Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

http://blog.minming.net/post/35762604294/melinda-gates-at-stanford

by lominming • 14 years ago

33 66 14 years ago

blog.minming.net

meaty• 14 years ago

Until a profit is to be made...

Yes that's a jab at capitalism and commercial healthcare.

GuiA• 14 years ago

I believe she meant it in a moral sense, rather than as a truth upheld by our current societal system (because it isn't)

oboizt• 14 years ago

I agree that travel can definitely open our eyes to various conditions outside our own culture.

However, the cost of travelling often could be put directly towards donations. There are so many opportunities to serve close to home in our own communities that often get overlooked because that kind of volunteering doesn't sound as glamorous as building schools in Africa.

Pwnguinz• 14 years ago

Giving money to charitable organizations that have 30~% waste ratio isn't the way to go.

What you want are driven, motivated and open-minded individuals that can create disruptive innovation; entrepreneurs.

Edit: typos.

pretoriusB2• 14 years ago

>What you want are driven, motivated and open-minded individuals that can created disruptive innovation; entrepreneurs.

As if the problems of the third world are not already in large part created by greedy enterprises operating there?

jobigoud• 14 years ago

At first I thought this would be a case for veganism.

scotty79• 14 years ago

I'd rather say:

  Life l1, l2; # initialises by default to unique value
  l1 > l2;     # false
  l1 < l2;     # false
  l1 == l2;    # false

Calling lives equal means that any life is replaceble by any other and you can allow for someone to die to save someone else without any trouble.

alexanderh• 14 years ago

Agreed. Saying everyone is equal is a nice elementary school thought, meant to inspire people. But it simply isn't factually true.

We're so far disconnected from the tribal traditions of our distant ancestors, we forget that different values can be very easily bestowed upon an individuals life, for very legitimate reasons in some cases (when its life or death... and survival of the fittest, in an ancient society). I guess I can sort of see some truth in "we all have equal potential" but even thats shaky concept at best, just meant to inspire people.

Thats all this speech appears to be though, an inspirational talk. Not something thats going to stand to the logical rigor most HN readers are going to want to apply to it.

jonah4• 14 years ago

Except that she's in favor of population control...

gsk• 14 years ago

I am sure you recognize a better reflection of what she favors is in the life-changing work that Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is doing.

jonah4• 14 years ago

They definitely do good work in many areas.

However, on one hand they work to reduce deaths from diseases[0] while on the other, people are just a drain on natural resources.[1] It's not consistent.

[0] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/malaria/Pages/home.aspx etc.

[1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/infographics/Pages/family-pla...

adaml_6232• 14 years ago

You are misquoting her. She is in favour of contraception. That gives a woman control over whether her body will become pregnant.

I think you should elaborate. Your view is not very clear.

jonah4• 14 years ago

Not really. Birth control reduces the number of people born.

I'm not saying anything about motives or whether it's the right thing to do or not, rather simply pointing it out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jul/11/ric...

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/Search.aspx?meta=MDCont...

confluence9• 14 years ago

All lives don't have equal current value, but the do have equal eventual value - I'll explain that in a moment (please note: I mean financial/economic value as I believe the term "moral/intrinsic" value to be so vague and undefined as to be completely useless as a thought model or reasoning tool - I understand what Melinda means).

This is empirically correct - a poor person in Africa is worth less than a rich American - by definition of earning capacity, consuming capacity, life expectancy and investment in their quality of life.

Please note: This does not mean the American is better than the African - it's merely an accident of birth.

Now here's the point I'm going to make.

Keeping people alive has exponential value - irrelevant of current value (e.g. African vs. American). What is the cost of keeping a poor African alive? I'm going to say for ~90% of the population it'll be around $1-4K a year. Now this is relatively expensive - however you must remember, this African will go on to consume and work all their lives, have kids who themselves will have kids and so forth - a combinatorial explosion of development and production making us all the richer.

Think of it like this: We are all descendant from a group of ~2000 people from Central Africa ~250,000 years ago. They produced ~7 billion people over the course of a few hundred thousand years - that's some seriously insane value generation right there. Imagine if we did the same with the ~7 billion we have now - we could be the ~2000 of the next millennium.

Each life you save today means hundreds or even thousands in the future - it's like an exponential investment. This is why we should protect poor people - apart from fuzzy moralistic reasons. It is a financially sound investment.

Each poor person will be an eventual consumer and producer - we must maximise their ability to do so - and that is why we must fundamentally help them. It also feels good.

