
Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems - gjenkin
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578261780648285770.html
======
cs702
Mr. Gates writes, _"I have been struck by how important measurement is to
improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set
a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal — in
a feedback loop ... This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not
done and how hard it is to get right."_

He's talking from experience. Between the late 1990's and early 2000's, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wasted around $1.7 billion on a broad-ranging,
intensive, national effort to study small schools... based on a flawed
measurement of Bayesian probabilities!

The foundation looked only at the probability that a school would be small
given high school performance, and seemingly forgot to look at the probability
that a school would be high-performing given a small school size. The two are
not the same. $1.7 billion, poof!

The following analysis, by a professor of statistics, explains in more detail
how the foundation got it wrong:
<http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8863.pdf>

~~~
adaml_623
Guy spent $1.7 Billion testing a hypothesis. Admitted he was wrong.

Probably would have been better to fail faster, etc. But it was his money.
Kudos to him.

------
lenkite
I must say the comments here are extremely cynical and somewhat disturbing.
Speaking as a citizen from India, (still third world despite our progress), I
can say that the Gates foundation has done a turn of good in our corner of the
world. You might dislike Microsoft the corporation, but Gates as a
philanthropist deserves praise.

~~~
dubya
I am pleased to hear that Gates's money is doing good somewhere in the world.
In the US, I think, the Gates foundation has a much higher profile in
education reform, which is very controversial because it drags in all of the
baggage of accountability, slipping standards, unions, privatization, big
government, etc.

------
zb
He is not wrong, but there is also a certain danger in this approach that goes
unremarked upon. It is often difficult to measure the outcome you actually
desire, and a lot easier to measure some proxy for it. But attaching
incentives to optimising some metric - making an intermediate goal the goal in
itself - tends to make it an extremely unreliable proxy for the original
worthy cause.

We know that Gates is aware of this, because he is credited with having once
said: "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring
aircraft building progress by weight." We can only hope that he is keeping
this in mind; he certainly makes no reference to the problem in this piece.

The Gates Foundation has in the past spent billions driving ruthlessly and
with careful measurement toward what turned out to be entirely
counterproductive goals. Simply measuring more stuff will not be sufficient to
prevent it from doing so again.

Some recommended reading material on the subject:

Ritter & Webber, "Dilemma's in a General Theory of Planning" (1973) introduced
the concept of "wicked problems" -
[http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_T...](http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_Theory_of_Planning.pdf)

Dietrich Dörner, _The Logic of Failure_ (1996) covers this ground very well,
including with case studies of people trying to save a fictional third-world
country in a computer simulation of an aid program... with uniformly
disastrous results.

~~~
tptacek
What are the counterproductive goals the Gates Foundation has driven towards?

~~~
zb
I was referring in particular to the "small schools" initiative:
[http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/18/gates-foundation-schools-
op...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/18/gates-foundation-schools-oped-
cx_dr_1119ravitch.html)

------
donniezazen
This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell talk on why future generation will
remember Bill Gates and not Steve Jobs and also why he will be remembered as a
humanitarian and not as a computer genius.

------
ilaksh
Feedback and data related to your actual goals is key to achieving anything,
and of course education and health should be targeted, but a bigger underlying
problem is the structural inequality causing a constant lack of resources for
many countries and communities.

The fact that Mr. Gates ignores this leads me to believe that he thinks that
the grossly unequal distribution of resources is the result of some process
that has a sound basis. Our current 'economic' models, since they do not take
into account equality, health, education, or any other important scientific
data, are fundamentally unsound, and that is why we have the problems of gross
inequality and inadequate distribution of resources.

