Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media
wired.com
wired.com
Compare a nature made system to a man made system.
Nature changes over time. Our laws and regulations however do not get updated to reflect the times. That is the reason why human progress is slow. It's because humans don't change. That is the root cause of all evil. Humans like the comfort of not having to change.
What about "It’s insane how confused the trials here in the US have been."? That opinion is very important and has implications for how everyone here should act. The last 6 months have been expensively purchased and the best thing that could have been bought was good information. If that time has been wasted then there should be reform of an evidence-based nature. This is an opinion that really deserves debate, opinions thrown about and evidence dredged up. With encryption, HN will basically just agree that he is wrong and everyone likes encryption. Not much more to say. Maybe we will think of the children on the way thorough.
Encryption is an important issue but frankly that isn't what Gates is talking about, so arguing about it is a bit pointless. It is barely even germain to the topic he is talking about. He is talking about a global pandemic.
You can also read in his tone that he feels personally slighted by not being given a seat at the table in the US COVID response. People point to South Korea's success and call the US a failure, not realizing that if you implemented their measures in the US: things like forced contact tracing, forced registration, and locking up the infected in isolated sites, you'd have a civil insurrection on your hands.
Evidently it is interesting to the HN croud, because this is how they vote.
Why argue about this? This is what we have a voting system on HN for. It shows us what is objectively interesting and what is not, we don't really need you or anyone else to tell us what should be interesting, we have real data to demonstrate what is.
Someone like Gates pushing for the end of private speech at scale is always going to be of interest to the HN crowd.
Point is, who cares what else he has to say if he says stuff like this? He's as much an expert on technology as he is on pathology, so if his opinions on technology are bad... well you get the point.
What is frustrating about this comment is that it inevitably commands the top of the HN thread, "for the 8-zillionth time", because its author's moniker automatically attracts "upvotes" due its familiarity, not because the comment is the most interesting.
That said, this comment is probably worthy of being at the top since the E2E debate is indeed a tired one and that sentiment probably has many sympathisers. However, as someone else pointed out, Gates brought this up, not HN. And it does directly relate to discussions about COVID on Facebook (WhatsApp) and the ability to censor them. Of course, there is also the argument that newcomers to HN will not know all the past discussions of E2E, nor are they expected to read them before commenting. We regularly see HN re-post items that have previously been submitted, re-opening discussions that are old hat, inviting us to re-hash them.
While some readers may grow tired of seeing the same topics discussed over and over again, other readers may grow tired of seeing the same usernames at the top of so many threads, over and over again, no matter what their comments.
This is one of the reasons for which I proposed that HN, by default, display discussions collapsed down to first branches. Just show the text for the first branches and collapse their corresponding conversations. Readers would only expand branches they find relevant or interesting and comment within them.
You could take this one step further and only show the first two lines (or n characters) of first branch comments. This would force a style where authors would have to provide a two line summary of their comment (if it is a first branch comment) in order to facilitate scanning. With this approach the list of first branches would almost look like the HN home page, where you can quickly scan the short titles and expand topics of interest.
To address your comment directly, if the inevitable makes it to the top of the first branch list it will be easy to scan other first branches on the same page without having to scroll or take any action. This might promote participation in other threads within the conversation and maybe even the bubbling-up of more "worthy" contenders for the top first branch.
Give me top threads and a level below them to see a rebuttal -- if I want to see more I'll break them down.
I do wish there was a way to see if there are high value or low value posts below, like someone got gilded or got 400 upvotes or something. Not sure how this would be implemented though; I could see terrible pun threads getting too many upvotes and throwing that off.
I think is generally good. I wouldn't call it "great". I can only assume that people who think it is great only ever care about tech (where HN is a good tech site) and politics (where every politics discussion on the internet is terrible). Every other interest I have has a forum that is better than HN. HN suffers somewhat from its demographic monoculture and seems to have way more opinionated arm-chair quarterbacks than other forums I'm in. I assume that many other "career-related" forums have similar issues, though. I can imagine lawyer forum probably has lots of lawyers who have never practiced Constitutional law but giving strong opinions on it on a daily basis.
Rather the very difficult and important issue, how do you stop someone with 80 million followers from spreading lies and large numbers of people believing them, and who determines what are facts and what are lies. By Facebook, Twitter, etc.. removing Trump's posts for instance, aren't they taking upon themselves the authority of what's true and what isn't?
I have to believe the only answer is something they call freedom of speech. You can say whatever the hell you want publicly. I'm appalled by the fact the highest authority in the world retweeted the sperm doctors video as well, but I'm not so comfortable with FB, Twitter, etc. deciding for me what is true and not, or worth me reading, either.
