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"Bill Gates, the world’s most generous and influential philanthropist." Good thing this writer is unbiased.
by davidroberts 14y ago
"Bill Gates, the world’s most generous and influential philanthropist."
Good thing this writer is unbiased.
- jiggy2011 14y agoThis is probably objectively true.
- elliptic 14y agoProbably not for useful definitions of "generous," which should take into account the actual utility (in money or time), given away. Someone who donates half of their life savings of 50k is (I would say, at least) more generous than someone who donates 90% of 1 billion.
- ryguytilidie 14y agoI would not define someone who gave 25k as more generous than someone who gave 900million, no.
- jlgreco 14y agoWould you define someone who gave away until they only had 100million remaining as more or less generous than someone who gave away until they only had 25k remaining? How about if the person with 50k gave away 25k, but the billionaire gave away double that? Who is more generousness in that case? It seems fairly plain to me that utility of what was given away is by far the most important factor in determining generosity.
- ryguytilidie 14y agoI see your point, but I simply disagree. The utility to the person is much different, but after that, money is money and 900m provides much more utility to starving kids, etc than 25k does, no matter how you slice it.
- a3voices 14y agoI would say the person with 50k is making a larger personal sacrifice, but is not being "more generous" objectively.
- ok_craig 14y agoI know the comment you're responding to wasn't that great, but this really isn't "objectively true." He's done a lot of good for sure, but to simply accept his contributions as "the most generous and influential" because of his fame and the money behind it, is to discredit lots of other brilliant philanthropists. For example, wasn't there just an article on HN within the past week about Norman Borlaug, whose agricultural techniques helped prevent hundreds of millions of people from starving? That doesn't seem less significant.
- Symmetry 14y agoNorman Borlaug is probably a greater humanitarian than Bill Gates, but I'm not aware of him doing any philanthropy. Now, you probably come up with metric of philanthropy where, say, Rockefeller beat him (Percentage of then existing human wealth donated?). But most of the measures that come to mind put Bill Gates on top, so while "clearly objectively true" would be going too far, "probably objectively true" is quite reasonable.
- ok_craig 14y agoWhat's the difference between philanthropy and humanitarianism? Just donating wealth vs developing it? Is that really a significant thing to distinguish?
- Symmetry 14y agoA philanthropist is someone who gives a lot of money to charitable causes, with a connotation of noble motives. A humanitarian is someone who acts on their strong desire to help their fellow humans, with a connotation of successfully helping many people. These have a broad area of overlap, but a person can be one without being the other. One can be a philanthropist without being a humanitarian by, for example, donating large amounts of money to creating wildlife refuges. Charitable giving, but not to humans. From the other direction, people like Norman Borlaug who devote their careers to helping other people are excellent examples of people who are humanitarians without necessarily being philanthropists.
- maskedinvader 14y agocan you think of someone more generous and more influential in philanthropy ?
- brianbreslin 14y agofrom a pure cash standpoint what about warren buffet?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- toast0 14y agoBut Warren Buffet gave his money to Bill Gates to spend; and may be been goaded into it by Bill Gates, so influence is hard to compare there.
- patja 14y agojust curious who you think is more generous?
- taylorbuley 14y agoI know this writer, and she's about as "objective" as any journalist can be.
- davidroberts 14y agoI'm not disagreeing with the statement. It's just that it's rather shoddy journalism. Most influential is a matter of opinion and needs to be justified. Most generous is plausible, but the metric for generosity needs definition.
- tjr 14y agoI think that's a fair reading of it, and I'm not sure why you've been downvoted so. An alternate reading could be that the statement is meant to be obviously opinion; one school of thought on writing is that it should be obvious which statements are fact and which are opinion by the very nature of the statement, and it is superfluous to preface them with phrases like "in my opinion".