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Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates
- caruana 12y agoThat was very moving, I'm not sure how it hasn't been voted onto the front page.
- purephase 12y agoHere's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c
- illini123 12y ago> Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism.
- gd2 12y agoLet your heart break. That was the headline summary.
- imranq 12y agohmm, that's interesting. I posted this last week, but no bites...maybe because I'm a newbie. Anyway, a great duo-commencement speech, which inspires and provides some real-world advice
- bsilvereagle 12y agoI highly doubt you being new to the community had anything to do with it. Lots of good and relevant posts never make it off /new. Today enough people noticed the post and it made it to the frontpage.
- imranq 12y agoSomehow I have negative karma, why downvote this?
- pitchups 12y ago> "If we have optimism, but we don't have empathy – then it doesn't matter how much we master the secrets of science, we're not really solving problems; we're just working on puzzles." Brilliant and moving!
- jejones3141 12y agoI wonder how much empathy was involved in writing the AARD code. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code)
- hyperliner 12y agoDude, after 22 years, and you cannot look forward?
- elevenfist 12y agoIt may be important to think about what they might do and say if they were no longer rich, and forced to earn their fortune again. Would they do what they did again? Would they behave in the same way?
- csallen 12y agoI don't see why or how this could be important. It's possible to craft circumstances in which anyone would do almost anything. Numerous studies have shown that human morality and ethics are highly situational rather than permanently ingrained into the cores of our beings.
- pcunite 12y agoI'll take a sinner turned saint over continued arrogance any day.
- CamperBob2 12y ago(Shrug) It's easier to trust people who don't do things like that in the normal course of business. Can a leopard change its spots?
- qeorge 12y agoReminder: you aren't Bill or Melinda Gates, but you are still rich from software. Maybe you could spend some of your funny money on someone else's healthcare? I just sponsored a hysterectomy for $180 (1 year of Netflix) in 3 clicks on Watsi. That's crazy. Maybe you can sponsor someone too: https://watsi.org/fund-treatments https://watsi.org/fund-treatments
- ISL 12y agoWe made a donation to watsi today too, as part of our in-house flossing contest. A dry-erase marker and a bathroom mirror keeps the tally, and about once a month, someone wins. When the tally gets reset, the total number of flosses is donated, in dollar form, to a charity. You win, because $1/floss is worth it in aggregate to prevent future dental bills. Someone else wins, because they get the treatment they need to live a better life.
- carlsednaoui 12y agoI love this idea!
- hkmurakami 12y agoI don't give to healthcare ATM, but I do give to the "current me" feels strongly about -- organizations such as EFF, Mozilla foundation, etc. I also support my nuclear-fusion-researcher friend's dance group, since he could be easily making $200k+ on Wall Street yet has chosen to make ~$30k as a PhD student for a worthy cause. I'm hoping that as I mature, I'll be expanding the range of causes to which I will be giving to.
- gohrt 12y ago$180 isn't really "1 year of Netflix" -- you already bought 1 year of Netflix, and you have more money... you'd need to buy so much to run out of money... is it all improving your life at the margin, buying Netflix and Hulu and cable and HBO and ....?
- mda 12y agoThanks for the pointer. Sponsored 3 persons treatments already.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoRemind me, which university did Bill Gates graduate from, again? ;-)
- tubbs 12y agoI know it's cliche to have the founder of Microsoft be your idol person when going into software development, but Bill Gates is certainly worthy of that position. We at HN (an overwhelming portion, anyway) are so comfortable in our lives. Even little sacrifices could change the world for some of those less fortunate. Imagine what big sacrifices could do - they could change entire villages, countries, even continents. Think big. Even if you aim to help millions and only affect a few, your work was not in vain. This was a really inspiring read, thanks OP.
- leaveyou 12y agoPowerful. So much money and still big souls. There is hope.