So, the encryption issue doesn't apply here. It's a serious issue, but separate. The problem is not that encrypted lies can be sent. The lies that reach 1000 people aren't the problem. The problem is the unencrypted lies that REACH 80 million+ people.
Consider that the pile-on of that doctor - an African from Cameroon where Christianity is blended with traditional tribal superstition - happened around the same time as the Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health published a Newsweek piece on how HCL is a valid early-stage treatment [1].
I understand this is how the media works: an advocate of HCL who has fringe cultural beliefs was retweeted by Trump, so the story was irresistible and endlessly amplified (including here by Gates).
But the quality of debate would be so much better if the media engaged with the (superficially) strongest proponents of a position (such as Harvey Risch) and aimed withering criticism and analysis at them instead. Shouldn't the focus be on dismantling the claims of the most, not the least, credentialed proponents?
Instead the media from all quarters deliberately amplifies the most fringe proponents, so now HCL is shorthand for expressing disdain for particular cultural beliefs, and those 10 million views were significantly driven by most media outlets covering her.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exis...
The media, which is mostly left leaning, ignores this and instead prefers to take cheap shots at Trump whenever possible on the subject. It seems very biased, very childish, and entirely divorced from reality - actually that more or less sums up the state of US politics lately.
Something I've wished for; hacker news only with top level comments
This is one of the things Slashdot did rather well with its categorization and ratings, though if that system were used then I’m sure everything would just be rated +5 Insightful with little signal over the noise.
1) decide what the definition of truth is
2) differentiate between subjectivity and objectivity
3) differentiate between misleading and outright incorrect
4) investigate every piece of media thoroughly
5) avoid bias
6) peer review
7) correct any mistakes
And this list is just off the top of my head.
So what bill gates is saying is that you have to do all this at a scale of 1 billion users, all controlled roughly by a few centralised organisations. I think Bill's words are still kind of stupid even with context. The way to fight all of these problems has always been education, and social welfare, and things the government should ACTUALLY be doing, not vetting encryption schemes.
I've yet to see anyone provide any kind of evidence that suggests censorship changes people's minds about conspiracies - if anything it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.
Very few people are actively seeking to become radicalized into some fringe movement. It instead happens more passively or through active recruitment by another member. Negative content is normalized when it appears on a platform intertwined with mainstream content. People stop viewing it as fringe and it becomes easier for people to be passively radicalized or recruited. When that content is only available on sites dedicated to that content, people aren't going to stumble upon it without recognizing what it truly is. There are plenty of stories about people being accidentally radicalized by what they see on Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, etc. You aren't going to accidentally be radicalized by visiting Storm Front.
Also on that point, the freedom of speech in the US is strongly correlated with conspiracy theories, if only because 1) you can freely spread malicious lies and 2) it can be in a lot of people's interests to do so. I think it's always been in people's interest to spread lies, but I think recently in the very partisan climate in the US the media (and I'm including social media there) have happened upon the discovery that spreading this misinformation is actually very very good for business. It generates outrage in the opposite camp and keeps one side of the divide entertained.
The problem is there’s no agreed upon definition for what’s “bogus”. A while ago someone commented here with a list of statements ranging from obviously false obviously true to show how hard the problem is, I wish I could find it.
Several commenters point out end-to-end encryption would prevent filtering or tagging messages.
But that's not true. The message analysis could be done at either endpoint without violating privacy.
Tagging (or removing) a message before you send/forward it, or after you receive it, with "the central message of this comment has been tagged as "probably a hoax" by hoaxtracker.com; check out this CDC notice <here> to learn more".
<here> does not need to be a URL which reveals much other than your general interest in the subject. But if that seems too revealing, it could already be already available as part of the endpoint's filtering data and readable locally.
Lots of people forward (retweet), or write a little something before resharing what is false or misleading information, not realising they're doing so. I would not be surprised if getting those tags, rarely enough to stand out, before they send the message would cause some people to hesitate and check/think a bit more before sending. Maybe rephrase their attached comment into a question rather than confident outrage.
Technically this is not much different from privacy-preserving spam filtering.
This is stupid. Lots of naked baby photos get sent in my culture (Eastern-European country) in a most non-harmful way, i.e. from parents to the kids' grand-parents or even to the parents' close friends (especially from the mother to her friends). Your supposed filter will most probably block that social-sharing process (because it will see photos of naked children => very, very bad), not realising the above mentioned context.
