Michael Vassar On Bill Gates

"While he admits it might be more fun to be a rock star or a theoretical physicist, Vassar considers himself to be saving the world in the best possible way he can, as opposed to what he claims many notable philanthropists do; he says, "If Bill Gates tried to fix the world with the same brain he used to manipulate software instead of simply wearing the good boy cap, he could raise enough money to eliminate 90% of our world's "easy problems" within 30 years like poverty, Medicare and global warming—in contrast to hard problems like education, indigenous people's rights and preventing child abuse."

Michael Vassar on A Probable Future

People assume that there exists a coherent well developed common sense view of the probable long term future. The real common sense when speaking of one's own future is to assume that in 40 years you will be 40 years older and it will still be 2009. When speaking of the world's future, common sense is to take a single trend from the last 20 years and extrapolate it linearly, throwing in one random cliche taken from science fiction movies. When deciding what to do (nominally) about the future, common sense is to imitate the nominally future oriented behavior of those who you see as similar to yourself but slightly more successful with the opposite sex.
-Michael Vassar, SIAI President