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A series of talks in the Epstein documents
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Does anyone know what this June 2019 text from Epstein is about? I have added some links to RationalWiki and Wikipedia ~~but not corrected spelling~~ and corrected OCR errors. Was it at one of the institutions he sponsored like MIT Media Lab? Or more like his conference in the Virgin Islands? It seems to mix mainstream figures and people in the Libertarian/LessWrong network.
Another correspondent in 2016 suggested inviting Scott Alexander Siskind to speak at a different event Epstein was involved in. The correspondent has a Substack which cites Siskind in 2025.
Obviously just because Epstein had heard of a public figure does not mean that they knew him.
Epstein's words begin below:
- List for summer talks. David Pizarro. Professor of Psychology and Philosopher at Cornell Univcrsit
- Eric Weinstein, Mathematician
- Matthew Putman, Scientist
- Paul Saffo, Technology Forecaster, and Professor of Engineering
- Lori Santos, Professor ofPsychology and Cognitive Science
- Janna Levin, Theoretical Cosmologist
- Ev Williams, Internet Entrepreneur
- Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Author
- Heiner Gocbbels, Composer, and Director
- Martine Rothblatt, Lawyer and Entrepreneur
- Peter Thiel, Venture Capitalist, and Entrepreneur
- Richard Thaler, Behavioral Economics
- Barbara Tversky, Professor of Psychology
- Michael Vassar, Futurist, Activist
- Bret Weinstein, Biologist, and Evolutionary Theorist
- Susan Hockfield, MIT President, Professor of Neuroscience
- David Deutsch, Physicist
- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Al Researcher
- N. Jeremy Kasdin, Astrophysicist
- Carl Zimmer, Science Writer
- Douglas Rushkoff, Media Theorist
- Eric Topol, Cardiologist
- Dustin Yellin, Artist
- Sherry Turkic, Professor of Social Studies
- Taylor Mac, Actor
- Stephen Johnson, Author
- Martin Hagglund, Swedish Philosopher and Scholar of Modernist Literature
- Thomas Metzinger, Philosopher, and Professor of Theoretical Philosophy
- Bjarke Ingels, Danish Architect, Founder of BIG, currently working on Floating Cities/Sustainable Habitats project
- Kai-Fu Lee, Venture Capitalist, Technology Executive, and Al Expert, developed the world's first speaker-independent continuous speech recognition system
- Poppy Crum, Neuroscientist, and Technologist, Chief Scientist at Dolby Laboratories, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University (Computer Research in Music)
- Neil Burgess, Researcher, and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, investigating the role of the hippocampus in spatial navigation
- Paul Sloom, Psychologist, and Researcher exploring how children and adults understand the physical and secin' world, with a special focus on language, religion and morality
- Brian Cox, Physicist, and Professor of Particle Physics, Presenter of Science Programs
- Eythor Bender. CEO of Berkeley Bionics, Innovator and Business Leader in human augmentation (bionics and robotics)
- Gwynne Shotwell President. and COO at SpaceX, Engineer. listed in 2018 as the 59th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes
- Jaap de Roodc. Associate Professor of Evolution (of parasites) and Ecology, focusing on how parasites attack monarch butterflies and in return how butterflies have the ability to self-medicate
- Jim Holt, American Philosopher, and Contributor to the New York Times writing on string theory, time, the universe, and philosophy
- Vijay Komar, Indian Roboticist and UPS Foundation Professor in School of Engineering & Applied Science:. became Dean of Penn Engineering, studies flying and cooperative robots
- Hugh Herr, Biophysicist, Engineer, and Rock Climber, builds prosthetic knees, legs, and ankles that fuse biomechanics with microprocessors at MIT
- Gabriel Zucman, French Economist at UC Berkeley. best known for his research on tax havens, inequalities, and global wealth
- Fci-Fei Li, Professor of Computer Science, Director of Stanford's Human-Ccntered Al, works as Chief Scientist of Al/ML of Google Cloud
- Dennis Hong, Korean American Mechanical Engineer, Professor and Founding Director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) of the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA
- Misha (Mikhail) Leonidovich Gromov, American
"Susan Backfield" should be "Susan Hockfield" (president of MIT from 2004 through 2012). The PDF reads correctly but apparently the OCR is screwed up, or something, and trying to copy the text gives a misspelling. Likewise, "Hcrr" should be "Herr" and "Iocman" should be "Zucman".
So far, this mostly looks like a list of random public figures in science/tech/entrepreneur circles.
The Weinstein brothers, Michael Vassar, Peter Thiel, and Yudkowsky were the names that leapt out at me. I don't know that Vassar has any mainstream intellectual or academic achievements.
I don't know of any either... To amend my earlier comment: it looks like a ghastly New Scientist/Forbes cocktail-party axis, with a dose of TESCREAL.
That was my take as well. It's basically anyone in academia/tech who had a PR machine working for them at the time, and a couple of weird extras.
How Gromov only landed the underwhelming summary of "American" is interesting, I assume the list copy paste was cut short and the next word was "mathematician".
If these people did all end up in the same location it's probably safe to assume it was a private and unpublicized event. Some of them seem to have been in and around silicon valley at the time, so maybe one of the tech fake charity "foundation" events.
Some names are missing like Sabine Hossenfelder, the GMU economists, Brad Delong, and Hoover Institute staff. And I would not underestimate the number of people in this network who just went to the right university, met the right people, got the right job, and started to climb the ladder of fame.
I'm sure many of them are somewhat accidental ladder climbers, but looking at some of the names in the list:
These were just the ones I looked at out of curiosity for what they were up to around 2018-2019. There's clearly the TESCREAL theme across the list, but it strikes me that there's also a lot of very active PR/promotion effort across the board. Award nominations don't exactly spontaneously generate from impartial awe-struck onlookers, and media book reviews aren't chosen based on literary merit.
The inclusion of Mac especially is what made me think this might just be a slightly wider list of candidates a grotesque parasite would want to ingratiate themselves with by inviting them give private lectures - he doesn't strike me as a great fit otherwise.
Back in 2019, Sabine Hossenfelder was a blogger with one book to her name. She hadn't taken off as a YouTuber and fully embraced the grift. I'm not surprised she barely appears.