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Frankly, I'd rather he leave it to Bill Gates. Going to Mars may be sexy, but stomping out Polio makes millions of lives better. Its hard to realize that, I s
by outside1234 13y ago
Frankly, I'd rather he leave it to Bill Gates.
Going to Mars may be sexy, but stomping out Polio makes millions of lives better.
Its hard to realize that, I suppose, when your life is in the bubble of a limo. That's honestly what makes Bill Gates second act so amazing.
- tunesmith 13y agoIt's an interesting collision of values. One is "every life has equal value", which implies optimizing for existing, present-day lives. Which is honorable in its own way. The other is optimizing for best chance of future life. Those two values will have a lot of implications in common, but they can also conflict. I don't think there's a wrong answer here, it's just a matter of what value each person chooses to optimize for.
- voicereasonish 13y agoWhich do you think will have a bigger impact on humanity, and deserve more chapters in history books? a). Prolonged a few more lives by eradicating some viruses. b). Set up a colony on MARS The people loving Bill Gates "second act" seem to forget how he made all those billions in the first place - by being evil, crushing better competitors, monopolistic practices, etc etc etc. And by basically creating terrible software, holding back the computer industry for years.
- pizza234 13y agoHistory is written by the winners (or survivors), so if a colony on "MARS" would survive humanity, certainly option b) will deserve most of the chapters. It's pretty sad to see though that many users are only seeing two options: 1) give away money to charities to solve symptomatic problems 2) invest money in technologies who try to solve, again, symptomatic problems A more effective approach would be to work out the causes; first of all, education would be the key. But this is the hard way of approaching problems.
- wil421 13y ago>Going to Mars may be sexy, but stomping out Polio makes millions of lives better. Right, both are trying to better man kind in their own special ways. Its a do we solve 1st world problems or do we remember about the rest of the developing world. As I grow older I struggle with which camp I am in. Mars and an electric car do sound good...but conquering deadly pathogens and diseases sound awesome in a different way.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago>> "Its a do we solve 1st world problems or do we remember about the rest of the developing world." I agree. Mars is very cool to me and something I'd love to see. BUT my life is already pretty good. There are millions whose lives are short and horrible. Bringing their lives up to my current life standard seems like a more logical first problem to solve than making my already nice life better while theirs doesn't really progress.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- acchow 13y agoI had to re-read that a couple times. Commas are helpful! > Its hard to realize that, I suppose, when your life is in the bubble of a Google limo.
- Florin_Andrei 13y agoOne is oriented more short-term (polio), whereas the other is more long-term (not putting all our eggs in one basket). Both are good.
- pizza234 13y agoWell, "good" depends for who. The beneficiaries would be first-world population in one, and third world in the other. Besides, putting all eggs in a basket could be a fitting metaphor, except if the person holding the basket has a perverse passion for stomping on it. Moving to Mars wouldn't be a way to save the population, it would be an excuse to find another planet to destroy.
- UnFleshedOne 13y agoThere really is nothing to destroy on mars. You can't destroy an ecosystem where there is none.
- nollidge 13y agoStomping out polio is not short-term.
- davidw 13y agoWhat with the anti-vaccination idiots, stomping out lots of things that should be simple is proving difficult.
- aestra 13y agoWe are really friggin close to eradicating polio! The Americas (North and South) have been polio free since 1994. The last 1% is what has proven to be difficult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication
- rmason 13y agoI think Bill Gates is going to have enough billionaires already giving their money to his foundation. I like the idea of at least a few going in a different direction. Letting Elon Musk throw billions at an audaciously big goal because he has a record of achieving and society might benefit as well.
- polarix 13y agoWell, until you start looking seriously at existential risk. Then you may realize how many orders of magnitude more humans will be helped with similar probability by spreading to new habitats. Page lacks not "Empathy" itself, but rather the "Locality of Empathy"; his temporal discounting of empathic investment appears much lower than Gates'.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoExactly. Page seems like someone who knows how to "shut up and multiply". http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply
- jobu 13y agoThe stated reason for going to Mars is to create a backup population for humanity. If a major asteroid impacts earth (or any other Extinction Level Event) then potentially every human will be as dead as those killed by Polio.
