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My new favorite book of all time

gatesnotes.com

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Re: My new favorite book of all time

#11

Post by cs702 »

I read Pinker's previous book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," and found it eye-opening; it changed the way I perceived the world. Highly recommended. (Here's a review: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-an... )

This book, his latest one, is now an automatic buy for me.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#12

Post by dalbasal »

drcode wrote: post #9

Good on Bill Gates to not just choose a feel-good book for sake of "virtue signaling", but a book with real substance in it. (The fact that this book happens to be optimistic is incidental)

I dunno how strong it is, but I have a feeling that the virtue signalling you mention is at least tangentially at odds with the "reason, science, and humanism" he mentions.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#15

Post by melling »

I don’t get it. It’s a feel good book?

Something more interesting would be learn how to more quickly improve the world. The world of 2100 could arrive in 2050, for example.

Gates has around $100 billion to improve the world. How to most effectively leverage his money, for example?

Build a better pharmaceutical company and cure some of the diseases on his list? Help to create better economies in Africa?

[UPDATE]

This comment got downvoted fast. I guess I’ll be happy with the improvements and learn to live with the current rate of progress.

Any other feel good comments from the book that I could use at a party?

[UPDATE]

Don’t want to waste fu karma today. So, answer is half the world’s population lives in cities. Perhaps we could increase by making them more liveable. I’m all for reducing the human footprint on the world. Wildlife crossings, fewer roads and cars, less plastic, etc. How about a billion people move one planet over? A lot depends on increasing knowledge and reducing costs. Let’s increase the rate of innovation!

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#17

Post by topleveldomain »

"War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. But before the creation of the United Nations in 1945, no institution had the power to stop countries from going to war with each other. Although there have been some exceptions, the threat of international sanctions and intervention has proven to be an effective deterrent to wars between nations."

I would argue that something else that happened in 1945 has been a much bigger deterrent of war - at least among the developed countries of the world: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once the world saw the atom bomb's capability for destruction, the motivation to avoid war increased significantly (to put it lightly).

Surely the Cold War would have been a real war if not for nukes, no? I don't think the US and Russia were avoiding conflict because "the UN made it illegal."

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#18

Post by voidmain0001 »

yarapavan wrote: post #2

Interesting facts discussed: * The global average IQ score is rising by about 3 IQ points every decade. * Time spent doing laundry fell from 11.5 hours a week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014.

If you live in an area with reasonably priced electricity and access to plentiful water. I lived in Honduras for 3 years (2009 - 2012) and laundry consumed far too much of my time because water in the community came twice per week, and electricity was expensive. I had a cistern which was connected to the water main, and I installed a floating shut off valve so that I could leave the valve open to fill with water when it came without notice and invariably I was out working. I couldn't afford a dryer due to high cost of electricity and I was volunteering without any spare income during that period so I had to wash and dry clothes on sunny days. There were people in the community that still washed clothes by hand using a scrub board and I know that they spent many hours weekly on it.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#20

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

yarapavan wrote: post #2

Interesting facts discussed: * The global average IQ score is rising by about 3 IQ points every decade. * Time spent doing laundry fell from 11.5 hours a week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014.

The IQ thing is the Flynn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect), which is pretty cool, if a little puzzling.

The laundry one is also good, because I hadn't already heard of it :)

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