info on the Hastert scandal. And Google the Boystown sex ring from the 80's and its relation to D.C. (you may have heard about the "White House tours" scandal).

You probably don't want to know, but seriously. This world is far more insane than we realize. It's scary how so many things link to another, and this isn't even CT territory. All of this is well documented, some have even had legal action brought against them. Not enough though if you ask me.

There's a documentary about it, that was allegedly banned from airing on the Discovery Channel. I have not watched this, but I did spend hours reading about it. Strong stomachs are recommended.
 
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UK proposes to build a wall to protect Brit drivers from migrant gangs.

So, showing my ignorance here, are these migrants? Refugees? From where? And why is there this obligation for France, the U.K. Or any other sovereign nation to take everyone in? I mean, other than being humanitarian, is there some sort of legal thing that these European nations agreed to?

For our fellow UK forum members, how bad is it really? I hear a lot about the refugee problem, but I'm more interested to hear from those who actually live it. Any from Germany please chime in as well, as I've heard there's been major issues there as well.

And if France gets a wall, why don't we? (I'm kidding)
 
When you judge a politician, judge them by what they say not what other people, politicians, journalists say they say. Most of the information we have is unreliable. Politicians lie about their rivals. Journalists lie about the politicians they favor making them seem better than they are and they lie about the politicians they are against making them sound worse than they are. We recognize the lies that contradict our beliefs, but we don't recognize the lies that confirm our biases. It is very hard to make decisions based on facts because we don't have reliable information and our own bias interferes with our apprehension of the truth.. But there are absolute principles that we can follow to help us make decisions. Anger and hatred will lead to bad decisions. Love, tolerance forgiveness will lead to better decisions. I don't mean people should be allowed to harm others or that you should trust someone who is untrustworthy. Just that when you are acting out of hate or anger your thinking is at one level, and when you are acting from love and tolerance and forgiveness you are thinking at a different level. When a politician or a journalist is playing on your hate and anger, they are not working for the highest good, they are not thinking at the right level, they are not helping you to think in the right way. But judge them by what they say not what other people say they say.
 
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