Holy christ, Trivers too?


Apparently, evolutionary biology is a dangerous field for men’s brains — it totally warps them in ugly ways. In the ongoing saga of the decadence of Jeffrey Epstein, we have another testimonial. Epstein is the filthy rich fellow who allegedly buys and sells underage girls for his sex parties, and then buys a veneer of respectability by supporting eager, money-starved scientists and influential politicians. He is not a nice man. The latest story of Epstein’s corruption includes statements from another beneficiary of his tainted largesse.

"Did he get an easy deal? Did he buy himself a light sentence? Well, yes, probably, compared to what you or I would get, but he did get locked up," Trivers said. He said he got about $40,000 from Epstein to study the relationship between knee symmetry and sprinting ability.

Trivers also said he believes girls mature earlier than in the past. "By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous," he said.

That’s Robert “Reciprocal Altruism” Trivers. He’s one of the very biggest names in evolutionary theory…and there he is, stating that he is just fine with rich people buying justice, and basically endorsing the sex trafficking of 14 year old girls because “they’re like grown women were 60 years ago”. And as we all know, it’s just fine to buy grown women.

I am so disappointed. I would have thought buying a man with Trivers’ reputation would have cost far more than a measly $40K. Gosh, that suggests that mere women and 14 year olds ought to be really cheap.

Comments

  1. brett says

    Trivers is probably going to start back-pedaling like crazy once people point out he’s endorsing pedophilia and the sale/sexual use of underage girls. What an asshole.

    I guess this isn’t surprising. There’s a lot of embarrassing idiots with reprehensible opinions in science – just see James Watson.

  2. rq says

    He believes girls mature much earlier in the past. As a scientist, does he have the research to back this up?
    *puke*
    Oh, and yeah, totally okay to buy women. It’s not like they’re getting the wrong end of that deal, at all, no way, she’s just a prepackaged vagina with a use-by date.
    *puke*

    I’m going to need a bigger bucket.

  3. says

    It’s amazing how cheaply people will sell themselves. And, of course, if they value themselves and their principals so little, it shouldn’t be surprising that they value other people even less.

  4. kosk11348 says

    WTF? If Trivers doesn’t consider trafficking in underage sex slaves to be “so heinous,” one wonders what he would find morally objectionable.

  5. says

    From the linked article:

    “His interest is in interesting people and interesting ideas,” said Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss, who directs a program on the origins of life that Epstein has supported. He said he would feel cowardly if he turned away from Epstein because of accusations Krauss knew nothing about.

    *smh* Sure Dr. Krauss, THAT would make you a coward

  6. freemage says

    More and more, I’m convinced that criminal penalties should include a scaling financial hit. The richer you are, the more it will cost you to break the rules of the society that enabled your wealth. For certain crimes (particularly sexual predators and violence), you should be coming out of the far side with no more than $50K in assets, no matter how wealthy you were before.

    Money can be split in some formula between victims and the government.

  7. says

    Of course, as a scientist Dr. Trivers will have looked up the evidence about the effects of sexual encounters between adolescents and adults* on the adolescent, right?
    Right?
    Damn…

    *Not even mentioning the sex slaving component here

  8. militantagnostic says

    If anything, I would think girls mature mentally and emotionally later than in the past and it is a good thing that they do. They are not sent off to work in their early teens or if they are the oldest, have to take care of their younger siblings in a large family.

    What a self centered ignorant asshat.

    From the linked article

    In two cases, Epstein boasted about donations he never made, a major university said.

    Freemage – I am tempted to go further and make sentences proportional to privilege. At the very least these jerks should lose their their passports so they can’t leave the country to access their wealth.

  9. toska says

    Fuck.
    I’m with the commenters above — what evidence is there to support this theory? I’m a young adult in my mid 20s. I still remember what it was like to be a 14 year old. 14 year olds are not like grown people. My mental maturity (and physical, but I was a late bloomer) at age 14 was a helluva lot closer to what it was at 10 years old than to my current self. Jeebus. Just talk to a few teenage girls and a few grown women. Have a conversation. You will notice a fucking difference. This isn’t very hard. At least, not if you treat women and girls as people.

  10. says

    Yes, Lawrence Krauss actually used his credibility as a scientist to try to defuse the accusations against Epstein. He used the phrase “as a scientist” in conjunction with statements like “I never personally saw him rape any underage girls.”

