
Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know? - legionof7
I help out with a positive news podcast at my high school and we&#x27;re looking to interview people that have made a positive impact! We&#x27;ve currently interviewed people like Austen Allred and TurboVote.<p>You can find the podcast here, https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anchor.fm&#x2F;somethinggoodhappened<p>Please give interview suggestions!
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diegoperini
Leonard Susskind, a theoritical physicist at Stanford.

He has open, free video lectures that cover an entire 4 year cirruculum of a
physics degree in his personal website called Theoritical Minimum.

~~~
vark90
Yep, he has an extremely charming personality judging from his videos.
Something similar is about Robert Sapolski, also from Stanford. Love watching
these guys lecture. Natural born teachers.

~~~
diegoperini
I suspect our Youtube accounts are doppelgangers. o/

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xparadigm
My high school physics teacher. She taught me the importance of being a good
human being. And that being kind and empathetic to others is the best thing a
person can do. That honesty and integrity are more important than winning. And
she also taught me elementary physics.

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fghtr
Richard Stallman:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallman)

~~~
smellf
How is Stallman a redirect to RMS's page? Shouldn't it go to a disambiguation
or name page?

~~~
fghtr
Here is the answer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stallman&redirect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stallman&redirect=no)

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iamroot
Bill Murray.

Netflix has a new release about him, named "The Bill Murray Stories: Life
Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man."

Highly recommended.

------
en4bz
Sal Khan from Khan Academy.

~~~
pcurve
I still remember his video on fractional reserve lending and how banks
effectively up printing money doing so.

------
gradys
Will MacAskill[1] for his contributions to launching the effective altruism
movement, which has gone on to inspire many other people to take a much more
rigorous and active perspective on doing good.

[1] - Many others were involved, but I know the most about his contributions.

~~~
bevan
For anyone not familiar with EA or Will MacAskill, I highly recommend these
podcasts:

Tim Ferriss: [https://tim.blog/2015/11/22/will-
macaskill/](https://tim.blog/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/)

Sam Harris: [https://samharris.org/podcasts/being-good-and-doing-
good/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/being-good-and-doing-good/)

Joe Rogan:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buyBzK5yM-s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buyBzK5yM-s)

Also, short Economist article on EA:
[https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/02/can-
effec...](https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/02/can-effective-
altruism-maximise-the-bang-for-each-charitable-buck)

------
playing_colours
John Carmack. First, by making one of the most memorable game of my childhood.
Second, by inspiring me and a few of my friends via Masters of Doom [1], with
his tweets, videos, by being a Craftsman, the embodiment of a great
programmer. Masters of Doom helped one of my colleagues to ignite his passion
for coding again, after a long exposure to mind-numbing corporate work.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom)

------
deepaksurti
Prabhu Ramachandran [1], author of Mayavi [2]

The amount of high quality work he does, all the while being positive,
cheerful and friendly is a trait to imbibe and admire.

I am privileged to have him as a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide.

[1]
[https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/](https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/)

[2] [https://github.com/enthought/mayavi](https://github.com/enthought/mayavi)

------
ryanmercer
I'm going to change it a little to the people I've met that have had a sizable
impact on the world.

I've _met_ Sam Altman briefly last year. His involvement with YC the past
several years and co-founding OpenAI have directly and indirectly touched
thousands of jobs.

I've also _met_ Michael Seibel. His involvement with YC the past several years
has directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs. His co-founding of
Junstin.tv allowed it to exist, it is now evolved into twitch.tv which has
allowed some creators and gamers to actually earn a living streaming and has
created tons of micro-communities for video games and table top fans to both
play and watch.

Aside from them, I don't really know (nor have I met) anyone else that I feel
has directly and indirectly had as much of an impact on society as those two
although...

I have very casually known, but never met, Kate Bornstein since our mutual
participation in the Save Caprica campaign. She's certainly been a bastion of
hope for many LGBT persons. She's semi-active on various social media.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bornstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bornstein)

------
ihinsdale
Jon Kabat-Zinn

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-
Zinn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn)

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batonD
Richard Feynman. You could pretend to ask him questions and play sound bites
of his interviews/lectures :)

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berberber
Mom

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gHosts
Kent Beck and Andrei Alexandrescu.

Andrei is quite amazing to me...

Clearly capable of writing code that is wonderful... and incomprehensible to
mortal man.... but wonderfully focused on not doing that.

On making it comprehensible, and producing facilities that are friendly and
nice and doing so with a kindly attitude.