That means no control of communication by the endpoint software either directly or indirectly between willing senders and recipients regardless of justification, and especially on the basis of whether or not data send from a willing sender to a willing receipient represents the "truth". The endpoint software vendor has no standing to judge that unless it's an opt-in anti-spam type feature.
So what I'm saying is it's easy for the app on people's phone to filter or block sharing misinformation, because the app can see what the data is just like your eyes using the app can see what the data is. I'd also be fairly surprised if WhatsApp the app re-uploaded every single shared video, I'd say it's more likely they share a link or hash and encrypt that link in the message (but that is just a guess).
To your second point. All methods of global speech are eventually used for evil. All methods of communication are eventually used for evil, all methods of food preparation are eventually used for evil. There are some flaws in that argument.
Facebook/WhatsApp claims WhatsApp messages are "end-to-end" encypted. For example, here
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
Are the "end-to-end" encryption claims irrelevant if "they have access to the unecncypted information before and after sending"?
"I'll be on my way home in five minutes!" [send]
"Sorry, our algorithms have detected that you were about to spread misinformation. Please contact support to reactivate your account. Premium support is available to subscribers of our membership programme"
I'm actually only half joking: while some local library code surely cannot tell truth from lies, that problem remains just as unsolved for arbitrary amounts of central effort. There's a reason truth ministries are a Bad Idea.
When I look at the medium article, I see this:
And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].
Note the []? Was this added in by Medium? Gates as an edit after a read-and-OK-to-release? Did Gates have editorial input?
Regardless, I believe [] means 'edited afterwards for clarity'. But by whom?
I Googled, and found this:
https://wccftech.com/bill-gates-hate-encryption/
Yet in this case, there was no hatred of encryption, but picked quotes where he suggested that in one case, if you have the means, the government should be aided .. eg, a murderer.
There was another article on hackernews, where many lamented how much the media just spins, takes quotes out of context, basically does whatever it wants to. I wonder, how much of this are we seeing here?
(Note, Gates could very much be for back-doored encryption, but my point is, I don't think it's a clear position due to this medium article.. where that stances was in [] and added by someone after...)
> (I wouldn't see a problem with it personally
The POTUS said CNN is fake news, hundreds of times. So, as you say, people should be prevented from sharing and reading it?! There's no problem with that?! The very first item on the USA Bill of Rights isn't important?
The goal seems to be removing easy access to communications where governments can't listen for signs of dangerous behavior. But individuals can write custom software. Is there a stage in this arms race where one would need company/nation-state level resources to communicate in private?
Is there a potential future in which every piece of end-user software can't run without being signed by the government and is enforced at the CPU level? I'd hate to think this is even possible, but my (limited) understanding of secure enclaves makes me think there's a chance.
Not for walled garden platforms. See also The Digital Imprimatur:
If you're sitting here going, "gosh, I wonder why someone that well-informed would say that?!", I'd point out that you don't actually know the full detail of what he said.
He doesn't seem to realise however that he's making this far worse.
Literally a core part of the Gates/COVID conspiracy theories goes like this:
"Bill Gates want to track everyone and is using a COVID vaccine as a trojan horse to do it"
Then he goes and says, gee, maybe it shouldn't be possible to say things Bill Gates doesn't like and the way to implement this is to ensure tech firms can monitor and track everything everyone is saying.
He's basically giving his critics an intellectual ammo dump with this interview. Dude doesn't seem self-aware, at all.
I personally think the solution isn't to make it harder to share lies, but easier to share the truth. Sharing the truth is actually extremely labor intensive.
An honest utilitarian would be willing to share their calculations, which would be interesting to see, though I am not sure how you'd balance the interests in the cases described above.
I've fallen into this trap. It led me to realize that, like ideologies, all frameworks are flawed. Assuming otherwise leads to positions that are starved for empathy and compassion - and that are ultimately counterproductive.
I feel that the following statements could both be true.
1. Social media platforms should be able to monitor what content users are sharing on these platforms. Therefore these platforms maybe shouldn't have end-to-end encryption.
2. People need to have access to encryption for their own usage outside of social media platforms.
Where this might get tricky is in decentralized platforms which nobody owns. But we don't need to deal with this right now because it's not yet a problem. This will be a cat and mouse game always.
EDIT: Points 1 and 2 aren't necessarily my beliefs. I haven't put enough thought and research into it to have a more fully formed belief. These points are just my interpretation of what Gates could be saying. The context of encryption is in these platforms. He's not attacking encryption in general. Though other sources may reveal more information which could change my interpretation.
