Ask HN: Who is the most positive impactful person you know?
82 comments
Leonard Susskind, a theoritical physicist at Stanford.
He has open, free video lectures that cover an entire 4 year cirruculum of a physics degree in his personal website called Theoritical Minimum.
He has open, free video lectures that cover an entire 4 year cirruculum of a physics degree in his personal website called Theoritical Minimum.
Yep, he has an extremely charming personality judging from his videos. Something similar is about Robert Sapolski, also from Stanford. Love watching these guys lecture. Natural born teachers.
I suspect our Youtube accounts are doppelgangers. o/
My high school physics teacher. She taught me the importance of being a good human being. And that being kind and empathetic to others is the best thing a person can do. That honesty and integrity are more important than winning. And she also taught me elementary physics.
Richard Stallman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallman
How is Stallman a redirect to RMS's page? Shouldn't it go to a disambiguation or name page?
Here is the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stallman&redirect...
Bill Murray.
Netflix has a new release about him, named "The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man."
Highly recommended.
Netflix has a new release about him, named "The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man."
Highly recommended.
Will MacAskill[1] for his contributions to launching the effective altruism movement, which has gone on to inspire many other people to take a much more rigorous and active perspective on doing good.
[1] - Many others were involved, but I know the most about his contributions.
[1] - Many others were involved, but I know the most about his contributions.
For anyone not familiar with EA or Will MacAskill, I highly recommend these podcasts:
Tim Ferriss: https://tim.blog/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/
Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/podcasts/being-good-and-doing-good/
Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buyBzK5yM-s
Also, short Economist article on EA: https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/02/can-effec...
Tim Ferriss: https://tim.blog/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/
Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/podcasts/being-good-and-doing-good/
Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buyBzK5yM-s
Also, short Economist article on EA: https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/02/can-effec...
John Carmack. First, by making one of the most memorable game of my childhood. Second, by inspiring me and a few of my friends via Masters of Doom [1], with his tweets, videos, by being a Craftsman, the embodiment of a great programmer. Masters of Doom helped one of my colleagues to ignite his passion for coding again, after a long exposure to mind-numbing corporate work.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom
Prabhu Ramachandran [1], author of Mayavi [2]
The amount of high quality work he does, all the while being positive, cheerful and friendly is a trait to imbibe and admire.
I am privileged to have him as a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide.
[1] https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/
[2] https://github.com/enthought/mayavi
The amount of high quality work he does, all the while being positive, cheerful and friendly is a trait to imbibe and admire.
I am privileged to have him as a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide.
[1] https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/
[2] https://github.com/enthought/mayavi
I'm going to change it a little to the people I've met that have had a sizable impact on the world.
I've met Sam Altman briefly last year. His involvement with YC the past several years and co-founding OpenAI have directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs.
I've also met Michael Seibel. His involvement with YC the past several years has directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs. His co-founding of Junstin.tv allowed it to exist, it is now evolved into twitch.tv which has allowed some creators and gamers to actually earn a living streaming and has created tons of micro-communities for video games and table top fans to both play and watch.
Aside from them, I don't really know (nor have I met) anyone else that I feel has directly and indirectly had as much of an impact on society as those two although...
I have very casually known, but never met, Kate Bornstein since our mutual participation in the Save Caprica campaign. She's certainly been a bastion of hope for many LGBT persons. She's semi-active on various social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bornstein
I've met Sam Altman briefly last year. His involvement with YC the past several years and co-founding OpenAI have directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs.
I've also met Michael Seibel. His involvement with YC the past several years has directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs. His co-founding of Junstin.tv allowed it to exist, it is now evolved into twitch.tv which has allowed some creators and gamers to actually earn a living streaming and has created tons of micro-communities for video games and table top fans to both play and watch.
Aside from them, I don't really know (nor have I met) anyone else that I feel has directly and indirectly had as much of an impact on society as those two although...
I have very casually known, but never met, Kate Bornstein since our mutual participation in the Save Caprica campaign. She's certainly been a bastion of hope for many LGBT persons. She's semi-active on various social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bornstein
Jon Kabat-Zinn
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn
Richard Feynman. You could pretend to ask him questions and play sound bites of his interviews/lectures :)
Mom
Kent Beck and Andrei Alexandrescu.
Andrei is quite amazing to me...
Clearly capable of writing code that is wonderful... and incomprehensible to mortal man.... but wonderfully focused on not doing that.
On making it comprehensible, and producing facilities that are friendly and nice and doing so with a kindly attitude.
