Friday, August 29, 2014

[yezgjban] Two-horned Bill Gates

Assuming true the theory that malaria is the main reason we haven't cut down all the rainforests yet, and if the Gates Foundation succeeds in eradicating malaria and thus causing the apocalyptic unintended consequence of climate change, Bill Gates will have tremendously harmed human civilization twice in a single lifetime.  Usually human society is robust enough that a single person cannot do tremendous lasting harm.  To do it twice in completely separate fields is perhaps unique.

The other Bill Gates destructive legacy is popularizing and establishing as the norm the practice of unmodifiable software, causing the now widely accepted mindset that users should feel helpless when their computer does not function the way they want.  It may be hundreds or thousands of years until that legacy is reversed: I don't see it occurring any time soon.

Fascinating is that both of these harms were done with completely good intentions, someone very far from a classical description of evil.

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