Rich Karlgaard of Forbes writes:
At an August 6, 2010 conference in Lake Tahoe, the richest and smartest guy in the room, Bill Gates, offered his opinion on the next big thing.
Ready?
Toilets. All kinds of toilets. Broadband biffies that email PSA counts to your doctor. Do-gooder dumpers that save water in the third world.
“[Toilets are] one of the greatest under investments,” Gates effused. “Not much money goes into that. You end up with the low IQ guys on the toilets.”
I think what Bill is saying here is that low IQ guys go into the toilet industry.
If you know Gates — I once spent 5 days on the road with him — you’ll know he uses the term, IQ, a lot. Gates has always loved IQ. He loves it like a football coach loves 40-yard-dash speed. It never seems to occur to Gates that IQ has become a politically incorrect subject for many.
Which raises the question of who is actually running the Gates Foundation, which has devoted billions to educations fads, such "small learning communities" and to bullying school boards into requiring passing Algebra II to graduate from high schoo. It's just another example of today's lack of intellectual integration between private life and public policy discourse.
(To its credit, the Gates did, however, give $15 million to adding iodine to salt in Third World countries, which helps reduce cretinism.)
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75 comments:
Um, yeah, I think the guys on Scrubs already tackled this one.
This offers whole new slant on the expression "sh*t for brains."
Steve Sailer is a beggar.
The thing about IQ is that many people, including people like Gates, have never stopped to consider whether it can be too high.
It's like asking if you can have too much technology or too much money. Incurious people gloss over such questions--which drive directly into their own self-worth.
Actually, in Japan high-IQ toilets are nearly ubiquitous. Gates is wrong.
So these smart toilets will generate a profile of your drug usage along with your dna signature. It won't be safe to use a public toilet. Fabulous.
“[Toilets are] one of the greatest under investments,” Gates effused. “Not much money goes into that. You end up with the low IQ guys on the toilets.”
Unless he intends installing sensors to analyze your crap and ordering automatically which amounts to a better diet, I'd say he's talking shit. Ayway I's love to see his digitised toilets perform in Ghana.
Grohe (German company) for instance is a world leader in bathroom utilities such as toilets, showers and taps. They produce water-saving taps and fittings with electronics, but the stuff is practical albeit sensitive. I'm sure they are much further technologically than Gates can imagine. Of course there is no point in installing these instruments in the Third World because the water quality there is so poor that everything jams up. Ask white South Africans, who have gone through the misfortune of watching their water quality drop precipitously since blacks took over. Nowadays you need a particle filter on the main house line to prevent all these fancy Grohe instruments from becoming dysfunctional.
I wish Gates would start talking about reimbursing those millions of customers he ripped off with Windows instead of irritating us with his intellectual rubbish. How come this fellow is considered smart beats me.
Ho hum, Bill Gates. To borrow a word you recently used, at the moment I cannot think of a more vapid and uninteresting rich person/pundit.
Mr Sailer,
More on Social Security here and here.
Gates Scholarship also outright bans whites from even applying. At least most other ones don't advertise this fact.
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/02/02/bill-gates-scholarships-exclude-white-kids/#more-21745
bill gates does a lot of real stuff though, too.
back in january and february, some of my friends from MIT approached gates for venture capital money. he has been funding this outfit called Intellectual Ventures, which is like this think tank for inventors, and which has a nuclear fission reactor project called TerraPower, which gates wants to develop to replace coal power plants. i had to research this stuff, the technology, as well as trying to estimate gates' financial involvment. did you know that there is a financial firm who's sole client is bill gates? an entire finance operation exists strictly to handle his own personal fortune.
anyway my friends at MIT are trying to build huge batteries, storage for wind and solar power plants, and not only that, but batteries which use few rare materials, so the batteries are better long term designs than batteries which are constructed from neodymium or whatever rare earth element which only exists in large quantities in some third world nation.
i ended up writing a few questions for my friends to ask gates when they met up with him. gates was pretty knowledgeable about most of this technology and answered intelligently. so he's not clueless outside of computer science. just misguided when it comes to a few of his "save the world" initiatives.