Kent, in addition to the stuff he has done on the TDD front... https://www.infoq.com/presentations/self-image/
Andrei is quite amazing to me...
Clearly capable of writing code that is wonderful... and incomprehensible to mortal man.... but wonderfully focused on not doing that.
On making it comprehensible, and producing facilities that are friendly and nice and doing so with a kindly attitude.
Kent, in addition to the stuff he has done on the TDD front... https://www.infoq.com/presentations/self-image/
Would love to hear your definition "impact". On a personal level? On a business level? On a global level even? I think it is really difficult to define what impact even means. Sometimes impact is realized even long after someone has died, think F. Scott Fitzgerald (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Legacy_and_mo...)
Derek Sivers
Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen - His company saved the lives of about 10 million people (my wild ass guess) with approximately one million water purifiers and something like 1 billion mosquito nets distributed in Africa. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestergaard_Frandsen)
Steve Gleason, former NFL player & ALS survivor & Congressional Gold Medal recipient: http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-360/0ap3000001010997/Steve-Gle...
Milton Friedman.
Remarkable economist and very bright person. A noblr prize winner. Defender of the free market.
What is remarkable about him is the simple way to argue bringing natural human behavior and historical examples.
Alon Geva: He has really practical and straightforward questions for spiritual awakening: https://www.youtube.com/user/awakeningrightnow
Kevin Adler of Miracle Messages. They reunite long lost homeless people with their families. I'm sure Kevin would be happy to do your podcast.
https://miraclemessages.org/
https://miraclemessages.org/
The urban landscape is changing from auto-centric to human-centric (pedestrian areas, bike-lanes, light-rail). Jan Gehl and Janette Sadik-Khan are two prominent examples, but there are many others.
Dr. Michael Greger. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger
Murray Gell-Mann
Scott Hanselman
Dawa Tarchin Phillips -- he teaches mindfulness and leadership skills in schools and around the world.
Read the question and was about to suggest Austen Allred when I read the rest of your post. :)
Ocean Whitehawk: Spiritual teacher who has completely changed the lives of her students.
www.oceanwhitehawk.com
www.oceanwhitehawk.com
Tim Ferriss
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Spock
It won't be anyone that uses the word 'impactful'.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Jocko Willink
Robin Hanson
The sex redistribution guy?
Ok, I found Hanson’s view on “sex redistribution” in his blog http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html
Mad world: It is ok for the US president to pay prostitutes, restrict sex-redistributing websites and it is ok for the first lady to sell body. What is not ok is to advocate more liberal sex policies for scientists.
Mad world: It is ok for the US president to pay prostitutes, restrict sex-redistributing websites and it is ok for the first lady to sell body. What is not ok is to advocate more liberal sex policies for scientists.
If that's all you know him by you should definitely read his actual blog and work, since he's super interesting and actually a really wonderful person.
i'm not sure what you are talking about. You should try to google him. I like his views about the future and it is good to talk about futarchy now as topic starter mentioned TurboVote
Tom Bilyue from Impact Theory.
My parents.
Paul Graham
Elon Musk
This will be a controversial answer for some reasons I think are misplaced. In my opinion Elon Musk seems like he has a potent toxic side to his personality, and he doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of certain things. He also legitimately seems delusional at times.
However in terms of bringing awareness, optimism, and a willingness to actively work on engineering solutions to long-term existential threats to humanity I think his impact on our culture is often understated.
However in terms of bringing awareness, optimism, and a willingness to actively work on engineering solutions to long-term existential threats to humanity I think his impact on our culture is often understated.
If someone has a historical record of making delusions become reality, then I think they aren't really delusional.
Mr Musk's company SpaceX has brought down the cost to orbit by a factor of three. That's a big deal. Not as big as Edward Jenner & Louis Pasteur (vaccines) or Isaac Newton, but still pretty big.
George Washington
Sir Isaac Newton
Alan Watts
1) John Carmack
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Jesus
I kinda like Warren Buffett
Edward Jenner & Louis Pasteur (vaccines)
Jesus
Jordan Peterson
This is a 'brave' answer...
It's a fine answer. He spends his time railing against Marxism, Postmodernism, SJW culture and telling people to take responsibility. His main messages seem to boil down to become resilient and don't destroy the world.
qntty(2)
did you clean your room?
Unfairly down voted.
I second this. Jordan Peterson
Edit: To all the people that cowardly down voting me: I also like Heather Mac Donald and Ben Shapiro.
Edit: To all the people that cowardly down voting me: I also like Heather Mac Donald and Ben Shapiro.
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You can find the podcast here, https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened
Please give interview suggestions!