There’s no direct connection---it was through intermediaries that separately knew both.

Pinker explained his connection to Epstein earlier on this site, and it wasn’t a very close connection. He also explained one thing he did for which he is sorry:

In the interests of full disclosure, there was another connection. Alan Dershowitz and I are friends and colleagues, and we taught a course together at Harvard. He often asks me questions about syntax and semantics of laws, most recently the impeachment statute. While he was representing Epstein, he asked me about the natural interpretation of one of the relevant laws, and I offered my opinion; this was cited in a court document. I did it as a favor to a friend and colleague, not as a paid expert witness, but I now regret that I did so. And needless to say I find Epstein’s behavior reprehensible.

As someone who was on O. J. Simpson’s defense team as an expert witness (also unpaid), I can’t be arsed to criticize this: everybody deserves a fair trial, even those accused of odious crimes—especially those accused of odious crimes.

At any rate, a colleague of Steve’s offered to flag accounts that connected Pinker and Epstein, and then manually blocked the flagged ones. Pinker notes that “the colleague doesn’t block anyone for criticizing or disagreeing with something I’ve written.”

And as far as the “right” to defame Pinker on his own Twitter site, Steve responds this way, and with a classic Jewish joke:

“I’ve been told that people are now bitching and moaning about this, but no one has a First Amendment right to post something on Steven Pinker’s Twitter feed,” Pinker wrote to Motherboard. “If someone wants to smear me personally, they have plenty of channels; to whine that I’m not offering them my platform has to be a new definition of “chutzpah,” after the man who killed his parents and threw himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.”

Then the article continues the smear:

Pinker’s numerous interactions in Epstein’s orbit have long been the subject of reporting and speculation.

. . . In 2019, Pinker  introduced him to Epstein, who cultivated a network of elite intellectuals and academics. Sometimes those intellectuals spoke or appeared at Epstein-financed , other times they hung out at Epstein’s island (or estates), and other times they entertained Epstein’s  like  and  Pinker seems to have been involved with Edge speaking events as far back as , and appears in a photo from one of the Edge “‘Billionaires’ Dinners,” which Epstein has attended, .

The Edge Foundation events are run by Steve’s agent (and mine), John Brockman, who invited Pinker and Epstein to some of them. Steve’s involvement with Edge is because Brockman is his agent, and that has nothing to do with Epstein. Notice, though, how VICE tries to use Edge to connect Pinker and Epstein (yes, they did appear at the same event and were photographed together). But as Steve explained on this site:

But Epstein had insinuated himself with so many people I intersected with (Alan Dershowitz, Martin Nowak, John Brockman, Steve Kosslyn, Lawrence Krauss) and so many institutions he helped fund (Harvard’s Program in Evolutionary Dynamics, ASU’s Origins Project, even Harvard Hillel) that I often ended up at the same place with him. (Most of these gatherings were prior to the revelation of his sex crimes, such as the 2002 plane trip to TED with Dawkins, Dennett, the Brockmans, and others, but Krauss’s Origins Project Meeting came after he served his sentence.) Since I was often the most recognizable person in the room, someone would snap a picture; some of them resurfaced this past week, circulated by people who disagree with me on various topics and apparently believe that the photos are effective arguments.

I haven’t asked Steve how many times he actually met Epstein at Harvard, but VICE doesn’t know either; it just implies that they were connected because Epstein had an honorary position in Martin Nowak’s evolution group at the school (Nowak’s being investigated for this). Pinker and Epstein were at one of Nowak’s events, and that’s all I know. As VICE notes:

There are  of Pinker with Epstein at an event at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PEDS). Pinker wrote to Motherboard that “[t]he director of the Program, Professor Martin Nowak, invited me, and he also invited Epstein. I had nothing to do with Epstein being there.”

According to , Epstein visited the campus over a dozen times, was a visiting fellow at one point, and had an office there—after he was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008—and donated $9.2 million to the university, $6.5 million of which went to PEDS.

The “over a dozen times” is irrelevant to Epstein’s connection to Pinker, as it’s certain that Steve didn’t see Epstein constantly on campus, much less interact with him.