I watched an interview with Gates and was very impressed with how knowledgeable he was.
He is trying to do some good including getting other billionaires involved in philanthropy. I think we should give him a break.
"...whether it can be too high..": too high for what?
Proof positive that Bill Gates is an anal retentive dork. Perhaps he can outsource the research for this to India.
The best thing about this comments section is the first post.
I read somewhere that Gate's IQ is around 160 -- that's pretty respectable.
I've been wondering the same thing about Gates for a long time. I've concluded he likes the influence that comes with politically correct opinions, so he lies a lot.
""...whether it can be too high..": too high for what?"
Sales and managerial and executive jobs, getting laid...lots of things other than nuclear physics and software engineering, many of them quite fun and lucrative.
People in computers talk like that.
Before I switched to Microsoft I taught Novell classes. In the core networking technology class they had a wacko distinction between "smart" computers and "intelligent" computers.
I taught the party line but liked to illustrate "smart" technology with the example of the "smart" luggage cart that you could rent at the SF Airport.
This cart was made entirely of chrome tubing. No electronics, no moving parts other than the rubber wheels. To this day they still rent these "smart" carts. It would be false advertising if it made even a lick of sense.
In all fairness to Novell there were "dumb" terminals - ASCII asynchronous terminals that communicated one character at a time while IBM sold what they called "smart" 3270 terminals that transmitted data a page at a time. Some ACSII terminal manufacturer added some more features and started calling their terminals "intelligent". Marketing hype.
By the time Bill Gates and others set off the personal computer revolution all this "intelligent" and "smart" technology talk was passe. But back then they called PCs brain amplifiers. This morning I read in Drudge that Google wants to be the third half of your brain.
I was also involved at the time with a half billion dollar software development effort to bring Artificial Intelligence to public welfare eligibility. That was twenty years ago and that project had begun ten years before I got there. Nothing yet. Keep tuned in.
Albertosaurus
I think there's a Frederich Pohl book where the main character decides to look back at his product after he's done since he might as well know what the computer is going to be analyzing. CHON or something.
Microsoft is a good example of high IQ people running in circles. At one point someone had a genius marketing idea about product segregation that earned the company billions by deliberately putting out crap at the low end and forcing consumers and companies that could to shell out. But if you do that too much you institutionalize putting out crap, and that's what most of Microsoft's people work on today.
The Gates foundation could benefit from a little HBD discussion judging from the people I've met. They don't really understand the difference between poor India and poor Africa. Of course I'm not brave enough to bring it up.
Bill Gate's IQ isn't that impressive any more. At his mental peak, around the time he took the SAT and scored a 1550, it was probably in the mid 150's, but I know guys in technology with 160-plus IQs, and Bill doesn't seem like one of them. These guys have multiple talents and broad interests in areas like music, art, science, history, and technology. Bill gates sounds too much like a guy with a one track mind. And with time, IQ declines, especially as the cardiovascular system begins to deteriorate. Something tells me Bill has a generous coating of lipids on his heart and arteries and amyloid proteins tangling his cerebral neurons. The shelf life of his intellect has probably long passed. I'd be surprised if he could test into MENSA, these days.
I call for higher IQ university administrators.
The unis are now 60% female. This is the junk they waste their parents hard-earned dollars (and mortgage their futures in the form of loans) on:
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-confessions-of-a-regretful-gender-studies-student/
What if toilets start analyzing our waste to find any diseases or diet and health issues and reports it to the federal or state government? This could really help us to control the population.
You know Bill's getting old when he starts obsessing about PSA tests and bowel output. Instead of a smart toilet, how about an IQ monitor with a liquid crystal readout which can be taped to your forehead so people know instantaneously how smart you are. Imagine all the fun drinking games you could play. Or the loud guffaws when your score plummets as a young woman with jiggly breasts walks by, redirecting blood from your brain to your naughty bits.
Shortened Steve Sailer: Bill Gates! he's so rich but so DUMB and PC!!! I'm Steve Sailer! I'm so smart!!
