How many episodes of the show have you watched? I was surprised by the *lack* of soul-crushingly-commercial toy-selling actually in the episodes. And I'm generally an extremely cynical, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist type. There may be plenty of slimy child brainwashing manipulation going on in separate toy ads, but the show material itself seems a lot less marketing-driven than the majority of kid's TV shows.
Actually, the show writing isn't the horrible syrup you might expect --- it's actually made to be tolerable for a parent to watch alongside their kids. There are frequent joke references that would go *completely over* the head of the "target" demographic age, but are thrown in for 20 to 30-year-olds. The voice/character acting is high quality. There is surprisingly little blatant "buy all our playsets and toys!" pushy in-show merchandizing (especially for a kids' TV show produced by a *toy company*). And the main character is a "nerd" portrayed in very positive light --- the show has a refreshing air of anti-anti-intellectualism, and is the opposite of "math is hard! let's go shopping!" Barbie.
You mean she gave her grandkid $100k, to provide software (which typically has a marginal cost of approximately $0) to the school district, that the district would not have bought at the $100k price in the first place (or possibly even wanted/needed at all). There's little indication that the school district got anywhere close to $100k of actual value out of the deal --- but the federal government certainly did lose several tens of thousands in taxes (to be foisted off onto the backs of taxpayers too poor to evade). So, yes, it's a transparently scummy scam to pull.
In 2012, Gates ended up 7 billion dollars *richer*after "giving away" billions --- to the "charity" that re-invests in the companies that Gates holds the rest of his fortune in. Pretty convenient to "accidentally" make 7 billion dollars in a year, while trying to "give away" your wealth. Almost as if the Gates Foundation was actually a wildly successful tax-sheltered front for advancing the extremely profitable interests that Gates is heavily invested in, that, after a few years of initial start-up investment, is now paying back ridiculously high dividends.
Well, he's doing a terrible job. In 2012, Bill Gates got $7 *richer* after all his "charitable" donations --- to the foundation that serves as a lobbying/investment firm for Gate's for-profit holdings. The "philanthropy" is a scam front for investing money back to Bill Gates empire. You don't "accidentally" get $7 Billion richer in a year after "giving away" all your money. So, yes, based on 2012, Gates is earning an immense return on all that wealth he's "giving away."
Okay, so why don't they just not provide any of that information, so people don't even know that they're investing in destructive companies?
Well, a lot of the "transparent disclosure" that you're so proud of is *already mandated by law* for maintaining charity status. As for supporting some slimy causes publicly, a big reason is to use the positive PR of the "Gates Foundation" name to give a positive slant to crummy corporate chicanery and lobbying (and even get a tax write-off for funding things you'd be doing anyway).
It just seems to me like Bill Gates is motivated by building organizations, not necessarily amassing vast sums of money.
I'd agree with you there. Bill Gates wants to build massive controlling capitalist power structures --- to "solve" all the world's problems by putting an oligarchy in charge. This "organization building" --- to cement the power of global megacorporations that Gates invests in to run the world --- is exactly what I dislike Gates for.
By the way, you still haven't answered the other questions yet.
Sorry, I don't keep a comprehensive list of every random talking point from AC inquisitors. If you like long lists of points to address, I found this nicely compiled list of dastardly things the Gates Foundation has been (openly) doing. How about addressing a couple hundred of those?
WTF kind of dictionary are you using? "Corruption" --- from more literal meanings of "decay" or "rot" --- refers to when institutions/officials work counter to their supposed "original" or "correct" functions: e.g. a government intended for "general welfare" instead makes the majority worse off for the benefit of a wealthy bribing minority. Being "corrupt" does not depend on personal gain, though seeking personal gain above the "proper" functions of ones office is a common form of corruption.
Campaign contributions aren't personal gain, they are made to the campaign.
They are only "not personal gain" in the most idiotic and shallow sense; for a politician who considers getting elected a *personal gain,* things that help their election certainly are *personal gain*. Again, though, as noted above: whether or not there is personal gain has nothing to do with whether an action is corrupt. If an official decides to act contrary to the interests they are supposed to represent in return for a large donation to a religious cause of their choice, they're also corrupt.
