= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
rabidchicken comments on Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others... - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (318)
Given you and wedrifid's responses, I am now updating my estimate of number of lives saved significantly downwards. However, I am curious as to why it's obvious to you that 3 lives is too high of a number on the margins.
I wonder if getting too focused on the best (or worst) case scenario is a named logical error.
I'm also not sure whether giving a rare blood type is likely to save more lives than giving a more common blood type.
It seems odd the more people of a certain blood type would sustain injuries requiring blood, or that people of a certain blood type would care more about blood donation So if the people who heard about blood banks and were interested, and the people who needed them are nearly randomly distributed in the population, I would expect the demand vs supply of each type to average out to the same figure.
However, I have heard blood banks ask specifically for people with rare blood types to donate, so it would appear that this theory is wrong. Alternatively, there is an equal shortage of all types, and someone in marketing thought that the specification would attract more people. (Even though if I was going to use the dark arts to make a group more likely to come, I would target the largest one)
Blood types vary by ethnicity, SES varies by ethnicity, injuries and donations vary by SES.
For the same reason donating organs if one is mixed race is worth more (than organ donations by individuals of predominantly monoracial ancestry) because of complications in compatibility for the demographic.
The reason for this is the compatibility of the blood types, for example O-negative-blood can be donated to everyone and is therefore used in emergencies where the blood type of the recipient is not known.