Campaigning for live organ donations and donating yourself is such a waste compared to the real solution, which is opt-out organ donation.
My Left Kidney
91–100 of 325 posts
Re: My Left Kidney
#92I know a few people who have donated kidneys (both to friends and strangers), and I find it admirable (and supererogatory). At the same time, I think this post demonstrates a kind of selective unawareness that I’ve seen members of the EA community demonstrate. A significantly less charitable summary of Scott’s situation is “our prospective kidney donor is newly-married high-stress professional with a history of SSRI…
He was officially rejected due to mild childhood OCD. If you take that stated reason at face value, his rant about it is completely reasonable. If their "real reason" is more like your description, perhaps they should have found a way to try to say that.
I agree. But we also only have Scott’s telling; it’s entirely possible that they expressed other concerns to him and only concluded with a final point.
Re: My Left Kidney
#93Can anyone (with a better understanding of radiation risks) confirm the math for the added mortality risk from a single CT? I know a CT is a lot of radiation, but the mortality risk seems very high.
I think there's a very obvious error in the calculation:
The author jumps from 30mS increases the risk of cancer by 1/660 to 1 in 660 get cancer after the procedure.
Re: My Left Kidney
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was officially rejected due to mild childhood OCD. If you take that stated reason at face value, his rant about it is completely reasonable. If their "real reason" is more like your description, perhaps they should have found a way to try to say that.
I agree. But we also only have Scott’s telling; it’s entirely possible that they expressed other concerns to him and only concluded with a final point.
This is true.
Re: My Left Kidney
#95> People got so mad at some British EAs who used donor money to “buy a castle”. I read the Brits’ arguments: they’d been running lots of conferences with policy-makers, researchers, etc; those conferences have gone really well and produced some of the systemic change everyone keeps wanting. But conference venues kept ripping them off, having a nice venue of their own would be cheaper in the long run, and after lookin…
Whenever I read anything from these people I just keep thinking "Lies, damn lies, and statistics." They rely on "the math checks out" as an excuse for basically doing whatever they want. Here is some real-world math: how about "the math doesn't check out because people will look at your castle and think you're full of shit?"
Re: My Left Kidney
#96This does honestly kind of shock me, it’s respectable that he did something like this for a random person but I could never imagine myself doing it for anyone except close family. I used to think EA was some kooky AI safety Cult but if so many EA folks donate their kidney, my opinion of them has improved far more. They at least have balls!
>They at least have balls!
For the moment.
Re: My Left Kidney
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your summary literally doesn't even sound more stressful than the median American adult life. He has a job? He got married? He has taken psychiatric drugs before? Some people don't like him? There exists social drama sort of nearby him? So what? These are incredibly superficial assessments. Why is the standard for donating a kidney that your life has to be, in the opinion of some bureaucrats who just met you, super c…
The average American isn’t donating half of their kidneys, as the post points out. It’s entirely possible that the average American isn’t psychologically suited to do so without an extensive (and fallible) filtration process. But beyond that: the author is not an average American, and we both know that. Most Americans don’t find themselves in the NYT, or somewhat central to a large, wealthy controversial community th…
Why does being a minor celebrity mean you shouldn't donate your kidney?
You don't think most Americans are "psychologically suited" to donate a kidney? Again, I don't think you would apply this level of paternalism to other situations. Would you tell the median person that they aren't "psychologically suited" to have a kid and therefore aren't allowed to? That's a dramatically more impactful and psychologically stressful decision, but we admit that the person best suited to make it is the person living it.
I think you are just trying to justify a dumb bureaucratic decision that doesn't respect the suffering of people who actually need kidneys.
Re: My Left Kidney
#98I 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.
It's easy to say in retrospect, but it's not like all the movement ever did in it's entire existence was buy a single castle. Do you really think they were expecting EA to explode in the public consciousness after the SBF thing and to have all of their line-items exhaustively audited for what could make the best outrage-bait article? That's quite a black swan event.
Re: My Left Kidney
#99Campaigning for live organ donations and donating yourself is such a waste compared to the real solution, which is opt-out organ donation.
it's not either/or, tho
Re: My Left Kidney
#100Wow. 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.
> Evolution has ... for presumably good reasons
That's not how evolution works either in theory or in practice