- pcunite 12y agoIncredibly introspective and appropriate coming from one of the most successful people on earth. http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s http://youtu.be/wug9n5Atk8c?t=22m00s
- eshvk 12y agoThis was truly phenomenal. I grew up in some of the poorest places, went through a lot of shit before things got better. It is really really hard to go through all that and come out with optimism and hope for the world, or even think you can make a difference as one human. Good on the Gates for believing that and having the resources to push this forward.
- sz4kerto 12y ago"Bill and I talk about this with our kids at the dinner table. Bill worked incredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is another essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck – absolute and total luck. When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us." Totally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.
- beggi 12y agoThis is a sentiment lost on some people unfortunately.
- rayiner 12y agoMelinda's comments are truly amazing: > Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who brought me her two small children and implored me: "Please take them home with you." When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said: "Then please take one." . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our children. The only difference is our ability to give it to them. This is such a tremendously important message that I don't think you can even hope to accurately perceive the world without really internalizing it. The other day, someone told me a story. He was working maintenance in an apartment building, and went into a unit one day. Inside the unit, he saw a couple passed out on the couch, and a baby screaming in his crib. He went over to the baby, and saw a cockroach crawl out of his diaper. The diaper was stuck to the baby's skin. He called 9/11 immediately, the police came, and the building fired his maintenance company for not going to the building management first. This wasn't South Asia, it was here in the U.S. I heard that story, and then thought about how our daycare e-mails me daily an itemized list of the time of every diaper change and whether it was wet and/or BM. I thought about how unfair it is that she started life with a leg-up, from the hospital where she took her first breath, and yet how I'm totally driven to give her every unfair benefit I can ("you know honey, we could afford private school from pre-K if we budget carefully"). Intellectually, we want life to be fair for everyone, but being a parent means having this overwhelming urge to clear the path ahead for your offspring, burning down the forest if you have to. I'm certainly not going to send my daughter to an inner-city public school to make a point. What gets to me is our inability as a society to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance, and speak about this issue honestly outside of graduation speeches. To talk about traits like intelligence and patience in terms of what they are: winnings in the genetic lottery, rather than as the result of moral virtue. To acknowledge that "equality of opportunity" is a vicious fiction and understand that not as a call to any particular political ideology, but as a fact of the universe that we must reconcile with any political ideology.
- bby 12y agobill go hard
- tnuc 12y agoBill Gates has good intentions and in some cases is doing well. If only he wasn't so swayed by the likes of Geoffrey Sachs and Bono. There is a great book written by Nina Munk about Sachs, if only Gates could try and change his mind and look at it a little differently. http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-Tale-From-Africa http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Idealist-A-Cautionary-Ta...
- rpandey1234 12y agoHere are some of the highlights of the speech on Youtube tagged by time: http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663 http://www.deebrief.com/#!/consume/53a37a3ba109a8020091e663
- roadnottaken 12y ago"a college in the suburbs of Boston" love this
- jenius 12y agoThis is so, so good. An upvote alone is not enough to get across how much I appreciate this. These are the principles I've built the plans for my entire life around, these principles are at the core of who I am as a person. Seeing such an eloquently put and important message like this appreciated by so many people is absolutely incredible. Huge, huge respect for bill and melinda gates for the work that they have done and the good message they are spreading.
- onmydesk 12y agoIm going to be down voted for this. To me, the speech was fairly embarrassing. Its as though some rich people saw some poor people on a poor person safari. Now they come back to tell of what they saw, as if everyone in their audience would be just as amazed at such things as they were. Perhaps for a stanford graduate audience that is true? Theres suffering in the world!? :O Thats what I was left with. No-one rational could disagree with their points, the validity of the foundations purpose, etc etc and all of that. But the speech made me cringe a little.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jianshen 12y agoActually I think that's the point of the speech. A lot of folks (not just college grads) aren't aware of how lucky they are and are perhaps even more unaware that they have the ability to do anything.
- hkmurakami 12y agoStanford is nestled in the very heart of Silicon Valley, a place of understated yet immense wealth and considerable gentrification. You can spend months here and not have "a poor person" register in your consciousness. It's like the whole place is geared towards making you forget that bad things exist in this world. So unfortunately, a "hey guys, there's suffering in this world" kind of speech may just be appropriate for Stanford and the kind of people who will tune into its commencement.