Then you’re not a platform, you are a publisher and should be held accountable for what you choose to publish. A platform is literally that: a platform for use by users as they see intended. I’m not talking about trolls, spammers, hackers and those who post illegal content. When platforms move down to editorialize content, they cease to be defined as a platform.
Decent article about section 230: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/business/section-230-inte...
Lie, fraud, child porn is real. Government should install 24-7 cameras in every private room of every citizen to curb all illegal activity.
Because billionaires don't need encryption to keep themselves safe. The billions take care of that just fine.
> Joseph P. Nacchio is an American executive who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International from 1997 to 2002. Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest. He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The simple explanation is that there exist people who in good faith disagree with you about encryption.
Social media is destroying our society in front of our eyes. Identifying how and why that is happening is something that matters too. The hardline techie position that all communications must be completely encrypted with obfuscated origins is a position whose consequences are not fully understood.
Well, strangely, I'm involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I'm involved with climate change, GMOs, and vaccines. The IRONY [emphasis added] is that it's DIGITAL [emphasis added] social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, "OK, there's just an evil person, and that explains all of this."
Well, you're friends with Mark Zuckerberg. Have you talked to him about this?
After I said this publicly, he sent me mail. I like Mark, I think he's got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there. The lies are so titillating you have to be able to see them and at least slow them down."
Gates has a reason to be against the spreading of information on social media because recently he became a target of conspiracy theories spread on social media.
If encryption is an imediment to stoping people from spreading theories about him, then he obviously has a reason to be against encryption when used to spread these theories.
Maybe what is more interesting is when he uses the word irony right before he states he is against encryption.
What does he mean?
What is ironic about the fact that it is "digital social media" that allows "oversimplistic explanation[s]"?
HN readers can probably make better guesses than me. Disgreement with the guesses I make is expected.
For example, perhaps it is ironic because:
He has been such a strong proponent of using computers for anything and everything.
Gates was initially a skeptic of the internet, but later believed Microsoft's "internet strategy" was of primary importance. This led to projects like Internet Explorer and MSN. The company is now preparing to spend billions to acquire a social media company.
In amassing the fortune that allows him to pursue these philanthropic causes he and his company presented countless titillating, oversimplistic explanations of the value of using computers for seemingly anything. He wanted us to believe that the computer (running Windows of course) was the great enabler.
I have no idea what he meant and I am grasping at straws.
Also, sad to see the actual meaningful content of the article gotten less attention.
If there were strong privacy laws defining how and when data could be collected and accessed then in theory I'm happy for the right people to have access to investigate criminal acts. Under a warrant that a judge has reviewed.
But currently it seems to be a free-for-all with tech companies being the ones in control of most of the data.
Gates didn't suggest that the messages be sent unencrypted through government-controlled message routers either. Presumably, he is promoting systems that work like MS Teams or Slack.
Gates attacked encryption. Nothing beneficial (to the public) follows that.
He is demonizing encryption. There are few options that logically follow that stance.
[1]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/mps-largest-...
Would you sacrifice your privacy if it could eliminate child pornography? The theory is hard to say no to, but in practice that kind of power has never worked out. If we want to retain privacy we have to accept some amount of crime going unnoticed.
It seems to me that there are many instances where child exploitation is ignored when it is politically convenient such that giving up our privacy wouldn't be of benefit to society, and would be largely to our detriment.
Finally if you take a look at pure math - most of worlds suffering, evil and death is inflicted by world's governments. You'd put your trust in that over individuals?
I also said in my (very short) comment that such an extreme level of power never works out in practice. So we need to accept that as long as privacy exists, some amount of crime will. We can't eliminate privacy without giving someone too much power.
And it's obvious that this is not "his" statement, but a statement from the mouth of a puppet who is absolutely dependent on spreading the agenda in order to maintain his status quo of an "independent billionaire"
This is so asinine, especially because bill lumped this problem in with fact checking, which is in a completely different realm of problems.
It wasn't about the demographic, but about the fact that their healthcare system would get overloaded, which impacts a lot of treatments for everybody else.
Also the problem with predictions of epidemic is that if you actually do a better job than expected at confinement / protection measures, then predictions are meaningless. You "could have" a lot of bad things happen, but once you do things right, they disappear. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have done those things, it just means that people have been warned properly. He said, if they get hit severely, impact would be much bigger than in the west. He didn't say the 10 million was a done deal.
No virus in history has infected virtually everyone, and there are lots of experts calling foul on that particular assumption right now. It's baked into epidemiological models but those models are always wrong, and the assumption of very high susceptible populations is being floated in several papers as one of the possible reasons.