You seem to be intent on making up ludicrous new definitions for words in order to protect buying political influence from being called by its rightful name, "bribery". The "essential part of democracy" is deciding matters by *vote* --- "one person, one vote" --- as opposed to oligarchy (markets), which run on the "one dollar, one vote" principle.
How could you possibly think that Bill Gates was not involved in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
When the heck did I say that? I said that there were perverse political causes that I opposed, and *then* I found out that the Gates foundation was heavily supporting them.
Why would Bill Gates make such a terrible organization run transparently so that people can trace where funds go?
Because his "philanthropy" has an amazing PR team, so they can *openly* fund terrible things by *calling them good ideas,* like "education reform" and "strengthened intellectual property rights." Also, there's a lot of under-the-table strong-arming before the funds move: you know that $XX million dollars were given to such-and-such a country, conveniently *after* key politicians agree to "unrelated" corporate-friendly causes. The Gates Foundation provides a fully-tax-deductible corporate lobbying and investment fund. And whenever anyone does call them out for their transparent investments in destructive companies, it's "why do you hate charity for poor African children?"
Why would Bill Gates care about his personal wealth when he doesn't plan to give his children billions of dollars and he already has vast sums?
Why would Gates have bothered going beyond being a mere multi-hundred-millionaire in the first place? As I've argued elsewhere, Gates is apparently motivated by *power and control* over others --- amassing giant heaps of money is one way to get this, but so is being able to throw around heaps of your own and others' money for "charity."
Bribery is only done clandestinely to the extent that it is frowned upon or punished to be done openly. From the Oxford English Dictionary:
4. The act or practice of giving or accepting money or some other payment with the object of corruptly influencing the judgement or action; the offer or acceptance of bribes; spec. the application of such influences to gain votes at a parliamentary or other election.
Whether or not the action is clandestine is immaterial to bribery. The wealthy and powerful have simply convinced society not to condemn or limit their perfectly open acts of paying for corrupting influence.
I do judge Gate's philanthropic works on their own merits, independent of Microsoft. That's why, when I see the Gates Foundation name showing up as the major donor for all sorts of things that *I already think are twisted evil* before I knew Gates was involved, I get pretty cynical. I don't like the push for poorer countries to sign on to international "intellectual property" treaties to prevent them from mass-producing life-saving medications without generating profit for Western pharmaceutical oligopolies --- and I disliked that *regardless* of Gates' involvement. I don't like the push for destroying public education, replacing it with for-profit corporate indoctrination centers run by the same folks behind the private prison industry --- and I disliked that *without* knowing Gates had a hand in it. I don't hate many of the things that Gates' "philanthropy" does because of Gates; I hate Gates for funneling lots of fake philanthropic money towards causes that are *massively harmful* to humanity.
When you're one of the richest people in the world, and you've retired young. You do whatever makes you happy, without needing to care less about the media or anyone else thinks.
And when what makes you happy is having unlimited control and power over others; to command grovelling admiration from everyone? If what made Bill Gates happy was sunsets and kittens and walks along the beach, he could have retired long, long ago --- to a life of whatever luxurious hobbies tickled his interests. But to amass sheer raw power; to have heads of state tremble before you and beg for charity; to be able to portray anyone who criticizes you as a monster who wants children to die from malaria --- that appears to be what gets Gates rocks off. Moving from computers to Big Charity was just a sideways move from one empire to another. And many of Gate's activities with Big Charity are moves towards assuring a world that will *forever* be worshiping at the feet of billionaire global capitalists to beneficently wield the reigns of autocratic power.
Both? A sociopath won't have much concept of the interests of others as distinct from their own. To a sociopath, doing what's right for *yourself* is identical to doing what's right for the world. Paternalism is fundamentally sociopathic.
Clearly, he's a collage student, complaining about the current state of the field by pasting together random cut-out scraps of sentences in a confusing jumble.
When you have billions of dollars of your own money invested in Big Pharma, you sure do. You know Bill Gates doesn't keep all his money in Microsoft stock? He (and his heirs) are massive beneficiaries of profits for pharmaceutical companies and private education investments. "Big Charity" to coerce national level decision making is just another profitable business/investment decision.
