• Optional@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    The files show that in 2007 he [Stephen Pinker] was consulted by Epstein’s lawyer (as “one of the world’s leading experts on grammar”), “to analyze the statute” of a law which criminalizes contact with minors for the purpose of sexual exploitation. When this emerged, during Epstein’s 2019 court case, Pinker claimed he didn’t realize it was for the defense of Epstein, but it is difficult to imagine what he might have thought his advice was to be used for — did he think his verdict, that the “sole rational reading” of the statute was that “communication must be the vehicle through which the persuading or enticing directly occurs,” was in defense of the “enticed” girls? It seems unlikely.