If Bill Gates had gone to "cure cancer" or "feed Africa" instead of selling operating systems and word processors, is it guaranteed that he would have succeeded? I'm pretty certain that in that alternate reality someone else would have stepped up to create the equivalent of Windows and maybe become a billionaire, but do we have the assurance that they would also make the same altruistic use of their money?
I always get a bit annoyed by people who claim to understand that life isn't some balanced chemical equation with swappable variables, but then display a contradictory logic. If you mention the "butterfly effect" they engage in a dissertation. Later you catch them off-guard and they're lamenting on brilliant minds being wasted on meaningless problems, or on people not eating organic food anymore, or music being too commercial nowadays, etc.
The thing that really gets me is not the lack of merit of such complaints, it's the refusal by people who emit them to extrapolate on the implications of their hypotheses. They somehow always assume that the alternate reality in their proposition is some sort of utopia.
Life is a huge mess, but as chaotic as it is, every little variation has an effect and a price. Just don't assume that you'll like what they are.
I always get a bit annoyed by people who claim to understand that life isn't some balanced chemical equation with swappable variables, but then display a contradictory logic. If you mention the "butterfly effect" they engage in a dissertation. Later you catch them off-guard and they're lamenting on brilliant minds being wasted on meaningless problems, or on people not eating organic food anymore, or music being too commercial nowadays, etc.
The thing that really gets me is not the lack of merit of such complaints, it's the refusal by people who emit them to extrapolate on the implications of their hypotheses. They somehow always assume that the alternate reality in their proposition is some sort of utopia.
Life is a huge mess, but as chaotic as it is, every little variation has an effect and a price. Just don't assume that you'll like what they are.