Kent, in addition to the stuff he has done on the TDD front...
[https://www.infoq.com/presentations/self-
image/](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/self-image/)

------
jdmoreira
Bill Gates

~~~
pasta
At the moment I am readig Factfullness from Hans Rosling [1].

He is very positive about the changes of the last (100) years.

Bill Gates is one of those people who contributed a lot to these positive
changes.

[1] ISBN: 978-12-50-12381-7

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baxtr
Would love to hear your definition "impact". On a personal level? On a
business level? On a global level even? I think it is really difficult to
define what impact even means. Sometimes impact is realized even long after
someone has died, think F. Scott Fitzgerald
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Legacy_and_mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Legacy_and_modern_analysis))

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rodolphoarruda
Derek Sivers

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irchans
Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen - His company saved the lives of about 10 million
people (my wild ass guess) with approximately one million water purifiers and
something like 1 billion mosquito nets distributed in Africa. (See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestergaard_Frandsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestergaard_Frandsen))

------
ppetty
Steve Gleason, former NFL player & ALS survivor & Congressional Gold Medal
recipient: [http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-360/0ap3000001010997/Steve-
Gle...](http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-360/0ap3000001010997/Steve-Gleason-I-
feel-like-I-ve-conquered-ALS)

------
vlindos
Milton Friedman. Remarkable economist and very bright person. A noblr prize
winner. Defender of the free market. What is remarkable about him is the
simple way to argue bringing natural human behavior and historical examples.

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bishalpaudel
Alon Geva: He has really practical and straightforward questions for spiritual
awakening:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/awakeningrightnow](https://www.youtube.com/user/awakeningrightnow)

------
simple10
Kevin Adler of Miracle Messages. They reunite long lost homeless people with
their families. I'm sure Kevin would be happy to do your podcast.

[https://miraclemessages.org/](https://miraclemessages.org/)

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elendilm
Christopher Hitchens. His impact on me is so powerful that for the last 4
years I have my ringtone and sms alert tone set to him saying "There are no
final solutions. There is no absolute truth"

~~~
etse
“there is no absolute truth” sounds awful like a statement of absolute truth

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mondo9000
The urban landscape is changing from auto-centric to human-centric (pedestrian
areas, bike-lanes, light-rail). Jan Gehl and Janette Sadik-Khan are two
prominent examples, but there are many others.

------
ArrayList
Dr. Michael Greger. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger)

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amai
Murray Gell-Mann

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triplee
Scott Hanselman

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q845712
Dawa Tarchin Phillips -- he teaches mindfulness and leadership skills in
schools and around the world.

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davidivadavid
Read the question and was about to suggest Austen Allred when I read the rest
of your post. :)

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bishalpaudel
Ocean Whitehawk: Spiritual teacher who has completely changed the lives of her
students.

www.oceanwhitehawk.com

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rodolphoarruda
Tim Ferriss

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sharcerer
Spock

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gmoore
It won't be anyone that uses the word 'impactful'.

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snyena
J. R. R. Tolkien

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sdan
François Chollet

~~~
rytill
Really? Sell me on this one. Keras is great, but socially he leads people to
be careless about AI safety, which is hugely negative.

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0xJRS
Jocko Willink

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meshr
Robin Hanson

~~~
qntty
The sex redistribution guy?

~~~
meshr
Ok, I found Hanson’s view on “sex redistribution” in his blog
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-
envy.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html)

Mad world: It is ok for the US president to pay prostitutes, restrict sex-
redistributing websites and it is ok for the first lady to sell body. What is
not ok is to advocate more liberal sex policies for scientists.

------
james_s_tayler
Tom Bilyue from Impact Theory.

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antisthenes
My parents.

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oonny
Paul Graham

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genie514
Elon Musk

~~~
allemagne
This will be a controversial answer for some reasons I think are misplaced. In
my opinion Elon Musk seems like he has a potent toxic side to his personality,
and he doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of certain things. He also
legitimately seems delusional at times.

However in terms of bringing awareness, optimism, and a willingness to
actively work on engineering solutions to long-term existential threats to
humanity I think his impact on our culture is often understated.

~~~
natalyarostova
If someone has a historical record of making delusions become reality, then I
think they aren't really delusional.

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irchans
George Washington

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irchans
Sir Isaac Newton

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HelenePhisher
Alan Watts

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notomorrow
1) John Carmack

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with_a_herring
Jesus

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tim333
I kinda like Warren Buffett

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irchans
Edward Jenner & Louis Pasteur (vaccines)

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koosnel
Jesus

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anroypaul
Steve Jobs

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jenscow
His availability for interview is greatly exaggerated.

~~~
baxtr
oh man, I miss him almost every day

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Repiro
Jordan Peterson

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cadence14
This is a 'brave' answer...

~~~
james_s_tayler
It's a fine answer. He spends his time railing against Marxism, Postmodernism,
SJW culture and telling people to take responsibility. His main messages seem
to boil down to become resilient and don't destroy the world.

