https://www.wired.com/story/an-end-to-pornography-sophistry-and-panty-raids/
When I signed with Brockman in 2009, I knew the vast majority of Edgies were men. But I presumed things were changing; it wasn’t exactly early days for feminism, and graduate schools across disciplines were packed with women. I even expected I’d find some of my academic heroes on Brockman’s list. Maybe Warner would be there, or the philosopher Elaine Scarry or the sociologist Gina Neff.
Not so. And not only did I not find the theorists I admired most, I found fewer trained academics than I’d been led to expect. There are some bona fide supernovas (I admire especially Lisa Randall and Frank Wilczek), but Edge has also featured robber barons, dilettantes, and has-beens. Several members, including Lawrence Krauss, Michael Shermer, and the late Marvin Minsky, have been credibly accused of and even disciplined for sexual harassment, abuse, or assault. There is also Joichi Ito, the onetime WIRED contributor and former head of the MIT Media Lab, who resigned earlier this month over his ties to Epstein.
A subset of Edge are members of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, a clique of famous, mostly right-wing thinkers who think of themselves as outlaws. Finally, a few members of Edge are notorious for outright pseudoscience or intellectual dishonesty: Rupert Sheldrake, Marc D. Hauser, Jonah Lehrer.
Say what you will about Sheldrake--no one is accusing him of molesting young women. (?)
MOAR:
Christ, don't start me on Shirky or on WIRED magazine....With the baby strapped to my chest as she often was that year, I checked the acknowledgements sections of books by Clay Shirky and former WIRED editor in chief Chris Anderson. JOHN BROCKMAN. Titans of TED praised this guy. So he was the gatekeeper of fame and fortune—or at least, for me, maybe less consumer debt.
Nice putdown:
Not to generalize from an anecdote, but Epstein’s answers to two Edge questions don’t precisely suggest that he had, as Edgie Martin Nowak put it, “the mind of a physicist.” In response to “What is your law?” (2004), Epstein composed this sub–Vince Lombardi epigram: “Know when you are winning.” Then, in 2005, he predicted: “Consciousness itself will be seen to only be a time sensor, adding to the other sensors of light and space.” Dude.
Then she tears a nice big chunk out of John Searle, a guy I'd heard of before. He was notorious for his massive ego.
And (now) he's famous for being a sexist pig and molesty old fart....oh well, that's show biz!