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Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

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Re: Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

#31

Post by dos1 »

I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard problems and people here are complaining. Sure, they may not be the problems that you think are most important, and I'm sure the foundation is making missteps along the way and wasting some money. But his message in this article is a good one I think:

> The process I have described—setting clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach

This sounds like a pretty pragmatic plan to me. I know that I don't necessarily agree with the direction he's going (I would personally pick other problems to tackle), so I just hope someday I'm in a position to do something along the same vein and learn from the lessons he's willing to share.

Re: Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

#32

Post by krie »

cbs wrote: post #29
krie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting to discuss it here, the zenith of technocopian optimism and futurism. There's a host of intelligent people frequenting Hacker News, but few have any idea what sort of trouble we are in. No conscious thought at all about the value chain that's involved for them to fill up their car in the awesome Bay area with amazing people doing fantastic work to "change" the world. Why aren't you guys picki…

Its priorities dude, most people aren't in it to "change" the world, they're in it to get filthy fucking rich in a way that lets them feel OK with themselves at the end of the day. We're on a website run by a venture capitalist to talk about tech. All the nonsense about being super smart, the futurism, and having any grasp on the world is simple puffery. And the people here who do have meaningful discussion on topics…

I get it. Still annoying that I'm reduced to a simple "Malthusian" for espousing that resource depletion is a problem that's insurmountably difficult to "solve".

Re: Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

#33

Post by moe »

krie wrote: post #22
cbs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malthusian thought always strikes me as a comfortable little tautology to live in. It seems like it could be a neat way to contextualize one's efforts to delay the onset of, and diminish the impact of inevitable catastrophe. But I only ever see it being used to shit on ideas that on first glance would appear to accelerate the inevitable. Which in and of itself is bit odd. It may be a bit cold to see it this way, but…

I think it's interesting to discuss it here, the zenith of technocopian optimism and futurism. There's a host of intelligent people frequenting Hacker News, but few have any idea what sort of trouble we are in. No conscious thought at all about the value chain that's involved for them to fill up their car in the awesome Bay area with amazing people doing fantastic work to "change" the world. Why aren't you guys picki…

Many people work on these things (renewable energy, electric cars, education, you name it) and many more donate to such causes when they can't or don't want to get involved directly. We also vote for political parties that we hope may improve things.

What are you doing other than posting "WE ARE DOOMED!!1" to seemingly every HN thread you come across?

Re: Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

#34

Post by pbw »

dubya wrote: post #8

Not everyone is as confident in Bill Gates's magical abilities as he is. http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/10/how-bill-gates-wasted-50-... http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny0...

That 2nd link is an obvious straw man. If you read what Gates is actually saying [1] it's far more reasonable. There is a huge dynamic range in teacher abilities. He is saying take the very best, and give them a slightly higher load. Just as you can take the very best programmers and have them write more code. But then people freak out and say Gates wants big classes across the board, it's silly.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02...

Re: Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

#35

Post by krie »

adventured wrote: post #20
krie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it stops at 8 or 9 billion doesn't really make an impact until 2150 at best. IF we had the resources to keep everything puffing till then. We don't. :)

We sure do. The human race will be just fine resource wise. And that's just accounting for the existing base of resources and knowledge we have today. What we'll have in just another 50 years will be astounding, and further ensure that we won't have a resource problem. :)

You're not even able to moderate yourself to "could" be astounding, it WILL be astounding, categorically? Is there anything pointing toward such being able to reach fruition? Not really.

Re: Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems

#38

Post by jneen »

dos1 wrote: post #31

I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard problems and people here are complaining. Sure, they may not be the problems that you think are most important, and I'm sure the foundation is making missteps along the way and wasting some money. But his message in this article is a good one I think: > The process I have described—setting clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring result…

The negativity is because of the legacy of colonialism. "Rich White Guy Solves all the World's Problems" ends up being really condescending, especially when other rich white guys are causing or exacerbating many of the problems.
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