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Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

nytimes.com

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Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#161

Post by hpkuarg »

wolverine876 wrote: post #78
KMag wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some loopholes with donations, mostly regarding difficult-to-value benefits and also around donating dificult-to-value things rather than cash, stocks, and/or bonds. But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times t…

> But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment. I think it's highly unfair in that it shifts decisions on social spending…

> it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals.

To the degree that it's possible to amass wealth in this country without having to coerce people (a la crony capitalism), the money from those few wealthy individuals are a time-delayed, indirect sum of the democratically-made decisions of the people to spend their hard-earned dollars on the products and services those wealth individuals have offered.

Philosophically, it's not all that different from the people's will being indirectly expressed via their elected representatives in government.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#162

Post by metacritic12 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #156
t_mann wrote: post #134

One thing that I don't get - if I was in the enviable position to make such donations, the one thing that I'd do is fund a company/foundation with a single goal - capture the maximum amount of carbon (+equivalents, +research into other ways to fixing climate change). There must be something I'm missing because I don't get eg what Bill Gates is doing. He says he wants to give away most his fortune to fix the biggest p…

How many people die per year from natural disasters and where does that fit in the overall picture of human suffering? Take that figure and deduct by whatever amount is the natural baseline (since eliminating inclement weather is impossible). Fewer people die from natural disasters today than ever in human history and despite world population being at all time highs. You can believe the hype about a particular issue…

Absolutely! I think there's a group of people who get sucked into the narrative of X being the world's largest problem, and then get really exasperated when people are working on anything other than X. They see inattention to X as almost an affront.

Substitute for X "climate change", "AI risk", "Nuclear risk", "Energy depletion". And interestingly the X's are mutually exclusive. So climate change maximalists and AI risk maximalists can be mutually exasperated at each other.

BTW, this is not to say one of the narratives is not true. But they can't all be the unique #1 problem.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#163

Post by t_mann »

11101010001100 wrote: post #159
t_mann wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, thanks, I didn't know about that. 2B is a very decent amount of money. But it sounds more a VC that invests in highly risky, but ultimately profitable ventures. Carbon capture doesn't even feature in their wikipedia description ( It invests in a variety of startup companies that are attempting to commercialize new concepts such as nuclear fusion, large-capacity batteries to store renewable energy, and microbe-gen…

The ROI on this donation to stanford will be very similar to investing in carbon capture technology. I'll let you estimate that ROI.

My point is, see it as a donation, not an investment. You probably won't get richer by funding carbon capture, but you also won't get richer from having your name on a building on the Stanford campus.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#164

Post by colechristensen »

lofatdairy wrote: post #130
rayiner wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First off, most of this funding will go to a building. What a waste.

Upvoted because I agree but it's not always this cut and dry. I can't speak for climate research (I imagine it's mostly computer sims so maybe a building is a waste), but for bio research lab space is nearly as important as personnel.

The waste is they hire architects to build elaborate buildings with plenty of affectations that make universities and donors feel important, but that often put functionality far behind form. While the inside of lab space is quite functional and "luxury" in lab space goes is actually lab equipment, sq. ft, and having a window that looks out on something pleasant. Much less impressive looking buildings could be built which facilitated far more science.

Universities have degenerated somewhat into being professional sports teams and professional fundraisers.

"Attracting top talent" is nonsense, universities are already full of people so desperate for positions they work nearly for free.

If I had a billion dollars I'd build a university out the best equipment, the cheapest buildings, and a minimum wage for anyone doing academic work of $100k and see how far that got me.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#165

Post by 11101010001100 »

t_mann wrote: post #163
11101010001100 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ROI on this donation to stanford will be very similar to investing in carbon capture technology. I'll let you estimate that ROI.

My point is, see it as a donation , not an investment. You probably won't get richer by funding carbon capture, but you also won't get richer from having your name on a building on the Stanford campus.

Take a look at the current carbon capture tech and the potential carbon capture rates from existing technologies. We are orders of magnitudes off from what is needed. You will require a fusion (something Gates is already invested in) level advance to achieve meaningful carbon capture. 1B isn't nearly enough.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#166

Post by stanford_labrat »

valarauko wrote: post #135
codekilla wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe at least 170 million was slated initially for construction costs, which may have run over. I don't know how much was for new equipment, but I can't imagine it was a significant fraction (and likely it was an additional expense over those numbers).

170+ million for a BUILDING?! That doesn't make sense to me at all - as someone who spends his waking hours in research laboratories in a newish building of comparable size to the Chen building, I can't see where the money would go.

here's a guess, our fancy new stem cell research building has 3 pieces of chihuly glass about each about the size of a mini cooper...

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#167

Post by namdnay »

metacritic12 wrote: post #158
daterdots wrote: post #11

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.

Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well. In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements. I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the…

A good programmer doesn’t take suck their talent from other programmers around them. Giving so much to a handful of establishments sucks up the best researchers and projects

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#168

Post by grinich »

metacritic12 wrote: post #158
daterdots wrote: post #11

I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.

Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well. In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements. I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the…

Or even better, Rosalind Franklin.

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#169

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

thinkcontext wrote: post #140
t_mann wrote: post #134

One thing that I don't get - if I was in the enviable position to make such donations, the one thing that I'd do is fund a company/foundation with a single goal - capture the maximum amount of carbon (+equivalents, +research into other ways to fixing climate change). There must be something I'm missing because I don't get eg what Bill Gates is doing. He says he wants to give away most his fortune to fix the biggest p…

Gates has talked about what has motivated him to donate the way he has, its no mystery. He says he was gobsmacked by how little money was devoted to the health problems experienced by poor countries and that comparatively small investments could have enormous impact. Also, I think you are underestimating how terrible malaria is > Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that in 2020, 241 million clinical cas…

I mean, that's bad, but those numbers aren't anything compared to what climate change is going to do. If the population of Earth drops by a billion over the next hundred years, that's 10M a year, on average. (I recognize that I'm not differentiating between premature deaths and a lack of replacement births, but still.)

Re: Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr

#170

Post by namdnay »

hpkuarg wrote: post #161
wolverine876 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, if you donate $1.1 billion to an eligible charity (and claim to have gotten nothing in return), then the US government basically pretends that you never made that money, and your tax bill goes down by roughly your marginal tax rate times the size of the donation. There are limits and caveats, but in general, it's a pretty fair treatment. I think it's highly unfair in that it shifts decisions on social spending…

> it shifts decisions on social spending from the democratically made decisions of the people to a few wealthy individuals. To the degree that it's possible to amass wealth in this country without having to coerce people (a la crony capitalism), the money from those few wealthy individuals are a time-delayed, indirect sum of the democratically-made decisions of the people to spend their hard-earned dollars on the pro…

And therefore we should just make the richest person the president, because he’s been elected democratically by our spending! Genius
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