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My Left Kidney

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Re: My Left Kidney

#151

Post by eru »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #121
TheDong wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a long waiting list for recipients, and we don't have an excess of donors to be picky with. Why are you assuming Scott was not "able to see" the explanation you laid out, when in all likelyhood that thought has crossed his mind (he's thought about this far more than you, a commenter who speculated that in 5 minutes)? Perhaps he thought of it, and decided saying it would be even meaner to the hospital... which…

> Like, if they rejected him from bureaucratic incompetence as they tried to filter out people who can't consent to surgery? Fine, incompetence is bad, but fine. I'd be even more charitable to them: it's not incompetency, but waste inherent in a bureaucratic process, which is a consequence of scale. Sure, it would be better if Scott was interviewed with someone dedicated and empowered, who could hear and verify the f…

> And sure, it sucks to be the one rejected by an effectively automated process[0], but it's better for everyone than not having any process at all.

You could have a much lighter weight process, that leaves more of the decision making powers with individuals and families. That would be cheaper and overall suck less.

Re: My Left Kidney

#152

Post by eru »

woodruffw wrote: post #87
TheDong wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a long waiting list for recipients, and we don't have an excess of donors to be picky with. Why are you assuming Scott was not "able to see" the explanation you laid out, when in all likelyhood that thought has crossed his mind (he's thought about this far more than you, a commenter who speculated that in 5 minutes)? Perhaps he thought of it, and decided saying it would be even meaner to the hospital... which…

> We have a long waiting list for recipients, and we don't have an excess of donors to be picky with. That’s not how this works. Organ donation is inherently picky and fallible: without that pickiness, you get coerced organ donation and people undergoing mental crises seeking a form of salvation. I don’t understand where the moral judgement or grudge determination came from: everything I’ve said is a prima facie plau…

> Organ donation is inherently picky and fallible: without that pickiness, you get coerced organ donation [...]

What is your evidence for this claim?

Re: My Left Kidney

#153

Post by snarkconjecture »

jmcgough wrote: post #147
snarkconjecture wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be astonishing if it were a mistake. And yes, it's a detectable signal. "in a large population-based cohort it was found that up to 4% of brain cancers were caused by CT scan radiation" --somewhere on Wikipedia CT scans vary in dosage. Wiki gives ~10 Sv for an abdominal CT; I don't know where Scott got 30, but maybe the kidney screening is multiple scans or otherwise higher dose. Or he was wrong by a factor…

> CT scans aren't done frivolously As someone who works in the ED, we pretty much give CTs out like candy to avoid a lawsuit if we miss something.

I stand corrected.

Re: My Left Kidney

#154

Post by eru »

nyssos wrote: post #108
woodruffw wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure woodruffw necessarily talked about donations to US politicians when they mentioned 'diverting money towards a particular set of reactionary worldviews held by its leadership.'

Perhaps they just don't like malaria nets? See https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

Re: My Left Kidney

#155

Post by deelly »

rutierut wrote: post #119

It was completely baffling to me how someone as brilliant as SA could conclude that "the risk of dying from the screening exam was 1/660". However, the paper he references does contain the specific example: > For example, a 40-year-old woman undergoing CT coronary angiography is estimated to have a 1 in 270 chance of developing cancer at a radiation dose of approximately 20 mSv At this point I'm completely lost here.

Please don't be so quick

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38036113

Re: My Left Kidney

#156

Post by wging »

streakfix wrote: post #144
illys wrote: post #107

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…

He also assumed that the risk increases linearly.

Not blindly; there is a pretty extensive footnote (footnote 2) covering the linear-risk assumption.

Re: My Left Kidney

#157

Post by eru »

TheDong wrote: post #77
zabzonk wrote: post #9

Wow. 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 equipped us with two kidneys for presumably good reasons As the article pointed out, on average you live a totally fine life with only 1 kidney, so clearly no. Like, that same argument would be "evolution gave us poor eyesight, so glasses must be bad. Why else would evolution make so many people's vision fail? Blurry eyesight must have an evolutionary advantage", or "evolution made some people white f…

Going off a tangent: the modern myopia epidemic seems to be related to lots of time spent indoors when growing up. People in the past weren't so myopic, and we have difference between modern countries that also track pretty well with that explanation.

However the science isn't quite settled on that.

Re: My Left Kidney

#158

Post by TeMPOraL »

bowsamic wrote: post #143
unholiness wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to trust a community who claims to focus on effectiveness but then it turns out puts great effort into looking good. That kind of deception is more damaging than a bit of bad press. There's plenty of charities with great marketing. EA doesn't need to be another one.

Prove it with the maths. I'd be willing to bet that the maths comes out on the favour of those who put effort into looking good.

Not when you factor in how this strategy affects those who employ it. Sure, compromising your ethics and lying to people in order to secure more donations will bring in more money for the good cause - short-term. Longer term, how long until you start thinking, since you're already lying to the donors anyway, why not also lie about the whole charity thing and start pocketing the donations for yourself?

"Ends don't justify the means" isn't true on paper, for perfectly rational actors - but is true for actual humans.

Re: My Left Kidney

#159

Post by atleastoptimal »

Good for him. However I feel bad it seems like a misplaced sense of personal guilt over being an effective altruist compelled him to do this. Many empathetic people worry far much over the slight possibility they are a bad person even though they're miles away from one. Evil, psychopathic people never worry about being a bad person at all, and can sleep soundly even in perfect understanding of the deliberate suffering they've caused.

Re: My Left Kidney

#160

Post by eru »

low_tech_love wrote: post #102
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 mu…

Nobody really objects to them holding conferences. (At least not too many people do.)

Renting venues for the conferences vs buying a venue seems like a straightforward financial calculation one can make and decide on fairly objectively.

If you want to have a moral discussion, we should probably talk about what kind of venues conferences should be held at; not on whose balance sheets the assets are held.

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