"This is a huge challenge, we’ve always known the potential for a naturally caused, or intentionally caused, pandemic is one if the few things that could disrupt health systems and economies and cause more than 10 million excess deaths.
This could be particularly if it spreads in areas like sub-Saharan Africa and some Asia, it could be very very dramatic.
We’re doing the constant science to provide the tools to do the diagnosis to provide vaccines, to provide therapeutics and hopefully contain this epidemic, but it’s potentially a very bad situation."
(found this here -> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/15/coronovirus-bill...)
His biggest contribution is money, which pays for really smart people to tackle these issues.
So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?
It's not how long it took that person to demonstrate this. It's that Gates kinda hasn't really done it.
He's far from terrible but he gets pretty low scores on most of those attributes. He's not going to be listened to if he didn't bring the money. His experience in making microsoft a juggernaut in the 80s and 90s is not super-relevant here but that's why he's being held up as an "authority." That position of authority is one he seems very happy to hold and use as a pulpit.
Is it deserved at all? Maybe it is. He did bring the money to a lot of programs and I believe he is even bankrolling the WHO nowadays (worthwhile after their multiple screwups that continue? I don't know. Maybe it is and a vital service he's performed there). Gates an expert? Hmm. Don't think he's really demonstrated that conclusively. He'd use his position to get advice from one or more, one would think.
To be clear. More power to him giving his vast wealth away to try and make the world better in tangible ways. You can't possibly spend more than $100m in your life on consumption even if you're totally nuts. Go for immortality. Do it in a way that's kinda good. Go Bill! I pray your good intentions don't pave a road you don't want built as I do everyone's good intentions, including my own.
You’d presume he’s learned a fair amount about it over the years. But I’ve learned a fair amount about accountancy through my years of working with corporate accountants. I’m definitely not an accountancy expert though.
What qualifications do you imagine he has? What significant work do you believe he has personally contributed to?
Why get information thirdhand from the money guy?
I think the summary is: this is really odd but it is even more odd how governments are unable to work on long-term topics unless shit hits the fan.
Not so odd. This is a common human behavior. We humans are very slow in responding to low probability but high impact events, especially if they require coordination.
E.g. upcoming climate disaster ("climate change" is a euphemism at this point), or nuclear weapons stockpile and the military systems which are effectively a dooms-day device for humanity.
At a smaller scale, various preventable accidents like Beirut explosions or most industrial accidents.
Ironically, a well functioning bureaucracy is one of the best answers, as you can see from Taiwan or South Korea's preparedness and response to COVID pandemic.
This is just because there is no incentive for any politician. It's just like how security is at the bottom of the budget list for most IT companies. Unless we have a framework where people are accountable, nothing will change.
That’s not true. GWB took it very seriously and put a plan in place. Obama modernized the plan. Trump is the one who ignored his predecessors and set the stage for the mess we are in.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-whi...
Maybe it’s just the cynic in me, but it comes across as a bit of “billionaire worship”.
“He’s made lots of money, so he must be brilliant and I want to hear what brilliant people think about Covid.”
He's proven to be reliable over decades. That's the main reason, I think. There was a small reason to talk to him about public health at first, but over time it's grown into a huge reason.
The question remains, is what is he reliable at? Why do I and so many others want to listen to him more over the years? I think it's because of the depth and breadth of issues he discusses. It's a sweet spot for me, between talking in too much depth and not enough depth.
So I’d think his accounts would be as easy and correct as some wiki articles or better, and at the same time would sound “irrelevant” to the public for the lack of emotional components to it.
Thus questions regarding a contemporary infectious disease potentially treated by a disease causing odd politicized conspiratorial behavior on social media is right up his wheelhouse and he's a well known public speaker. There are many epidemiologists you could hear from, and most people have heard from them repeatedly, but Gates offers a fresh perspective due to his fairly unique experience and perspective.
There are plenty of rich philanthropists but very few with Gates's level of understanding and ability to make good policy choices.
Like on WHO? The organization that lied for months about the potentiality of the covid to become a pandemic and that is excluding on political ground the country that handle best the virus (Taiwan). By still sponsoring this China’s lying organization, Bill Gates lost credibility in my eyes.
I could very well be that his interviews attract far more attention than interviews with experts, but you can't really compensate for that kind of name recognition.
If you think about it, having public policy being at least partially dictated by unelected and unaccountable individuals is not a good place to be.