We should frame this as less exploitation and more fairness rather than more
charity.

~~~
specialist
I agree with what you say. What bothers me about the Gates Foundation is their
education agenda. Their priorities reflect a naive reductionist worldview akin
to Rudyard Kiplings' Just So Stories.

MEASUREMENT

I'm confounded by the emphasis on Taylorism
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management>) and privatization, and
by extension the emphasis on teacher performance.

Make a list of all things wrong with public education in the USA (inequity,
parental involvement, malnutrition, etc). Teacher performance isn't even in
the top ten.

A friend works on some sort of in school room surveillance system at the Gates
Foundation. It records the teacher. Which is then reviewed and the teacher
graded. By what criteria, I can't imagine. Then the teacher's performance is
graded and coaching in administered. For improvement. I asked if any teachers
were advising the project. No. I asked who reviews the tapes. Non teachers.

Yea, that'll help.

Even more standardized testing is another aspect of Taylorism. As every
QA/Test person knows, you cannot test your way to quality.

The only measure of teacher performance is student achievement. But with so
many factors beyond the control any teacher or group of teachers, it's
patently unfair to judge teachers. And yet ask any faculty, group of students,
or parents, and they'll tell you who the great teachers are.

PRIVATIZATION

The outsourcing of education is just a way to divert money meant for the
classroom towards cronies. Standardized testing, textbooks, misc contracts are
some examples.

The rationalization for corporate charter schools is that somehow the free
market will make schools more competitive. Alas, free market means monopoly,
not more parental choice.

Further, how is a private entity more accountable than government? I can
attend board meetings, vote on levies, submit public records requests. But
corporations can easily hide their activities, that's what makes them private
entities.

THE FIX

I believe what's needed is more transparency, more accountability, more
democracy.

Every single profession struggles with their bad apples. What's needed is a
way to hold individuals accountable and some means of either correcting the
problem or firing them. This applies to cops, doctors, accountants, teachers,
everyone.

It's always an open secret who the bad teachers are. But just try to fire one.

A second friend was a principle for a few years. Of the bad apples, one of his
teachers was assaulting his students. For years. My friend wasted three years
trying to fire this person. Opposed by the district, the union, the other
teachers, etc. Couldn't get it done. Violent teacher was a few years away from
retirement, hey buddy, don't rock the boat.

Another friend works in the local school district. He recently related that
people within the district admin were quite pleased they only "had to fire" 5
teachers out of 2,000+ in the last year. That's astonishing. I know there's
more than 5 bad apples in the district. The documentary The Rubber Room shows
what happens to bad teachers in NYC that can't be fired. (Spoiler: They all
sit in a room every work day, doing nothing.) I have it on good authority that
happens in every district. Probably in every profession.

One example from my experience: I wasn't allowed to fire 4 developers on my
team. Pushed onto my team by my VP, who was building an empire. Completely
toxic individuals (eg one Lebanese and one Isreali who would go at each
other). No other manager would deal with them. Complete drain on my team's
morale and productivity. I had numbers, facts, personal reviews in my arsenal.
I couldn't fire them. I can't imagine how much harder it is in a public
context.

But in truth, I don't know a specific fix is for culling bad apples. I believe
this governance issue is the central management challenge in our society.

Meanwhile, I advocate for gathering more data (transparency) so that we can at
least know what's going on.

(Thanks for reading this far.)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I don't necessarily disagree with much you wrote, but this piece about
corporate charter schools,

 _Alas, free market means monopoly, not more parental choice._

seems like it came out of nowhere. Since charter schools entered my area, my
kids have gone from two choices, the local high school and a gifted program
for engineering students at a local college, to many choices, includes a
performing arts school, a science and engineering school for the "non-gifted"
and many others.

As a parent, I have concerns about how charter schools impact the local school
budgets, but monopoly is the exact _opposite_ of the word I'd use.

So I'm curious about what logic brought you to that statement. Your comment
was well thought out, so I don't think you are just pulling statements out of
nowhere.

~~~
specialist
Thanks.

Yea, that was quite the leap. I see privatization equated with competitiveness
all the time. (As those the bidding process isn't an insider rigged game, but
that's whole 'nother issue.)