No, I'm pretty sure that Bill Gates loves cheap labor.
Gates may have a high IQ but he also has more money than sense.
sorry jody, you seem to feel connected to this guy coz you worked out a few questions. Gates is one of the most corrupt people in the US. M$ systematically ripped off millions of people with inferior software, and killed a lot of good companies using their monopoly, gained by hook and crook. In addition to that they are regulars in the HB1-visa scam. I'm a foreigner but I read about this on VDare. You should know even more. All this rubbish about wanting to help the world is pure hypocrisy. I don't even take his techno-whiz seriously. There are other, far more knowledgeable people out there who can do a better job. Gates needs to go the route of Levi the tax collector and reimburse all those he ripped off, instead of strutting around like a savior. Pure selfishness.
Maybe he should get his wife Melinda behind it. Melinda was behind the infamous "Microsoft Bob" disaster and is apparently involved pretty heavily in Bill's foundation work.
OT: Leon Wieseltier implores "graciousness here and viciousness there" toward muslims (invade, invite).
A night at the J. At the JCC on Q Street a few weeks ago, there was a family night for “kibbutz camp.” As the children sang “Zum Gali Gali,” an old anthem of the Zionist pioneers, I noticed among the jolly parents a Muslim woman swaddled in black. Her child was among those children! Her presence had no bearing on the question of our security, but it was the image of what we are protecting. No American heart could be unmoved by it. So: Cordoba House in New York and a Predator war in Pakistan—graciousness here and viciousness there—this should be our position. For those who come in peace, peace; for those who come in war, war.
Only low IQ guys go into toilets. Okay, Bill, I'd like to see you install a toilet some time, from centering the wax ring, to rigging the flush valve and flapper in the tank. As any home repair enthusiast knows, this can be tricky. If improperly adjusted, a flushed toilet will either spray fetid water in your face or leave your USS Nautilis circling endlessly without submerging.
louis CK on bill gates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95fNgx8aCS8
Proof positive that Bill Gates is an anal retentive dork. Perhaps he can outsource the research for this to India.
Back in the 1980s, in Commentary Magazine, Richard Grenier wrote an evisceration of Mohandas Gandhi, which spent no little time chronicling Ghandi's obsession with matters fecal.
Gates is not that smart, and even geniuses like Thomas Jefferson (who could write Latin and Greek with each hand at the same time!) did stupid things like spend so much he died broke. While "dumb" John Adams left a healthy estate.
Nevertheless, the sole interest of rich White guys is to prevent Middle/Working class "lean and hungry" White guys from supplanting him. Gates has nightmares no doubt about Linus Torvalds, or Steve Jobs, or perhaps both.
Hence his open exclusion of the White middle/working class from his scholarships. He's not been called on it, yet. Expect that to change.
One reason I avoid MS crap.
Gates is not that gifted. Outside his unique ability to seize monopoly power in the micro computer operating system arena given strategic failures by short-sighted competitors, he just is not that smart. Like Warren Buffett, his early success allowed him to obliterate and bury his very public mistakes. The X-Box is a money-loser, MS failed in mobile phones.
I decided a few months ago that if I can't afford a high-IQ toilet within five years, I'll commit suicide. It's just too hard...
Funny, because my opinion of Windows has been in the crapper since day one.
...."You end up with the low IQ guys on the toilets.”
I remember seeing leaflets in Australia on how to use old-fashioned public toilets in a, shall we say, broad mainstream manner.
I think Bill's basic premise is wrong.
> I'd be surprised if he could test into MENSA, these days.
You think a 99.99th %ile IQ (mid 150s) can deteriorate to 130 = 98th %ile, in a healthy 55y.o.? The answer is a resounding no. The degradation of IQ with age is quite mild even at age 75. At age 55 it has probably degraded by about 2 points. What used to be interpreted as considerable degradation with age is actually an artifact of the Flynn effect.
Mr. Gates... Sherryl Crow. Ms. Crow... Mr. Bill Gates.
