Bill Gates

I've read the book by Carreyrou - Bad Blood [1] and up until this time, I am left wondering if she really was insane, or on the firm belief that she can revolutionize something.

For her to be able to convince a lot of people - companies, investors, CEOs and perhaps a multitude of bright people to do what seems to conclude as a big fraud is still mind boggling to say the least.

You got the best engineers, doctors, laboratory technologists, medical techs, pharmacists, and just about everyone in science, and yet they continued for so long on this path of bizarre development of a product. Why did these people only realized when it was too late and that everything would crumble down at some point? They must have shared her vision with an intensity that has out shined their conscience and common sense.

[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Bad-Blood

> Don't you think some of these are interesting?

Because there is so much that someone can read it is usually helpful to have additional information so you can decide if it's worth reading.

Now I am not a Bill Gates fan in any way, and I am not saying you should go into the depth that he does, but as an example look at what he does when he recommends a book. He doesn't just say 'this is something I find interesting'.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Educated

> 'Cause It's like a secret society where you have to figure it out over time or be clued in.

Hah well this thinking is similar to, say, Twitter which on purpose makes things difficult for the ordinary man and the beginner. Will note that Apple took a different attitude with the iphone in 2007 and we know how that ended up.

So sure why not be more welcoming to newcomers?

Indeed, if you look at what he was saying at the end of February, there was no concern about the way the U.S. was handling the pandemic. Look at what he wrote on February 28th[1] - his recommendations for the current pandemic are for richer countries to assist poorer countries, and for a vaccine to be made.

If someone like Gates sounded the alarm on the poor way the U.S. was responding, it might have made a difference, but he did no such thing. Like most of the leadership in the U.S., he seemed to have a big blind spot with regards to how bad things could get in America. Some people were sounding the alarm early on (take a look at the last minute of this video[2] for an example), but were mostly ignored.

[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/How-to-respond-to-COVID-19
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8VImMUvz-A

There's two perspectives:

1. The world will become a place of suffering. The assumption here is either that childhood is a terrible experience, or that suicide is immoral. Your children can decide for themselves if they don't think it's worth being alive in the future

2. Overpopulation is the cause of this doomsday. In that case, we're asserting that having children today means less children will be born in the future. This implies we need to reduce birthrates to more efficiently invest the planet. Unfortunately this line of thought can quickly devolve into eugenics. There are better ways to stabilize population. Relevant: Does saving kids’ lives lead to overpopulation? https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_13_2018_02_AnnualLetter2018_Explainer_BG-YT_&WT.tsrc=BGYT#ALChapter5

why should everyone agree with this?

i respectfully disagree. first, project drawdown considers nuclear[1] a "regret" solution, because we have no story for dealing with nuclear waste. in the US specifically, until i see some movement on the yucca mountain [2] political clusterf*ck[3], i won't see nuclear as worth considering.

also, energy generation is only 25% of "our problems with co2"[4]. agriculture and transit make up the bulk of the other 75%, and i don't think we're going to have nuclear trucks or cows any time soon.

[1]: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/electricity-generation/nuclear

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU

[4]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change

Bill Gates has a podcast recently talking about this: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast/Is-it-too-late-to-stop-climate-change

Also, the book "Ministry For The Future" is an SF take pulling together ideas people have on climate change. The actual prose may make you throw the book at the wall.

You can, if you wish, push information forward. For example, having free interfaces to solar panels, cheap sun following controls, software to control car charging for cheap times, software to use a car as a 'peak load' battery, data modelling to show Hawaii why tourism is better with only electrics, software to create micro cargo ships with solar power, cleaning up the automated kite power generators that were open sourced, and the like.

You have more power than you expect.