- irishloop 13y agoIf. Polio is a real problem now. Asteroids are a theoretical problem.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoCan we not work on all the problems in parallel?
- _greim_ 13y agoNot actually. An impact is inevitable, given enough time.
- nerfhammer 13y agogiven the time scale of the duration in which a major impact event is likely humanity's technology will have advanced radically beyond which we could possibly imagine
- baddox 13y agoYes, and the way that will happen is that money will be invested into space technology companies like SpaceX.
- nerfhammer 13y agoor it will just happen anyway over the course of thousands of years
- dragonwriter 13y ago
- emilsedgh 13y agoI cannot remember where I read it, but Musk's view is that curing polio, cancer, etc are all nobel and important, but there is only one way to guarantee human's long-term survival: Exploring space. Not that I [dis]agree, but I think this point needs consideration. (Not that I feel good about donating to a for-profit)
- jon_black 13y agoIsn't curing polio, etc a requirement for ensuring the survival of the species? What I mean is: doesn't it matter that we try to save each person rather than just a person?
- TheCoelacanth 13y agoEven when polio was at its worst it never threatened the survival of the species. Curing polio would save many people's lives, but it would have minimal impact on the survival of the species.
- kiba 13y agoThink of it as this way: curing polio means more Einsteins for the future.
- deletes 13y agoWhy then don't geniuses come from third world countries. Improved standard of living will help that, not pure numbers.
- PeterisP 13y agoActually, no. If right now 50% of kids started to die early, we'd have pretty much the same number of kids growing up to be Einsteins; we'd just compensate it by more births just as we have always done. In the same way, if a large portion of the population was suddenly killed today, in the long run it wouldn't affect the number of people. The total population limit/equilibrium is determined by food production, tech and social habits; but actual mass deaths (say, as ww1/ww2) are just a short term disturbance in the number of people and quickly get corrected. It doesn't mean that curing polio is useless - it makes many people much happier; but simply there is no direct relation between happiness of one generation and wellbeing of non-immediate future generations. Culture gets passed on; built infrastructure gets passed on; reseach gets passed on; but there's almost no difference caused by generation suffering horrible conditions/war/torture [assuming no large permanent loss of knowledge/infrastructure; just the suffering&deaths] and that generation living happily. In the short term there's an effect, sure, but in the long term? Is Germany suffering now in any way because the 30-year-war in 17th century killed 30-40% of the population? Would it be any better place if that war&suffering hadn't happened ? Definitely no. The lost people recover in a generation or two, and that's it.
- dperfect 13y agoWould you rather give your money to fix a symptom of the problems we face currently as humans, or to help build a self-sustaining machine with the economic incentive to improve lives for as long as we vote with our dollars that the machine's contribution to mankind is worthwhile? One is a practical choice, and the other is driven by a long-term ideal and belief that capitalism drives innovation better than handouts. Both have merit.
- swswsw 13y agolet's thinking about this from humanity's point of view in a thousand years. if someone stopped polio now, his name would be in history. if someone colonized mars, his name would be in history, and probably of bigger importance. because it is a more audacious goal and having higher impact to the future generation. if you ask me to donate to stopping polio vs spacex, i would probably donating to stopping polio. however, that is because i'm a little bit short-sighted on goals. (incidentally, i guess this is why i'm creating an internet business rather than a space exploration program.) however, that does not mean i should not let other people try the more audacious venture.
- nickbauman 13y agoImagine for a moment you could colonize space. What problem would that solve, really? The thinking and systems that are causing us to destroy / consume our planet will simply be exported. It will only delay the inevitable. The line must be drawn here, on Earth. We must overcome our primate programming here in our own nest, or else become a menace to all the universe. Fix it here, my friend. Now. For time is not on our side. That is the battle.