I'm pleased that charter school led to greater diversity and choice in your
district. Like they say, YMMV.

In the reports I've read, charter schools have been selectively admitting
students, cherry picking, excluding the low potential, aptitude students.
Reinforcing inequity.

Whereas public schools have to take all students. Different rules, same
scoring system. Very unfair.

In my district, we've had short-lived "magnet" programs and schools. They're
hugely popular with students and parents. Teachers seem like them too.
District administrators hate them. Non standard. Must be closed down.
Taylorism redux.

Two of our low income high schools have hugely popular magnet programs. My
friends that teach at those schools say that it creates a class (caste)
system, like two schools in one. The smart, rich, mostly white students in the
gifted programs. The rest in the remedial programs. The two groups rarely
commingle. (I used to volunteer in the classroom, I've seen this firsthand.)

I find that so weird. So much wasted potential.

Whatever the current situation, there's huge money being poured into our local
pro-charter school campaigns. So whereas our district foolish tried to culled
diversity, maybe we'll eventually get it with new charter schools. That'd be
ironic.

Thanks for replying.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The application process is one of those interesting ones. I completely agree
that having a different ruleset but same grading process is completely wrong,
but I think that says more about having involvement from too high of a
governmental level.

Personally, I think our best option would be to do away with the notion of
age-based grades. Make progression based on competency (at least for the core
curricula), so if you are highly competent in math, you may be with students
several years older than you but if your writing stinks, you may be with
younger kids. Instead of trying to force kids into a mold that very few fit
comfortably in, let them grow in their own ways.

I would love to have my kids attend a school like that. My daughter, who is a
gifted writer and artist but struggles non-stop with math (and there are
physiological reasons for that) would be able to be comfortable in school and,
as a result, better able to focus on her strengths instead of trying to shore
up weaknesses that only matter for testing programs.

If the charter system allows more experimentation, then that alone justifies
its existence; but the transition of more than 100 years of "prepare them for
the factory" type of education to "prepare them for knowledge work" will not
painful, especially since we still need some of the "prepare them for the
factory" and many more "prepare them for a trade".

~~~
specialist

      Personally, I think our best option would be to do away with the notion of age-based grades.
    

Agreed.

I've been chewing on two ideas.

Assess student achievement with actual achievements. Just like achievement
badges in the Boy Scouts. My son is an Eagle Scout. After meeting the minimum
requirements, and completing his project, he was able to assemble whatever
achievements tickled his fancy. Promotes self direction and working at one's
own rate.

Have students teach each other, work more collaboratively, grade each other.
Versus lectures, rote memorization, and testing. I've experienced this first
hand (as the student). Peer pressure and expectations work wonders. Hardest,
most rewarding 'A' grade I ever earned. (I was otherwise a terrible student.)

Alas, to date, there's very little research on these two reforms. Some places
have tried the achievement system, results inconclusive. I haven't looked to
see if the peer support system has been tried else where.

------
realcertify
A couple of years ago my wife's 2 years old nephew was diagnosed with
retinoblastoma (eye's cancer). I contacted the world's best hospitals and was
told that the treatment will cost hundreds of thousands dollars.

So I tried to get some financial help from related funds and organizations and
contacted all of them I could find on the internet.

Guess what happened: 90% of them just ignored me, and the rest told me that
they are not helping sick kids, but only doing research work. One came up to
cover up to $3.500(!) if I provide a bunch of documents I was sure I wouldn't
be able to gather in a short term.

On web pages of such funds you normally can easily find a button to make a
donation. But try to contact them if you need help - you will be surprised how
difficult it is.

So we (relatives and friends) collected as much money as we could, the kid was
receiving treatment in one of the local hospitals, in the end both of his eyes
got removed. Maybe the same would have happened in those best hospitals too,
but if there was even the slightest chance to keep his sight it certainly
would worth any money.

Bottom line is - I don't believe in cancer funds any longer, and will never
donate any dime. In fact I'm not even sure that they spend all money for
"Research", they might be just another way to avoid taxes.

May be Bill Gates fund is different, I hope so...