Anonymous said..."Bill Gate's IQ isn't that impressive any more...The shelf life of his intellect has probably long passed. I'd be surprised if he could test into MENSA, these days."
Maybe he's hoping to dunk his head and absorb 25-20 IQ points before taking any more intelligence tests.
"The older SAT (before 1995) had a very high ceiling. In any given year, only seven of the million test-takers scored above 1580."
Bill Gates got a 1590 >= 99.9993 Percentile
He is smart and I think his foundation will do a lot of good notwithstanding his incorrect assumptions about human nature.
Which raises the question of who is actually running the Gates Foundation
I seem to recall, in the early 90's Gates took a lot of crap (hah) for not giving much money to charity. I think the Gates Foundation exists primarily to shut those people up. I doubt Gates has much sincere interest in any of that PC stuff.
I can't wait until companies start unveiling smart toilets. Will it be Apple's iPoop, which Steve Jobs will tout as being "magical" and "totally reinventing the way we take a crap", or will it be Google Dump, which keeps track of (logs?) the frequency and content of all your bowel movements in addition to your search engine queries, emails, and IMs?
(To its credit, the Gates did, however, give $15 million to adding iodine to salt in Third World countries, which helps reduce cretinism.)
Evidently, he forgot to add iodine to his own salt supply.
"He is trying to do some good including getting other billionaires involved in philanthropy. I think we should give him a break."
9 times out of 10, philanthrophy means more money for leftist organizations and foundations. I'd rather rich people keep their money and build bigger houses than donate to causes. Causes in the past were run by patriots and actually did some good. Today, they are run by the likes of Bill Ayers and mostly do bad.
"Steve Sailer is a beggar."
Better a honest beggar than a bully and a thief which is what Gates is. He's a punkass thug who used monopoly tactics to destroy other better companies.
So, what would this be? Thigh-Q?
Anonymous said...
Steve Sailer is a beggar.
And you sir, are a bugger.
"What used to be interpreted as considerable degradation with age is actually an artifact of the Flynn effect."
Riiight. And all a homeboy of the 23rd century needs to do is get into a way back machine, and he can invent the theory of relativity before Einstein.
IQ degrades mildly in middle age only for those near the middle of the Bell Curve, but for the plus-3 sigma crowd, the decline is a lot steeper. Trust me. As one of these folks, working among these folks for two decades, I know.
Gates isn't the primary driver behind where his fortune goes and what causes and ideologies his money ends up supporting. If he were in Nazi Germany or something his fortune would be going to eugenics research or something.
adsfasdfasf said..."9 times out of 10, philanthrophy means more money for leftist organizations and foundations. I'd rather rich people keep their money and build bigger houses than donate to causes. Causes in the past were run by patriots and actually did some good. Today, they are run by the likes of Bill Ayers and mostly do bad."
My thought exactly. I guess he thinks he's too smart for "Primum non nocere".
OT: Leon Wieseltier implores "graciousness here and viciousness there" toward muslims (invade, invite).
The same idea is behind the neocons' promotion of Muslim immigration into Europe and elsewhere and their promotion of war against Muslim countries. They're trying to "tame" the Muslims basically since the Muslims are a natural global force that challenges the global hegemony/governance that the neocons/globalists seek.
What did Bill Gates actually ever do at Microsoft? DOS was stolen and the only real product ever truely unique by Microsoft was the original 4K Basic interpreter that went into Commodore machines and the original PC. Paul Allen did the bulk of that work from what I read.
Name one Microsoft product that wasn't a rip-off of something already out there that was better. Those companies weren't able to stay in the game as more IT heads just decided it was easier to buy all Microsoft as they finally got their products up to an acceptable level.
"Nevertheless, the sole interest of rich White guys is to prevent Middle/Working class "lean and hungry" White guys from supplanting him. Gates has nightmares no doubt about Linus Torvalds, or Steve Jobs, or perhaps both."
Steve Jobs is half-Syrian by birth. Does that make him white to a nice Scots-Irish boy like you?
