Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (not pictured) at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing on January 9, 2019.
Elon Musk is an optimist: There is no better time to be alive, Musk says. "Humanity can address a lot of the suffering that occurs in the world and make things a lot better. I think a lot of times people are quite sort of negative about the present and about the future, but really if you are a student of history, when else would you really want to be alive?" Musk said Tuesday at a Neuralink event at the California Academy of Sciences. "Now is the best time, pretty much. Those who think the past is better have not read enough history," Musk said.
Bill Gates has read his history, and he makes a similar argument to Musk. As evidence, Gates uses examples from psychologist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker's book "Enlightenment Now": In 1920, the average person spent 11.5 hours each week doing laundry, and in 2014, that fell to an hour and a half, Gates writes on his blog, Gates Notes. He also notes that the global IQ score is rising three IQ points each decade thanks to better nutrition and a cleaner environment aiding in brain development. "The world is getting better, even if it doesn't always feel that way," Gates wrote in the 2018 post. Then there's Warren Buffett: While the investor urges that the stark wealth inequality in America needs to be addressed, he says capitalism and the country's growing wealth help make this the best time to be alive.
"Early Americans, we should emphasize, were neither smarter nor more hard working than those people who toiled century after century before them. But those venturesome pioneers crafted a system that unleashed human potential, and their successors built upon it," Buffett wrote in his 2016 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. The result is that each generation leads a better life than the past. "This economic creation will deliver increasing wealth to our progeny far into the future. Yes, the build-up of wealth will be interrupted for short periods from time to time. It will not, however, be stopped," Buffett says. "I'll repeat what I've both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history." Though it may seem easy to have such optimism when you're a billionaire like Musk, Gates and Buffett, Gates says he's "optimistic about the future because I know that advances in human knowledge have improved life for billions of people, and I am confident they will keep doing so." See also: 5 timeless lessons for success from the early years of Warren Buffett's annual shareholder letters Neuralink president: You have to be 'very careful' telling Elon Musk something is impossible Jeff Bezos: I spend my billions on space because we're destroying Earth
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StunGod on July 20th, 2019 at 00:18 UTC »
I tell people I won the lottery. I'm a middle class white American dude born in the late 60s. Setting aside the family influence (lower middle class, no bad stuff), my quality of life is better than pretty much anybody who lived and died before 1940. Just objectively, in terms of nutrition, shelter, mobility, health, etc, even royalty and the very wealthy didn't have the things we in the developed world take for granted today. And I'm a white guy, so there's a few extra lives added on at the beginning...
But I'm getting old enough now to see that I'm going to just barely miss out on the really cool stuff. So right now is the best time in history so far. 50 years from now will be even better.
Sparkstun on July 19th, 2019 at 23:47 UTC »
I don't think anyone is arguing it's worse than a previous time. Though if you offered me to be born 50 years later, I probably would not have passed the offer.
slackwalker on July 19th, 2019 at 23:10 UTC »
Guess I'll cancel my plans to be alive in the past.