~~~
MichaelGG
In the past, the foundation has explicitly stated that they are not looking to
fund clinics and specific work. While that kind of charity provides immediate
help to people, it does not provide any long-term solutions.

Bill Gates does not have unlimited money. The $40BN or so they manage is not
enough to really make an impact if they focus on immediate solutions like
helping individual cases. They need to use the money to research better ways
and change how governments handle things so that the overall system will be
better.

While it's sad about what happened to your nephew, it's much more sad if such
diseases remain expensive and difficult to treat and more people suffer in the
future. Unfortunately, it is _not_ worth unlimited amount of money to save one
child's sight.

Do the math. If the Gates foundation spent $100,000 to help one person out,
they'd be able to only help about 400,000 people. That, in the scope of
things, is not a whole lot of impact. Their current plan will have far more
impact.

~~~
realcertify
I see your point, but considering that there are almost no advances in cancer
treatment over last decades (despite all that research), may be it would make
some sense to spend some of that money to help sick people? Especially 2 year
old kid with such rare type of cancer? In fact trying to help him could be a
great research in itself, but looks like it's not something they are
interested in.

~~~
MichaelGG
Even if there were no advancements, which is certainly not the case, no, it
would still probably not be a good use of the money. If all forms of cancer
are simply unsolvable (not the case), then research would be better spent on
researching other diseases, working to change healthcare so the costs are not
extremely expensive, and so on.

And why spend $100K+ to save one child? Why not that money, to, say, feed many
starving children? Or build housing?

If "trying to help him" would be a form of "great research", then chances are
someone would be interested in it. You might need to realise that he is simply
unlucky. But not necessarily any more unlucky than a child that gets polio, or
has their skin burned off, or is left brain damaged from a car accident.

It's complicated and sad, but denouncing long-term investment because of
immediate sad situations will only create more sad situations.

------
ChuckMcM
Hmm, would love to see Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet in a
competition to see who can solve more of the worlds problems.

~~~
lancewiggs
In a way there are, or at least BillG and Elon Musk. Buffett is giving his
money to the Gates Foundation. Musk and Gates each identified what they saw as
our greatest issues where they could have impact, and went from there. Whether
we agree with their priorities or not, it's inspiring to watch.

------
nealabq
How to rid the world of all known diseases (the Python method)

"Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for
something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice
of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get
everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again."

<http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/toridof.htm>

~~~
SHIFTHAPPENZ
Also on youtube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM> :-)

------
aramadia
Bill Gates treating the world like a computer optimization problem. First
profile the world (program) and construct suitable benchmarks. Figure out some
reasonable goals and test if your various health care and education programs
affect the benchmark results.

~~~
pbw
As Gates points out in the article, these techniques existed before computers.
So I agree given Gates's background, he is probably applying what he learned
from computers to wider problems. But in the grand scheme of things, computer
science adopted these techniques from other disciplines.

~~~
johnchristopher
I know Gates was a really good (strike that, he was really, really good)
hacker and software engineer.

But I think he was an even better bussinessman. I am pretty sure he's applying
more from the latter background than from the computer field.

~~~
Peaker
Gates was a good business man. I've not heard many call him a good hacker
before. I'd like to hear more...

------
gesman
Dear Bill Gates. Here's yardstick to measure residual value of your efforts:
_If you'd stop doing whatever you're doing, will the world continue benefit
from your past efforts for ages to come?_

Compare "buying food for the hungry" and "teaching the man to fish" - which
effort carry more residual value?

You developed DOS, and then Windows. Even when you stopped - the world
continued rolling with your software and building more and more great stuff on
top of it. Even Ballmer with all his powers couldn't derail your past efforts.

Dear Bill Gates, please stop taking consequences for causes, stop fighting
with shadows. See where you can turn on the light so it will shine when you'll
be long gone. Money + creativity goes the long way. It's time to add
creativity. You can do that! You can do that!

