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.

Wealthy people are less ethical

• Pity the rich. They drive their expensive cars with little respect for the law. Most of them (not all of them) break the rules thinking they won’t have to face the consequences, and they even take candy from children. Being wealthy is what drives the unethical behavior.
• Their unethical behavior is driven by the fact that they see nothing wrong with greed. Their wealth makes them less dependent on others, less concerned with how they're viewed and it gives them more resources for handling trouble (like traffic fines) should it come along.
• Drivers of expensive cars were four times more likely to cut off another vehicle and ignore the right-of-way than drivers of cheaper cars. The most flagrant offenders: Mercedes drivers.
• Police officers often face lecturing from the drivers of fancy cars when they pull them over for a ticket.
• Lower-class individuals are more physiologically attuned to the suffering of others than their middle- and upper-class counterparts. The difference in ethical behavior might be about opportunity rather than moral fiber.
• The pursuit of self-interest is a more fundamental motive among society's elite and the increased want associated with greater wealth and status can promote wrong-doing.
• According to a string of new studies, it's not clear if being rich increases unethical behavior or if such behavior is what allows people to become rich in the first place.
• Those given an unfair advantage believes they deserved to win. They attributed their successes to their own individual skills and talents, rather than their highly favorable circumstances.
• If rich are made to feel psychologically a little less well-off, they become way more generous, way more charitable, way more likely to offer help to another person.
• A few at the top are indeed generous, as evidenced by Bill Gates and others.

Read the source article

Technology is not the solution to poverty

You might think that technology is the solution to poverty – but here’s why you’re wrong.

• Technologies created and sold by big business will be rolled out by Technology creators in place of real solutions to global inequality.
• 62 people have more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population. 
• In the USA and Europe, large sections of the population have no faith at all in the institutions that govern society.
• The world’s richest man i.e. Bill Gates can’t give his money away fast enough, quite literally, because his wealth grows by multiple billions of dollars every year, a symptom of an economic system skewed to the interests of the very richest.
• Technology allows us to grow more food, to slow down climate change, to provide all of our energy needs, to end all of our suffering. 
• It does not challenge the status quo i.e. rich will remain richer and poor will remain poorer. 
• Who wants to question Bill Gates's statement a year ago that, if we just keep going “there will be almost no poor countries by 2035”.
• Yet to be invested technologies can theoretically provide abundance for all.
• The power of the 1 per cent rich actually means that, all things being equal, those technologies will simply reinforce that power. 
• Gates foundation is the biggest funder of research into genetic modification in the world. Gates pushes intensive farming methods involving plenty of chemicals and privatization of seed distribution. Time and again, these ‘solutions’ have proved disastrous for small farmers, allowing big players to effectively control the whole food system. They also ramp up global carbon emissions and fuel global warming.
• The cult of technology is useful for the world’s most powerful people. But if the rest of us are really interested in creating a better world, we need to look beyond the words of Bill Gates and challenge his power. 

My View:
Technology alone will never solve our problems like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption etc. At best Technology can improve what we are good at. If we are honest we will improve our honesty. If we are rogues we will improve our roguishness etc. 

What we need to do is focus on (1) education and ethical education. (2) population control which minimizes or nullifies the impact of our development. (3) elimination of corruption especially in public domain etc, over a period of time. 

Export oriented economic development has its own pitfalls. We should focus on developing what we are good at to become self sufficient in all segments and earn enough through exports to meet the needs of petroleum products import, only to maintain trade account balances every year.

In any good system, middle class should expand and poor class should shrink. Otherwise progress is meaning less. At the same time rich class should be monitored for their undesirable practices of amassing wealth and must be controlled.