- pkinsky 13y agoWe would be able to transfer heavy industry and resource extraction to space, using robotic factories! That would solve all the problems, starting with scarcity! Pollution is bad in a biosphere, but why shouldn't we strip-mine the asteroid belt with von-neumann machines?
- forgottenpaswrd 13y ago"Imagine for a moment you could colonize space. What problem would that solve, really? " Very interesting. Do you realize that people said exactly those same words about the microscope? They said : What problem would seeing the same things that we already see bigger are going to solve? It was called a "toy" with no real use. If you have a microscope you know how hard is to see something. The fact is that we don't know what we don't know. Just traveling to the moon changed everything. We discovered isotopes on moon surface that are not created on earth because of earth atmosphere. The same materials where not eroded by fluids behave very different.
- nickbauman 13y agoRestating a problem (in a larger context) is not solving it.
- FD3SA 13y agoA kindred spirit. I wonder, how many on HN share this sentiment? Man's greatest problem is man itself, particularly our primate instincts to which most are obliviously enthralled. Understanding ourselves from a scientific perspective is the first step in a long journey to overcome our destructive natures. But as it stands, I do not see any successful attempts at such. Investment in and respect for science in the western world is declining, and most people are without any guiding principles other than the profit motive. Ironically, this is the best situation we've ever found ourselves in, historically speaking.
- a1a 13y agoDon't get me wrong, Bill is awesome, but still: (1) Exploration of space today will some day save everybody's lives. (2) Driving Teslas with energy from Solar city will postpone that day.
- opendais 13y agoPretty much. Donate to improve science, perform basic research, etc. Why on earth would you donate to a for-profit? It makes no sense.
- pizza234 13y agoBecause when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For how may be exceptional in their fields, some people may still have a narrow vision outside that (or no vision at all). Specifically, Page is a technically-minded person who's showing not to be able to see outside of the strictly technical realm, so choosing between a charitable organization and a technological one, is not really a choice, because in his perspective, there's no such thing as the first option. I was actually surprised (but not too much) that a person like him may have such narrow vision.
- opendais 13y agoI suppose I just have different blinders than it doesn't occur to me that people view the world that way. :/
- TeMPOraL 13y ago> Specifically, Page is a technically-minded person who's showing not to be able to see outside of the strictly technical realm, so choosing between a charitable organization and a technological one, is not really a choice, because in his perspective, there's no such thing as the first option. Or maybe he's actually smart, as you would expect from a technically minded person, did the math and realized, that there ain't many good charitable organizations to give, nor that the for-profits are worse than charities in pursuing goals beneficial to mankind.
- pizza234 13y agoThe fact that charitable organization may be generally ineffective (or inefficient at beast) is a very common argument, the problem is that there are alternatives which are in the middle ground, see social enterpreneurship, and they are definitely effective Such alternatives consider human problems as both a human problem and a technical one, and work with both. This is exactly the point; I expect a technical mind to be at a high risk of seeing only one part of the problem. Reality is of course much more complex. Enterpreneurs are limited by the fact that having a "human" opinion carries a high risk of damaging the stock value. Note that I wouldn't certainly consider Elon Musk's social enterpreneurship. Kiva would be (it's just an example).
- NegativeK 13y agoIt's possible to leave money to both. I'd prefer that over being lopsided.
- freehunter 13y agoYeah, I'm glad this isn't an either/or situation. There are enough billionaires in the world willing to donate that they don't all collectively need to pick one over the other.
- izzydata 13y agoI get the feeling Larry Page will outlive Bill Gates by a couple decades.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoConsidering Gates is almost two decades older than Page that's a pretty logical conclusion. But Gates foundation will likely outlast him. With the kinds of things he's doing it seems pretty simple to layout a plan for after he's gone (e.g. next we solve HIV, then clean water, then etc. etc.).
- crusso 13y agoAnd as soon as he's dead, whoever is running it may totally screw up the mission.
- chriskanan 13y agoThe Gates Foundation is to exhaust all of its funds within 20 years after Bill and Melinda's deaths [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Lifespan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundati...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ritchiea 13y agoSeconded. This shows an amazing lack of empathy on the part of Page. I love science and technology, they move society forward. But we shouldn't obsess exclusively on progress while ignoring the people who are born without access to health care and schools let alone access to the cool new technology we build.