I've seen Gates spending a lot of "charity" money to coerce poor countries into accepting Big Pharma's terms for "intellectual property" --- to make sure they can't produce cheap medications for themselves, but are ever reliant on (tax-deductible) contributions from wealthy benefactors. I've seen millions poured into "educational reform," to encourage profitable privatization and the creation of corporate-friendly obedient peon mills. Yes, the Gates "philanthropic" foundations have done some good things, but if you look more closely at their records, they're often involved in empire building to assure that the future of the world is still at the mercy of power-hungry multibillionaires.
Like that, only that you'd have been happier to so thoroughly destroy him that he could never play chess again, and take every cent that he had, and leave him homeless to die starving on the street. The only reason you don't is that you're not *that* much better a player than him --- so until then, you act friendly and drink beer together.
In addition to both being fellow business competitors, Jobs and Gates are also both highly successful sociopaths. Gates knows quite well that emulating compassion and humanity for the media is a savvy move; I'm sure Jobs would have done the same for him, had the situation been reversed.
You just weren't looking closely enough at how Dyson addressed this question within his other answers:
Scientific progress happens in two ways, either driven by new ideas or by new tools. The first half of the twentieth century was the time of new ideas, the second half was the time of new tools.New ideas are more exciting but new tools are often more important.
The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.
There are two NASAs, the real NASA which is intensely conservative and likes to use safe and reliable technology, and the paper NASA which pretends to support radical ideas but never does anything real.
Providing conservative but reliable tools like vacuum cleaners is clearly critical to the progress of science and technology, rather than chasing after wacky Sci-Fi goals like FTL travel.
To much time, in class that is, what is bad about collage now? Days, to much class, room --- and a big gap! In the hands, on parts of learning. Trades got this, right with apprenticeships.
^^ I hope I interpreted your missing implicit punctuation correctly in parsing this sentence? I'm afraid your sophisticated abstract poetry is a bit beyond my level of comprehension.
Given the wide range of positions that fall under the broad banner "vegetarian" (do you eat eggs? dairy? fish?), there is no one correct "technical qualification". Likely, vegetarians closer to the "fundamentalist vegan" side will consider this an unacceptable animal product, while vegetarians closer to the "I still sometimes have a BLT because bacon tastes so good" school will embrace the concept.
Yep, you get plenty of fries from a parallel research project, codenamed "raise dolphins that grow potato tumors and kill them to make fries," thanks to a generous donation from the Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Animals.
Clearly, "derp" is a plural noun, while "slashdot" is the verb, and "just" an adjective. The first clause ("Derp slashdot") has a parallel structure to "Sheep graze". The second clause ("just derp") more narrowly specifies which derp are said to slashdot: the just ones (as opposed to the unjust ones) --- so the overall sentence structure is parallel to "Sheep graze, hungry sheep."
If mechanics understood cars as well as we understand brains, then dealing with car problems might work like this: After having cut apart and ground up thousands of working and non-working cars, mechanics would know that a lack of gasoline, oil, or water was a common factor in many common car failures. Thus, whenever a broken car was brought into their shop, they'd pop open the hood and pour a bucket of gasoline, oil, or water over everything (depending on the symptoms) to try and fix the problem.
Don't worry, that's getting fixed faster than many other disparities. With families (far more often with a single mother than single father) being the fastest growing homeless demographic, followed by single women, gender parity is well on its way. Additionally, one of the largest homelessness creators --- the US military, which discards huge numbers of veterans onto the streets after they are no longer useful canon fodder --- has seen major strides towards gender equality over the last few decades.
No, they are not trying to redefine anything. YouTube functions the exact same way broadcast TV does, and the radio before that. It's a business model that has existed for 90 years now.
Exactly, on which I mute, or record and fast forward over, the ads. Which has been established by long legal precedent to be *absolutely legal,* and is only considered the least bit unethical by *fucking corporatist authoritarian assholes.* It's the TV network's problem if too many people decide that ads suck, and they go out of business; it's not the TV watcher's sacred responsibility to support the business model by staring at the ads.