    *barf*

  11. Golgafrinchan Captain says

    Disclaimer: I don’t know if Trivers has ever had sex with a a 14-year-old but his defense/rationalization of it is enough to condemn him in my books. I think that rationalization gets one 95% of the way to actually doing it. The remaining 5% is just a matter of access.

    What is he talking about when he says girls are like grown women of 60 years ago? Is he talking about physically or emotionally? It seems somewhat plausible that physical maturity comes earlier now, due to better nutrition and hormones in our food. But I don’t think physical maturity isn’t really the issue when it comes to 14-year-olds engaging in sex with adults.

    If he’s talking about emotional maturity, my (untested) hypothesis is that we probably reach emotional maturity later now. Relative comfort and longer life-spans seem to allow people an extended adolescence (when they aren’t trafficked or otherwise abused).

    One thing I do know for a fact is that human beings don’t enter their final stage of cognitive development until their 20’s. How does Mr. Sleaze-Muffin rectify that? As I think further, he probably doesn’t even attempt to rectify that, since he doesn’t give a crap about their minds.

    Another possibility, maybe he’s just used to interacting with young girls who have been robbed of their childhood and have been forced to “mature” by selfish assholes.

  12. twas brillig (stevem) says

    To interject a bit of trivia:
    I am now struggling (externally) to the new concept that “adulthood is now delayed in our children”. We were self-declared adults around 23 [after college graduation], while our children today achieve adulthood 5 years later than we did.” Due to our over-attention to our children and keeping them safe from all danger, etc. etc. We’ve delayed their adoption of adulthood. Not in anyway a blaming, just recognition of today’s transition into adulthood is a little later than what we experienced. yada, yada, yada. … To have another person say that girls are mature adults, younger than ever, is blatantly contradictory. I’ll go with my experience; this guy has got it all wrong, upside-down, etc.

  13. militantagnostic says

    Sally Strange @14
    So scientifically speaking none of the men and very few of the women I know have ever had sexual intercourse, or at least none of the the ones who don’t have children. I think we should nominate Lawrence Krauss for Pope of Atheism.

  14. Lady Mondegreen (aka Stacy) says

    Lawrence Krauss himself has a pretty bad reputation as someone who sexually harasses and has little regard for women’s boundaries. It’s a reputation I believe is earned. (A friend, someone whose word I trust, has had first-hand experience.)

  15. PaulBC says

    If he’s talking about emotional maturity, my (untested) hypothesis is that we probably reach emotional maturity later now.

    Probably. I often think that we’ve lost the art of dressing and acting like grownups. I don’t say this as if it’s a bad thing. I am well into middle age, dress more or less like I did in college (mostly no T-shirts though) and have never developed the sense of gravitas that I imagined would come with advancing years.

    Adults in movies through the 1950s movies also act “grownup,” even if chronologically they much younger than I am now. I don’t mean they are more mature or more responsible. But there is a different veneer. Compare, e.g. Days of Wine and Roses (1962) with any non-period depiction of adults in a movie today. (Note: I have never watched Mad Men, but the stills suggest a pining for those days; maybe it’s just the ties and hats.)

    I am not really sure what Trivers is trying to say, and even attempting to understand makes me feel icky. My kids in elementary school have classmates some of whom are taller than their parents. Anyone who mistakes this for maturity has got a serious problem.

  16. samihawkins says

    “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous,”

    A human lifetime is not long enough for me to express the amount of ‘fuck you’s this statement deserves. Were I granted immortality I would be saying ‘fuck you’ for the rest of eternity. When the last photon burned out and the universe descended into eternal darkness I would still be there, sitting on a cold desolate rock and shouting ‘fuck you’ into the void,

  17. Amphiox says

    If he’s talking about emotional maturity, my (untested) hypothesis is that we probably reach emotional maturity later now.

    It seems that he is actually conflated physical maturity with emotional maturity, which is a rather common thing for apologists for men like Epstein do.

    Of course, what that betrays is the underlying attitude that they are regarding girls and women as physical objects, bodies that mature, and not as individual humans who think and feel.

  18. ledasmom says

    Not surprised at all. At the first college I went to, Trivers had a reputation for hitting on students a lot (his usual pickup line, I was told, was along the lines of “I study sexual behavior; would you like to be an experiment?”).

