I am very open to critiquing Bill Gates (and other personally wealthy folks disregarding experts in a messianical manner), but isn't this kind of what he spends all of his time on now (malaria, ebola, etc.)? From the article itself, he links to a TED talk he gave about epidemics in 2015, as well as a paper he had published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It has been a hobby of his for some time. Although he hasn't credentialed that knowledge. It doesn't mean his opinion is moot, just that people should examine his points through research of their own and not just appeal to his 'authority'.
I'm kind of the opposite. I've never been all that impressed by photorealistic painting, myself. Oh, sure, I get that a lot of time and technique goes into these things, and I can certainly appreciate them as a technical achievement. But, much like overclocking a processor to 6.3Ghz by using LN2 cooling, I don't really see the point of it, especially since a digital photo can capture the same thing far more easily and faithfully.
Abstracts of all sort have room for me in them; photorealism doesn't. SFMOMA had a piece on display at one point that was simply a giant, all red canvas. It was quite an unassuming piece at first, situated at the very entry of the gallery exhibit it was featured in. But, the more I stood and just took it in, the more in awe of it I became. I could never imagine feeling that while standing in front of a painting that very well could have been a photo.
Correct. Rejecting modern/abstract art does not limit you to photorealism. In fact, even less stylized classical works rarely strived for mere photorealism, or were judged solely on that basis.
You're confused. I never said I rejected abstract art, and I never claimed that if you reject abstract art, you must love photorealism. Please reread what I wrote.
"Abstracts of all sort have room for me in them; photorealism doesn't." and the rest of your post heavily implied that the only options are abstract art or photorealism, and doesn't even mention the many different traditional styles. But you are correct that you never say so explicitly.
It's a forum comment, not an art history dissertation. I chose photorealism as it contrasts very explicitly with abstract styles, and, because I don't care for it. There's no need to read anything more into it.
This is an oversimplified take, and completely glosses over macro social effects beyond "individual choice".
This is the social science equivalent of reasoning about human behavior and focusing on the behavior of individual neuron connections, or the behavior of an OS by focusing entirely on the I/O drivers - wrong scope of analysis.
Yeah, they really jumped the shark with that release. The meta has been changing drastically, and I don't know if the dev team really is interested in patching it back up.
Are you suggesting that jail (aka expensive housing funded by the public) is the most effective solution to these crimes/behaviors? For example, do you think the population of people who defecate in public are going to be deterred due to the threat of imprisonment?
