Lawrence Krauss accused of sexual misconduct

Is Krauss' irrationality re: Epstein good (Bayesian) evidence of the claims made in the Buzzfeed hit piece?
 
theprestige said:
According to Krauss, black swans need to be observed, just like any other claimed phenomenon.
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But they HAVE been observed. Just not by him, and he doesn't believe those who have claimed to have observed them. And therefore concludes they don't exist.
 
d4m10n said:
Is Krauss' irrationality re: Epstein good (Bayesian) evidence of the claims made in the Buzzfeed hit piece?
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A little bit, maybe, but I'm taking the "verified by Buzzfeed" claims independently on their own, based on their individual merits.
 
angrysoba said:
According to Krauss his hypothesis could be falsified. He’s actually very Popperian in his ideas about science.
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It's not Popperian to deny evidence.

Does Krauss deny the existence of an interstellar body if he hasn't seen it himself?

"I have looked all over the skies and never seen a black hole. Therefore, I don't believe all these others that claim they have observed evidence for them."
 
Jerrymander said:
Um.
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The above indicates that you don't think anyone could disagree with you on this or not see the issue you see. That doesn't bode well for the discussion.

That he butchered the scientific method
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I agree, but is that "disturbing"?

to defend a man who solicited sex from a 14 year old?
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You believe he knew at the time that this was the case? Otherwise this is entirely irrelevant.
 
Jerrymander said:
That doesn't disturb you at all?
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What? It’s a reference to the Stranger by Albert Camus. A guy shoots an Arab but the authorities are going to let him off until they hear about him not honoring his mother so they hang him.

The point is that his article about Epstein is irrelevant.
 
Read the part in between: "Three years after that profile ran, Palm Beach Police Officer Michele Pagan got a disturbing message. A woman reported that her 14-year-old stepdaughter confided to a friend that she’d had sex with an older man for money. The man’s name was Jeff, and he lived in a mansion on a cul-de-sac." ---and --- "Palm Beach assigned six more detectives to the investigation. They conducted a “trash pull” of Epstein’s garbage, sifting through paper with phone numbers, used condoms, toothbrushes, worn underwear. In one pull, police found a piece of paper with Mary’s phone number on it, along with the number of the person who recruited her."
 
kellyb said:
Neverminding the 13 and 14 year olds, would you really want to be friends with someone 50 whatever years old who always has girls in their late teens hanging about?
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I don't see what one has to do with the other. I would instinctively think that large age differences are odd and perhaps indicative of manipulation or something, but I was told a good while ago that this is none of my business and that people can love those that are much younger or older than themselves. Consenting adults and all that.

Jerrymander said:
He was convicted in 2008. Krauss said this in 2011.
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Well, that's quite a bit more wrong, then. But then biases are strong when one is emotionally involved in something. I'd call it naive and biased, certainly, but it's the "disturbing" part that I don't see. Are you trying to intimate that this might indicate that Krauss is also into minors?
 
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There isn't much room for doubt that Epstein was into high-school girls, given the contemporary reporting and the plea deal. That said, it's still a bit of a logical leap from Krauss' irrational defense of Epstein to the conclusion that Krauss is a serial sexual predator himself. Maybe he is, maybe not. Perhaps "he clumsily propositioned a fan on an expensive cruise to try to get her to do a threesome" as Watson has claimed. Perhaps not. With hearsay, it's always hard to say. Perhaps he sexually assaulted a humanist volunteer whom he'd invited to his hotel room, after feasting on wine and cheese, perhaps not, but it isn't at all obvious how we make the leap from defending Epstein to Krauss' behavior in that hotel room, some years prior.
 
d4m10n said:
There isn't much room for doubt that Epstein was into high-school girls, given the contemporary reporting and the plea deal. That said, it's still a bit of a logical leap from Krauss' irrational defense of Epstein to the conclusion that Krauss is a serial sexual predator himself. .
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Good thing, then, that no one has done that.
 
Belz... said:
No in so many words but Jerrymander seems to be implying it in #119. I'll wait for his answer to be sure.
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I seriously doubt he/she does.

I'm freaked out by Krauss defending Epstein, too. Being all "I didn't see it, so it didn't happen. In fact, I think he might be the real victim here." over this stuff is scary to me in ways that are difficult to articulate.
 
Jerrymander said:
No. But with the recent allegations, it makes the quote even more disturbing.
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Again, what's "disturbing"? If you don't think he supports or engages in this sort of activity, then what?