  19. toska says

    Ugh, so an hour after reading this post, I’m still pissed off.

    We talk about what makes humans special and unique as a species, and we go straight to talking about our brains and cognitive functions. One of the factors that makes this possible (besides our proportionately large skulls) is our long development period. The stages between birth and adulthood are so stretched out in humans compared to others, and it allows us to learn more during childhood and adolescence than other species. This is one of the key differences that makes us who we are, that makes us human.

    Trivers and his ilk want to take that away from girls (notice it’s girls who are fully grown at 14. Boys get to have their entire childhoods). He doesn’t see a problem with girls being ripped away from their childhoods and forced to pleasure men instead of being given the opportunity to learn and grow like every child should. He doesn’t want us to focus on cognitive development to become the best we can be. He wants us to learn our place as sex objects because no other knowledge is important for lowly non-humans like us.

  20. toska says

    Amphiox

    It seems that he is actually conflated physical maturity with emotional maturity, which is a rather common thing for apologists for men like Epstein do.

    Of course, what that betrays is the underlying attitude that they are regarding girls and women as physical objects, bodies that mature, and not as individual humans who think and feel.

    ^^Yes. Leaving aside the fact that many girls are not physically mature at that age either, physical maturity isn’t what matters when it comes to consenting to sex. Rape apologist men think that rape of minors is all about them and their sexuality. “Well, if she looks like and adult, it means my sexuality is normal, so it’s totally fine.” It’s not about adults and their attractions. It’s about children and their brains and their ability to fully understand and consent to sexual activities.

    Men, raping children is not about you and your feelings. It’s about children. It doesn’t matter if you feel they are as attractive or more attractive than adults because again, it’s not about your feelings.

  21. says

    Well, if you only spend time looking (aka oggling) at 14 yo girls (Oh. My. Gosh. They have bodies. And they show them. They are becoming sexually aware. Somebody call the police!) but never time talking to 14 yo girls you could of course think that they mature earlier because they use attributes to express themselves that used to be the domain of older women.
    Of course, if you consider 14 year old girls people and bother talking with them, you will notice that they’re tall grown kids.

  22. says

    Trivers said Epstein is a person of integrity who should be given credit for serving time in prison and for settling civil lawsuits brought by women who said they were abused.

    Why should he be given credit for being imprisoned and buying off law suits? Isn’t that what happens to guilty people? How is this a sign of integrity? Am I missing something here or does this just make no sense at all?

  23. laurentweppe says

    I would have thought buying a man with Trivers’ reputation would have cost far more than a measly $40K. Gosh, that suggests that mere women and 14 year olds ought to be really cheap.

    Or maybe scientists are cheap: cut science departments’ funding for long enough, and you may well increase the number of easily bribable professors.

  24. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Ah, looks like a version of “but she looked older” defense with shades of “if she dresses like a slut an adult woman what does she expect” for victim blaming.

  25. mrcharlie says

    It seems his statement about earlier maturation of women is correct, at least physically, e.g. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/09/19/changing-biology-age-at-first-menstruation/
    (Causes may be improved nutrition, or estrogen mimicking compounds in the water supply or food as someone suggested above)

    However as far a I know there has been no change in the age at which the brain matures, which I’ve seen described as when myelination is complete. Which: “…Postmortem studies suggest that axon diameters and myelin sheaths undergo conspicuous growth during the first two years of life, but may not be fully mature before adolescence or even late adulthood…”
    (from http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Myelinate.html )

    So who the hell cares what physical characteristics are present in 14 year-old girls? Buying and selling humans is something we fought wars to stop and doing it with children is extra creepy. Has Epstein paid off all possible victims? If not why hasn’t he been prosecuted?

  26. PaulBC says

    It would have been better if the interviewer could have confronted Trivers right there and asked him to explain exactly what he meant by “like grown women” and watch him either squirm or maybe just come right out and say what he’s thinking. I can’t think of charitable interpretation.

    It sure doesn’t improve with rereading, and I still can’t help channeling the Ken Shabby sketch:

    By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, Know what I mean eh, oooh! (makes obscene gesture involving elbow) Oh yeah, yeah. (produces handkerchief and cleans throat horribly into it) so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.

  27. says

    Evolutionary biology is a pretty small community. This is going to get really ugly if people start defending Trivers’ statements.