"I can't wait until companies start unveiling smart toilets. Will it be Apple's iPoop, which Steve Jobs will tout as being "magical" and "totally reinventing the way we take a crap", or will it be Google Dump, which keeps track of (logs?) the frequency and content of all your bowel movements in addition to your search engine queries, emails, and IMs?"
IMs and BMs. Hey! IBM may just be set for a renaissance.
**********
Maybe ol' Bill is just still ticked off about getting swirlies in middle school?
IQ degrades mildly in middle age only for those near the middle of the Bell Curve, but for the plus-3 sigma crowd, the decline is a lot steeper. Trust me. As one of these folks, working among these folks for two decades, I know.
I seem to recall reading in The g Factor by Arthur Jensen that the opposite is true: higher IQ people hold up better in old age than lower IQ people, although it could just be that higher IQ people can better afford to lose brainpower.
When I first visited America, I was very surprised to see that the apparatus is larger and there is so much water actually in the bowl rather than the cistern.
Before going ahead, and thinking this was a malfunction, I drew this to the attention of my host who could not understand my concern.
We had a long conversation in the little room.
Maybe it is a case of so many things being bigger in America.
I especially like Italian loos
which are invariably foot pedal operated....like a Ferrari.
re: Bill Gates as a programmer
Read this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONKEY.BAS
Dan Kurt
"Anonymous said...
Shortened Steve Sailer: Bill Gates! he's so rich but so DUMB and PC!!! I'm Steve Sailer! I'm so smart!!"
And you, Mr. Anonymous Poster, who thinks that a person is better in proportion to the amount of money they have, are nothing but a c**ksucker of the wealthy. Was Pablo Escobar a good person or a smart person, because he had a lot of money? And if so, how much better than any of us was he, and how much less so than Bill Gates?
Screw you, idiot.
"sorry jody, you seem to feel connected to this guy coz you worked out a few questions."
well i don't feel connected to him, but he was conversant in nuclear engineering as well as chemistry. in fact it was nathan myrvold, the physicist in charge of TerraPower, who was asking my friends chemistry questions about the batteries they wanted gates to fund, who did not indicate much battery chemistry knowledge.
i make no claim about gates other than he demonstrates technical knowledge outside of the field in which he made all his money, and he seems to be putting his money where his mouth is. he's very likely aware of the role which plumbing serves in the grand scheme of things, and i'm merely pointing out that steve is really just doing some sensationalizing here. between 2000 and 2010, Intellectual Ventures went through more than 1 billion dollars in funding, and gates has been putting up millions and millions of that.
i agree with some of your negative opinions of gates.
james cameron, another famous guy, is also genuinely facile in multiple fields, and mentally he easily operates at the same level as experts in astronomy, oceanography, and mechanical engineering.
LOL, of course, i remembered these guys' names wrong. it's john gilleland who's the physicist in charge of TerraPower. nathan myrhvold was one of gates' cronies at Microsoft, which is why he didn't know much about the chemistry of batteries and was asking not so great questions at the venture capital meeting with MIT. although when i check his wikipedia page, he has all kinds of science credentials.
myhrvold runs Intellectual Ventures, and is not the guy in charge of operations at any of IV's enterprises. he's the guy who screens you when you ask gates for money for technology.
> but for the plus-3 sigma crowd, the decline is a lot steeper. Trust me. As one of these folks, working among these folks for two decades, I know.
Nullius in verba, dawg - though in saying that I'm certainly not saying you're an idiot. Many informal notions from intelligent people have been overturned by formal scientific work. What you're saying is certainly possible, but I bet we could find someone else of equal perpicacity who would deny it from their own exoerience (I myself have not observed people over a long period in that way, so I have no impressions to share).
Gates talks out of ignorance. The toilet business is larger and moves more money than the software business. He has no idea of the amount of research and yes, IQ, that is invested in the wastewater industry. If money is any indication of intelligence, which I think is, and since the average plumber makes more than the standard code writer, toilet people tend to be high IQ. I expect Gates to spend his money on developing some revolutionary and innovative composting toilet or pee purification system, in addition of the thousands already tried, all totally useless.
