>I have not written code in a shipping product for a long time but I do write enough code to understand the new tools like Typescript or Github (shameless Microsoft plugs).
Cool to see he still tries to stay up to date on new technologies.
Do people derive pleasure from these AMAs? Gates seems to reply with the same platitudes and non-answers to the point where its hard to tell if it’s him or the BMGF publicist.
> He thought nuclear weapons, bioterrorism, and climate change were the biggest threats to humanity.
There was some book (The Cuckoo's Egg?) where a computer scientist and a biologist talk about the biggest threats to humanity. The computer scientist thought that biological viruses were the biggest threat, and the biologist thought that computer viruses were the biggest threat.
I've asked a few people about this, over the years, and the results are remarkably consistent. Everybody is much more scared of the other field where they're not an expert.
Funny how we complain that politicians are bought but the former richest man in the world apparently can't figure out how to use his massive fortune to influence policy.
He was asked how much he should pay though. He didn't give an actual answer and only said he didn't pay enough. Surely, he has an idea of an actual rate, but doesn't want to disclose it for whatever reason.
His answers seem quite concrete to me. He even links further reading after answering questions directly. I don't really see any platitudes or non-answers at all. Maybe it's predictable? But it seems his answers are genuine, to-the-point, and even provides the reader with further reading. Not sure what more you could ask for really.
In response to your edit: he said the same thing on The Verge [1] a week or two ago. I think maybe what the OP is getting at is that there's really nothing revealing or exclusive that comes out of these AMAs; it's just another media outlet.
I too think the answers are mostly fine. I think the medium is a problem. Personally, I’d probably prefer submitting questions and then getting answers later at some point (there’s only so much you can answer right of the top of your head like that). How the questions get selected would be a problem. Voting obviously ends up with results like “Boaty McBoat Face”.
What non-answers are you referring to? Most of the ones I read were responded with what the askers were wanting to know. They might get repetitive, but that's because people ask the same questions all the time.
I'm not saying I think it was the BMGF in the AMA, but you think a publicist wouldn't say this? "Client watches X show and plays Y sport" would be a typical line to make someone appear more relatable. Politicians say these things all the time. It is not surprising that a publicist would try and make their client/employer seem normal.
Publicist sure, no. But this has been totally sanitized by Bill when he makes as one example statements like this: [1]
> 'The other thing is that I sometimes use a private jet. It does help me do my foundation work but again it is a very privileged thing to have.'
He inserts the word 'sometimes' to lessen the impact of 'private jet'. He adds that it helps him do foundation work implying that that should make it ok in normal people's eyes. [2] He doesn't mention that it's actually importantly needed for security purposes he is obviously a target and not flying like the general public. He then acknowledges that it's a privileged thing to have.
[1] Remember the movie "An Officer and a Gentlement" when Lou Gosset character fights Richard Gear character? And Gosset character replies (something like) 'oh I see you've had some training!'. Well Bill Gates has had training.
[2] Which is should be anyway. Without saying that.
Really? Sure he has some practicd answers to questions he gets hundreds of times a week, and he is careful about what he says. But I wouldn't call them "non-answers", and I don't think he pulls any punches. I feel like his personality comes through, and yes he has opinions that I don't really agree with. Maybe it's not really a worthwhile way to spend time, but it all feels real enough. Do you have some examples of what's so egregious that it doesn't seem like it's really him?
For me, not really. A live text interview is probably the worst medium for this type of content (exhibit A: Kara Swisher & Jack Dorsey). There is also a lot of subtly missed when comparing speech to text, and due to the time delay it gives the interviewee time to apply any relevant PR spin.
> The goal of the Foundation is that all kids grow up healthy - no matter where they are born. That means getting rid of malaria and many of the other diseases that affect poor countries.
There's something about this guy that seems 'off' to me. I should assume it's because he's a tech guy originally and not a politician.
Is it just me or do other people see the convoluted logic that links 'lack of money' with disease and therefore unhealthy kids?
If so, then all that needs to be done is for Mr Gates to give all his money to those poor countries, ipso facto disease is gone and kids are healthy.
I'd love to see him try it this out!
A later quote:
> However if I had one wish to make a new technology it would be a solution to malnutrition. Almost half the kids in poor countries grow up without their body or brain developing fully so they miss most of their potential.
From "How much would it cost to end hunger?" [0], the answer is $160 pp in poverty.
Or from Quora [1]:
"With say 2.5 billion people short of food, $166 billions per year would "theoretically" eliminate hunger. Just as a comparison, "During FY 2013, the federal government spent $3.45 trillion on a budget or cash basis, down $84 billion or 2.4% vs. FY 2012 ", or about 20 times as much"
Now, the US military budget was $637 billion in 2015 [2], which is enough to feed the poor several times over.