  28. paganeng says

    As for selling himself cheaply, I am not surprised. I live in the DC area across the river from a building where 535 people meet to “govern”. The majority may have sold themselves just as cheaply and provided benefits worth billions to the purchasers, IMHO.

  29. Joshua Kosman says

    This is entirely unsurprising after my recent attempt to read Trivers’ latest book, The Folly of Fools. Pretty much every real-life example or hypothetical he comes up with involves his own history of being a creep to women, generally related without any sense of self-awareness of how he comes off.

    “This happened to me once, when I was trying to keep my wife from finding out that I was stepping out on her, but I was blinded by my own rage at the suspicion that she might be doing the same.” That kind of thing (I paraphrase). After a few chapters I had to give up because he was too unpleasant as a person to be around.

  30. carlie says

    I have a 15 year old and a 16 year old. Therefore, I have spent a lot of time in the last few years at concerts and school meetings where there were an awful lot of 14 year old girls. Sure, they’re tall. Some of them have secondary sex characteristics. But talk to them for two minutes, and it’s entirely clear that they are fourteen years old. Heck, you just have to look at their faces for a few seconds – their expressions totally give them away. Anyone who says that a 14 year old “seems so much older” to them is deliberately avoiding paying attention to the most obvious features of their humanity in favor of focusing on height and breast size. That’s not just gross, I would put it in the category of actual evil, because the only way to come to the conclusion that 14 year olds are somehow mature is to forcibly ignore the evidence right in front of you.

  31. says

    Whenever I think of selling oneself cheaply, I remember the beautiful scene in “A Man For All Seasons” where More sees that Richard Rich is wearing a chain of office, and asks to look at it… Then says: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… But.. For Wales” (Rich traded perjuring his testimony for the Attorney Generalship of Wales)

  32. Saad says

    I’ll have Unconscionable Quotations for $500, please Alex.

    Who said the following:

    “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.”

    Who is Abubakar Shekau?

    Ah, dang it!

  33. Francisco Bacopa says

    Why is everyone going on about how 14yo’s don’t seem emotionally mature if you talk to them? Don’t you get it? This is the whole point of the attraction. They are seeking girls to abuse and can likely only get girls who are already habituated to what they want by prior sexualization and abuse in their own households.

    And don’t tell me any 14-15 year old even with our supposed earlier puberty is really an adult woman. Fuck all y’all. Look at her hips: They just aren’t there yet. Sure, they are quite exciting to the 12-15yo boys. Is that the emotional age of Trivers and Epstein?

  34. carbonfox says

    toska @13,

    I’m 24 and I know how different I am from 15 (example: my career plan is no longer “rock star”). I wasted too much time last week arguing with somebody on another forum who posited that “there isn’t much mental difference between 15 and 24 year olds” in response to a case where a teacher of the latter age was jailed for sleeping with a student of the former age (and, following, there shouldn’t be repercussions for the teacher). When I described my personal experience, the (older male) commenter told me that as a 24 year old, I had no authority to speak on my own experiences, and that even if I couldn’t see it, my current mind was in fact equivalent to that of my 15 year old self. Even when I mentioned that some people from my high school class are military officers, nurses, small business owners, and generally productive members of society, this middle aged fellow kept insisting that they were all actually middle schoolers mentally. See, it doesn’t matter what women say about our own experiences: if a man says adult women are children (and so we shouldn’t have rights) or simultaneously asserts that young girls are adults (and so we can be exploited for sex), then that’s just how it is.

  35. Ichthyic says

    This is going to get really ugly if people start defending Trivers’ statements.

    Even when I was a grad student back in the 90s, Trivers the man was pretty much invisible. you never saw him at conferences, he had no new papers coming out at the time that were being discussed, he was having no measurable impact on the field at the time.

    He kind of came out of nowhere in the late 90s to talk about developing mathematical models to predict selection influences on traits within populations, but then he seemed to disappear again.

    Maybe his relative invisibility wasn’t so much his doing. this new information makes me wonder if he was always SO unpleasant, that he tends to get shoved into the closet and NOT invited to much of anything.

    I don’t really know, probably because i tended to ignore personal quirks in favor of purely examining the contributions someone’s work was making, but it would explain a few things. It also makes me think perhaps we should train our graduate students to be a bit more cognizant of who our colleagues are as people, not just scientists.