- Squarel 12y agoSometimes you need speeches like that to remind you that it is out there. Unless you personally have watched these things, you can only know about them vicariously, and emotive speeches motivate others to become involved. Cold hard facts rarely move people the same way.
- javert 12y agoCame hear to find out if Bill and Melinda were saying the same old things they usually say over and over. Yep. There is one social model that has been truly successful in human history and has truly brought unlimited masses out of the darkness and into the light, and it is not based on altruism. It is based on (a) rule of law, not of men and (b) individual rights, especially property rights. The Gates would do well to start preaching this model instead of the one that has failed over and over and over all throughout history, which is: you have a duty to be your brother's keeper (altruism).
- xophe 12y ago"Optimism is often dismissed as false hope. But there is also false hopelessness." A poetic touch from a tech genius of our generation.
- aik 12y agoCommencement address video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wug9n5Atk8c
- indianheart 12y agoI wonder why these scumbags choose my country ( India ) for painting poor life conditions always ? Agreed, there are cases of extreme poverty, but so in US, Africa, Brazil ( yeah, hosting world cup !) , Eastern Europe etc. Why pick India for prostitution ? As if in US there is no prostitution. Why not pick on own country. Just look at backpage.com thousands and thousands of girls doing open prostitution. How is that good thing ? or not a poor thing ? I wonder if there was political agenda for picking India ( since we are good friends with Russia ). Bill Gates is not a hero. Did you read stories from Paul Allen ( another co-founder those who don't know )? here is the link : http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsoft-billionaire-paul-allen-talks-bill-gates-revenge-and-cancer-video/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/15/microsof... Why Stanford , a prestigious university, would invite such scumbags ? If Gates favors so much of charity why not donate everything except $1 Billion ? Are $1 billion not sufficient to live for rest of the life ? Is his charity ( which comes to around 30 %) a simply proxy for tax saving ?? Whatever may be reason , please stop painting India a bad country. I am from India , lived in America for 10 yrs before returning , travelled all over US and I can tell you there are classes, hungry people, children / women related crimes all over the place. So first look at your own country, how they are killing people in other countries and then lecture others. Worst commencement speech in history of Stanford I would say.
- graycat 12y agoI've long guessed, and this OP reinforces that, that much of what Bill and Melinda are doing now was driven by Melinda 'selling' Bill on some values that Melinda deeply held and got from her nuns and the Catholic church. But, yes, the story of Bill's visit to Soweto showed that some of Bill's own experiences made him fertile ground for Melinda's values and goals. I may be underestimating Bill's initial drive for their work now, but generally I have to guess that Melinda is the main hero here. Oh, not to forget, one little thing Melinda did: She talked both Bill and Warren into handing over, what, ballpark $100 billion? Then for her second day, the set up a value that all wealthy people should give about 50% of their wealth to philanthropy and got, apparently, quite a list of wealthy people to do just that. Another good thing to respect about them clearly seems to be their marriage; it looks like on of their beet examples. Perhaps not just coincidentally, their love and relationship, if more widely followed, would have helped those woman and children abandoned in South Asia. My view is that their example of a good marriage is huge not just for themselves but for their goals of curing poverty, that is, it is easy to see that letting marriage break is one of the biggest wastes in civilization, in particular, leading to poverty and the problems they are now trying to solve. Why so many people are so eager to bust up their marriages, or just not be very devoted to each other at all, seems to be a grand determination to extract miserable defeat from the voracious jaws of magnificent victory and just inexplicable. Congratulations to them both.
- uireiu89 12y agoTypical Americans - let's screw people throughout life, betray founders, get most unethical , get hit by anti-trust lawsuit, criticize another country though own country is having same problems. post retirement - try to cover up everything. Do Reddit AMA , have shills on internet to cover up things and misdirect new generation and create impressions you are greatest person ever. FUCK you.
- kateperry 12y ago[spam deleted by moderator to fix formatting problem in thread]