Bill Gates, Steven Pinker and Philip Galanes

Excerpts from conversation between Bill Gates, Steven Pinker and Philip Galanes over a lunch of pizza and salad. Published in New York Times dated Jan 27, 2018.

• You don’t want a tech company run by somebody in their 60s. At least I didn’t want to ... Bill Gates
• Mr. Gates readily acknowledged that the person he is today is not one he would have recognized when he was in his 20s and single-mindedly building Microsoft. “I was a zealot,” he said. “I didn’t believe in weekends. I didn’t believe in vacations. I knew everybody’s license plate so I knew when they were coming and going. That was my life: doing great software.”
• Given this wealth and our value system, what’s the highest-impact way to give it back? Melinda and I chose global health as our biggest issue, and U.S. education as our second one. And we’ve surrounded global health with agriculture and sanitation, family planning, antismoking. So, it’s a broad definition ... BG
• For a young man in his 20s, writing software night and day may be the best way to add to human welfare ... BG
• We have to resist the temptation to say that the fantastic good that’s done by foundations and innovators takes governments off the hook ...  Steven Pinker
• The motto of the foundation is: “Every life has equal value.” But in truth, I want better things for my husband and my kids than for you ... Philip Galanes
• When we give ourselves over to the law, we want it to be executed impartially. We gain stability. But if you could get your son off, of course you’ll try ... BG
• Those under the influence of reason desire nothing for themselves that they do not desire for all humankind ... SP
• But reason is not a powerful part of human nature. Innately, we favor family over strangers, our tribe over other tribes. It’s only when we convince others of the right way to act — that we conclude that all lives have equal value ... SP
• There’s a tendency in journalism and political debates to assume that it’s easy to achieve a perfect society. But we have no right to expect perfection ... SP
• Why throw money at the developing world? They’re just going to have more babies and be just as poor ... SP
• I embrace more risk. Most philanthropists don’t take huge risks. If I didn’t have the success I had at Microsoft, I would never have the bullheadedness to embark on this project ... BG
• The person who invents an affordable and efficient toilet should be made a saint ... SP
• One of the biggest enemies of reason is tribalism. When people subscribe to an ideology, they suck up evidence that supports their preconceptions and filter out evidence that goes against them. And a move toward greater rationality would unbundle them and let evidence inform what the optimal policies ought to be. ... SP
• Innovation drives progress, not Washington ... PG
• Is AI going to proceed so quickly that work, which is something people worship, will suffer bad distributional effects, and people won’t know what to do? This is an unfortunate time for saying, “Take all your damn negative thoughts, and I’ll innovate away from them.” People are seeing difficulty with that argument ... BG
• There are certain things that governments are always going to do better than private innovators. Basic research, for instance ... SP
• All three sectors — philanthropy, which is about 2 percent of the economy; government, which is about 30 percent; and the private sector, which is the balance and largest by far — each have their role ... BG
• Disease elimination is something that runs against people’s general pessimistic outlook. It’s amazing to think that polio might be gone. That one is pretty near ... BG

With advancing age, enlightenment is natural especially for people with book reading habit. The winner is who gets this at an early age and doesn't intimidate juniors and respect their rights.

Gandhi's 100 teachings

Here are 100 teachings drawn from Gandhi's writings. 
There will be greater opportunities to put them to good use.

