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

Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 115 posts

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#91

Post by Rebelgecko »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

What a genius idea to raise awareness. This seems like a no-brainer for blood banks, hospitals, public health and so on.

I think it's a terrible idea. That reverse track from specific use of blood to phone number of the source should not even exist.

Or how about the other way? If you know when your blood is used and where, you might be able to make assumptions about who is getting transfusions. Granted that's probably small potatoes compared to all of the other privacy concerns in health, but hopefully this program is optional for the recipients.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#92

Post by spacko »

fabiandesimone wrote: post #18
AriaMinaei wrote: post #14

This could work not just for donating blood, but for pretty much any kind of service. Imagine if you could see, in real time, how your job affects other people's lives, even in the most mundane way. It would let you see the value of what you do, and give you a reason to do it better.

I always thought about this about taxes. If you could choose from a list of projects a la Kickstarter where YOU choose where your taxes go to, I'm sure people would not only feel better about taxes in general but would allow them to get involved in said projects.

"Congratulations, Herr Schmidt, your 2014 taxes have just been spent on a chandelier for the rebuilt Berlin city palace!"

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#93

Post by AriaMinaei »

jessriedel wrote: post #90
AriaMinaei wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I have an unbaked thought that says assigning numbers to people's contribution to the world is going to create the wrong kind of incentives. The problem is that it's (probably) impossible to summarize someone's effects on other people into a number. We're seeing that even quantifying school performance ends up being counter-productive. For me, the ideal is that instead of seeing how many people you've helped, o…

I think that's more of a concern when there is a principal-agent problem. Yes, if you pay me X $/widget but are unable to measure widget quality well, then I may try to maximize number of widgets produced at the expense of quality. (And it may make sense to use other incentive structures.) But if I'm trying to help people, it's much less likely that I'll stupidly maximize a metric (# of page views) by lowering qualit…

I see. But I think this "system that lets you see how what you do affects other people" should be applied to everything we do, not just charity. It should be mainly about your job and what you do that pays you.

I wanna say why I think this is a good idea, but I'm curious to know whether it's obvious to other people why this could be a good thing.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#94

Post by civilian »

pluma wrote: post #63
tomjen3 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I think I could work such that when you are unemployed or getting money from the government coffers you also get a notice with a name and picture of the person who payed tax to give you that. Sorta like "your income this months was made possible by the hard work of $NAME" - would you be more or less inclined to abuse government founds this way?

That would be passive-aggressive abuse. Unemployment is rarely a choice, yet society likes to make the unemployed feel that way. This would add insult to injury.

Don't you think it could be phrased as a warm community support message?

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#95

Post by civilian »

spacko wrote: post #92
fabiandesimone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought about this about taxes. If you could choose from a list of projects a la Kickstarter where YOU choose where your taxes go to, I'm sure people would not only feel better about taxes in general but would allow them to get involved in said projects.

"Congratulations, Herr Schmidt, your 2014 taxes have just been spent on a chandelier for the rebuilt Berlin city palace!"

"Congratulations Ms Smith, your 2013 taxes have provided 0.01% of the cost of a missile that was just deployed in Afghanistan!"

If we could choose how our taxes were used (a libertarian dream of mine for awhile), we'd have really lumpy funding. Hopefully it'd cause our military to be defunded, but the VA would probably end up taking the brunt of the hit.

Along those lines, I bet the funding of NASA would be even lumpier than it usually is. Don't they have difficulty planning engineering efforts because they're not sure if congress is going to continue funding next year?

Here's a thought: why don't NASA and other gov research institutes have an endowment instead? The government can add in a one-time lump sum and then periodically add the typical budget to the endowment? I imagine this would be pretty hairy though. It could be just another fund to get ransacked by congress on a rainy day, and there'd easily be controversy about how the fund was invested.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#96

Post by user »

Trombone12 wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #12

So, how long until someone figures out that they don't actually need to save someone's life to send a text message? And what about using the blood when someone's life is not saved, does that not warrant a text message? How come the entities using the blood and/or distributing it have access to the phone numbers of the donors?

You try turning up at ha hospital with a bag of blood and saying "here's some blood, but I won't say who it's from".

>try turning up at ha hospital with a bag of blood

I have Rhnull and that is the only way I would donate my blood, ever. My mom (who also has this type) has been looked down as a emergency bag of blood on a few occasions and living with that is terrible experience.

In fact, I installed tor just to post this.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#97

Post by icebraining »

tomjen3 wrote: post #52

Blood donation is not very efficient charity and the service is homophobic and (in the US) nationalistic (no the entirety of Europe doesn't have mad cow disease). Instead of sending these feel good SMS messages they should work on solving those two issues.

So what do you think Sweden should do about the nationalism of the US' blood donation system?

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#99

Post by spiritplumber »

imjustsaying wrote: post #29
spiritplumber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't work in the US, I find that the social value of having saved someone's life is somewhere between zero and negative, unless that someone belongs to your interlocutor's subculture. You tell an investor in SF, in passing, "I talked a junkie off the bridge and took her away before the cops showed up, and let her stay at my place for six months until she cleaned up", and they'll think you are mad, not honorable.…

>"I talked a junkie off the bridge and took her away before the cops showed up, and let her stay at my place for six months until she cleaned up" It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one who got an ex-girlfriend this way.

Nah, I have a guest room with its own door. Don't stick your dip in crazy, and all that.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#100

Post by pluma »

civilian wrote: post #94
pluma wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be passive-aggressive abuse. Unemployment is rarely a choice, yet society likes to make the unemployed feel that way. This would add insult to injury.

Don't you think it could be phrased as a warm community support message?

It's not about the how but the why. Social welfare is a matter of decency, not a luxury. What good does it do to couple that with a sense of sponsorship other than to elicit a feeling of guilt? This is just sociopathic Ayn Randian bullshit, not beneficial to anyone at all.
Post reply on HN