Will geeks save the world?
I don’t know how many of you consider yourself a “geek” but here’s an article that says geeks are going to save the world. Clive Thompson points out the well-known contradictory facet of human psychology that means we will go to considerable lengths to help individuals but turn away from dealing with massive problems involving millions of people. He then says that geeks know how to deal with large numbers and can envision dealing with very large problems. He uses Bill Gates and his efforts at eradicating diseases in Africa as an example:
Psychologists have long observed that our ability to discriminate among quantities is finely tuned when dealing with small amounts but quickly degrades as the numbers get larger. Our ears work that way, too. When a very quiet sound becomes slightly louder, we detect the difference right away. But once a noise is really loud, it has to increase dramatically for it to seem “louder.” The same holds true for our judgments of weight and, of course, less tangible quantities like money. We’ll break the bank to save Baby Jessica, but when half of Africa is dying, we’re buying iPhones.
Which brings me back to Gates. The guy is practically a social cripple, and at times he has seemed to lack human empathy. But he’s also a geek, and geeks are incredibly good at thinking concretely about giant numbers. Their imagination can scale up and down the powers of 10 — mega, giga, tera, peta — because their jobs demand it.
So maybe that’s why he is able to truly understand mass disease in Africa. We look at the huge numbers and go numb. Gates looks at them and runs the moral algorithm: Preventable death = bad; preventable death x 1 million people = 1 million times as bad.
We tend to think that the way to address disease and death is to have more empathy. But maybe that’s precisely wrong. Perhaps we should avoid leaders who “feel your pain,” because their feelings will crap out at, you know, eight people.
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[...] YouTube Will geeks save the world? » This Summary is from an article posted at Windows Tips and Tricks on Thursday, August 23, 2007 I don’t know how many of you consider yourself a “geek†but here’s an article that says geeks are going to save the world … and can envision dealing with very large problems. He uses Bill Gates and his efforts at eradicating diseases … iPhones. Which brings me back to Gates. The guy is practically a social cripple, and at times Summary Provided by Technorati.comView Original Article at Windows Tips and Tricks » 10 Most Recent News Articles About Bill Gates [...]