False dichotomy. You can do both at the same time.
He's not saying you can't do both, he's saying that we need to get our priorities straight. Which is true.
An interview with Bill Gates
21–30 of 171 posts
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#22The answer to every single problem in the world is education. The internet is education... and cats.
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#23Why, so they can't create companies to support their countr's GDP to become independent of your pity aid? What a monopolistic cunt. Make microsoft quit taxing android phones for a windows license before you act like you have a high ground beyond your 22 hidden patents. What a rich shitmark.
You don't have to agree with everything that a person says or does in order to acknowledge a simple truth. If Gates said the sky is blue, would you (as you have done) call him a 'cunt' for saying so? Clean water, healthy food, tenable living environment... All these things obviously matter more than internet connectivity. I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise. If you can get yourself vaccinated against a dise…
The country these people are living in should have hospitals. They should be able to affordably produce antibiotics, malaria nets and everything else.
Antibiotics and most other medical products are unnecesarilly burdened by patents and become prohibitevely expensive unless some rich patron grants them something they could buy at a much cheaper price.
Patents can be a tax on those who are unlucky. I think certain things deserve patents. But the company he represents taxes any linux device as a microsoft device.
I agree people should be healthy. But you know what? Maybe they should be able to make their own fucking choices in their own fucking hospital on their own fucking dime.
He is a cunt for being afraid of competition and supporting autonomy. That is a sign of the weak and those who are unable to deal with truly dynamic problems that come from actual competition.
In all honesty I understand his position. But for him to vocalize it as though he doesn't see the poor billions as potential competitors? Too fucking bad. He can have his own beliefs but fuck spreading a narrative.
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#24He's right. Poverty, disease and basic things like that are things about _survival_, the internet is not. But mainly, the title is provocative and misleading. The article clearly states, he was asked a leading question "asked whether giving the planet an internet connection is more important than finding a vaccination for malaria", and he answered. The title makes it seem like he went out of his way to make the compa…
Those things are also about increasing our problems down the line IMHO The world population has doubled in the last 30 years. Doesn't that scare anyone else? Sure, you could save a few million poorly educated people from dying. Then what? They're all going to need food, energy, education, housing, etc etc. Saving people from dying is no good at all if they still have a shitty life and die from something else anyway.
> The world population has doubled in the last 30 years. Doesn't that scare anyone else?
Not that greatly. Birth rates in near enough every country are dropping after having peaked. 7 billion in 2011, 8 billion in 2025, 9 billion in 2043, 10 billion in 2083 is what UNFPA predicts. As education improves and the relative value of each life, and as people live longer on average, the Malthusian catastrophe is one I would think we will avoid. In fact it is this stabilisation of the population that worries me because without any immediate pressure from something else, with no race, no competition and no Sturm and no Drang in progress, will we be destined to find the answer to the Fermi Paradox through our own fate?
Look at this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Populatio... and then consider that while the case of Japan seems about to be a portent for other countries. Doesn't this scare you even more - the thought of the human race ending with a whimper? Or will each of us be, by our current standards, a god among machines living a life a hundred times more valuable than those of their ancestors in their grasp over the earth. If anything these kinds of questions should probably keep you more awake than the thought of a Malthusian catastrophe at this point.
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#25He's right. Poverty, disease and basic things like that are things about _survival_, the internet is not. But mainly, the title is provocative and misleading. The article clearly states, he was asked a leading question "asked whether giving the planet an internet connection is more important than finding a vaccination for malaria", and he answered. The title makes it seem like he went out of his way to make the compa…
Those things are also about increasing our problems down the line IMHO The world population has doubled in the last 30 years. Doesn't that scare anyone else? Sure, you could save a few million poorly educated people from dying. Then what? They're all going to need food, energy, education, housing, etc etc. Saving people from dying is no good at all if they still have a shitty life and die from something else anyway.
Funny thing is, we "know" relatively good, what the maximum of earths population will be and why. And we know (also relatively good) how fast we will lift people from poverty, given the actual and historical numbers.
Hans Rosling showed it quite well in a TED talk he gave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#26Why, so they can't create companies to support their countr's GDP to become independent of your pity aid? What a monopolistic cunt. Make microsoft quit taxing android phones for a windows license before you act like you have a high ground beyond your 22 hidden patents. What a rich shitmark.
Serisously, this is about malaria, internet, a better life for people and you start nagging about ms-vs-google-vs-linux etc?
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#27He's right. Poverty, disease and basic things like that are things about _survival_, the internet is not. But mainly, the title is provocative and misleading. The article clearly states, he was asked a leading question "asked whether giving the planet an internet connection is more important than finding a vaccination for malaria", and he answered. The title makes it seem like he went out of his way to make the compa…
Those things are also about increasing our problems down the line IMHO The world population has doubled in the last 30 years. Doesn't that scare anyone else? Sure, you could save a few million poorly educated people from dying. Then what? They're all going to need food, energy, education, housing, etc etc. Saving people from dying is no good at all if they still have a shitty life and die from something else anyway.
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Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#28Getting rid of Malaria is obviously a higher priority than internet access from the perspective of any one person living in the third world today. I have much respect for Bill Gates for the work he's doing in that area.
However, there is a kind of shortsightedness in his attitude: The thing is, societies evolve because of technology and opportunities. So while it is preferable for each individual to have no internet and no malaria, society as a whole might progress more by taking care of the fundamental causes of poverty (lack of education and opportunity, government corruption, etc) rather than fighting the symptoms.
Even if it turns out that Gates is right and I'm wrong, dismissing the relevance of the internet as flippantly as he has done is intellectually dishonest to a certain extent.
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#29Why, so they can't create companies to support their countr's GDP to become independent of your pity aid? What a monopolistic cunt. Make microsoft quit taxing android phones for a windows license before you act like you have a high ground beyond your 22 hidden patents. What a rich shitmark.
Serisously, this is about malaria, internet, a better life for people and you start nagging about ms-vs-google-vs-linux etc?
The country could potentially have their own corporations that produce a tax basis for hospitals. Those hospitals could have a much lower cost of setup.
You want me to pretend that his short time frame narrative matters? I'd be happy to die today I knew it was part of a meaningful step for others to get beyond the limits they were born into. Sadly socialist demagoguery tend to be run by worse fucks.
Re: An interview with Bill Gates
#30So there's a philosophically sound argument that eradicating malaria comes before worldwide Internet access. Or does it just rely on majority consensus that the one should come before the other?
I mean if you keep asking "Why?" like a 5 year old, eventually you hit what underlies the reasoning: some basic assumptions that each person holds and that the rest of the argument is built on. E.g. Kant's categorical imperative.
The problem is not everyone might agree with your most fundamental assumptions, and when you arrive at questions like "Internet or malaria eradication first?" people will disagree. Unless you lay those assumptions bare, it's unnecessary argumentation.
E.g. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.." Well I might just not hold that that truth is self-evident, and disagree with you on any argument you build on that assumption.