91–100 of 128 posts
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In philanthropy, yes. His personal conduct appears to not be so admirable.
How important is that?
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Why is it that his "admirably altruistic life" never seems to conflict with what Microsoft's goals are, if the line is that he's "changed since he started Microsoft". If that were the case, wouldn't it make sense that his new "altruistic" ideals conflict with the "ruthless competitor" ideals that Microsoft holds?
Two monks were walking when they met a swift but shallow stream that they needed to cross. There was a young woman stood on the bank who also needed to get across, but she was scared, so she asked the monks for help. The monks had taken vows of chastity which included never touching a woman and the younger monk refused. The other, older monk, picked up the young woman and carried her across, gently placing her down o…
If bill gates in the past was "ruthless" and Microsoft was born from that, then it's logically inconsistent to say "bill gates is a good person because of his altruism despite his ruthlessness in the past" since his current altruism does nothing to address that past ruthlessness.
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I'm defending Hacker News, it's really just that simple. Can you please use the site as intended? It's only worth anything if it's interesting, and vandalizing it is just a way to destroy it for everybody. I'm sure you don't leave campfires burning in dry forests or toss your trash on the street. Why do the equivalent here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If I'm going to be frank here, it's because you've already allowed the trash in the street. The allowance of certain subjects to be discussed, combined with some of the moderation policies ostensibly designed to quell flamewars, have given a certain segment of the population a license to think they can act like this. You bring the hammer down just as hard on people also trying to defend HN. And since those people wan…
Am I the only one growing suspicious of this since the SBF/FTX effective altruism turned out to be a front to masquerade a good old Ponzi? I don't think the Gates foundation is a Ponzi, but I am not entirely convinced that all of this is really what is advertised. Are there any reliable (external and independent) audits for charities?
> I am not entirely convinced that all of this is really what is advertised. What does that even mean? Be explicit. Right now I'm left to assume you think he's implanting 5G chips in children... More to the point, barring huge changes in this country, what else can we expect of the ultra rich? What Gates is doing is nearly best case scenario...
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I hate how nobody can have a change of heart and do an INSANE AMOUNT OF GOOD without some goofball constantly needing to feel cool by pointing out they weren't always doing good stuff. Who gives a shit about anticompetitive behavior in comparison to saving human lives from a preventable disease? Talk about missing the forest for the trees. It's so miserable to talk about positive actions these days, because it's verb…
Yeah, well there are those flight logs that tell a pretty disgraceful story.
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Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay. We need to accelerate this in places that are still growing, slow them down but…
Why isn’t endless growth attainable? It’s like saying “we can’t keep writing poems forever.” Sure we can. Realistically, many poems will be forgotten. During my lifetime, we’ve probably forgotten/lost more poems than were written in all of history before my birth. But we can keep making them, just as we can keeping building parents and software and flux capacitors and warp drives. Why is there an inevitable limit, I…
The issue here is that "growth" is ambiguous, and right now is mostly defined as "GDP" or some other measure of money. Unfortunately, the nature of money is that zero-sum portions of the economy can get more expensive, but expanding-sum portions have a fundamental price limit. Therefore, if you define growth as "money", you can't have endless growth.
Of course, you can have endless improvements to quality of life that don't involve constrained resources, it just won't increase GDP.
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Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay. We need to accelerate this in places that are still growing, slow them down but…
It is an excellent thing, then, that we are not simply stuck on this Earth.
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In philanthropy, yes. His personal conduct appears to not be so admirable.
How important is that?
I for one, am not super happy that half of the third world relies on a child rapists' friend to get their Malaria vaccines.
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Two monks were walking when they met a swift but shallow stream that they needed to cross. There was a young woman stood on the bank who also needed to get across, but she was scared, so she asked the monks for help. The monks had taken vows of chastity which included never touching a woman and the younger monk refused. The other, older monk, picked up the young woman and carried her across, gently placing her down o…
The "why do you care" argument kind of falls on deaf ears when we all give our consent to discuss the contents of the article, and continue to give our consent as we actually reply to comments. If bill gates in the past was "ruthless" and Microsoft was born from that, then it's logically inconsistent to say "bill gates is a good person because of his altruism despite his ruthlessness in the past" since his current al…
> Our work on education goes back to the foundation’s earliest days, and our focus on improving math skills goes back almost as far. Although there are many factors that affect a student’s trajectory, the evidence shows that it’s extremely important for them to succeed in math. For example, those who pass Algebra I by ninth grade are twice as likely to graduate from high school and more likely to go on to college, ge…
It also looks like conflating "success" with "high-paying career". Most people would probably consider a high paying career success, but the idea that we're not even questioning that assumption when talking about children's education shows how it gets propogated.