- jerf 13y agoI disagree. Going to Mars "because it's cool" would be somewhat callous. Going to Mars to backup humanity has the real, bona-fide potential to save more lives than any amount of Earth charity; if it succeeds and it really does end up "backing up" humanity (including, might I add, more than just the raw fact of humanity on Mars, but the tech, the other incidental settlements, etc., all the rest of the tech stack and colonization that would occur), it could be the difference between humanity existing and not. For that matter, space tech of this level of magnitude is extremely likely to have massive positive impacts on Earth-bound humanity too. We're still not really in a good position to judge the likelihood of a species-wide existential crisis right now, but we do know that the cumulative odds of one occurring only go up over time.... At the very least, it is not a clear-cut case in favor of either position. In the real world, you, perhaps unfortunately, can't afford to try to serialize your problems and attack them one-by-one... you must attack them in parallel.
- ritchiea 13y agoWell that's very speculative. Mostly I disagree with the heavy-handedness of his stance. I think it would be great for humanity to donate part of a fortune to research & technological advancement and the rest to helping people in need alive today.
- fixermark 13y agoI'm not sure what's heavy-handed about it. The statement was with regard to Larry's wealth, not a general guideline for post-mortem wealth distribution. If Larry thinks a Mars-shot would be a better investment for his particular (large) slice of the pie than other investments, that's his business. It doesn't imply that the rest of the world needs to either agree or follow him as an example.
- Jun8 13y agoIt's all about prioritization, e.g. the big rock-small rock MBA parable, so any argument about which one (e.g. saving polio or to create a backup population on Mars) is better is pointless. The real argument is how to allocate resources among these things that must all be done. Humanity needs to be saved but only if we don't lose our humanity, everybody needs to be given a fair chance, even if it's one in a million. Some of the kids I sometimes deal with operate with slightly above this chance, some I read about get much, much lower. I suggest you do this: While browsing, whenever you encounter a story like this (http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1wsybd/til_in_1971_a_woman_petitioned_a_judge_for/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1wsybd/til_in...) or this (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.h...) or see a photo like this famous one (http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/kevin_carter/sudan_child.htm http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/kevin_carter/sudan_child....), save it to an out of the way folder on your laptop. Whenever you get too cocky, take 15 mins to look at that folder and think how far we have to go. Great way to degauss your perspective.
- angersock 13y ago"Everybody needs to be given a fair chance, even if it's one in a million." Ain't been true for thousands of years. The question is whether we prioritize the species, at large, or an individual. If the answer is species at large, off-site backups make a great deal more sense.
- shn 13y agoWell said.
- novalis78 13y agoSorry, but it is pretty pointless to stomp out Polio if 90% of life is stomped out by an asteroid. It's great to have a Bill Gates, but it's even better to have an Elon Musk, IMHO.
- kashkhan 13y agoit's also pointless to wipe out polio if the asteroid is going to stomp us the next day.
- biesnecker 13y agoYou know what else will wipe out polio? An extinction-level asteroid strike that wipes out all of mankind if we don't manage to colonize another planet before then.
- kashkhan 13y agoyou don't need billions to eradicate polio. How much money has Bill Gates actually spent on polio? There are at most a few thousand workers in Pakistan, india and nigeria going around with polio vaccine oral drops that cost cents per dose. They don't cost billions, not even hundreds of millions.
- yblu 13y agoFrankly, I'd rather he splits, half to Gates and another to Musk. The world needs more than just one brilliant guy to know where money can be best spent.
- diminoten 13y agoI don't think it's necessarily important for everyone to attempt to maximize the direct life benefit of their incomes and activities. I say this because you say, "makes millions of lives better" as if that'd be the end of the discussion. I don't think it is.
- cashmonkey85 13y agoElon Musk is also trying to save humanity from climate change with a solar company, battery factory and electric cars. Climate change is a much greater threat to humanity than polio.