Slashdot Mirror
How many episodes of the show have you watched? I was surprised by the *lack* of soul-crushingly-commercial toy-selling actually in the episodes. And I'm generally an extremely cynical, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist type. There may be plenty of slimy child brainwashing manipulation going on in separate toy ads, but the show material itself seems a lot less marketing-driven than the majority of kid's TV shows.
Real sincerity is the new ironic fake sincerity.
Actually, the show writing isn't the horrible syrup you might expect --- it's actually made to be tolerable for a parent to watch alongside their kids. There are frequent joke references that would go *completely over* the head of the "target" demographic age, but are thrown in for 20 to 30-year-olds. The voice/character acting is high quality. There is surprisingly little blatant "buy all our playsets and toys!" pushy in-show merchandizing (especially for a kids' TV show produced by a *toy company*). And the main character is a "nerd" portrayed in very positive light --- the show has a refreshing air of anti-anti-intellectualism, and is the opposite of "math is hard! let's go shopping!" Barbie.
You mean she gave her grandkid $100k, to provide software (which typically has a marginal cost of approximately $0) to the school district, that the district would not have bought at the $100k price in the first place (or possibly even wanted/needed at all). There's little indication that the school district got anywhere close to $100k of actual value out of the deal --- but the federal government certainly did lose several tens of thousands in taxes (to be foisted off onto the backs of taxpayers too poor to evade). So, yes, it's a transparently scummy scam to pull.
In 2012, Gates ended up 7 billion dollars *richer* after "giving away" billions --- to the "charity" that re-invests in the companies that Gates holds the rest of his fortune in. Pretty convenient to "accidentally" make 7 billion dollars in a year, while trying to "give away" your wealth. Almost as if the Gates Foundation was actually a wildly successful tax-sheltered front for advancing the extremely profitable interests that Gates is heavily invested in, that, after a few years of initial start-up investment, is now paying back ridiculously high dividends.
Well, he's doing a terrible job. In 2012, Bill Gates got $7 *richer* after all his "charitable" donations --- to the foundation that serves as a lobbying/investment firm for Gate's for-profit holdings. The "philanthropy" is a scam front for investing money back to Bill Gates empire. You don't "accidentally" get $7 Billion richer in a year after "giving away" all your money. So, yes, based on 2012, Gates is earning an immense return on all that wealth he's "giving away."
Okay, so why don't they just not provide any of that information, so people don't even know that they're investing in destructive companies?
Well, a lot of the "transparent disclosure" that you're so proud of is *already mandated by law* for maintaining charity status. As for supporting some slimy causes publicly, a big reason is to use the positive PR of the "Gates Foundation" name to give a positive slant to crummy corporate chicanery and lobbying (and even get a tax write-off for funding things you'd be doing anyway).
It just seems to me like Bill Gates is motivated by building organizations, not necessarily amassing vast sums of money.
I'd agree with you there. Bill Gates wants to build massive controlling capitalist power structures --- to "solve" all the world's problems by putting an oligarchy in charge. This "organization building" --- to cement the power of global megacorporations that Gates invests in to run the world --- is exactly what I dislike Gates for.
By the way, you still haven't answered the other questions yet.
Sorry, I don't keep a comprehensive list of every random talking point from AC inquisitors. If you like long lists of points to address, I found this nicely compiled list of dastardly things the Gates Foundation has been (openly) doing. How about addressing a couple hundred of those?
"corruption", which means personal gain
WTF kind of dictionary are you using? "Corruption" --- from more literal meanings of "decay" or "rot" --- refers to when institutions/officials work counter to their supposed "original" or "correct" functions: e.g. a government intended for "general welfare" instead makes the majority worse off for the benefit of a wealthy bribing minority. Being "corrupt" does not depend on personal gain, though seeking personal gain above the "proper" functions of ones office is a common form of corruption.
Campaign contributions aren't personal gain, they are made to the campaign.
They are only "not personal gain" in the most idiotic and shallow sense; for a politician who considers getting elected a *personal gain,* things that help their election certainly are *personal gain*. Again, though, as noted above: whether or not there is personal gain has nothing to do with whether an action is corrupt. If an official decides to act contrary to the interests they are supposed to represent in return for a large donation to a religious cause of their choice, they're also corrupt.