  36. toska says

    carbonfox @41,
    Also 24 and agree with 100% of what you said. Most older men still treat me the same way they did when I was a teenager (patronizing, as if they are speaking to a child), but it isn’t my fault they would rather rely on their biases than actually listen to me and realize that I am an adult. I am such a completely different person from my teenage self that we would hardly recognize one another. When I read stuff I wrote even as an 18-19 year old, I end up rolling my eyes or face palming at my former self. Anyway, the guy you were talking to is an idiot, and modern brain development science supports our side (brains, on average, become fully mature in a person’s early 20s, and I believe this is part of the reasoning behind the drinking age laws in the US).

  37. Ichthyic says

    Of course, now I’m wondering what old Tricky Dick (not Nixon) will be tweeting about this.

    that should be… entertaining.

    has anyone poked him yet?

  38. Ichthyic says

    When I read stuff I wrote even as an 18-19 year old, I end up rolling my eyes or face palming at my former self.

    you’ll very likely do that again when you hit your mid 30s.

  39. neverjaunty says

    I don’t understand the comments here about menarche or great development. A girl who begins menstruating or grows breasts is entering puberty, not finishing it. She is not a “grown woman”. So who gives a shit if girls get their first periods earlier than in days of yore? 14-year-olds are not “grown women” in any sense of the word – physically, mentally or socially, and Trivers is lying when he claims they are.

    As Francisco said, though, that is of course the point for these kind of assholes; sex with children who have secondary sex characteristics.

  40. Ichthyic says

    Epstein did not respond to interview requests. In response to two pages of written questions from Reuters, a lawyer for Epstein said the financier’s philanthropy has been widespread for an extensive period of time.

    “His efforts include making substantial contributions to scientific and medical progress and in helping children in providing them with the educational and technological tools necessary for their having a chance to succeed,” the lawyer, Martin Weinberg, said in an emailed statement. “It would be unfortunate if the recent media activity would in any way adversely impact Mr. Epstein’s efforts in any of these areas,” he added.

    “That’s a nice science foundation ya have there… be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”

  41. Ichthyic says

    I don’t understand the comments here about menarche or great development. A girl who begins menstruating or grows breasts is entering puberty, not finishing it.

    then actually, you understand the comments HERE very well.

    somehow you must have managed to misinterpret what they were saying though.

  42. neverjaunty says

    @Ichthyic: a couple of people have, while condemning Trivers as reprehensible, allowed as he may be technically correct on the issue of physical maturity of girls vs. their grandmothers. That argument is wrong.

  43. Ichthyic says

    no, it isn’t.

    if you look carefully at what they said, they very clearly said the PHYSICAL aspect of development was irrelevant to mental development, and that was what was really important.

    In fact, there are several studies supporting the idea of early physical puberty, and they only reason people were pointing that out, was to highlight that it is irrelevant to actual mental maturity, which has not changed.

    so yes, you misread what they were saying. go read again.

  44. Ichthyic says

    It would have been better if the interviewer could have confronted Trivers right there and asked him to explain exactly what he meant by “like grown women”

    yes it would have.

    but apparently, journalism has been dead for years now. I don’t know what to call this modern thing that has replaced it, but it isn’t journalism.

  45. mythogen says

    Carbonfox @41:

    I am 28, though male, and my experience with aging has been the same as yours. Honestly, even 24 to 28 has been huge. It’s not until now that I have felt what I consider adult level self-confidence and cognitive abilities. To compare with myself at 14… A 14 year old, as has so often been repeated here, is a child. Not a “young adult” or any other euphemistic way to miscategorize them. A child. A child with an undeveloped and fragile sense of self, morality, and their place in the universe. Of course, when I was 14, I would have disagreed. But such is the very short-sightedness of youth that requires them to be protected.

    I also noticed your link between woman-as-child and child-as-woman. I think that may be an important revelation about MRAs and rape apologists and such persons. If all women are children, as they tend to say, then why would actual children be any different? If they think a 24-year-old woman is a mentally-childlike sex object, how is that different from a 14-year-old as a mentally-childlike sex object? I’m about to vomit just writing that…

  46. Amphiox says

    don’t understand the comments here about menarche or great development. A girl who begins menstruating or grows breasts is entering puberty, not finishing it. She is not a “grown woman”. So who gives a shit if girls get their first periods earlier than in days of yore? 14-year-olds are not “grown women” in any sense of the word – physically, mentally or socially, and Trivers is lying when he claims they are.