~~~
gesman
Dear Bill Gates. Stop buying stuff for people. Be that vaccines or portable
toilets or donations to some vague "research" causes.

Invest in helping people to discover the powers within. Do not invest in
making people think they need to depend on some external rich power to pull
themselves out of their misery. That is misservice. This is lie. That warm,
fuzzy feeling you get after spending billion on buying stuff for poor people
comes with deeper unease - deep inside you know that you did not really make a
lasting difference. Difference yes. Lasting - only until that billion ran out
and your vaccines are used, food is eaten and very soon they will want more.
This is not a difference.

Invest in helping people to learn the skills, invest in helping people to find
inspiration within, invest in helping people to express their own creativity
and power.

Invest in helping people to discover how each of them can help other million
people without spending billion dollars.

~~~
jackowayed
He's trying to _eradicate_ polio. That would be incredible lasting good.

Research does serious lasting good as well. Research funding built the
Internet, for example.

------
reasonattlm
So far as I'm aware, the Gates Foundation does nothing in regard to the
world's biggest problem, which is aging. Aging kills the most people, causes
the greatest amount of suffering, causes the greatest loss of wealth and
capital, falls most heavily on the poor without access to palliative medical
technologies, etc, etc.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-
outra...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-
outrage-1.php)

You'll see a number of mainstream foundations in the Methuselah Foundation
lists, and those also support the SENS Research Foundation, working on the
basis for ways to reverse the cellular and molecular damage that causes aging.
The Gates foundation isn't there:

<http://mfoundation.org/?pn=donors>

But that's not entirely surprising: from the beginning, the Gates Foundation
has been a very traditional Big Philanthropy operation. Wealth does not grant
vision. Where there is innovation or stepping away from the norms it is of the
incremental type, with none of what Peter Thiel calls "radical philanthropy".
Is this is a criticism of Gates? Sure. But it's equally a criticism of
everyone else. The Gates Foundation is doing what most people think Big
Philanthropy should do. The blind spot for aging is near universal.

~~~
kevincrane
I'd put aging a lot farther down the list of big problems. I'd much rather him
dedicate resources to stopping malaria in Africa, granting children and
average people a shot at living, than to give money to extend grandma and
grandpa's lives by a few more years.

~~~
hughlomas
What about extending the prime years of scientists, engineers, etc? More years
of experience and wisdom to capitalize on and to reinvest their skills and
knowledge into human progress. I for one would prefer that many of the
brightest candles in humanity's past were still lit.

------
dubya
Not everyone is as confident in Bill Gates's magical abilities as he is.

[http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/10/how-bill-gates-
wasted-50-...](http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/10/how-bill-gates-
wasted-50-million/)
[http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny0...](http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny09.html)

~~~
pbw
That 2nd link is an obvious straw man. If you read what Gates is actually
saying [1] it's far more reasonable. There is a huge dynamic range in teacher
abilities. He is saying take the very best, and give them a slightly higher
load. Just as you can take the very best programmers and have them write more
code. But then people freak out and say Gates wants big classes across the
board, it's silly.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2011/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022702876.html)

------
rdl
I'm very glad he's doing what he's doing.

It is also fair that when someone proposes a certain set of objectives, and
then declares a plan to accomplish those, that you can criticize the plan to
accomplish those objectives as being less than optimal. IMO, since this is his
own money, he has every right to pick the objectives he thinks most important.

I think a marginal $1b spent to end the drug war would do more for his stated
goal of fixing underperforming urban schools than a marginal $1b spent on
teacher measurement. The irony is he wouldn't even need to spend $1b to make a
huge impact on ending the drug war -- just showing through data that the drug
war is responsible for many of the problems in schools and urban culture
($10mm to study this?) and then having the courage to promote that result
(free or priceless) would accomplish it.

