Jeffrey A Tucker has an interesting piece about Bill Gates published by the Brownstone Institute.
In a surprising interview, Bill Gates said the following: “We didn’t have vaccines that block transmission. We got vaccines that help you with your health, but they only slightly reduce the transmission. We need new ways of doing vaccines.”
It’s odd how he speaks of medicines as if they are like software. Try it out, observe how it works. When you find a problem, put the technicians to work. Every new iteration is an experiment. Free to try until you finally buy. Surely over time, we’ll find the answer to the problem of blocking or blotting out pathogens.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how powerful and intelligent people can fail to see serious flaws in the way they frame complex issues in terms they understand.
Early on in the pandemic, to get a sense of Gates’s views, I watched his TED talks. I began to realize something astonishing. He knew much less than anyone could discover by reading a book on cell biology from Amazon. He couldn’t even give a basic 9th-grade-level explanation of viruses and their interaction with the human body. And yet here he was lecturing the world about the coming pathogen and what should be done about it. His answer is always the same: more surveillance, more control, more technology.
Once you understand the simplicity of his core confusions, everything else he says makes sense from his point of view. He seems forever stuck in the fallacy that the human being is a cog in a massive machine called society that cries out for his managerial and technological leadership to improve to the point of operational perfection.
Early on in the pandemic, to get a sense of Gates’s views, I watched his TED talks. I began to realize something astonishing. He knew much less than anyone could discover by reading a book on cell biology from Amazon. He couldn’t even give a basic 9th-grade-level explanation of viruses and their interaction with the human body. And yet here he was lecturing the world about the coming pathogen and what should be done about it. His answer is always the same: more surveillance, more control, more technology.
Once you understand the simplicity of his core confusions, everything else he says makes sense from his point of view. He seems forever stuck in the fallacy that the human being is a cog in a massive machine called society that cries out for his managerial and technological leadership to improve to the point of operational perfection.
8 comments:
Thanks, that's an interesting read. Especially the bit about Bill's failure to differentiate between real viruses, and the "viruses" that attack computers. It's one of those little insights that explains so much. Firewalls, lockdowns, avoidance, vaccinations.
The main problem here is that if Bill were just another wiseacre down the pub or on the internet, he would be corrected and then would have to either shut up or ramp up the rhetoric into full-blown obsessive crank mode. But he's already made his billions, so he has the means to get his views across in ways that matter. And, of course, he's made so much money, so he must be smart... Let's hope that someone is able to publicly humiliate the misguided geeky reptile before he captures any more public policy.
Have a peek at Dacher Keltner's web site: https://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltner
He has found *scientifically* that power corrupts, makes people more impulsive, more reckless, and less able to see things from other's point of view. So if you are lauded for your past achievements and are a billionaire you become less empathic and less interested in weighing up contrary views. Since you are the Big Cheese everything you say must be true, obviously, even if you really know SFA about a subject.
This is certainly my observation. Scientists like Professors Steve Jones and Paul Nurse eminent in genetics are called in by the media to instruct the public about climate change, despite knowing nothing about it. As scientific achievers, they feel entitled to pronounce on anything 'scientific' which rather links to peoples' need to defer to authority, even when that authority has no real merit.
I wish he wouldn't bang on about newer vaccines like this, I'm still getting boosters for my Windows 7, and if Windows 11 turns out to be a damp squib, then no sort of vaccine will prevent me chucking a heavy paper-weight at the screen, just before I leave the house to go and buy an Apple Mac!
@Scrobs: it was a delight for us to return to Apples after too many years at the Windows coalface.
Sam - many in the media may be unwilling to take him on because of his billions even if they suspect or even know that public humiliation would be popular.
DJ - thanks, that looks like an interesting link. I've bookmarked it for later. If I happened to be a billionaire I think I'd have similar problems. Even if I managed to rise above the Big Cheese syndrome it would not be easy to know that I'd risen above it.
Tammly - I find Paul Nurse particularly annoying although I haven't read any of his climate pronouncements for some time. Whether he is or not I don't know, but on climate issues he always gave the impression of being somewhat oafish.
Scrobs and dearieme - we have Windows laptops, Apple phones and an Apple tablet. I'm not sure which I prefer, but having everything Apple would have some advantages.
Daughter who is an IT trainer, told me that she has just gone over to a Mac, and is absolutely delighted with the way it works, especially as she's an iPhone and iPad addict/specialist!
The whole lot seems to sync so easily!
Scrobs - that's what we like about the phones and tablet, the way they sync together.
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