And could you use the quote function properly? Without seeing my name and link to my post it's harder to spot the answers directed at me.
 
It isn't entirely obvious to me whether the Buzzfeed hit piece and the subsequent blog posts are using the Epstein thing as supporting evidence or not. They certainly seem to be hinting at something like a cumulative case argument.
 
d4m10n said:
https://twitter.com/danarel/status/968159200097452033
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This is what people are saying they do NOT assume:

Are you trying to intimate that this might indicate that Krauss is also into minors?
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No.



But when it comes to this?


In response to complaints, two institutions — Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario — have quietly restricted him from their campuses. Our reporting is based on official university documents, emails, and interviews with more than 50 people.
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And...

In lengthy emails to BuzzFeed News, Krauss denied all of the accusations against him, calling them “false and misleading defamatory allegations.” When asked why multiple women, over more than a decade, have separately accused him of misconduct, he said the answer was “obvious”: It’s because his provocative ideas have made him famous.

“It is common knowledge that celebrity attracts all forms of negative attention from many different angles,” Krauss said in a December email. “There is no pattern of discontent revealed here that suggests any other explanation.”
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And when she tried to interview him for a student publication, he closed the door to his office, answered her questions with jokes, and invited her to dinner, which she found entirely inappropriate. She wrote about these experiences in the campus newspaper:

“There was even one particular creep of a professor who once told me he thought differently of me compared to other students and asked me to dinner: a situation so disturbing that it left me upset for weeks afterward.”

Nora didn’t mention Krauss by name. But the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cyrus Taylor, guessed who it was based on rumors about an earlier incident between Krauss and an undergraduate. The dean sought Nora out and encouraged her to make a complaint, which she did. (BuzzFeed News has seen emails between Nora and the university administration describing the incidents in question.)
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Full-on predator might be taking it a bit far, but I'm not seeing his "I'm smeared for being a famous skeptic" thing being plausible, either.

He's not someone I'd want to be around. He's exactly the sort of shady character I was raised to watch out for.
 
Jerrymander said:
Where in the tweet does she claim that Krauss is a predator because he defended Epstein.
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As I said . . .

It isn't entirely obvious to me whether the Buzzfeed hit piece and the subsequent blog posts are using the Epstein thing as supporting evidence or not. They certainly seem to be hinting at something like a cumulative case argument.
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Certainly the aforementioned Skepchick articles seem to be encouraging us to make this leap, especially the ones prior to the Buzzfeed piece.

I suppose we should ask ourselves what conclusions we are intended to draw from any given piece. The central goal of the Buzzfeed article is ostensibly to persuade "his 'skeptic' fanbase" to "believe the evidence" because the various accusations against Krauss "weren’t extraordinary claims."
 
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d4m10n said:
I suppose we should ask ourselves what conclusions we are intended to draw from any given piece.
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I know that apparently what I'm supposed to be gathering from your words is that the sins of Watson and Skepchick and the Buzzfeed journalists et al are supposed to be much worse than anything Krauss has ever done, and that's the real story here.

:rolleyes:
 
kellyb said:
I know that apparently what I'm supposed to be gathering from your words is that the sins of Watson and Skepchick and the Buzzfeed journalists et al are supposed to be much worse than anything Krauss has ever done, and that's the real story here.

:rolleyes:
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What sins?
 
d4m10n said:
It isn't entirely obvious to me whether the Buzzfeed hit piece and the subsequent blog posts are using the Epstein thing as supporting evidence or not. They certainly seem to be hinting at something like a cumulative case argument.
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Right. So it's a cumulative case argument, which means that no one is using that single thing as a justification.

At best, his defense of Epstein is being used as evidence that he lacks perspective in terms of accepting what is and isn't acceptable behavior. So when he says, "I didn't do it" the response is, who cares what he thinks? He defends child molesters. If he can defend that, he will defend anything.
 
d4m10n said:
As I said . . .
"
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Here's how the conversation went.

You: "There isn't much room for doubt that Epstein was into high-school girls, given the contemporary reporting and the plea deal. That said, it's still a bit of a logical leap from Krauss' irrational defense of Epstein to the conclusion that Krauss is a serial sexual predator himself..."

pgwenthold [In response to just that part portion of your statement]: "Good thing, then, that no one has done that."

In response, you posted that tweet.
 
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