To me, it sounds like he should turn his Foundation into a lobbying group to end all war (or greatly reduce the military industrial complex) and use that money to reach his goals. Just sayin'. (This is why his words keep seeming 'off' to me)
No, it's just another stop on the publicity tour now. They're coordinated with Reddit ahead of time and most don't even bother to answer candidly or even answer questions themselves. Reddit was able to suspend disbelief until ~2014 when the Morgan Freeman AMA really exposed the whole operation.
Hot take: Bill Gates is massively underrated today, compared to how he will be viewed by history.
When the reckoning of history books happens, I could see him in the running for “most positive social influence of anyone 1800-2100”.
His humanitarian work is second to none and we can expect 20+ more years of his direct influence on global policy. The world is a better place thanks to Mr and Mrs Gates.
Not really. You look at Andrew Carnegie who has a similar history, and even a hundred years out, no one cares.
People like Einstein and Picasso are who lasts. No one really gives a shit about businessmen, regardless of their philanthropy.
Artists even more than scientists. When the Italian comedian Totò died in the late '60s this happened [1]:
> Totò died at the age of 69 on 15 April 1967 in Rome after a series of heart attacks. Due to overwhelming demand, there were no fewer than three funeral services: the first in Rome, a second in his birth city of Naples—and a few days later, in a third one by the local Camorra boss, an empty casket was carried along the packed streets of the popular Rione Sanità quarter where he was born
A similar thing happened when the Russian folk singer Vysotsky died in 1980 [2]:
> After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.[78] The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.
I'm pretty sure no businessman on this planet would have his/her funeral attended by tens of thousands of people nor will they be interred thrice "by popular demand", so to speak.
Depends. Carnegie is remembered more than, say, Jay Gould (the industrial magnate) or commodore vanderbilt. I suspect how well an individual remembers him has a lot to do with whether they like libraries and have been to a Carnegie library. In other words, he's remembered to the extent he made a lasting impact. (For most people I agree this isn't a large extent)
So, the question with Gates is whether he manages to fund something that materially changes the world in a way people in the future will remember.
Saving some lives? Probably not that meaningful 100 years from now. Funding a technology that solves climate change and/or provides cheap clean energy? People will probably remember.
So it's hard to tell. Gates has funding in both areas of potential, and he's taking a very hands on approach to his philanthropy so he's more liable to get some credit, in the same way library afficionados do remember Carnegie.
Except that Bill Gates was one of the precursors of modern computing.
Einstein? Modern physics. Picasso? Cubism.
That's why these three will be remembered for a long time.
History books will probably talk just a bit about his wealth, maybe about his humanitarian actions, but he'll definitely be remembered as the person who made personal computing a thing.
Carnegie was worth only $5 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. Gates is worth $100 billion, so we can expect him to have a philantropic impact 20 times greater.
Definitely not a "hot take" but there are certainly a lot of users on here who would argue otherwise. A lot of older programmers who were well into their careers during Microsoft in the 90's seem to have a different opinion of Bill and his business practices.
I think trying to point to something "solved" is not the right approach. The goal of the foundation is to solve through research. While it's impossible to say that his funding of these goals will actually solve them, because the solution may come on a different grant from another source but where a scientist learned something from one of the scientists on a gates funded project. I feel that's a reasonable situation where complexity makes it impossible to directly attribute a solution to Mr. Gate.
Instead I'd look at the social impact of someone in the 0.1% looking to the poorest in the world with empathy (whether genuine or not) and how that's changed how we look at philanthropy.
Malaria is a bitch. It's one of the worst things about going to many countries out there and Dengue is even worse in many cases. While survivable as an adult, it is no joke, and the idea that solving this should be something we focus on even though people (for practical purposes) can't get malaria in the USA is awesome.
Anecdotal evidence inbound => As someone who has prepared for an extended stay in South America, this was 100% the worst thing to focus on. I got Salmonella in Haiti and shit man that was rough. I can't even imagine Malaria.
Anyway, back to the point. The fact that he's focusing on this is the important thing. Investigating results of his 50bn dollars would require it's own research with a ton of nuance and assumptions.