Hasan Minhaj had an episode on the Patriot Act about this topic and how:
a) the huge sums of money and foundations these billionaires manage have less of an impact than one would think because of the staggered way that the money is handed out, organizational bureaucracy and the fact that most problems that they're trying to tackle don't really lend themselves to being quashed just by throwing money at them. Many pursue such philanthropy also in part to clean up their public image and as a tax reduction strategy.
b) those huge sums distort the domains that they are injected in and could in some cases cause harm. The Gates Foundation is known for favoring high-impact project and sucking the air out of the room for other initiatives for example.
However for someone living in a western European country it would not be received very well if a business person, even one with such a big philanthropic side to them, would become the go to authority on public health and wellbeing during this time. For that only be an actually trained and experienced professional can be turned to.
edit; spelling.
There is definitely a billionaire cult going on these days. I don't know when it started but I see more and more headlines "billionaire does X", "billionaire says Y". Somehow being a billionaire gives you credibility on everything you do or say.
He gets listened to so he does interviews. This wouldn’t be on HN if it were Fauci.
And he gets to say the unedited. He can call BS because he doesn’t have a boss who can yank his budget or job.
If they were asking him about funding these efforts, then yeah, he’d be the go to guy.
But asking him about the science?
This possibility has been discussed and researched for decades by experts and policy makers around the world.
I’ve heard my own CEO try explain something technical and it’s clear they don’t really understand it (and why should they? That’s why they hired experts).
In this article Bill says “most of the Covid tests are garbage”. That seems like a technical statement that should come from someone who is an expert in testing.
If the question was “what do you think the most promising Covid treatments are?” that’s a good question for Bill, assuming he’s involved in the funding decisions (maybe he’s not?).
- Bill Gates: 10 million clicks, $$$
- Joe Schmoe, MD, PhD: 0 clicks, no $$$
If someone like Gates sounded the alarm on the poor way the U.S. was responding, it might have made a difference, but he did no such thing. Like most of the leadership in the U.S., he seemed to have a big blind spot with regards to how bad things could get in America. Some people were sounding the alarm early on (take a look at the last minute of this video[2] for an example), but were mostly ignored.
[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/How-to-respond-to-COVID-19 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8VImMUvz-A
Or is it just about the wealth?
Bill Gates is there because his foundation is responsible for helping to eradicate diseases and coordinate pandemic responses, so without his wealth he certainly has experience in this field.
> There’s this thing where the health worker jams the deep turbinate, in the back of your nose, which actually hurts and makes you sneeze on the healthy worker. We showed that the quality of the results can be equivalent if you just put a self-test in the tip of your nose with a cotton swab.
This interview is good but barely scratches the surface.
edit: I've just found a recent interview - while still high level, it's a bit more detailed. However, the comments section reads like 4chan, all of the top comments are trolls. What's going on? When/how did it become a thing to hate on Gates for his efforts to eradicate diseases?
Once you light that spark, the useful idiots will help advance that agenda.
WOW. Why would someone in the tech industry like Gates be anti-encryption for the public? The only argument I can think of against it is "You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide"
Would it be a map of unacceptable things, or an on device model like GPT3? Would you allow someone to type the offending thing and just disable the send button, or would you block it at the keyup event?
I don't see any way this could be implemented without kissing freedom goodbye.
I like the other commenter's take that this idea was just a bit out of exasperation.
But I see your point: you would need to inform the user without restricting his or her freedom.
And they wouldn't be wrong. If the same thing came out of someone else's mouth I assume you wouldn't be seeking out an unreasonably charitable explanation like this.
And if such a plan was introduced by Trump you probably wouldn't even think of this charitable version as a good plan at all because at the end of the day, things like censorship and mass surveillance are tools of oppression in the wrong hands, and you have no control whose hands it will end up in once it's normalized.
What does he mean by that ? That research regarding HIV, malaria and polio is slowing down ? Or that there'll be a rise in HIV/malaria/polio cases ?
How to Beat COVID-19 with At-Home, Rapid Result Testing: 5 Min. Summary by Dr. Mina (Antigen Tests)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWuyvBAWWQ
Coronavirus Pandemic Update 98: At Home COVID-19 Testing - A Possible Breakthrough (~ 15 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Sv_pS8MgQ
At Home, Cheap, COVID-19 Tests with Results in 15 Minutes: How to Fix Testing with Dr. Michael Mina (~ 1 hr)
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/08/covid-19-test-for-public...
I'm also a huge fan of this work and struggling to understand why it isn't more mainstream.