------
adrianbg
Who has more power to do good in the world? A rich business person or a
"powerful" politician in a democracy? I'm going to go with the business
person. They're free to do anything they can afford, unlike politicians who
are at the mercy of government processes and political opponents.

------
lampe
We will fix nothing if we don't change the OS on that we are running...

OS = what we see(input) and what we do with that knowledge(output)

We can Install this software and this firewall and this make things easy tool
but at the end we still are on the same OS.

------
jaakl
Sometimes it seems that some think that the world biggest problem is that
there are too few people on earth. No, it is not. We are killing our ecosystem
already now. These other human problems like child mortality, poverty etc are
of course emotionally and personally big ones, but resolving them would make
world more crowded and not better place at all. My suggestion: if you put X
amount of money to increase human population, then you must put also at least
same amount to resolve all the next problems what we people generate: over-
harvesting, co2 and other greenhouse gases, pollution etc.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Interesting read.

What is not measured, can not be controlled.

------
singingfish
The best I can say is that BG sure made the right decision stepping down from
Microsoft to do something useful.

------
dos1
I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard
problems and people here are complaining. Sure, they may not be the problems
that _you_ think are most important, and I'm sure the foundation is making
missteps along the way and wasting some money. But his message in this article
is a good one I think:

> _The process I have described—setting clear goals, choosing an approach,
> measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine
> our approach_

This sounds like a pretty pragmatic plan to me. I know that I don't
necessarily agree with the direction he's going (I would personally pick other
problems to tackle), so I just hope someday I'm in a position to do something
along the same vein and learn from the lessons he's willing to share.

~~~
technoslut
>I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard
problems and people here are complaining.

I respect Bill Gates and think his cause is noble but they are partly childish
because of the idealism and the hopes to cure disease. ilaksh's post on this
thread is part of the reason why though I wanted to reply to your post instead
of doing so to his. It will be far more controversial though.

David Attenborough recently said that human beings are a plague on Earth.

I'll present you with three stories:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906520/planet-earth-
narra...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906520/planet-earth-narrator-
david-attenborough-calls-humans-a-plague-on-the)

Peter Beard, in an interview with Alec Baldwin on 'Here's the Thing', said
that AIDS was a good thing in Africa because of overpopulation and it caused
quite a stir.

I listened to an All Things Considered story where, not only was there a
slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks, but they would wait until more
elephants would come back to mourn the slain and the poachers would kill them
too. When asked, off the record, the poacher said he had to feed his family.
The natural question I asked is "Why are you having kids you can't afford?"
The question wasn't asked during the piece and it's something that isn't asked
worldwide.

There are numerous examples of mankind ruining the environment. As the most
intelligent life on this planet, we are to be the custodians and not expand
like a virus.

Even if you took the approach of mankind over everything else we are now
destroying the soil which we rely on and food shortages continue as the price
for food continues to rise.

The answers don't come easy in this world. The best ones are the most
difficult to make. I suspect Western countries will have to do the same in the
coming years to limit population growth.

~~~
MichaelGG
Why exactly does Earth itself have any intrinsic value greater than humans? We
evolved to expand; we're machines to replicate DNA. I'm not sure how you can
state that we now must be custodians and not expand more.

I know you "can't get an ought from an is", and I can come up with several
utility functions that have the effect of limiting humankind's impact, but I'm
not sure there's any fundamental reason they're valid. You may want to save
the environment so you can continue to live, but poaching elephants doesn't
harm human survivability.

~~~
technoslut
>Why exactly does Earth itself have any intrinsic value greater than humans?

If you'd like to be arrogant about it then that's fine. However, we revolve
around and are dependent on animals, insects and plants to provide us life.

>We evolved to expand; we're machines to replicate DNA.

You can expand as much as you want. Nature will fight back like it has with
adaptive viruses and the Ice Age.

>You may want to save the environment so you can continue to live, but
poaching elephants doesn't harm human survivability.

My comment dealt with saving humanity from humans. If you think it's fine to
kill elephants while they hold a funeral then you've lost your humanity. Some
already have. A bunch of 6 year-olds just got killed and NRA subscriptions
went up during that span before any legislation.