You seem to be intent on making up ludicrous new definitions for words in order to protect buying political influence from being called by its rightful name, "bribery". The "essential part of democracy" is deciding matters by *vote* --- "one person, one vote" --- as opposed to oligarchy (markets), which run on the "one dollar, one vote" principle.
How could you possibly think that Bill Gates was not involved in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
When the heck did I say that? I said that there were perverse political causes that I opposed, and *then* I found out that the Gates foundation was heavily supporting them.
Why would Bill Gates make such a terrible organization run transparently so that people can trace where funds go?
Because his "philanthropy" has an amazing PR team, so they can *openly* fund terrible things by *calling them good ideas,* like "education reform" and "strengthened intellectual property rights." Also, there's a lot of under-the-table strong-arming before the funds move: you know that $XX million dollars were given to such-and-such a country, conveniently *after* key politicians agree to "unrelated" corporate-friendly causes. The Gates Foundation provides a fully-tax-deductible corporate lobbying and investment fund. And whenever anyone does call them out for their transparent investments in destructive companies, it's "why do you hate charity for poor African children?"
Why would Bill Gates care about his personal wealth when he doesn't plan to give his children billions of dollars and he already has vast sums?
Why would Gates have bothered going beyond being a mere multi-hundred-millionaire in the first place? As I've argued elsewhere, Gates is apparently motivated by *power and control* over others --- amassing giant heaps of money is one way to get this, but so is being able to throw around heaps of your own and others' money for "charity."
Bribery is only done clandestinely to the extent that it is frowned upon or punished to be done openly. From the Oxford English Dictionary:
4. The act or practice of giving or accepting money or some other payment with the object of corruptly influencing the judgement or action; the offer or acceptance of bribes; spec. the application of such influences to gain votes at a parliamentary or other election.
Whether or not the action is clandestine is immaterial to bribery. The wealthy and powerful have simply convinced society not to condemn or limit their perfectly open acts of paying for corrupting influence.
I do judge Gate's philanthropic works on their own merits, independent of Microsoft. That's why, when I see the Gates Foundation name showing up as the major donor for all sorts of things that *I already think are twisted evil* before I knew Gates was involved, I get pretty cynical. I don't like the push for poorer countries to sign on to international "intellectual property" treaties to prevent them from mass-producing life-saving medications without generating profit for Western pharmaceutical oligopolies --- and I disliked that *regardless* of Gates' involvement. I don't like the push for destroying public education, replacing it with for-profit corporate indoctrination centers run by the same folks behind the private prison industry --- and I disliked that *without* knowing Gates had a hand in it. I don't hate many of the things that Gates' "philanthropy" does because of Gates; I hate Gates for funneling lots of fake philanthropic money towards causes that are *massively harmful* to humanity.
When you're one of the richest people in the world, and you've retired young. You do whatever makes you happy, without needing to care less about the media or anyone else thinks.
And when what makes you happy is having unlimited control and power over others; to command grovelling admiration from everyone? If what made Bill Gates happy was sunsets and kittens and walks along the beach, he could have retired long, long ago --- to a life of whatever luxurious hobbies tickled his interests. But to amass sheer raw power; to have heads of state tremble before you and beg for charity; to be able to portray anyone who criticizes you as a monster who wants children to die from malaria --- that appears to be what gets Gates rocks off. Moving from computers to Big Charity was just a sideways move from one empire to another. And many of Gate's activities with Big Charity are moves towards assuring a world that will *forever* be worshiping at the feet of billionaire global capitalists to beneficently wield the reigns of autocratic power.
Both? A sociopath won't have much concept of the interests of others as distinct from their own. To a sociopath, doing what's right for *yourself* is identical to doing what's right for the world. Paternalism is fundamentally sociopathic.
Clearly, he's a collage student, complaining about the current state of the field by pasting together random cut-out scraps of sentences in a confusing jumble.
When you have billions of dollars of your own money invested in Big Pharma, you sure do. You know Bill Gates doesn't keep all his money in Microsoft stock? He (and his heirs) are massive beneficiaries of profits for pharmaceutical companies and private education investments. "Big Charity" to coerce national level decision making is just another profitable business/investment decision.