1. A civilization is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.
2. A Government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.
3. All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect.
4. All fear is a want of faith.
5. All other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
6. A nonviolent resister cannot wait or delay action till perfect conditions are forthcoming.
7. A nonviolent revolution is not a program for the seizure of power. It is a program for the transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
8. A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
9. By our actions we mean to show that physical force is nothing compared (to) moral force.
10. Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil.
11. Civil disobedience without constructive programs is bound to fail.
12. Cooperation with good is as much a duty as noncooperation with evil.
13. Do not undertake anything beyond your capacity, and at the same time do not harbor the wish to do less than you can. One who takes up tasks beyond his powers is proud and attached. On the other hand, one who does less than he can is a thief.
14. Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible.
15. Each step upward makes me feel stronger and fit for the next step.
16. Every one of my failures has been a steppingstone.
17. Every right carries with it a corresponding duty.
18. Everything is done openly and aboveboard, for truth hates secrecy.
19. Evil can only be sustained by violence.
20. Exploitation is the essence of violence.
21. Faith does not admit of telling. It has to be lived and then it becomes self-propagating.
22. Faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of God within.
23. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.
24. For a nonviolent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him.
25. Freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom.
26. Given the opportunity, every human being has the same possibility for spiritual growth.
27. God is conscience.
28. [God] reveals Himself daily to every human being but we shut our ears to "the still small voice."
29. Good government is no substitute for self-government.
30. He who is ever brooding over results often loses nerve in the performance of duty.
31. I am a Christian and a Hindu and a Moslem and a Jew.
32. I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.
33. I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him; and, if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.
34. I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill.
35. I can retain neither respect nor affection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.
36. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, "unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind."
37. If a father does an injustice, it is the duty of his children to leave the parental roof. If the headmaster of a school conducts his institution on an immoral basis, the pupils must leave the school. If the chairman of a corporation is corrupt, the members thereof must wash their hands clean of his corruption by withdrawing from it; even so, if a Government does a grave injustice, the subjects must withdraw cooperation wholly or partially, sufficiently to wean the ruler from his wickedness.
38. If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
39. I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me.
40. Individuals or nations, who would practice nonviolence, must be prepared to sacrifice [everything] except honor.
41. In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
42. In nonviolent resistance, success is possible even if there is only one nonviolent resister of the proper stamp.
43. In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things to go on. (written in September 1939 at the start of World War II) 
44. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.
45. It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
46. It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves.
47. It is not nonviolence if we love merely those who love us. It is nonviolence only when we love those who hate us.
48. It is sinful to buy and use articles made by sweated labor.
49. I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
50. Love is the law of life.
51. Love never claims, it ever gives.
52. No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption.
53. No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice no matter where it occurred.
54. No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important.
55. Nonviolence, in the very nature of things, is of no assistance in the defense of ill-gotten gains and immoral acts.
56. Nonviolence is never a method of coercion, it is one of conversion.
57. [Nonviolent] struggle is impossible without capital in the form of character.
58. Nothing enduring can be built on violence.
59. Our aim is the establishment of the kingdom of Righteousness on earth.
60. Peace has its victories more glorious than those of war.
61. Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one another.
62. Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?
63. Religions are different roads converging on the same point.
64. Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
65. Rights that do not flow directly from duty well performed are not worth having.
66. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
67. Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.
68. Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone.
69. Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak.
70. That line of action is alone justice which does not harm either party to a dispute.
71. The acquisition of the spirit of nonresistance changes one's outlook upon life. It puts different values upon things and upsets previous calculations. And when it is set in motion, its effect can overtake the whole world. It is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul.
72. The best politics is right action.
73. The danger is greatest when victory seems nearest.
74. The fabled godly Elephant King... was saved only when he thought he was at his last gasp.
75. The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
76. The fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves.
77. The highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
78. The movement of noncooperation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt; it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, or spirit.
79. The problem is a world problem. No nation can find its own salvation by breaking away from others. We must all be saved or we must all perish together.
80. There is a power now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.
81. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.
82. To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.
83. To benefit by others' killing and delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religious and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.
84. True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it.
85. Truth never damages a cause that is just.
86. Violence is suicide.
87. We are all children of one and the same God and, therefore, absolutely equal.
88. We hug the chains that bind us.
89. We leave things to Fate after exhausting all the remedies.
90. We may attack measures and systems. We may not, we must not, attack people. Imperfect ourselves, we must be tender toward others and slow to impute their motives.
91. We may not be God but we are of God -- even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.
92. We must combat the wrong by ceasing to assist the wrongdoer, directly or indirectly.
93. Western democracy as it functions today, is diluted nazism or fascism. At best it is merely a cloak to hide the nazi and fascist tendencies of imperialism.
94. What is possible for one is possible for all.
95. When we disobey a law, it is not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.
96. Where Love is, there God is also.
97. Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
98. Whilst... [conscience] is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon others would be an insufferable interference with their freedom of conscience.
99. Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great he might be, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically.
100. You should be pioneers in presenting a living faith to the world and not the dry bones of a traditional faith which the world will not grasp.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem 

brings us face to face with another problem ... Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gandhi on providence and greed

