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wmorgan comments on Rationality Quotes June 2012 - Less Wrong
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Eben Moglen, on how to change the world
I don't think Moglen always knew exactly what he was doing.
And I've never heard of him, so perhaps he didn't change the world either.
A lot more people have heard of Michael Jordan than have heard of Norman Borlaug. Yet Borlaug is one of the few humans on the planet who can be personally credited with saving millions of lives. Who one has heard of is not likely to be highly correlated with what impact people have had.
(I did perform a quick Google check after writing the comment and before posting it, just to make sure.)
Somewhat ironically, I actually have heard of Moglen for what he's really famous for, but I thought the quote was from Elon Musk (for whom, it should be said, the quote would be much truer - so far). I was surprised you hadn't heard of him, so I checked Wikipedia and then realized my mistake.
And sadly, more people know who Snooki is than know who Jonas Salk was.
I wouldn't be surprised if more people had heard of Jonas Salk, especially outside the US (although I reckon JoshuaZ's right about Michael Jordan & Norman Borlaug).
I had never heard of either, but after googling both I suspect that there are more people in the US who have heard of Snooki than people who have heard of Jonas Salk worldwide.
Snooki's pretty well-known in the US, but Jonas Salk's got staying power. Salk was a big American celebrity in his own right and is probably better known than Snooki among the middle-aged and certainly the old in the US & UK. As most people in the US & UK are at least 35-40 that might be enough to make Salk better known overall in those two countries.
Snooki does gets more hits & searches on Google but Salk's been a name for far longer and even holds his own against some rock stars in mentions in books.
Salk & Snooki are presumably less famous in non-Anglophone countries, and Salk must be worse off in that respect (reality TV antics better overcome language barriers), but he still has his half-century headstart, and the global effort to beat polio must've raised Salk's profile in quite a few countries.
One of the defence team of Phil Zimmermann in the PGP case. General counsel of the Free Software Foundation and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center. Mostly responsible for the changes between version 2 and version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
I'm not sure any of that counts as changing the world, but it does seem like he's had some impact.
In the context of the youtube link where the quote is from, he is saying what he learned from working under Thurgood Marshall - a man who probably did change the world.
Furthermore, what he is saying seems trivially true; the thing you need to know to change the world is how to get the change that you want. Knowing which things you need to know doesn't imply that you know those things!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G2VHf5vpBy8#!
Moglen on what the world needs -- in particular, for young people to have full access to computer hardware and software so that they can innovate, and privacy so that people can reboot their lives. I'm not sure whether this is giddy idealism or reasonable and important.
What does it mean, "reboot their lives"?
Start over with a new identity.
I assume this message is intended as some sort of irony? (Just because the message as a straight statement seems wrong and not in fitting to what your world saving attitudes seem to be.)
When it comes to big things I don't think that you often know beforehand exactly how to get it. As you progress you learn more and it makes often sense to change course. A lot of startups have to pivot to find their way to change the world.