I would have to half disagree with your statement on the business side. If we looked at the products and services that Microsoft under Bill Gates have created/promoted throughout its history, we can clearly see a market leader that has helped society advance to what it is today. Even the fights that they lost (e.g. cellphone), have helped shape the economy we live in today and improved the competition. Were there errors and misjudgments in the process? Absolutely, I am not sure we can point to a single individual with power that hasn't had its ups and downs. Bill Gates is an interesting character that should be analyzed in all ways and I encourage everyone to see the good and the bad. Not just pick one aspect and characterize the whole individual.
Maybe the site's layout is just hiding the actual report, but this just looks like an executive summary, and enumerates no solved problems.
Either way, I'd like to get something that would span multiple years of effort and billions spent. It would talk about the specific problems the Gates Foundation has solved through its efforts.
IAmA mod here - we have a bot that updates it every time a guest schedules a new AMA, so it should always be up to date. We also manually add events in as they come from other sources.
Bill likes to do his AmA's as "surprises", though, so we don't usually schedule those!
I wonder, if Gates was still driving Windows development would Windows 10 still spy on users and restrict their ability to control updates like it does with Nadella at the helm?
Can we stop this tired rhetoric? Yes ideally everyone would keep their system up to date 100% of the time, however it is not a good thing that users have that control stripped away from them, especially when these updates can actually have _adverse_ effects on their systems cough randomly deleting files cough.
I may disapprove of users not updating their systems, but I'll defend to the death their right to not do so.
History will forget all of that. His humanitarian efforts are going to have a much larger and longer lasting positive impact than anything he did at Microsoft.
I hate Windows10 like anyone with any self respect and appreciation to Privacy, and this is why I am still on a heavily fortified Win8.1 (with Classic Shell UI).
Microsoft is doing what Facebook is doing. You either 'shut up' and accept the T&C, or go your merry way and use Fedora and SMS.
They don't do it for the fun of it, they do it for the $$$ of it. And since both they got greedy shareholders to keep happy, there is only one way forward (for these/such companies).
Gates would be just as ruthless, if not more. Don't let his shift in focus to humanitarian issues fool you. Microsoft can't rely on its consumer brand prestige like Apple can (thus selling orders of magnitudes more devices), so it needs to extract as much revenue as it can from consumer machines.
Readit News
Cool to see he still tries to stay up to date on new technologies.
> I actually do use tabs. It is easy to convert tabs to spaces and vice-versa so we shouldn't waste too much time on this issue.
- He thought nuclear weapons, bioterrorism, and climate change were the biggest threats to humanity.
- He thought paying $10B in capital gains taxes was not enough and he should have paid more.
Maybe those are platitudes but it's real enough for me.
There was some book (The Cuckoo's Egg?) where a computer scientist and a biologist talk about the biggest threats to humanity. The computer scientist thought that biological viruses were the biggest threat, and the biologist thought that computer viruses were the biggest threat.
I've asked a few people about this, over the years, and the results are remarkably consistent. Everybody is much more scared of the other field where they're not an expert.
Dead Comment
I'm always annoyed when rich people say things like this. I had one say almost this exact thing to me in an elevator once.
There's nothing stopping him from paying more. He just writes a check to "Department of the Treasury" and sends it off to D.C. Problem solved.
But then he doesn't get to passive-aggressively whine about all of his piles of money that the government won't take from him.
Edit: I mean, look at this answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aunv58/im_bill_gates_...
Seems solidly real to me.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/12/18220756/bill-gates-tax-r...
He talked about the trampoline on the Ellen Show, so yes, it still counts as a PR-y answer.
> 'The other thing is that I sometimes use a private jet. It does help me do my foundation work but again it is a very privileged thing to have.'
He inserts the word 'sometimes' to lessen the impact of 'private jet'. He adds that it helps him do foundation work implying that that should make it ok in normal people's eyes. [2] He doesn't mention that it's actually importantly needed for security purposes he is obviously a target and not flying like the general public. He then acknowledges that it's a privileged thing to have.
[1] Remember the movie "An Officer and a Gentlement" when Lou Gosset character fights Richard Gear character? And Gosset character replies (something like) 'oh I see you've had some training!'. Well Bill Gates has had training.
[2] Which is should be anyway. Without saying that.
There's something about this guy that seems 'off' to me. I should assume it's because he's a tech guy originally and not a politician.
Is it just me or do other people see the convoluted logic that links 'lack of money' with disease and therefore unhealthy kids?
If so, then all that needs to be done is for Mr Gates to give all his money to those poor countries, ipso facto disease is gone and kids are healthy.
I'd love to see him try it this out!
A later quote:
> However if I had one wish to make a new technology it would be a solution to malnutrition. Almost half the kids in poor countries grow up without their body or brain developing fully so they miss most of their potential.