This is what I find so toxic about the entire Republican/private health care in America debate. You invest millions over the course of people's lives to keep them alive (schools/roads/bridges/cheap loans/national security/etc.) and all of a sudden, if they get sick, you're happy that they metaphorically shoot themselves in the head because of their sickness (bankruptcy/can't afford/die etc.). Hence, you must also be happy when this kills the ability of their families to consume, produce and reproduce by an order of magnitude for the foreseeable future. We must keep people alive not merely because it's a good investment in aggregate, and not merely because it is the correct thing to do, but also because it's financially nonsensical to do otherwise - especially in a first world country. People are expensive, they take huge amounts of resources to bring up, and they have a high ROI - we should protect these investments for the sake of protecting our collective future.

Secondly, pushing birth control doesn't do jack to population growth. The vast majority of variance in development/population rates between countries is explained by GDP per capita. Or as Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India once stated:

> Development is the best contraceptive.

-- Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox

Disclaimer:

Just to reiterate - I am not saying that one human is better than another in any sense of fundamental long-term value. I merely state that current value of any one human is grossly unequal due to path-dependent birth (born in America vs. Afghanistan) - however I mean to strongly imprint upon you that that the current value of a human doesn't matter in the long term - because humans in aggregate are worth the same over many generations because:

> In the long run we are all dead.

-- John Maynard Keynes

What matters is how we ensure the survival of a vibrant next generation, regardless of race, creed or birth.

jczhang• 14 years ago

Ok, I think it's implicit that her definition of value here has more to do with moral worth than anything measurable like earning capacity, consumption, etc. Therefore, this statement also implies that the reading of the word 'value', when used in the context of human lives, should default to moral worth.

kaptain• 14 years ago

Melinda Gates wasn't talking about economic value. I find it difficult to believe that most HN'rs take her statement to mean economic value since, as most people have been pointing out, all lives don't have equivalent financial worth.

The rest of your point, I think, is a very interesting way to look at the value of human life, but it is a crude way of evaluating the worth of humanity purely in the context of financial value.

At the risk of getting touch-feely amongst an audience that is very rational and analytical, there is something sacred and indescribable of all life (not just human) simply because it's not something that we can create from artificial means. This fact, I think, is what makes it hard to say one life is more valuable than another (again, just to be clear, I'm using 'value' as in financial value).

icebraining• 14 years ago

This fact, I think, is what makes it hard to say one life is more valuable than another

Just last night I said "those Brussels sprouts are worth less than me" by eating them. I don't find it hard at all.

tspiteri• 14 years ago

... there is something sacred and indescribable of all life (not just human) simply because it's not something that we can create from artificial means...

In the future, people may find ways to create life from artificial means, and that does not make life any less sacred. So please don't try too hard to find a reason behind holding life sacred.

mikedmiked• 14 years ago

(justification to read my post here: at the end I argue richer people have higher moral value!)

Many of us think its 'brave' and 'correct' to say "all lives are equal value" in the moral sense. Its a 'sexy' thought to have as it seems liberal and its simple, but it is ultimately wrong.

Our actions are what define us, so a person who performs good/selfless actions that benefit others should be defined as higher value than a selfish murderer/rapist.

If lives were equal value then taking the life of a child would be equally as bad as taking the life of an 80 year old - but most people do not think that way.

Your value (in the moral sense) should simply be a function how much good you provide to the world. This leads to the difficult issue where because we can in fact buy "good" (by buying anti-malaria nets for children for £5 a pop) you find that those born into wealth have a higher capacity to perform "good" and therefore, on average, have a higher moral value by this definition.

Swizec2• 14 years ago

What is the value of life? Clearly we find the idea of financial value just a tad too cynical.

Do we have any other measures? Something we can use to establish that all lives are in fact equally valuable?

Also, as soon as we start claiming all life to be equally valuable we get into the moral issue of comparing somebody like Mother Theresa to someone like Ted Bundy and saying they were both equal in terms of value. I doubt many people would agree.

zerostar074• 14 years ago

Assuming that people will keep reproducing the traditional way, live short lives and free market capitalism will maintain its intellectual dominance in future generations.

confluence9• 14 years ago

This works without reproduction or short lives.

If you assume human's can live forever then a similar production/consumption cycle will occur.

