Live data from Hacker News

My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

gatesnotes.com

581–590 of 704 posts

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#581
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a profit from somehow. People don't change much.

How does he profit from giving away all of his money?

Dig deep enough and there's always a kickback, some business he's involved in that profits one way or the other.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#582
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a profit from somehow. People don't change much.

Yup, the Gates worship is incredibly sad.

I don't get how it happened, it's like an epidemic on this site.

It's not like it takes a lot of effort to find out the truth about that scumbag.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's called cVDPV. It's caused by the virus in the live vaccine "unweakening" itself, and it's typically happening in people with weakened immune systems (e.g. from chronic malnutrition). It's not causing unvaccinated people to get infected, per se. Most cases are mild, and on average there are about 300-400 cases per _year_ for the entire world. But it's absolutely heinous to accuse Gates of deliberately infect…

I largely agree, but there is essentially no possibility of ever eradicating polio with the current OPV strategy. If you stop vaccinating, cVDPV will spread person to person. Some people carry virus for decades and it can become infectious at any time, many years after they were first vaccinated or infected. There will sparse but significant episodes until all humans who were vaccinated with OPV (or infected with the…

cVDPV outbreaks die out on their own, and the newer vaccines are designed to be less likely to escape.

People also don't carry the virus for decades. That's a myth. People with a weakened immune system can get infected with polio even after a childhood vaccination, so that's probably where this myth comes from.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#584
post #456
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there more important issues than tossing more money into that particular furnace? Touch some grass man.

Gates is betting very heavily on AI and thinks it will greatly improve health outcomes. Both for medical research and even primary care. You may not like it, but I'm sure he is offering grants for AI research. Not necessarily for training models, but for finding effective ways to apply models to achieve the foundation's goals. So, it's not a stupid question to ask at all.

AI as defined today is brittle. I am interested in understanding the fundamentals of learning so that systems can be learn as quickly as humans and have thier same level of robustness. Such a breakthrough would have a worldwide impact.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small-scale local charities are fine, but they are by definition _local_. And even the poorest parts of the US are doing much better than a lot of poor countries in Africa and Asia.

Yes they're local, but its not like there's a limit to how many local charities there can be in the world. Operating at a huge scale requires you to lump people together into groups and make assumptions about who they are and what they deserve, as you've done in your example. To me that sounds antithetical to the concept of charity. And even with the best intentions, if you mess up, you're messing up a huge scale.

I can't reasonably be expected to assess which local charities in Chad are even real. I don't think there are _any_, in fact.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#586
post #72

How can u get some of this funding to do fundamental AI research?

Why do you think something that is getting extensive investment from private sources needs philanthropy? Also, billg has laid out the goals of his Foundation and what they aspire to achieve. Which one of those aspirations do you think should be replaced with "fundamental AI research"? A lot of the Foundation money goes on disease research and preventative and curative vaccine and medicine development. All of those ar…

AI as defined today is brittle. I am interested in understanding the fundamentals of learning so that systems can be learn as quickly as humans and have thier same level of robustness. Such a breakthrough would have a worldwide impact.

As far as I can tell, very few places are looking into this topic area. Jeff Hawkins group is one of the few places. I would like to get involved as this area is my passion but I can't connected to funding to do so.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#587
post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does he profit from giving away all of his money?

Dig deep enough and there's always a kickback, some business he's involved in that profits one way or the other.

Do you have any examples?

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulated capitalism, where cases of market failure are addressed.

I sometimes wish we actually had unregulated capitalism. Housing and healthcare would be much less terrible without legislated bottlenecks, among other areas.

On the evidence of what exactly?

American healthcare is literally what you get with unregulated capitalism. Your statement makes no sense.

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree, but there is essentially no possibility of ever eradicating polio with the current OPV strategy. If you stop vaccinating, cVDPV will spread person to person. Some people carry virus for decades and it can become infectious at any time, many years after they were first vaccinated or infected. There will sparse but significant episodes until all humans who were vaccinated with OPV (or infected with the…

cVDPV outbreaks die out on their own, and the newer vaccines are designed to be less likely to escape. People also don't carry the virus for decades. That's a myth. People with a weakened immune system can get infected with polio even after a childhood vaccination, so that's probably where this myth comes from.

It's not a myth at all, off the top of my head I know of at least two cases studies including the study that led to the discovery that remdesivir may treat polio

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10022663/

Immunocompromised hosts can shed infectious polio for their entire lives.

These outbreaks sometimes die on their own, but there's no reason to believe they wouldn't spread widely if we completely stopped vaccinating

Re: My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth

#590
post #330

This is the way that foundations and endowments should operate. Too many well-intentioned organizations wind up milquetoast tax-exempt hedge funds aimed primarily at self-preservation because the received wisdom is that they should focus on building endowments and keep their withdrawal rates below 4% in order to achieve immortality. I'm a big believer in research-driven philanthropy and mission-driven organizations.…

> Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Ha ha, well here's mine. First, I'm way ahead of Mr Gates: I'm already worth almost nothing. But if I had billions to give , I would be supporting Science Education, Democracy and Journalism. Scholarships for bright, motivated students. With all due respect to Mr G, I don't believe any of his objectives is possible with stable, educated, science-orientated social progress. Human…

* s/with/without/
Post reply on HN