Technology

Bill Gates Offered New Grads Some Valuable Life Advice On Twitter


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Bill Gates, one of the richest and (subjectively) smartest men in the world, spends most of his time trying to solve world problems like disease, injury, and condom engineering. As a result, he’s asked the same question by new grads every year: Where should they go? What should they do? And how can they live lives that matter?

This year, the tech mogul decided that to do the most good, he’d just answer those questions in an inspirational tweetstorm that dropped this morning.

Gates starts off with a classic joke:

Then he lays out that artificial intelligence, energy, and biosciences are where he’d work if he’d started today. He also notes that intelligence isn’t as big a deal as he thought, before veering into more interesting territory: His biggest regret.

In other words, according to Gates, it’s not just building cool stuff new grads should be focused on; it’s fixing the social and cultural inequities around us every day. Gates recommends reading Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels Of Our Nature, Pinker’s analysis of how, despite how awful the planet can seem right now, humans are actually, overall, more peaceful and better as people now than at any point in our history. Gates’ fundamental point is that new grads need to believe the problems of the world can be solved and to go out there and get it done.

And he offers this as an ending:

(Via Business Insider)

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