    Well, I think the claim these people are making is actually that the 14-16 year olds are finishing puberty at that age now, rather than entering it, but again, that is in fact irrelevant, as has been repeated often enough here.

  47. mythogen says

    I am also noting, more and more, the misuse of language in the pursuit of oppression. As has been noted in this thread, Trivers conflates physiological development and “maturity” with mental and emotional development and “maturity”. I was reminded by this of the way rapists and rape apologists use the literal meanings of rejections to argue that they were confused, and didn’t realize that they had been rejected. See https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/ on this. The tl;dr is that rejection is nearly always expressed in “soft” ways in almost every context, and is just as universally understood. Claiming not to understand a “soft” rejection in the context of sex is complete bullshit.

    Further, I think this ties in with privilege in a couple of ways: first, the male construct of reality is privileged when such bullshit arguments are made and never critically examined, and second, education and facility with language allows an oppressor to craft ever better damaging-but-deniable statements, and persuade audiences (who have been trained to be impressed by the dominant culture’s idea of erudition) of their interpretations through their “superior” communication skills.

    This misuse-of-language aspect has a lot to unravel.

  48. militantagnostic says

    A 14 year old, as has so often been repeated here, is a child.

    So is a 16 year old. I work at a self storage centre and some of our customers are young adults who have just left home. A girl came in to pay for her father’s storage unit a couple of times, the second time by herself in a car therefore at least 16 and I was immediately struck by the fact that she was a child, very naive and easily taken advantage of. There is a reason we don’t let them sign contracts. The power imbalance between an adult over 25 and a teenager is huge.

  49. says

    carbonfox

    When I described my personal experience, the (older male) commenter told me that as a 24 year old, I had no authority to speak on my own experiences, and that even if I couldn’t see it, my current mind was in fact equivalent to that of my 15 year old self.

    Let me see:
    -he thought that you hadn’t really changed between 15 and 24
    -that you were so totally immature that you were not able to understand your own experience
    -but that it would probably be ok to have sex with you regardless of the fact that he though you understood nothing at all at 15 and 24?

    +++
    There’s an above average age gap between my husband and myself. He’s 9 years older than me, so when we first got together I was 20 and he was 29. And I will say that this was still dangerous territory and that I am totally lucky to have the best and most respectful partner ever. But only 3 years earlier that would have nordered on creepy and 5 years earlier it would have been a grown man abusing a child who would herself have thought she was totally an adult making adult decisions.*

    *I’m not against teenagers having safe sex. I’m against adults having sex with vulnerable teenagers.

  50. azhael says

    That is fucking disgusting…
    Who the fuck do those pieces of shit think they are, the characters in Mad Men? They are not even “seeing” people in those girls….they just see packaging they like, fuck the human inside, who cares if it’s just a girl with nowhere near the sufficient maturity to fully consent to a relationship with such a power differential, let alone to being sold and used. Monsters, fucking human monsters the lot of them…i wish they’d rot in jail where they can’t get their hands on children.

  51. azhael says

    Also, i refuse to believe that a biologist could seriously propose such a ridiculous claim, he has to know he is being maliciously dishonest.

  52. robinjohnson says

    “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago”

    And how women were treated 60 years ago is such a great benchmark. Wow.

  53. David Marjanović says

    Christ, what an asshole.

    More and more, I’m convinced that criminal penalties should include a scaling financial hit. The richer you are, the more it will cost you to break the rules of the society that enabled your wealth.

    Switzerland already does that.

    He used the phrase “as a scientist” in conjunction with statements like “I never personally saw him rape any underage girls.”

    Wow. Over here, his doctorate could be in danger.

    It would have been better if the interviewer could have confronted Trivers right there and asked him to explain exactly what he meant by “like grown women” and watch him either squirm or maybe just come right out and say what he’s thinking. I can’t think of charitable interpretation.

    Thirded.

  54. Anri says

    azhael @ 59:

    Also, i refuse to believe that a biologist could seriously propose such a ridiculous claim, he has to know he is being maliciously dishonest.