• In a place like India, people affected by large-scale industrial projects like mining are told that they must pay the price for the nation to progress. Gandhi fundamentally rejected this as immoral.
• Co-operation, Gandhi argued, not competition, is the natural state of mankind. The same is true for our economic system.
• How you make your money in the first place is more important than how much you give away.
• Whatever you generate is never fully yours because it's going to be there long after you. In essence, you are only its caretaker. Clinging to material wealth is therefore a redundant pursuit.
• Not everyone has wealth-generating capabilities. Those that do are somehow better endowed, therefore, which means that they have more responsibility. It's directed to individual entrepreneurs, but the same could be said for companies too.
• Business produces wealth within a social, political and cultural context. All wealth is public in some essential way because it wasn't generated it in a vacuum. A very Gandhian idea.
• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed, said Gandhiji. So long as we cooperate with the cycle of life, the soil renews its fertility indefinitely and provides health, recreation, sustenance and peace to those who depend on it. But when the ‘predatory’ attitude prevails, nature’s balance is upset and there is an all-round bio-logical deterioration.
• Utilitarian precept of  “the greatest good of the greatest number” is a hopelessly unrealistic ideal since some people are incorrigibly greedy and we live in a dog-eat-dog world of scarce resources and the devil take the hindmost. 
• But the problem is that the Earth cannot provide for everyone’s greed and their needs, then there is a hope of solving the problem by enough people curtailing their greed enough, provided (a) no one else’s greed is infinite and (b) the number of people becomes reasonably stable (unlike in the last eighty years, when it has doubled every two or three generations).
• A man who is poor will continually examine himself and find out what are the superfluous things he keeps for himself, and, if you conduct yourself in a sportsman like spirit from day to day, you will be astounded at the fewness of things you require.
• Excessive greed for anything is the root of all evil.
• I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil – man’s greed. Will America, England etc continue to exploit the so-called uncivilized races and hope to attain peace that the whole world is pining for? Will Americans continue to engage in commercial rivalries and yet expect to dictate peace to the world?
• Peace can be precluded by intense commercial rivalries (for, say, access to raw materials) and by an aspiration of one nation to “dictate peace” to the others on terms favoring itself in the rivalries. These are hardly the only causes of war, but they are substantial.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need 

but not enough for every man’s greed ... Mahatma Gandhi

My View:

Gandhi's views even though appear logical and equitable but is a misfit in today's racing world. No one is willing to wait for others to catch up. Gandhian views have reportedly produced over 1000 PhD's in western world but are never practiced or adopted. In the words of Prof. Amartya Sen "Gandhi has relevance only in academics". If anybody talks about Gandhi's ideals he will be looked at as insane person and gets isolated. Like communism, Gandhism stands irrelevant today. 

The illusion of progress

This is precisely what you'd expect of a self-serving elite that was desperate to cloak the unhappy reality that the relative few are benefiting immensely at the expense of the many. The core narrative of politics everywhere is progress. If progress isn't being made, politicians and the system are failing. In the past, "progressive" movements sought to advance both social and economic opportunities for marginalized groups. Now a days, social progress has been decoupled from economic progress.

Progress is defined as the social advancement of a marginalized populace into the mainstream. When the marginalized populace is comprised of many millions of individuals, social progress and economic progress are mutually reinforcing dynamics: opportunities for social advancement in the mainstream created economic opportunities, and vice versa. For variety of reasons social progress has been effectively decoupled from economic progress. Woeful lack of economic progress for the bottom 90% proves financial progress is now limited to an elite comprised of oligarchs, technocrats and entrepreneurs. Everyone else has been losing ground in wages, wealth and opportunity. The movement for the vast majority is now backward, not forward.

This self-serving elite is desperate to cloak the potentially explosive reality that the relative few are benefiting immensely at the expense of the many. If we measure progress solely by participation in and ownership of the most productive parts of the current mode of production, a much different snapshot emerges: economic stagnation is not progress.

There is no progress without corresponding digression ... Swami Vivekananda

Taxation has dual purpose of raising money for governance & development and also funding welfare activities to provide dignified life for the downtrodden. The current trend of lowering taxes benefits upper classes and facilitates them in amassing more and more wealth and widening of rich-poor divide. Poor remaining poor, middle classes becoming rich and upper classes becoming oligarchs is neither democracy nor desirable.