Epstein and my world model

Eye You

Have you guys heard about this Epstein stuff? Shit's pretty crazy.

Note: I'm not going to provide a summary of the situation or talk about evidence; this piece is for people that already know these things. I'm going to avoid specifics about what Epstein and co did, and instead will use vague terms like "Epstein stuff". This is a short post about how I've updated my world model.

Particular things that I find very surprising: that so many people basically knew what was going on and didn't say anything; that so many people were involved themselves in incriminating heinous acts; that the Epstein stuff and associated conspiracy to hide/protect it spanned not only lots of people but lots of time (~20 years!); that they got away with it for so long.

Conspiracy

Scott Alexander writes:

The Basic Argument Against Conspiracy Theories goes: “You can’t run a big organization in secret without any outsiders noticing or any insiders blowing the whistle."

He offers a number of heuristics regarding the plausibility of conspiracy theories, including:

A. You generally can’t keep the existence of a large organization that engages in clandestine activities secret.

Before I learned about this Epstein stuff, I thought this was a very strong heuristic. Now I don't.

Things I think are much more prevalent/likely than I did before

Secret, illegal, self-enriching coordination among powerful actors (especially long-term coordination).
- Cabals that have specific geopolitical and/or political goals
  - that successfully achieve these goals via manipulation of individuals
  - that successfully achieve these goals via control of other power structures
Blackmail; that any given part of the world involving human coordination "runs on" blackmail.
Powerful individuals/groups murdering out of self interest.
- And getting away with it.
The justice system being secretly manipulated or controlled by powerful groups in situations relevant to them.
- Powerful groups have ways of getting the justice system to classify "obvious murders" as suicides.
That the OpenAI whistleblower was assassinated.
That the Boeing whistleblower was assassinated.
Corporations engaging in collusion.
- CEOs verbally discussing collusion in private, 'non-business' contexts.
Large-scale market manipulation by sophisticated financial actors.
The Media and/or Big Tech being 'in cahoots' with a cabal and intentionally affecting the information ecosystem in a way that's beneficial to the cabal.

A. You generally can’t keep the existence of a large organization that engages in clandestine activities secret.
Before I learned about this Epstein stuff, I thought this was a very strong heuristic. Now I don't.

I'm not intentionally trying to stay very up to date with Epstein stuff, but isn't it the case that there actually was quite a lot of whistleblowing (mostly from the victims and their families?), but their whistleblowing was somewhat silenced / didn't meet the standard of "legal evidence" or something? (In case it's unclear: genuine question.)

(This doesn't invalidate your point, but changes the specific formulation of what happened here, insofar as it is representative of real-world ~conspiracies.)

Also, a heuristic argument against conspiracy theories is only a heuristic argument against conspiracy theories, i.e., it's fallible, so the Epstein counter-example does not necessarily constitute strong evidence against the value/validity of this heuristic argument.

A thing that's salient to me at the moment is that lots of stupid memeplexes circulating in the water supply inoculate the population against their close (superficially similar), but more real(istic) neighbors, i.e., you get exposed to a bunch of obviously bonkers conspiracy theories, and as a result desensitize to "yet another 'conspiracy theory'", even if there's some reasonable evidence that there's something plausibly concerningly real about it.

A lot of "this Epstein stuff" is mass hysteria. I don't think it's worth engaging with at all for most people, but if you've already been sucked in, I recommend reading Michael Tracey for some balance and counterpoints to the sensationalism.