    I’m gonna have to disagree with you here.
    Personally, I am forever amazed at the lengths to which people (myself included, sometimes, sadly) will go to preserve their worldview. Trivers is connected with Epstein, and Trivers knows he himself is a good person, and therefore can’t be associated with a horrible child molester, and therefore, what Epstein did just can’t be all that bad…
    When faced with having to question their own morality and decency, many people will throw away a lifetime of training and a world of experience to avoid thinking they themselves did something wrong. I have no idea where the line is between what Trivers actually believes and wants, desperately, to believe. And I frankly doubt if he knows either.

    (Mind you, I’ve never met anyone involved, so you could be entirely correct. And it doesn’t really matter, of course: intent isn’t magic, and why he’s defending Epstein is pretty much irrelevant compared to the fact that he is.)

  55. drst says

    I taught college for 6 years, so technically all of my students were considered legal adults.

    Emotionally were they all adults? Nope. Huge range of maturity levels. There was always an 18 year old who had their shit together more than I did, and a 22 year old who couldn’t manage to meet a deadline to save a life. And they changed, sometimes dramatically, in the four years I knew them. I prided myself on not babying them (part of my job was to get them to grasp what being an adult meant) but I regarded them as “kids” especially when it came to emotional maturity.

    So someone spewing bullshit that a 14 year old is somehow mature (in any sense) enough to have consensual sex with a grown man? *barfs*

  56. freemage says

    Ichthyic

    4 February 2015 at 10:22 pm

    It would have been better if the interviewer could have confronted Trivers right there and asked him to explain exactly what he meant by “like grown women”

    yes it would have.

    but apparently, journalism has been dead for years now. I don’t know what to call this modern thing that has replaced it, but it isn’t journalism.

    Eh, I’m going to disagree with this one. What you’re thinking of as journalism–the investigative reporter going after a story, the will to speak truth to power–that’s still out there. You just have to be willing to find it. However, there’s a whole generation of j-students who were taught that they have to be ‘objective’, meaning they need to shut off their own critical thinking. And this has an obvious impact on how a lot of news gets covered. You just take down the quotes you’re given, and let the reader sort themselves out.

  57. PaulBC says

    freemage #64

    However, there’s a whole generation of j-students who were taught that they have to be ‘objective’, meaning they need to shut off their own critical thinking. And this has an obvious impact on how a lot of news gets covered.

    In this case, the misconception is that asking for clarification would hurt objectivity. There are many characteristics that distinguish children from adults, so if you let someone get away with saying “like grown women” without saying in what way, then the reader only has a only a subjective interpretation.

    Is he saying that 14 year olds are now better at managing money (doubtful) or tend to think ahead and defer gratification more than in the past (again, I doubt it)? Is he… I dunno… saying some adolescent girls are developing breasts earlier? Can’t be! Because that would just be creepy, right? And he is a respected science-guy.

    So it just seems like he left so much out, that in the interest of objectivity he should be encouraged to finish his thought.

  58. Ichthyic says

    What you’re thinking of as journalism–the investigative reporter going after a story, the will to speak truth to power–that’s still out there. You just have to be willing to find it.

    that’s the problem though, as you point out this is NOT what is really taught any more, nor is it the norm.

    real investigative journalism is hidden within the 90% that would better be described as little more than photography in text form.

  59. Ichthyic says

    Also, i refuse to believe that a biologist could seriously propose such a ridiculous claim, he has to know he is being maliciously dishonest.

    even with all the examples, like Dawkins, to choose from? I don’t think Richard is being maliciously dishonest; i think he really does believe the bullshit he spews. I think his upbringing and education have situated him perfectly to accept his bullshit as truth, much like many privileged people, given similar circumstances.

    I don’t know Trivers personally, so I can’t speak to his history or his motivations. Can you?

  60. Rob says

    Ichthyic, Journalism has not only been dead for some years it has come back from the grave as a zombie caricature of its former self. We just need to put it out of its misery for once and for all.

  61. Rob says

    Back on thread. Over the years (although not recently it has to be said) I have had the opportunity to meet young (14-16) women who were physically mature and easily passed as older and sexually available. Until they opened their mouths that is. You cannot talk to any young person (female or male) without becoming painfully aware of the fact they are emotionally and mentally children regardless of how they look. It takes less than 60 seconds for crying out loud. That doesn’t render them unimportant or not worth knowing or talking too. It does render them off limits for sexual predation by those who are older, more mature, protected and knowing though.

  62. Ichthyic says

    We just need to put it out of its misery for once and for all.

    but how?

    that head is ginormous. is there a gun big enough to put it down?