Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Left Kidney

astralcodexten.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 325 posts

Re: My Left Kidney

#101

Post by woodruffw »

mquander wrote: post #97
woodruffw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stres…

I didn’t say that. I think anybody should be able to donate their kidneys, provided that they are deemed competent to do so. Famous people and controversial people can be competent, and Scott almost certainly is.

As a society, we treat organ donation differently because it comes with significant opportunity for abuse and regret.

The sole point of my comment was to highlight how prominent EA writers can demonstrate a hypocritical blindness in a way that dispassionate observation can reveal. I’m not especially interested in UCSF’s actual decision.

Re: My Left Kidney

#102

Post by low_tech_love »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #8

I 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.

The problem here is that, in order to believe this, we would have to accept that "the castle was the cheapest choice". There are near-infinite ways to present (and omit) numbers in a way that makes your point and your biased choice look like the best one, especially for smart people with a messiah complex. Unless there is someone on the other side actively interested in refuting it, they can massage the numbers as much as they want. It is reasonable for an average person to doubt that buying a castle was indeed the cheapest choice they had.

Re: My Left Kidney

#103

Post by mquander »

woodruffw wrote: post #101
mquander wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stres…

I didn’t say that. I think anybody should be able to donate their kidneys, provided that they are deemed competent to do so. Famous people and controversial people can be competent, and Scott almost certainly is. As a society, we treat organ donation differently because it comes with significant opportunity for abuse and regret. The sole point of my comment was to highlight how prominent EA writers can demonstrate a…

OK, acknowledged.

Re: My Left Kidney

#104

Post by kqr »

alphager wrote: post #93
elromulous wrote: post #26

Can 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.

I thought of this too, but then it also seems like too simple a mistake for someone like Scott Alexander to make in public, so I thought I must be misunderstanding his argument.

Re: My Left Kidney

#105

Post by kqr »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #67

While I've appreciated some of the author's articles in the past, I think the numbers in this one miss the mark quite a bit. > the risk of dying from the screening exam was 1/660 > The usual rule of thumb is that one extra Sievert = 5% higher risk of dying from cancer, so a 30 mS dose increases death risk about one part in 660. Well not quite. First of all, this assumes that exposure events are additive over a lifeti…

> a number of lifestyle changes: healthier eating, quitting alcohol, staying out of the sun.

On the other hand, maintaining these sound like a much larger effort than avoiding one CT scan.

(That said, they do have other benefits so they might still make sense.)

Re: My Left Kidney

#106

Post by [deleted] »

low_tech_love wrote: post #95
laserlight wrote: post #89

> 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?"

[deleted]

Re: My Left Kidney

#107

Post by illys »

The author states: "the risk of dying from the screening exam was 1/660"

And demonstrates with: "This involves a radiation dose of about 30 milli-Sieverts. The usual rule of thumb is that one extra Sievert = 5% higher risk of dying from cancer, so a 30 mS dose increases death risk about one part in 660."

Sorry but there is a flaw here: calculation seems good but conclusion is completely wrong.

Calculation: increased risk ratio of cancer-related death for 30mS = 1.05^0.03S = 1.001465... So +0.15% = +0.0015 = around +1/660 (with less rounding +1/682)... fine!

Conclusion: this is not your risk of dying, but the increase of your risk of dying. If it was X%, the exam brings your risk at X% x 1.0015

X depends on the medicine quality in your country, your access to it, your health, your exposure to cancer-triggers (pollution, tobacco, food...), your DNA, your gender...

Let's state a depressing 1%, then the screening exam brings you to 1.0015%, or +0.0015% additional risk due to the screening exam = 0.000015 = rounded 1/67000. So your chance of dying from an exam-related cancer is absolutely not 1/660.

Please correct me if I did it wrong...

Re: My Left Kidney

#108

Post by nyssos »

woodruffw wrote: post #82
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the "community/cult" here? I’m apparently missing context.

Effective altruism, which is both a general (and not especially objectionable) variant of act utilitarianism, and also a specific community that has (fairly, to my eye) been accused of diverting money towards a particular set of reactionary worldviews held by its leadership.

The main recipients of EA political funding (what little there is: the majority of money goes to global health and development, with AI safety as a distant second) are centrist Democrats. They're too right-wing for my taste too, but calling them "reactionaries" dilutes the word into meaninglessness.

Re: My Left Kidney

#109

Post by lostmsu »

An anecdote to go along with his rejection. Once I got rejected from doing a medical donation in US because in the giant table of family sicknesses they gave me I marked X next to one of the mental conditions for my father who was an alcoholic because apparently alcoholism technically is that kind of mental condition (yes, the X had to be explained in the form, which I did). As you can imagine alcoholism is not that heritable, and had more to do with the environment (I grew up in Russia where it was extremely prevalent), but for the clerks an X is an X.

Re: My Left Kidney

#110

Post by guenthert »

ckdot2 wrote: post #83

There are so many unknowns and unknown unknowns in medical sciense, especially regarding the human body. Did evolution really keep two kidneys if you actually just need one? I doubt it. When considering a donation you should also not only think about if you might die. There are more factors like quality of life. In the end, a whole organ will be removed from your body. This will have some effect.

I was wondering about that, but not enough to do any actual research. I figure that hunter-gatherer's diet consisted of a whole lot of meat (seasonally perhaps) and then two kidneys were of advantage. My doctors recommended against eating big steaks. I wasn't eating much of those before and had no need to adjust.

I can't tell the difference (six years after the procedure), but then, I'm no athlete monitoring his performance closely.

Post reply on HN