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Bill Gates is giving Factfulness to those getting a degree from a U.S. college
- rhombocombus 8y agoThis is great, I wish he were giving it to high schoolers and GED recipients too.
- rdlecler1 8y agoAnd the far right and far left.
- tudelo 8y agoWe are running out of categories. Really, everyone will have availability to the book given that the chances that one person will upload it is pretty darn high if it isn't already available.
- bonsai80 8y agoFrom the comments on that page it sounds like you just need to fill out the form with anything and you get the file. No validation. Also libraries :) Anyway, I hope it's a clever trick to get people to feel like they beat the system and go read the book.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThat's exactly it. Classic parental psychology trick: "are you sure you're grown up for this stuff? I don't know...."
- onetimemanytime 8y agoNo one knows the difference online, just choose a college from the drop down and via
- opencl 8y agoThere's no actual requirement of proof that you're graduating from college. It's just a free download that makes you click a button saying you are.
- onion2k 8y agoI like to think of myself as reasonably well-informed and unbiased, with a pretty decent set of tools for looking at things I see in the news but when I read it recently I learned quite a lot. It's a very good book.
- philwelch 8y agoOne of the best things about reaching the Bill Gates level of wealth is probably being able to say, "man, I really liked this book, I think every college graduate should read it," and then realizing you can literally buy it for all of them.
- hkmurakami 8y agoI regularly buy books for friends for whom I think it would be useful. Sometimes business books for entrepreneur friends, sometimes fiction that I think they would enjoy (or I really want to talk to them about!). Nothing stopping any of us from doing something similar at a smaller scale. (though the ability to reach people who we don't know, at a large scale, is definitely much much harder)
- technotony 8y agoWho knows how much this is even costing him. It's pretty good PR for the publishing company and will probably generate sales from non-graduates. Could just be a genius marketing move which benefits brand Gates and the publisher.
- raven105x 8y agoYou don't need marketing moves with a net worth of over 90B USD. If he wants to act, he'll buy the required companies/patents & do it. How would this, as a "marketing move", make any sense for him - or even be worth his time to do in the first place?
- technotony 8y agoRecruitment for his foundation?
- philwelch 8y agoIt's more the scale than the basic idea of gifting books that I find remarkable :)
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- pg_bot 8y agoIt is incredibly important to see that the world on a macro level is improving at an incredible rate. Hans Rosling was a brilliant educator and while I haven't read this book yet, I will be adding it to my backlog today.
- xg15 8y agoAs others have said, it's a good thought to have (and the book indeed sounds like an interesting read), but we should still define what "on a macro level" actually means. E.g., is "macro level" the average? Then it could just as well be a rich elite (or the spike part of a power law distribution) pulling up that average. Even if it's not, we should investigate how different parts of the world are improving differently and why. E.g., yes, eradicating certain diseases in African countries is laudable - but in an age where others dream about genetically augmenting humans, is that the bar we should use? And even if the overall measure of health and well-being might go up, why is it that nevertheless statistics for certain groups seem to regress? Like job security or the ability of low/middle-income groups to make savings?
- nemild 8y agoHans Rosling's work is famous for pointing out how media incentives, statistical illiteracy, and our preconceptions give us a flawed sense of the world. In the vein of Hans Rosling, I've done add'l research on media coverage vs actual stats for death. What's covered is what we most want to read about. As a society, we need many more lessons on statistics and the incentives behind news: The deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (<1%) of the way we die https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html Today’s biggest threat to democracy isn’t fake news—it’s selective facts https://qz.com/1130094/todays-biggest-threat-to-democracy-isnt-fake-news-its-selective-facts/ https://qz.com/1130094/todays-biggest-threat-to-democracy-is... How Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html EDIT: As some commenters point, news covers "new" things — and so of course it's at odds with data. The problem is that most consumers of news don't understand that just because something is heavily covered doesn't mean it's common — or relevant input for personal decisions they make. This speaks to the issue of media literacy, and I'd argue is why Rosling's book is so important.
- amelius 8y agoThe fundamental problem in media is their financial incentives, leading to clickbait articles, and sometimes even fake news. Government subsidies for proper, independent news reporting could help tremendously here. But unfortunately, now all politicians are looking at Facebook to solve the problem.
- nemild 8y agoI think another way is to train readers to understand the issues, and over decades, change the incentives faced by media. Or for us to push back on the incentives that social networks set for media outlets. I wrote a media literacy guide for engineers in this vein: https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer
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- Kenji 8y agoWhat a fantastic gift, Hans Rosling was great, I love him! May he rest in peace. The day he died, which was about one and a half year ago, was a sad day indeed.