"and mentally he easily operates at the same level as experts in astronomy, oceanography, and mechanical engineering."
Do you know this for a fact, or did you read it in "US" Magazine.
Below +3 sigma, IQ has some real predictive value about economic and societal outcomes. Above 3 sigma, it's not so predictive as you might think. Everybody talks about what a genius Gates is, but Paul Allen with a less than stratospheric IQ seems to have done all the heavy mental lifting to get Microsoft started. Whatever. IQ is probably just like money. After the first 100 million dollars or 150 points, it's all just score keeping.
Kings have always been obsessed with their thrones.
but I know guys in technology with 160-plus IQs
I suppose there are some guys in technology with IQ's of 160+.
But there cannot be many of them, as those with IQ's at that level make up just 0.01% of the population and many of those would be in other lines of work.
Bill gates sounds too much like a guy with a one track mind.
Successful people are more likely to be a bit monomaniacal than to have a blisteringly high IQ. It helps to have both of course.
"but I know guys in technology with 160-plus IQs
I suppose there are some guys in technology with IQ's of 160+."
Like a top 5 university engineering department, perhaps? You betcha.
Melinda French is the one behind the Gates Foundation.
She famously spoke of those who suffered "sexism and racism" in their lives.
I don't know her.
But I know those who attended HS with her at Ursuline High here in Dallas.
She grew up in a lily white, upper middle class neighborhood in old North Dallas.
Everything revolves around poop with some people.
Like a top 5 university engineering department, perhaps? You betcha.
Uh no. The average IQ at even Harvard is "only" 130 when given a neutral IQ test (not the SAT wich gives a statistically biased result because it's the test they were selected on):
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html
IQ's of 160 are impossibly rare, even at elite univerisities. Only one in 30,000 (white) Americans have an IQ this high.
Bill Gate's IQ isn't that impressive any more. At his mental peak, around the time he took the SAT and scored a 1550, it was probably in the mid 150's, but I know guys in technology with 160-plus IQs,
Bill Gates is rumoured to have a one in a million IQ of 170. The SAT is useless for measuring IQ's above 140. He could run circles around anyone you know when it comes to raw brain power. At his peak, he was the richest human to ever live.
Gates is not that smart, and even geniuses like Thomas Jefferson (who could write Latin and Greek with each hand at the same time!) did stupid things like spend so much he died broke. While "dumb" John Adams left a healthy estate
Gates is far more intelligent than Jefferson or any other president in American history. Jefferson would not be able to compete with Gates and other Microsoft elite nerds on tasks that require raw brain power.
' And with time, IQ declines, especially as the cardiovascular system begins to deteriorate.'
Just as well we accumulate more wealth, knowledge and a gruff exterior to compensate.
IQ degrades mildly in middle age only for those near the middle of the Bell Curve, but for the plus-3 sigma crowd, the decline is a lot steeper. Trust me. As one of these folks, working among these folks for two decades, I know.
Nonsense. I have always read that senility is more common among lower IQ persons. Not exclusively of course, but statistically significantly more common. It has something to do with the brain being of more complex design, more "backup" as deterioration occurs. Also, just more activity.
Among scientists the number who continue to work actively in their fields as they into their 80s and even 90s is amazing. They are not doing their greatest anymore, but they are still functioning and interested.
This is pretty general knowledge.
Concerning Intelligence Quotient scores-a theme with which so many of you are fixated?! IQ test scores-be they high or low have one thing in common: It is a very poor predictor of one's "success." Success in put between quotation marks as "success" is such a subjective word semantically. One person's success is another's failure. For instance: one person may view Bill Gates as wildly successful because he has earned billions; yet another person may view Mother Theresa as wildly successful and she died penniless. For the sake of both financial and academic success IQ is typically identified as the 4th of 7 factors that make for a successful person in his or her carrer. Hard work is still the number one leading factor in predicting the successful carrer of a given individual....these numbers are derived from longitudinal studies researched by some of the world's thought leaders, published in highly revered, refereed cognitive research publications. Just FYI
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