The MIT Technology Review for March and April of this year arrived by post a few days ago. Bill Gates is on the front page. As it turns out, he appears in no less than three articles, as well. He was invited to serve as the guest curator of the magazine’s ten breakthrough technologies (pp. 8-12), he offered his ten favorite books to the magazine’s readers (p. 16), and he had an interview with Gideon Lichfield, the magazine’s editor in chief (pp. 56-57). Predictably, Steven Pinker’s last book is among Gates’ favorite ones (“Enlightenment Now,” February 28, 2018). But the title of the interview really got me: “Bill Gates Explains Why We Should All Be Optimists.” Wow! “So, yes,” he is quoted, “I’m optimistic. It does bother me that most people aren’t.” How uncouth of them, too. “Maybe you have successful person’s bias?” jumps in Lichfield. “Of course,” Gates retorts, “we have to factor that in.” And so on, and so forth. This issue of the magazine is crowned with the list of ten grand challenges concocted by the editors with Gates’ blessing: carbon sequestration, grid-scale energy storage, universal flu vaccine, dementia treatment, ocean clean-up, energy-efficient desalination, safe driverless car, embodied artificial intelligence (AI), earthquake prediction, and brain decoding. To my disappointment, none of the challenges addresses inborn human stupidity. Sooner or later, though, Gates and his mates must tackle that challenge—the mother of all challenges, as a matter of fact (“Omnium malorum stultitia humani generis est mater,” February 19, 2015). And brain decoding is the first step in that direction, to be sure. Phew!