- Isamu 8y agoI am reading this now, it's pretty good. I think some misunderstand this book, maybe because there is a tendency to interpret any talk about how the world is improving as blindness about world problems. Or that admitting there have been gains made is the same as saying it's time to take it easy, stop trying to improve. This is nonsense of course. The point of finding out what has improved is to find out what works, and do more of that. See if you can apply what works in one place to another place, another problem.
- jakelazaroff 8y ago1 in 7 people in the U.S. face hunger every year and Flint still doesn't have clean water, but sure: let's buy every college graduate a book!
- amykhar 8y agoHungry people and Flint are not Bill Gates responsibility. If he choses to give a gift to somebody, that's a kind and generous thing to do.
- lev99 8y agoI'm pretty sure the statistic is that every year 1 in 7 people in the U.S. face hunger. Saying 1 in 7 people in the U.S. face hunger every year implies that the same group of people are hungry year after year. While a large portion of the hungry population probably are hungry multiple years, surely not all of them repeat every year.
- AriaMinaei 8y agoIf he was to spend that money to fight hunger, how should he have done it exactly? What would he spend it on? How lasting would its effect be?
- yoran 8y agoArguably, turning college graduates into better citizens by giving them a book can have a bigger long-term effect than directly solving the problem. Not that immediate action shouldn't be done, but both are valid attacks to the same problem. I think Bill Gates' underlying reasoning is that by giving all college graduates this book, the future generation will be better thinkers and therefore that society will be better than today's. Hopefully, this will lead to a situation where that 1 in 7 number will turn into 1 in 70, and every place in the US will have access to clean water. It's kind of like that saying "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.".
- hkmurakami 8y agoOne might call it leverage. Also, any good is better than no good, if by requiring a person to pursue the maximum good, they would have not had the emotional catalysis for pursuing the good.
- sergiotapia 8y agoHere's a good comparison page of the three big ones. https://stackshare.io/stackups/gitlab-vs-github-vs-bitbucket https://stackshare.io/stackups/gitlab-vs-github-vs-bitbucket Gitlab seems to be picking up the pace and gaining mindshare among developers. Freelancers I'm curious, would you switch and lose your repos' stars, PRs, fork counts? Those are actually a good marketing tool for potential customers since they see you are legitimate.
- _grep_ 8y agoJust FYI, I think you commented to the wrong article by mistake.
- yters 8y agoIt all depends on how we define better, and for any negative situation, you can change your definition of better so it is not included. If one believes that all human life is equally valuable, even when still in the womb, then our world has become drastically worse. Worldwide, the population of America is aborted every 6 years, or one WW2 every year. Or, consider Iceland's recent achievement in eradicating Down's syndrome, by killing all babies with Down's syndrome. Our world has dramatically improved in certain aspects of livelihood, but has dramatically worsened in our respect for human life. Proof of this statement is the average reader's inability to comprehend what I've just written.
- Jolter 8y agoI'm pretty sure whatever you've been reading was not Hans Rosling.
- technotony 8y agoI don't think the average reader has a problem comprehending what you wrote, they just don't define better the way that you do (ie they don't include unborn babies lives as equally valuable until a certain age in the womb). Your core point that given any set of facts you can define a value system such that it's improving is true, but that's not how most people define their value system.
- rwcarlsen 8y agoI think maybe OP was just trying to say that the means matter - not just the end. End state of no more down syndrome humans is good, but maybe just aborting them all before they are born isn't good - depending on your beliefs/values. I think it is a valid point to consider even if their tone wasn't very constructive.
- Retra 8y agoOn the other hand, just because a point is valid doesn't mean it is also useful. Especially compared to all the other points that could be raised in its stead.
- briantmaurer 8y agoIt would be great if the publisher would make digital copies of this book available to everyone for free. I wonder if Gates explored that option but the price was too steep.
- sharemywin 8y agoWas reading about the income levels I-IV in the book and looks like II-IV have access to cellphones form this article: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-phones-than-toilets-u-n-study-shows/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-ph...
- Torwald 8y agoYo, Bill, what about your own degree? LOL.
- kaypro 8y agoI just finished this last night in fact. My first thought upon completing it was that this should be required reading in every high school curriculum. Very cool to see this happening. Highly recommended read.
- BadassFractal 8y agoWhat are some other great resources for de-biasing oneself? I believe Charlie munger did a whole talk on this back in the day.
- IkmoIkmo 8y agoGreat, let's me buy a cheap one second hand!
- Dowwie 8y agoborrow from a library?
- johnsonjo 8y agoFunny. I just graduated and bought the physical copy like last week. It’ll be nice to have the ebook too. I haven’t really started it yet, because sadly I hoard books, and collect a lot faster than I read. I’m interested in the topic though. I would love to learn more about how we make mistakes in our assumptions, and statistical fallacies.
- megamindbrian2 8y agoStephen Peterson says facts are relative.