[flagged]
Why?
If your spouse does not oppose your decision to donate your kidney to a random person, get a divorce asap.
My Left Kidney
11–20 of 325 posts
Re: My Left Kidney
#12Wow. Bonkers. Also, prolix. Evolution has equipped us with two kidneys for presumably good reasons. Don't go giving one away unless you really have to.
This is a pretty odd remark. The effect of living with one kidney isn't some sort of unknown thing we need to reason about from first principles, we know pretty well what life is like for kidney donors. And I don't know about 'really have to', but it doesn't seem like 'saving someone's life' is a trivial or stupid reason.
Re: My Left Kidney
#13[flagged]
The ends do justify the means. It's just that the means are also ends.
Re: My Left Kidney
#14Good for Scott for actually looking at the research and then following through in a charitable action that is consistent with his beliefs.
I'm surprised by how relatively risky the scan creening seems to be though.
Re: My Left Kidney
#15Re: My Left Kidney
#16Wow. Bonkers. Also, prolix. Evolution has equipped us with two kidneys for presumably good reasons. Don't go giving one away unless you really have to.
This is a pretty odd remark. The effect of living with one kidney isn't some sort of unknown thing we need to reason about from first principles, we know pretty well what life is like for kidney donors. And I don't know about 'really have to', but it doesn't seem like 'saving someone's life' is a trivial or stupid reason.
the article struck me as something hannibal lecter might have used as a case-study in his paper on surgical addiction.
Re: My Left Kidney
#17I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good? Optics sometimes necessitate sacrificing the "mathematically superior choice" for one that's worse in the name of not pissing off a ton of people the support of whom you rely upon.
Reputation has a value but that value is not infinite. Presumably they made a guess at how bad the hit would be. (Also, with the right audience, being willing to make tough choices like this would enhance their reputation)
Re: My Left Kidney
#18I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good? Optics sometimes necessitate sacrificing the "mathematically superior choice" for one that's worse in the name of not pissing off a ton of people the support of whom you rely upon.
> Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good?
True. But the EA crowd has a hard time understand perception or empathy and has to resort to mathematical calculations
I could think of a couple of ways better than "buying a castle" for conferences.
Re: My Left Kidney
#19[flagged]
It looks like you've interacted with some nasty folks who were EAs - I don't think this was a typical cross-section of EAs. Sorry to hear about your bad experiences
As one example, a friend of mine lost over $20 million to SBF / FTX, which funded said castle. However he did not sell his claim and is optimistic he will get most of it back. Money seems like a number on a page until you see how it affects real people!
As another example, I had an EA VC investor nuke one of my seed investments in order to have a different one of his portcos acquire the IP for scrap because he had a far higher stake in the other portco, which was in the same vertical. Ruined a lot of employees' ISOs as well as my equity. But hey he's an EA - can't blame him! His expected value was simply higher.
Re: My Left Kidney
#20[flagged]
The ends do justify the means. It's just that the means are also ends.
Yes! This was the realization that started moving me away from many flavors of consequentialist utilitarianism.
There is to me no ontological distinction between means and ends, or the cause and the effect as an action. There is a vast literature prioritizing the latter at the expense of the former, an illusion brought upon us by the arrow of time our consciousness happens to be travelling in the same direction as. But if we're going to prioritize along that axis we might as well claim actions to the left of us are privileged relative to actions to the right of us.
I admit this is splitting philosophical hairs. "Doing X at time T means at time T + 1 many many sentient beings will benefit" is not really a hard-consequentialist argument - we don't prioritize X because it is at time T. But now consider: "if future sentient beings no longer care about Y, then doing X now will benefit nobody; deciding on not-X, however, saves resources we can then use towards whatever we do care about." Now totalize that, and add in a modesty claim: As the people at the start of history, we (maybe) have no control over what moral concerns future beings will have at all, and if we do then we can (maybe) can choose to craft a future where no moral concerns are detected by any sentient beings in the future at all.
Is that good? I have no idea, but it's a lot more fun to try to puzzle through.