From "How much would it cost to end hunger?" [0], the answer is $160 pp in poverty.
Or from Quora [1]:
"With say 2.5 billion people short of food, $166 billions per year would "theoretically" eliminate hunger. Just as a comparison, "During FY 2013, the federal government spent $3.45 trillion on a budget or cash basis, down $84 billion or 2.4% vs. FY 2012 ", or about 20 times as much"
Now, the US military budget was $637 billion in 2015 [2], which is enough to feed the poor several times over.
To me, it sounds like he should turn his Foundation into a lobbying group to end all war (or greatly reduce the military industrial complex) and use that money to reach his goals. Just sayin'. (This is why his words keep seeming 'off' to me)
[0] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/how-much-would-it-cos...
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to-feed-the-wor...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
(Edited)
Dead Comment
When the reckoning of history books happens, I could see him in the running for “most positive social influence of anyone 1800-2100”.
His humanitarian work is second to none and we can expect 20+ more years of his direct influence on global policy. The world is a better place thanks to Mr and Mrs Gates.
Artists even more than scientists. When the Italian comedian Totò died in the late '60s this happened [1]:
> Totò died at the age of 69 on 15 April 1967 in Rome after a series of heart attacks. Due to overwhelming demand, there were no fewer than three funeral services: the first in Rome, a second in his birth city of Naples—and a few days later, in a third one by the local Camorra boss, an empty casket was carried along the packed streets of the popular Rione Sanità quarter where he was born
A similar thing happened when the Russian folk singer Vysotsky died in 1980 [2]:
> After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.[78] The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.
I'm pretty sure no businessman on this planet would have his/her funeral attended by tens of thousands of people nor will they be interred thrice "by popular demand", so to speak.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tot%C3%B2#Death
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vysotsky#Death
So, the question with Gates is whether he manages to fund something that materially changes the world in a way people in the future will remember.
Saving some lives? Probably not that meaningful 100 years from now. Funding a technology that solves climate change and/or provides cheap clean energy? People will probably remember.
So it's hard to tell. Gates has funding in both areas of potential, and he's taking a very hands on approach to his philanthropy so he's more liable to get some credit, in the same way library afficionados do remember Carnegie.
History books will probably talk just a bit about his wealth, maybe about his humanitarian actions, but he'll definitely be remembered as the person who made personal computing a thing.
Edit: took out some things about Gates and the dual nature of his work at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
I think trying to point to something "solved" is not the right approach. The goal of the foundation is to solve through research. While it's impossible to say that his funding of these goals will actually solve them, because the solution may come on a different grant from another source but where a scientist learned something from one of the scientists on a gates funded project. I feel that's a reasonable situation where complexity makes it impossible to directly attribute a solution to Mr. Gate.
Instead I'd look at the social impact of someone in the 0.1% looking to the poorest in the world with empathy (whether genuine or not) and how that's changed how we look at philanthropy.
Malaria is a bitch. It's one of the worst things about going to many countries out there and Dengue is even worse in many cases. While survivable as an adult, it is no joke, and the idea that solving this should be something we focus on even though people (for practical purposes) can't get malaria in the USA is awesome.
Anecdotal evidence inbound => As someone who has prepared for an extended stay in South America, this was 100% the worst thing to focus on. I got Salmonella in Haiti and shit man that was rough. I can't even imagine Malaria.
Anyway, back to the point. The fact that he's focusing on this is the important thing. Investigating results of his 50bn dollars would require it's own research with a ton of nuance and assumptions.
a) The impact his wife Melinda had on his worldview;
b) That people are nuanced and full of contradictions;
c) The person you are at 30 and the person you are at 60 is defined by the accumulation of experiences, not the accumulation of wealth.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yes, I have read none of the annual reports. I did pop over to the site and found this for 2017:
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Med...
Maybe the site's layout is just hiding the actual report, but this just looks like an executive summary, and enumerates no solved problems.
Either way, I'd like to get something that would span multiple years of effort and billions spent. It would talk about the specific problems the Gates Foundation has solved through its efforts.
Does something like that exist?
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=amaverify@gma...
Bill likes to do his AmA's as "surprises", though, so we don't usually schedule those!
Dead Comment
I may disapprove of users not updating their systems, but I'll defend to the death their right to not do so.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/No-Bull-Bill-Gate...
Microsoft is doing what Facebook is doing. You either 'shut up' and accept the T&C, or go your merry way and use Fedora and SMS.
They don't do it for the fun of it, they do it for the $$$ of it. And since both they got greedy shareholders to keep happy, there is only one way forward (for these/such companies).
Dead Comment