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Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

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Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#121

Post by nickff »

devcpp wrote: post #113
partyboat1586 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's thinking from a pragmatic, utilitarian mindset. He has no principles surrounding privacy. If it has to be sacrificed to get the job done that's fine in his mind as long as it's a net positive.

You can be pragmatic and utilitarian and support privacy and free use of encryption. I would instead qualify his mindset of shortsighted.

Anyone who rigorously follows an ethical framework will eventually be lead to some conclusion(s) they dislike; utilitarianism is no guarantee of satisfaction.

An honest utilitarian would be willing to share their calculations, which would be interesting to see, though I am not sure how you'd balance the interests in the cases described above.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#122

Post by devcpp »

reillyse wrote: post #109
ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

I don't think he is saying that encrypted communication should be illegal. He's saying that spreading lies through encrypted channels should be stopped. It would not be hard for WhatsApp to prevent people from spreading bogus videos, because they have access to the unencrypted information before and after sending. So either preventing people from sharing misinformation or preventing people from reading the misinforma…

It would indeed be very hard, if WhatsApp's own claim that messages are encrypted end-to-end is true. Either way (and I disagree that this should be a separate discussion) all methods of global speech control are eventually used for evil.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#123

Post by throwaway12992 »

asalahli wrote: post #90
codebolt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, he's become a highly controversial figure for a large fraction of the population, particularly within the societies that his foundation works. In my opinion, they'd do good to pick a figure whose name is less tarnished if they want the message to be more broadly accepted.

That's an interesting claim. Pretty much every piece of negative opinion of Gates I've seen have either been 1. About his work at Microsoft 2. Or some conspiracy theory about world domination, population control etc I'd be interested to read more on how societies he's directly worked with think of him, if you have any links

It has to do with Gates' vaccine program in India. Here is a paper you can read. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30111741/

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#124

Post by another_day »

ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

If we extend this line of thinking, where does it lead?

The goal seems to be removing easy access to communications where governments can't listen for signs of dangerous behavior. But individuals can write custom software. Is there a stage in this arms race where one would need company/nation-state level resources to communicate in private?

Is there a potential future in which every piece of end-user software can't run without being signed by the government and is enforced at the CPU level? I'd hate to think this is even possible, but my (limited) understanding of secure enclaves makes me think there's a chance.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#126

Post by paxys »

Solstinox wrote: post #2

A quick, cheap, non-invasive test that is less accurate (in the direction of more false positives) would be far more effective than a more accurate but slow, expensive, and intrusive test.

But somehow every other developed country in the world has tests that are quick, cheap and accurate.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#127

Post by paxys »

refurb wrote: post #36

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it odd that Gates is the go to source for public health issues. His biggest contribution is money, which pays for really smart people to tackle these issues. So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?

Why interview the CEO of a company and not engineers building the product?

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#128

Post by BinaryIdiot »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #95

>And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger]. WOW. Why would someone in the tech industry like Gates be anti-encryption for the public? The only argument I can think of against it is "You have nothing to worry about if you ha…

Considering encrypted messages have to both be encrypted and decrypted, I don't think his statement is necessarily against encrypted. I assumed he meant preventing the sending of known materials like that and / or the opening of it (which wouldn't interfere with end-to-end encryption at all).

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#129

Post by cm2187 »

ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

Even on Covid. He warned in Feb that covid could result in 10 millions deaths in Africa, when we knew already from the Chinese numbers that the demographics of covid deaths was massively skewed toward 70yo+, and Africa has a very young population. I classify him in the FUD spreading category.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#130

Post by ipsum2 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #115
mdoms wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates is a public health expert. He has been working on these problems with some of the smartest minds in the field for decades now. How long does someone need to be working on a problem before they're worthy of being a "go to source", in your opinion?

Bill Gates certainly doesn’t have the credentials of a public health expert. His work with health experts has extended to funding and choosing what problems to solve. You’d presume he’s learned a fair amount about it over the years. But I’ve learned a fair amount about accountancy through my years of working with corporate accountants. I’m definitely not an accountancy expert though. What qualifications do you imagin…

If your full time job is to lead corporate accountants / head a large corporate accountancy firm and you've done it for several years, I'd consider you an accountancy expert.
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