I've seen Gates spending a lot of "charity" money to coerce poor countries into accepting Big Pharma's terms for "intellectual property" --- to make sure they can't produce cheap medications for themselves, but are ever reliant on (tax-deductible) contributions from wealthy benefactors. I've seen millions poured into "educational reform," to encourage profitable privatization and the creation of corporate-friendly obedient peon mills. Yes, the Gates "philanthropic" foundations have done some good things, but if you look more closely at their records, they're often involved in empire building to assure that the future of the world is still at the mercy of power-hungry multibillionaires.
Like that, only that you'd have been happier to so thoroughly destroy him that he could never play chess again, and take every cent that he had, and leave him homeless to die starving on the street. The only reason you don't is that you're not *that* much better a player than him --- so until then, you act friendly and drink beer together.
In addition to both being fellow business competitors, Jobs and Gates are also both highly successful sociopaths. Gates knows quite well that emulating compassion and humanity for the media is a savvy move; I'm sure Jobs would have done the same for him, had the situation been reversed.
You just weren't looking closely enough at how Dyson addressed this question within his other answers:
Scientific progress happens in two ways, either driven by new ideas or by new tools. The first half of the twentieth century was the time of new ideas, the second half was the time of new tools.New ideas are more exciting but new tools are often more important.
The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.
There are two NASAs, the real NASA which is intensely conservative and likes to use safe and reliable technology, and the paper NASA which pretends to support radical ideas but never does anything real.
Providing conservative but reliable tools like vacuum cleaners is clearly critical to the progress of science and technology, rather than chasing after wacky Sci-Fi goals like FTL travel.
To much time, in class that is, what is bad about collage now? Days, to much class, room --- and a big gap! In the hands, on parts of learning. Trades got this, right with apprenticeships.
^^ I hope I interpreted your missing implicit punctuation correctly in parsing this sentence? I'm afraid your sophisticated abstract poetry is a bit beyond my level of comprehension.
Given the wide range of positions that fall under the broad banner "vegetarian" (do you eat eggs? dairy? fish?), there is no one correct "technical qualification". Likely, vegetarians closer to the "fundamentalist vegan" side will consider this an unacceptable animal product, while vegetarians closer to the "I still sometimes have a BLT because bacon tastes so good" school will embrace the concept.
You get lots of fries for that price
Yep, you get plenty of fries from a parallel research project, codenamed "raise dolphins that grow potato tumors and kill them to make fries," thanks to a generous donation from the Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Animals.
Clearly, "derp" is a plural noun, while "slashdot" is the verb, and "just" an adjective. The first clause ("Derp slashdot") has a parallel structure to "Sheep graze". The second clause ("just derp") more narrowly specifies which derp are said to slashdot: the just ones (as opposed to the unjust ones) --- so the overall sentence structure is parallel to "Sheep graze, hungry sheep."
If mechanics understood cars as well as we understand brains, then dealing with car problems might work like this:
After having cut apart and ground up thousands of working and non-working cars, mechanics would know that a lack of gasoline, oil, or water was a common factor in many common car failures. Thus, whenever a broken car was brought into their shop, they'd pop open the hood and pour a bucket of gasoline, oil, or water over everything (depending on the symptoms) to try and fix the problem.
Don't worry, that's getting fixed faster than many other disparities. With families (far more often with a single mother than single father) being the fastest growing homeless demographic, followed by single women, gender parity is well on its way. Additionally, one of the largest homelessness creators --- the US military, which discards huge numbers of veterans onto the streets after they are no longer useful canon fodder --- has seen major strides towards gender equality over the last few decades.
No, they are not trying to redefine anything. YouTube functions the exact same way broadcast TV does, and the radio before that. It's a business model that has existed for 90 years now.
Exactly, on which I mute, or record and fast forward over, the ads. Which has been established by long legal precedent to be *absolutely legal,* and is only considered the least bit unethical by *fucking corporatist authoritarian assholes.* It's the TV network's problem if too many people decide that ads suck, and they go out of business; it's not the TV watcher's sacred responsibility to support the business model by staring at the ads.