~~~
MichaelGG
>You can expand as much as you want. Nature will fight back like it has with
adaptive viruses and the Ice Age.

Ice Age? Can you point me to the theory that shows how Earth or "Nature" is
somehow an entity that performs massive climate shifts in response to too-
successful lifeforms?

There is no necessary balance in nature. It's a constant struggle and what you
see just might be a somewhat stable state. If an actor in that system (like
humans) finds a game-theoretic superior strategy, there's no fundamental
reason why they won't "win" and destroy the rest of the ecosystem and go
extinct. Plenty of other species go extinct all the time. That's nature.

Anyways, I'm not saying it's fine to kill elephants at all. Indeed, I find it
disgusting, and it'd be fantastic if societies could figure out ways to ensure
that poaching isn't a beneficial action. But I am pointing out there's no
mandatory acceptance of any axioms that would generate an obligation to "take
care of the Earth", whatever that means. And there's definitely no particular
reason why a human killing elephants to feed his family is somehow invalid,
whereas if lions do the same thing, it's OK.

~~~
technoslut
>Ice Age? Can you point me to the theory that shows how Earth or "Nature" is
somehow an entity that performs massive climate shifts in response to too-
successful lifeforms?

I can point to scientific theses about how it will occur in the future. Are
you willing to bet against 95% of the scientific community?

>why a human killing elephants to feed his family is somehow invalid, whereas
if lions do the same thing, it's OK.

Are lions wiping out a species?

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derpmaster
Bill Gates eradicating disease is pretty awesome. His weird school ranking
system in the US is pretty bizarre and utilitarian.

"Students would be better served by measures of which colleges were best
preparing their graduates for the job market." is total corporatist bullshit.
How about more free courses online like what MIT and Stanford are doing.

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MTWomg
Didn't read the article; is getting rid of Balmer somewhere in there?

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wildranter
Hey Bill Gates! Fix what Aron Swartz was fighting for.

~~~
onlyup
Which was?

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michaelbuddy
Well for one, he was wanting to make sure that corporations weren't able to
convince government for any self-interested group to control the internet and
in general, the freedom of knowledge and fighting corruption. In regards to
the JSTOR stuff, he was against their locking up of open source, public domain
scientific information behind a paywall. He wanted information to be available
and people to communicate freely. Which helps societies knowledge grow.

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nerdfiles
Money elf found a new way to spend money (that just applies "The Lean
Startup.")

Good on Money elf!

"Huzzah!"

~~~
nerdfiles
"Keep your comments to yourself!"

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krie
The biggest problem is resource depletion and overpopulation. Overpopulation
will be "fixed" through starvation and death. Resource depletion will leave
the current young and future generations with far less extravagant lives.
Adding to the overpopulation through vaccination programmes und su weiter is a
misstep.

~~~
fideloper
Decreasing child mortality rates and increasing healthcare availability is
statistically shown to decreased birth rate (among other improvements),
resulting in fixing the issue of overpopulation (over time).

~~~
krie
Whether it stops at 8 or 9 billion doesn't really make an impact until 2150 at
best. IF we had the resources to keep everything puffing till then. We don't.
:)

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adventured
We sure do. The human race will be just fine resource wise.

And that's just accounting for the existing base of resources and knowledge we
have today. What we'll have in just another 50 years will be astounding, and
further ensure that we won't have a resource problem. :)

~~~
krie
You're not even able to moderate yourself to "could" be astounding, it WILL be
astounding, categorically? Is there anything pointing toward such being able
to reach fruition? Not really.

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dear
Windows is one BIG problem of the world. How is he going to "solve" it?

