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Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

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111–120 of 151 posts

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#111
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not accessible. As I said: IPCC's SRREN gives mortality/GWh statistics, and nuclear is not the safest, by that measure. Data included Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but not Fukushima. Actually, I've previously discussed both here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/267e5e/what_are... NB: Conca is a rather partisan pro-nuclear advocate. I've found his credibility wanting and bias quite evident in pa…

the report is 1088 pages and has appendices everywhere, can you point out where you found the risk comparison? A ctr-f for risk finds 511 uses

One of the appendices is risks of differrent generating methods. Should show up in the table of contents.

And yeah, I know it's long....

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#112
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not accessible. As I said: IPCC's SRREN gives mortality/GWh statistics, and nuclear is not the safest, by that measure. Data included Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but not Fukushima. Actually, I've previously discussed both here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/267e5e/what_are... NB: Conca is a rather partisan pro-nuclear advocate. I've found his credibility wanting and bias quite evident in pa…

the report is 1088 pages and has appendices everywhere, can you point out where you found the risk comparison? A ctr-f for risk finds 511 uses

Starting at p. 993: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Annex_II.pdf

And p. 745: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10.pdf

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#113
post #47

> A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything. Like nuclear fission? Or how about solar? Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won't help. In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc... The problem is corruption and safety. I've seen…

Moral change is so hard that people assume it's impossible. But if you can tackle it, it makes so many things easier or at least possible. It's at the heart of the Baha'i approach, which has development as its goal, but starts by training young people in honesty & altruism and developing a community oriented around local service (it aims at adults too, but they're harder to reach unless they are already basically on…

I think the morality based approach is not going to work for the majority of society, as it didn't in the past. Instead, we should take an analytic approach and focus on maximizing integration (freedom to act) and differentiation (freedom to think).

Integration is the idea that we should all have the ability to leave our mark on society. In other words, it means to have access.

Differentiation is the idea that we should be free to be different, that we should not fear for our physical safety. Unless people have the ability to express their creativity without restraint, we will have a society like the old Communist block, and we are headed to that with the latest mass surveillance policies, unfortunately.

An example of a differentiated and integrated society is the Open Source community. Another example is the brain, which has an astounding number of components tightly integrated yet differentiated. A third example would be the free market, where each agent tries to differentiate its offering from the competition and yet also has to be closely integrated with the other agents in order to benefit from the opportunities they create. A fourth example: the ecosystem, where each species is differentiated in order to benefit from a niche yet they also need to be integrated and function as a complex whole.

If we have differentiation and integration in society then our minds can cooperate to build a better future, organically, from the grassroots. In such a society a person would be free to be creative and have a low entry barrier to the market. If we took these two core principles and try to optimize them in society and politics, we'd maximize happiness. A differentiated-integrated system has a superior ability to adapt and find solutions to its problems.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#114

I'm surprised Gates, for all his work in this field, has failed to recognise that we're burning up more food growing cattle and farming animals, than if we were to just eat the plant resources we use to feed the animals. It's mathematically crazy that, during a mass shortage of food in some parts of the world, we're feeding a net loss of food in order to eat animal produce. He's even insane enough to support getting…

We will not solve the problems of the meat industry by convincing people to eat less meat, asceticism never works as public policy. The way forward on that issue is to develop synthetic meat products that can out-compete animal meat on economical/ethical/environmental dimensions.

You just have to put a sin tax on it like we do with (for example) cigarettes.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#115
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear Fission? Safe? As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima). Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for…

> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere Right, because government never cheaps out on massive infrastructure projects...

> Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt

From my original comment.

So, please learn to read.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#116
post #73
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear Fission? Safe? As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima). Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for…

Do you think other forms of energy are immune to this? Yet, in the actual world Nuclear power kills so many fewer people than any other kind of power - solar included - that's it's not even in the same ballpark.

And on the other hand we have ten thousands of people directly dying slow deaths due to nuclear power — the leukemia regions in the Elbmarsch, or in southern Bavaria, or around the Asse II come to mind.

Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.

Just counting direct deaths is misleading.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#117
post #66
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear Fission? Safe? As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima). Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for…

> Nuclear Fission? Safe? Nuclear power and uranium mining is far cleaner and safer than coal, oil/gas, even hydro. Coal mining, hydro accidents, and the various deaths from oil/gas extraction, power plant accidents, etc..., far outstrip deaths from nuclear power plant accidents. Not to mention the health costs that coal has inflicted on the world, the amount of people displaced and ecosystems destroyed by hydro, and…

For the people who end up having to live with contaminated tap water and only learn about it decades later (see Leukämiecluster Elbmarsch for example) it ends up having similar, or worse, results than coal, though.

And especially the waste issue isn't easily solvable.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#118
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear Fission? Safe? As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima). Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for…

> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima) And don't even get me started on the rapacious capitalists running Chernobyl...

Just because — as I mentioned in the original comment, which you would know, if you could read — a state-owned solution is even worse doesn't mean a company omptimizing for lowest quality and highest profits they can get away with is a "good" concept.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#119
post #47

> A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything. Like nuclear fission? Or how about solar? Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won't help. In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc... The problem is corruption and safety. I've seen…

Society is built on trust, and if you don't have trust in the energy company, or the justice system, or even your neighbours, then that sets a limit to how high functioning the society can become.

Aspects of these issues can be observed in pretty much every country, no matter how rich or developed. For instance, it is quite clear that because people in the US has no trust for social insurance systems, that puts a cap on how efficient their workforce can get. That doesn't matter economically as long as there is a lot of unskilled labour, but it leaves no possibility for the whole workforce to get skilled and well educated. That could matter at some point in the future.

Re: Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter

#120
post #63
post #47

> A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything. Like nuclear fission? Or how about solar? Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won't help. In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc... The problem is corruption and safety. I've seen…

Yours is such a tangential comment, it doesn't remotely relate to anything in the Gates's letter. You have just repeated the same old blah about corruption, safety, and infrastructure. All that Bill and Melinda are saying is that solving the problems they classify as energy and time will make the world a better place. > In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital,…

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