Free market capitalism need not be the system. This would work equally as well under market socialism (Euro), or just plain socialism (far future).

andyjohnson03• 14 years ago

Gates isn't talking about the value of human lives in terms of money, cost, ROI, investment, consumption, production, or any of the other terms you've used. She's referring to their intrinsic worth and dignity as human beings. That you've constructed such a long comment based on such a misunderstanding is rather worrying.

confluence9• 14 years ago

I fully understand what she means (I'm not an idiot) - and I think the way people describe "morals" is very vague to the point of being useless, as correct human actions can be easily enforced using other means (for example we have laws not to kill each other - Why? Well you could say it's the moral thing to do - and of course people say that. But it's also such a waste - everyone would live in fear and nothing would get done if this wasn't enforced - Murder is just economically bad, as is fraud, rape, abuse, battery, censorship and many other things - morals need not come into it - not enforcing these protections is more expensive - for more treatment in thinking like this see "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins).

See the problem with the terms "intrinsic worth" and "dignity" is that they are almost meaningless and very fuzzy. What do you mean exactly?

> “All lives have equal value”

Melinda Gates repeatedly emphasized the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s deep belief that all lives have equal value and everyone should be given the same chance.

I've come to the exact same conclusion that she has with harder terms. We need to give people the same chance because if done so - we are all better off.

paganel• 14 years ago

> This is why we should protect poor people

This is paternalistic, and worse yet, it doesn't work, i.e. rich people "protecting" poor people. What indeed does work is a free market (and that includes a free jobs' market), meaning free access of all (rich and poor) to the benefits of exchanging goods and improving one's life.

What the European Union (and to a lesser extent the USA) does now when it comes to Africa is border-line criminal, what if with Europe's protectionist policies when it comes to its agriculture and its immigrant policy. Imagine if those 2 million kids that get saved by the Gates Foundation instead of being forced to remain in conflict-prone Northern Nigeria or Kenya or Uganda were given the chance to come and work , legally, in Europe. Or what if they'd really have a chance to sell their agricultural goods on the same European market without having to fight countless protectionist measures designed to protect the raising of cows in the French Alps.

(if it matters, I live on the fringes of said European Union, and in my youth I used to live with under $1USD per day for at least a couple of years)

Muzza• 14 years ago

> Imagine if those 2 million kids that get saved by the Gates Foundation instead of being forced to remain in conflict-prone Northern Nigeria or Kenya or Uganda were given the chance to come and work , legally, in Europe.

And I suppose the EU taxpayer will be footing the bill for all this imported poverty, and at the same he will be forced to endure a marked increase in social friction (ultimately ending in complete social chaos a la the no-go areas in the banlieues of France, Britain and Sweden).

michaelgrafl2• 14 years ago

That's some disturbing shit you've written there.

You're disclaimer makes it even worse.

I don't know what would be a constructive thing to say, except maybe that being a decent human being is based on believe and conviction, not logic. You either decide that every human being has infinite value (if you're inclined to attach a value to a human being), or you try to find reasons to diminish someone's value by slicing them into a narrow set of more or less cherry-picked dimensions. At that point we're talking about abstractions, not human beings anymore. At that point we lose a big part of our own humanity.

I feel bad for sounding so aggressive, but your kind of reasoning makes me feel like throwing up, because it opens the gate to all kinds of atrocious behaviors.

confluence9• 14 years ago

Oh I'm sorry - logic is clearly subordinate to fuzzy terms such as "belief" and "conviction" - I mean it's not like many bad things have come at the hands of belief or conviction - not at all. Logic has nothing to do with bringing the world out of poverty - people's gut reaction should instead be relied upon to make life or death decisions - Numbers? What's that?

I mean there were the crusades - but really that was the exception. Religion? Exception right? There was the Holocaust there I suppose. And a bunch of other genocides. A couple of global wars and unsubstantiated racism. Oh but please - let's continue in just believing things without evidence - because that's worked so well - relying on intrinsic gut reactions.

Belief and conviction - a boon to humanity - in all its forms!

/sarcasm

How the hell is what I've written disturbing? I'm slightly perturbed at your reliance on unsupported thought models getting us all killed just because you believe in something. I'd rather not rely on people's beliefs - they are notoriously flexible.

I've indicated that a) poor people should be protected, b) that humans are long-term equal and c) we should work towards helping everyone - because it's good for all of us in the long run.

What's so surprising about that?

Does this not align with your views?

primitur3• 14 years ago

I believe your position is derived from one with an almost heinous lack of empathy.

Human beings are all equal. Each life is worth just as much as another. This is a fundamental fact of life. Not a single one of us was created in any way different than any other - human procreation itself is the grand equalizer. Where once was a man and/or womans pleasure, is now another man and/or woman. From that source, we are all derived, and thus: all equal from birth.