My internet is too flaky here at the moment to verify, but I believe this is the URL:
"That's a good business. It's zero times a number."
He wants more power. The Gates funded oral polio vaccine in India was a fucking disaster!
This is what giving away money is and what really makes a difference in people's lives: John Oliver buys and forgives $15m worth of medical debt [0].
Now, just imagine what a billionaire like Bill Gates could do. Actual material change in people's lives.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/john-oliver-...
Imagine if governments had the ability to silence certain "lies" throughout history, such as the planets revolving around the sun...or the Earth being round.
It sounds like Gates has a severe case of tunnel vision.
I'd like to understand more deeply why this is not happening.
Since WWII, the crises faced by the US have been small enough that American elites have been able to politically neutralize them with a combination of half-measures and concerted efforts to mold public opinion to shift blame onto disfavored groups, such as 'liberals,' urbanites, non-Christians, and/or non-Americans. Until COVID-19, it's seldom been politically necessary for America's elites to actually do something about America's crises as opposed to making sure that someone else takes the blame for them.
COVID-19 is different. It is a global-scale disaster that requires a competent national response and can't be politically neutralized because viruses aren't political actors. American elites, however, have no experience with this kind of crisis and have been unable to respond to it as anything but a political problem and, worse, as a source for graft. The results have been an abject failure in terms of lives lost, health lost, and economic damage.
(This is not a problem unique to the US. I have seen some comparative politics research that found a strong co-relation between poor national-level COVID-19 responses and the depth of internal political divisions. I speculate that highly divided societies make blame shifting by elites a favorable strategy for crisis response and erode the ability of elites to respond to real crises.)
* Most conspiracy nuts downvoted which is a relief. * Rehash of encryption. Totalitarianism versus anarchy. Seems to be 90% of the discussion * Attacks on Bill Gates suitability for interview by people in denial about what it means to be influential in society. * A few good mini threads about covid testing
(This comment is hidden on the second page so not feeling guilty about whining about discussion)
If you got connections to government, you can steal trade secrets from companies and enrich yourself and destroy the competition.
Destroy the lives of your political opponents by blackmailing.
Analyse and control the public sentiment to crush minorities.
I recommend you read a bit of stasi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Also Bill Gates wants full government control because he is practically within the circles of government, obviously he would benefit from such agreements, but same cannot be said for plebs.
Anyhow, even if people like Bill Gates might benefit from such undemocratic agreements, tide can always turn against them and this level of censorship and surveillance can be used against them even more effectively than that is currently used againsts plebeians.
Iraq clearly has weapons of mass destruction. Censor all communications claiming otherwise.
The American government is not performing mass surveillance on its citizens. James Clapper Confirmed this in a Congressional Hearing. Censor all communication claiming otherwise
South Korea's President is not being influenced by a cult leader. Censor all communication claiming otherwise
And countless other examples where government controlling communication would lead to censorship of topics that the general public MUST hear. One cannot make an informed decision without information.
"In late February, CDC director Robert Redfield testified before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee and was asked if healthy people should wear masks. “No,” Redfield responded. The day after that, US surgeon general Jerome Adams tweeted “Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS.” Fauci himself, in early March, told a Senate committee that the general public didn’t need to wear them because Covid-19 wasn’t widespread enough."[1]
Regardless of opinions on how to respond to Covid, mismanagement by various institutions and media has been agonizing to see. I'm strongly against government paternalism and believe the vast amount of misinformation peddled by institutions many hold faith in led to conspiracy on the rise.
[1] - https://www.wired.com/story/how-masks-went-from-dont-wear-to...
The other is plenty of countries in SE Asia with high rates of mask usage seem to have done well overall so it doesn’t seem to hurt. Anyway information changes do advice changes, that doesn’t mean these people are untrustworthy. Surely if they weren’t prepared to change advice as circumstances changed, that would be even more concerning. What matters is the reasons and context for the change.
I think people can handle the truth. When you lie, you might temporarily achieve your objective, but you're sacrificing your ability to achieve any of your objectives in the future. Now I don't trust the WHO because of this, and I'll be less inclined to take them seriously.
I disagree. Look what happened when to toilet paper, which was less scarce and less important than PPE.
Or told everyone to make them, like the Czech republic did?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/04/04/czech-gove...
