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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

#111

Post by realcertify »

MichaelGG wrote: post #69
realcertify wrote: post #58

A couple of years ago my wife's 2 years old nephew was diagnosed with retinoblastoma (eye's cancer). I contacted the world's best hospitals and was told that the treatment will cost hundreds of thousands dollars. So I tried to get some financial help from related funds and organizations and contacted all of them I could find on the internet. Guess what happened: 90% of them just ignored me, and the rest told me that…

In the past, the foundation has explicitly stated that they are not looking to fund clinics and specific work. While that kind of charity provides immediate help to people, it does not provide any long-term solutions. Bill Gates does not have unlimited money. The $40BN or so they manage is not enough to really make an impact if they focus on immediate solutions like helping individual cases. They need to use the mone…

I see your point, but considering that there are almost no advances in cancer treatment over last decades (despite all that research), may be it would make some sense to spend some of that money to help sick people? Especially 2 year old kid with such rare type of cancer? In fact trying to help him could be a great research in itself, but looks like it's not something they are interested in.

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

#112

Post by 9392732 »

dmhdlr wrote: post #110
anewguy99 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that gets uncomfortable when white people are treated as an undifferentiated, malevolent mass?

Rich whites were specified.

It still groups a large amount of people under one banner segmented with race as a variable.

Why can it not just be "rich people"?

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

#113

Post by meaty »

krie wrote: post #27
meaty wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well actually the first world will rape all the resources, just as it's doing now and the population will sort itself out in the third world, much as it's doing now.

Except, the population in the first world will be hit as well. Do you think 315 million Americans makes the USA not overpopulated?

There's plenty of resources to go around. They'll just have to eat corn instead of beef and lose some lard.

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

#114

Post by rdwallis »

specialist wrote: post #50
TDL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would rather have him do nothing?

Sometimes "free" is too expensive. Ask anyone who has gone aboard to do good works. There's a very fine line between helping and inadvertently creating a dependency or destroying previously stable social or economic structures. Big example is famine relief. We dump our excess commodities in a local economy. That enriches the power elite. It nukes the local agriculture. People end up worse off.

I don't find the argument that famine relief does more harm than good compelling.

Can you list some examples of this type of harm? Are they outliers or is it normal for this kind of aid to hurt its recipients?

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

#115

Post by cbs »

krie wrote: post #32
cbs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You just stated that it was difficult to solve and didn't say anything more, which I think is one of the problems most people have when talking with Malthusians.

For people who even vaguely know what they're talking about chances are pretty good they're aware of that the problems and hard and are still trying to make progress. Showing up and espousing that idea doesn't add anything to the conversation other than maybe suggesting your priorities are different than theirs (but that too can be articulated better).

I can compare it to talking to a libertarian, or alternatively someone who doesn't think anything matters but profit. All of their ideas are very sound within the realms of the overarching theory they subscribe to. That's all well and good, and sometimes makes for good conversation but they don't bother to extend their ideas to the current state of reality which exists outside of the already ideal conditions those philosophies provides.

Don't want to be reduced to "a simple Malthusian"? Make a post that says more than simply reiterating a watered down version of his thesis.

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

#116

Post by adaml_623 »

cs702 wrote: post #25

Mr. Gates writes, "I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal — in a feedback loop ... This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right." He's talking from experience. Between the late 1990's and early 2000's,…

Guy spent $1.7 Billion testing a hypothesis. Admitted he was wrong.

Probably would have been better to fail faster, etc. But it was his money. Kudos to him.

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

#117

Post by sliverstorm »

jneen wrote: post #38
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.

especially when other rich white guys are causing or exacerbating many of the problems.

Sounds like "Rich White Guy" is the best person to solve the problems, then. Which is a fairer fight- bushmen vs. rich white guys, or rich white guy vs other rich white guys?

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

#118

Post by sliverstorm »

cs702 wrote: post #25

Mr. Gates writes, "I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal — in a feedback loop ... This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right." He's talking from experience. Between the late 1990's and early 2000's,…

The $1.7B was not necessarily wasted, if it provided the BMGF learnings that improve future efforts.

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

#120

Post by erikpukinskis »

technoslut wrote: post #63
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to that problem is education, not killing off an underclass. Educated societies have far fewer children than non, to the point that some first world countries are losing population. The thing is, it's impossible to gain an education when you are constantly starving or sick. Solve that problem and you move towards solving the next.

It's not about killing an underclass. Human beings are selfish. >Educated societies have far fewer children than non, to the point that some first world countries are losing population. You're citing statistics without understanding the reason why. Education means a higher household income which has become less so during the recent economic crisis. The traditional reasoning, while crude, of why poor people have more…

Education and income both seem to effect fertility independently. There is evidence that income correlates with higher fertility, even controlling for education: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/52/09/48/PDF/publi_p... and vice versa: http://csde.washington.edu/~scurran/files/readings/May12/Why...

That said, all of the science on the subject is measuring very specific things and should be interpreted narrowly. You can say income is broadly correlated with fertility, and rule out some specific measures of education as an explanation for that particular (small) piece of the variance pie, but you can't then just make up an explanation and pretend it's supported by science. Just-so stories like the one you're telling are at best food for thought, or fodder for future experimental hypotheses. There's no scientific basis that I know of for the kind of mechanism you're proposing. Though I'd be happy to see more studies on the subject.

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