The 'value' that "Africa" has, is completely and utterly arbitrary. The arbitrary nature is derived entirely from cultural ideas and ideology, which worth is also completely arbitrary, depending on its proponents ability to carry the idea forward. The idea that Africa is 'poor', that Africans are 'uneducated/uneducatable' and so on .. these are just ideas, not based on any real fact.

The fact is, any kid in African Village #21239 has just as much human potential as any other kid in the world.

Life itself, is the rarest substance in the universe. What Life, itself, decides to do about that, is derived from a near-infinite ability for Life, itself, to decide. Once "African Village Kid, Age 9" starts learning to code on the Linux Kernel, for example, the ability to decide, equally as a species, can be observed.

And it is this fact on which 'equality' and 'worth' depend - nothing else.

berito• 14 years ago

No lives have different values. Bin Laden != Paul Graham

johncoltrane• 14 years ago

All lives should have equal value, maybe.

stuaxo• 14 years ago

Wow, and a crazy trolling biblical comment on it already, saying that people in the third world must deserve what they get because their idle ... amazing.

batgaijin• 14 years ago

I hate the Gates foundation.

You know what would help those kids a lot more than your medicine? Copies of all existing textbooks in an electronic format and access to all of our patents.

When the polio vaccine was created the inventor refused to get a patent for it, saying no one has the right to own it just like no one has the right to own the sun.

I just find it very hard to support the Gates foundation when I believe that it is playing by the rules to make the founders look and feel good instead of actually challenging laws and cultural assumptions, which it truly should.

andreasvc2• 14 years ago

Why would you hate the Gates foundation for the state of affairs concerning intellectual property? There's a democratic process to change those laws, that change doesn't have to come from their foundation. I don't believe that dumping a load of textbooks and lifting some patents would do much in itself, that's just one of the barriers that's keeping the poor poor.

tzs• 14 years ago

> You know what would help those kids a lot more than your medicine? Copies of all existing textbooks in an electronic format and access to all of our patents.

Dead kids can't read.

jl6• 14 years ago

There is no such thing as intrinsic value, whether economic value or moral value, whether of goods or of people. Value is subjectively assigned by people, according to the push and pull of their own internal motivations.

So it is meaningless to talk about value without asking: valued by who?

Some people (say, my family) are hugely more "valuable" to me than others.

pserwylo• 14 years ago

I agree with the sentiment about all lives being equal.

That is why I enjoyed challenging myself to think about it purely from an economic perspective one day. We were on the plane, and the guy next to us was studying "humanitarian economics". It is somewhat related to the issues that the gates foundation has to think about when distributing their funds.

There was some curious dilemmas you need to face, and most of them seem to be faced by removing yourself somewhat from the moral aspect, and thinking purely about assigning a monetary value to them. The bit that I remember was thinking about the financial value of a human life, as determined by its remaining potential. What this means is [0]:

- Small babies: haven't invested much time and effort into developing them, so they are not worth as much.

- Teenagers: Have spent considerable amount of time getting them ready to contribute to society.

- Older people: Although there has been a lot of effort invested in them, and they have contributed a lot to society, there is only so much more "potential" left.

Another interesting thing about this approach, is that in a funny way, it mimics the sentiment of Belinda's statement of all lives being equal. This is because (equally aged) people from Africa and Australia have the same monetary value according to this.

[0] - Please don't hate me! I' actually quite a nice person, I just found this interesting :) It's not how I normally think about people.

confluence9• 14 years ago

Actuaries need to do the same things all the time e.g. - probabilistic value of remaining life for life insurance settlement/pricing.

Yes it feels weird to discuss these things - but it doesn't make you an evil person or anything - life insurance must be priced, taxes distributed and money donated.

The problem with "hands up in the air - everything is precious!" thinking is that you can't make any decisions. If you assume that - all your money should be flooding Africa.

You'll notice that this isn't the case.

You'll also notice that people only pay lip service to their morals - but they never back it up with cash - and that's where actuaries and economists come in.

pingou• 14 years ago

I think the idea that all lives have equal values, while it sounds good, is paradoxical. If a life has a potential to save plenty of other lives (for example : healthcare worker, great scientist on the verge of discovering a new cure, engineer working on a more efficient way to get drinking water), doesn't that mean that their lives are worth more ? On the other hand I can't help myself thinking that a surgeon isn't worth more than an unemployed guy who does nothing except watching TV (for example), moral isn't always about logic.

Jach• 14 years ago

http://hardtruthsfromsoftcats.tumblr.com/post/35274152116 (Same amount of justification as Melinda gave. To the point of traveling to open one's eyes, I have a friend who gave up on the African continent entirely after learning more about its countries.)

Melinda Gates at Stanford: "All lives have equal value"

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