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Bill Gates on Predictable Global Catastrophe
- T-A 11y ago> what's likeliest to kill more than 10 million human beings in the next 20 years? Looking for spikes in mortality charts may not be the best way to answer this question. Cancer currently kills more than 8 million people every single year [1]. Smoking currently kills almost 6 million people per year [2]. At the current rate, road traffic will kill 25 million people globally over the next 20 years [3]. Maybe self-driving cars will reduce that significantly, but given rapid urbanization and the prevalence of developing countries in the data, I have my doubts. You don't see any of these stand out in charts because they constitute a smooth background, steadily reaping lives, year after year. [1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/ [2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/ [3] http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2013/en/ http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_st...
- vinchuco 11y agoCorrect. Spikes only present evidence that something may have occurred. So the deaths during world wars could have been due to a flu pandemic, we will never know ⸮. The main point is that there are some processes which can grow at a faster pace than we're prepared to control. Just like cancer.