Topline: According to a New York Times investigation, registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was considered an “intellectual impostor” by people he associated with in academia and supported dubious and unsupported scientific theories. Some highlights:
- He wanted to impregnate women in order to spread his DNA. Using his 7,500-acre New Mexico ranch, affectionately nicknamed Zorro, Epstein hoped to impregnate 20 women at a time with his sperm, according to VR expert and author Jaron Lanier. He believed in what’s known as transhumanism, the improvement of the human population through artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.
- He believed in eugenics, too. Critics have said transhumanism has its roots in eugenics, the belief in improving the human race through controlled reproduction, which has been disavowed by scientists on moral and ethical grounds ever since it was employed by the Nazis, who used it in support of the killing of Jews during World War II. Epstein himself was born to Jewish parents. Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Epstein expressed this support of eugenics to him once and that he was “appalled.”
- He wanted to freeze his brain and penis. Epstein also believed in cryogenics, an unsupported scientific theory in which people freeze their bodies to be later be brought back to life. He supposedly told a colleague he hoped to freeze his head and his penis for future use in eugenics and transhumanism.
- A Harvard psychologist thought he was a phony. Steven Pinker told the Times that he felt Epstein was an “intellectual impostor.” According to Pinker, “He would abruptly change the subject, A.D.D.-style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wisecrack.”
- He still managed to surround himself with scientific luminaries. In addition to Pinker, Epstein spent time with theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann, paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould, best-selling author Oliver Sacks, and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek.
