People who are trying to pay attention to what goes on around them.

When something happens, you look for the causes and motivations. If you just focus on the event itself, you have a much narrower understanding of how to anticipate or prevent such an event in the future

I'm not sure I need to "anticipate or prevent" an event like Mark Zuckerberg deciding to donate to some charity.

You're missing the point. Follow his motivations and you may be able to anticipate or prevent his next move.

He obviously wants to run for President. But again, that doesn't have much bearing on whether this tool is useful.

Nobody was implying that the Measures for Justice project wasn't useful. I was only questioning Zuckerberg's motives for supporting it, and the media giving him credit.

I think it's very reasonable to care. Motivations matter because they are more predictive of future behavior than just about anything else we might learn about a person.

Is it possible to suss out another person's motivations in our current political media climate? Was it ever possible to truly find out motivations that weren't mostly projections of the voters and media types?

My belief is a strong "no" to both of those questions. (I don't even think that I understand my own motivations very well, and am much more hesitant to ascribe behavior to what 'motivates' other people.)

I do, in case you missed that.

I don't think we should be giving people credit for PR "philanthropy".

We should. You can give someone credit for "pr_philanthropy" without giving them credit for "philanthropy". They still did a thing, and as people, they're allowed to do a thing for multiple reasons.

(Each of us are vast, and contain multitudes. We do not need to be self-consistent.)

Very few people are saints but if the data is useful or interesting then I don't really care. I think probably most philanthropists have some motives besides altruism.

I'd prefer credit be given to the people actually doing the work. I think it's an insult to the people at Measures for Justice for Zuckerberg to be absorbing positive PR for their work.

The credit was given to Amy Bach repeatedly throughout the article, I'm not sure how you missed that.

One of the many funding organizations happens to be funded by Mark Zuckerberg which makes for interest catching headlines but they're certainly not alone in funding the project.

https://www.measuresforjustice.org/about/overview/

>Bach’s work has attracted the attention of the tech industry’s increasingly activist leadership. Earlier this year, Google.org awarded Measures for Justice a $1.5 million grant. Today, Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced it is giving $6.5 million to the non-profit to help it expand into California.

My mom made me a cake last week, my favorite type of cake. It was great, but she made it only to pamper me, not because she really wanted to do it.

You are such a poser mom.

People with a stake in society.