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

gatesnotes.com

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

#611

Post by conception »

fallingknife wrote: post #461
legitster wrote: post #49

It's interesting he decided to go this way rather than put it into a sustainable trust and just trickle money out indefinitely. I suspect he believes that these causes need shock therapy. To eradicate a disease, you are better off doing it all in one go. I also wonder if he looks at something like the Ford Foundation and realize in the long run that any charitable trust will just turn into an overstuffed political ad…

If you have more money than anyone else on earth, the highest leverage use of that money is going to be to fund projects that require more capital than anyone else can afford to fund and that governments are unwilling to fund. That way you know you are actually adding to the opportunity set and not just displacing someone else. The difficult part is, of course, deciding which of those projects that only you can fund…

Actually the highest leverage would be to bribe electable politicians to get governments to be willing to fund your projects. It’s remarkably cheap apparently to do.

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

#612

Post by perilunar »

sokoloff wrote: post #165
999900000999 wrote: post #133

>The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities. Arguably he's already done so much for billions of people. Had typing on computers not became the main way businesses communicate , anyone with bad, handwriting would be stuck in menial work. When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad it was assumed I would never amount to anyth…

> None of this would have been possible without Gates. Though he and his company did a lot to change the prevalence of typing, if he or Microsoft didn’t come along, someone else would have led the computing revolution with probability 1.

They didn't even lead — everything they did was unoriginal.

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

#613

Post by perilunar »

jll29 wrote: post #508

It is an interesting game-theoretic question how to spend money x (say, hundreds of billions) to maximize good. - Should you first educate anyone who cannot read or write? - Should you first feed anyone hungry/thirsty? - Should you first provide shelter for all without homes? - Should you first make peace for all without safety? (all the way down the Maslow pyramid of needs) How would the philanthropic billaires unit…

> Should one "buy" a military force that is mightier than any country's

You'd be better off starting a clandestine agency that simply assassinates evil people. If anyone who started a war or oppressed their people was bumped off they would soon learn.

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

#614

Post by herewulf »

stewx wrote: post #409
js8 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among billionaires maybe he is on the good side. But in general? Linus Torvalds did more for the world than Bill Gates, IMHO. And he didn't need to set up a system that first appropriates money in order to "be generous" later.

What diseases has Torvalds eradicated?

SCO UNIX.

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

#615

Post by barbazoo »

lostmsu wrote: post #440
RataNova wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to love Gates or everything the foundation does to recognize that putting billions toward global health and poverty is way better than setting up a dynasty or letting it sit in investments

> letting it sit in investments Depends on investments. Arguably tech advances are more effective for alleviating hunger than direct food donations long term.

When though? When is it enough to be used for something good?

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

#616

Post by kubb »

_bin_ wrote: post #577
kubb wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's you again, you're the guy echoing specific contemporary political figures, and dressing up American isolationism in rhetoric. In the other thread you were claiming that America subsidises Europe's healthcare by paying for its defence.

Funny how when I specifically share opinions that you specifically dislike, you sling mud about "echoing". Of course, everyone else's opinions are well-founded and of their own mind. Mine, on the other hand, are downloaded straight into my head from a daily Fox News broadcast. You can tell by how my opinions aren't your opinions, and therefore must be those of some Bad Guy or not Real Opinions. Get a life dawg.

> opinions that you specifically dislike

You’re only sharing one opinion (America should isolate), and you’re presenting it as a fact (you refer to being „correct”).

I think you’re projecting the dislike towards your opinion. If I see American electoral politics seep into HN, I’ll call it out, as dictated by my intellectual curiosity.

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

#617

Post by therealdrag0 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #500
SteveNuts wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely, even at extremely conservative returns.

> That much wealth could probably fund every food bank in the country indefinitely That seems like an incredibly stupid way to spend money that has been eradicating diseases and saving lives in countries where food insecurity isn’t a choice.

Do food banks lack funding? In my region they often struggle to give away food before throwing it out. Even the poor in America don’t starve.

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

#618

Post by bigfatkitten »

calepayson wrote: post #607
bigfatkitten wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a free advice nurse. It is good for the other use cases, but it is the worst possible source of advice on subjects where the user has no expertise, and where there are serious health or safety consequences for getting it wrong.

I totally agree in situations where folks have access to an advice nurse. Always prioritize an expert over an llm. Same goes for the others, if you have the means I think you should get a tutor or an editor as well. However, if you’re choosing between nothing and an llm then the llm starts to become a great option. I used to work rescue and if I had caught one of my coworkers asking an llm how to treat a patient I wo…

I'd rather see a Good Samaritan being talked through CPR or whatever by a dispatcher who's trained to give that advice over the phone, rather than having a hallucinating LLM tell them to do something deadly.

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

#619

Post by thedailymail »

ghaff wrote: post #71
legitster wrote: post #49

It's interesting he decided to go this way rather than put it into a sustainable trust and just trickle money out indefinitely. I suspect he believes that these causes need shock therapy. To eradicate a disease, you are better off doing it all in one go. I also wonder if he looks at something like the Ford Foundation and realize in the long run that any charitable trust will just turn into an overstuffed political ad…

Was just talking with some folks last weekend about this in a different context. Open-ended foundations can easily have their missions drift and also become essentially sinecures for an executive director. Ford Foundation is a great example of what can happen. Olin is a good example of a foundation that was set up to dissolve after some length of time.

Mission drift can sometimes go in a positive direction. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, for example, functioned primarily as a tax evasion vehicle while Hughes was alive. After his death, the HHMI was in deep trouble with the IRS and sitting on an endowment of ~$5 billion. So it appointed former NIH director Donald Fredrickson to turn it into an actual research funding organization and mend relations with the tax authorities and research community.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-11-fi-2620-s...

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

#620

Post by jpc0 »

calepayson wrote: post #607
bigfatkitten wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a free advice nurse. It is good for the other use cases, but it is the worst possible source of advice on subjects where the user has no expertise, and where there are serious health or safety consequences for getting it wrong.

I totally agree in situations where folks have access to an advice nurse. Always prioritize an expert over an llm. Same goes for the others, if you have the means I think you should get a tutor or an editor as well. However, if you’re choosing between nothing and an llm then the llm starts to become a great option. I used to work rescue and if I had caught one of my coworkers asking an llm how to treat a patient I wo…

Most first aid can be broken down very basically.

Call a professional for help. Are they breathing, is their heart beating, are they bleeding.

If you haven’t called someone that can actually save the persons life no amount of first aid will help.

Unfortunately unless something is obviously preventing breathing as someone untrained theres not a lot you can do if they aren’t breathing.

Heart beating is pretty easy, chest compressions…

Bleeding again, pressure, and a lot of it to try to prevent the bleeding.

I would want to check what an AI response is to some situations but as long as it just tackles those cases it can probably only do more good than harm.

Id be more worried some good samaritan would start cutting people to try to “get an airway” or some nonsense. That would significantly increase mortality rates…

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