Government concerned about shortages + wasted N95 masks by untrained public -> recommendation against the public wearing masks -> additional evidence for airborne & asymptomatic transmission / opportunity to ramp mask production -> "I heard we recommended against the public wearing masks, so I guess we don't need to do that"
To be fair, there are tons of valid reasons not to allocate scarce masks to the general public (economic panic, inability to properly fit test, inability to properly wear, no decon procedures or facilities, likelihood of proximity to Covid-positive patient). But unfortunately, it seems like the actual rationale (and suggestions it would have for subsequent action) got lost in the simplification, even on the government itself.
turns out it makes no difference how many you crank out, what you lock down and when
the examples that we should do this or that are pointless,
everyone will run the same fate as Sweden, lots of cases, the epidemic runs it course, then it is over
It might seem obvious that surgical masks help, but there are a few reasons that people thought they might not:
1. Surgical masks let lots of unfiltered air in.
2. People might feel a false sense of security with masks, which could make them harmful.
3. People might touch their faces more when wearing masks.
Research like the paper I mentioned above, as well as the realization that asymptomatic and presymptomatic people play a large role in spreading the virus convinced the scientific community that widespread wearing of surgical masks is helpful. But blaming institutions for not knowing the right answer early on seems very unfair to me.
So Gates is against encryption because of CP but flew on epsteins Lolita Express in 2013, years after Epstein was a convicted child molester. He also has numerous other connections to both Maxwell and Epstein.
I mean knowing what i know about him before his "billionare philantropist PR project" of rockerfellian dimensions i was already sceptical but this is getting out of hand.
Listening to Gates talking about since makes the irony of it biting. Excel, the software designed under his watch keeps destroying scientific results, to the point gene names had to be renamed.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
Not to mention how Windows did all possible to hamstring Linux for decades, setting back science for god knows how long.
thanks Bill.
... yes ...
\sarcasm on
let's have some people decide what lies are, and once we define that, make it illegal to encrypt these lies,
teach a lesson to these lie-encrypting bastards
Based on his talks of: Worldwide chip tracking of disease. Destroying encryption worldwide.
I say that it quotations, because i do not believe it is the governments place nor right, to make public, crucial medical data about individuals. In a perfect system, without breaches of security, sure, but that is not the real world.
Also I don't believe dangerous people should have all sort of rights to privacy. We already ask pedos to introduce themselves to neighbours (at least in movies), why shouldn't same apply for deadly viruses? I guess this forum is frequented by too many Californians where knowingly giving someone AIDS is not a crime anymore.
I still strongly resent his company's business practices from the 1980s through the 2000s, and arguably to the present.
And yes, the irony of the world's leading enabler of electronic viruses being a leading authority and defender against biological viruses ... is not lost on me.
Gates, smiling, replying "You think COVID is bad? Let me tell you about when got hit by Slammer!"
I'll take my microchip in space grey please.
Against how our govt handled covid:
>> The irony is that this is a president who is a vaccine skeptic. Every meeting I have with him he is like, “Hey, I don’t know about vaccines, and you have to meet with this guy Robert Kennedy Jr. who hates vaccines and spreads crazy stuff about them.”
>> Well, that’s just stupidity. The majority of all US tests are completely garbage, wasted. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they’re going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money, and it’s mostly rich people that are getting access to that. You have to have the reimbursement system pay a little bit extra for 24 hours, pay the normal fee for 48 hours, and pay nothing [if it isn’t done by then]. And they will fix it overnight.
Against encryption/free speech:
>> The irony is that it’s digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, “OK, there’s just an evil person, and that explains all of this.” And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger].
re: tiktok acquisition
>> But yes, it’s a poison chalice. Being big in the social media business is no simple game, like the encryption issue.
To be fair, there aren’t many governments ‘handling’ Covid in anything like a manner that has been good.
His foundation seeks to create "viable markets" for vaccines and the original name for his foundation was "The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population Control."
I don't trust anything that piece of garbage says. I swear he's gotten worse the older he gets and no one remembers all the anti-competitive shit he pulled to get where he is.
Poisoned chalice my ass. He should know. His entire fucking life and legacy is a poisoned chalice.
For everyone else, it is not and never was called "The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population Control."
There does exist the "Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health", which has a fantastic mission.
Sources: - https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=%22The%20Bill%20and... - https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=%22The%20Bill%20and...
He's not a superhero, but it's definitely better to devote your capital to helping others rather than simply accruing more.
Like, where to start? Somebody save this one before the edits.
But then he starts demonizing encryption, which requires logic that's nearly as unsound as antivaxism.
Harmful positions are even more dangerous, when they're espoused by people who doing otherwise good work (and being attacked for that good work).
edit: I'm an idiot, I should have read the post, I thought this was about something else Bill Gates had said. Still, my point stands, though the tests are definitely mostly garbage.