= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Eliezer_Yudkowsky 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)
Thanks for data!
Only vaguely relatedly: if you have pointers to (or are willing to synthesize) a reliable calculation of expected lives-saved/deaths-caused by maintaining or discarding the existing Red Cross policies about who is "allowed" to donate blood, especially the relatively controversial ban on male donors with homosexual acts in their sexual history, I would be interested.
Full disclosure: I do have a personal/emotional stake in this question, but I really really don't want to set off a political/ethical conversation about it. I'm asking it here because, as with a lot of politically charged topics, the arguments I've found on both sides are mostly a case of framing the question so as to give the answer one wants to give, rather than so as to answer the question that was asked, and I'm looking for a more objective analysis.
I also wanted to ask this question.
Giving blood is important to me. It is so important that I have chosen not to pursue relationships with other men in order than I can continue to give blood without lying to do so. I expect that sooner or later, I will choose otherwise, and a sexual relationship will be important enough to me to sacrifice my ability to ever give blood again, and this distresses me.
I can accept that the risks of HIV may be high enough to make this a reasonable choice on the part of United Blood Services / Red Cross. However, I would like to be quite sure that this is the case, or to be told that my blood isn't as important as I previously though it was. I was previously giving blood on the impression that each donation saves around a twentieth of a life; this thread doesn't change that estimate enough for me to feel like I can stop donating in good conscience.
On the margins, I expect that each marginal pint of blood saves only a very small fraction of a life. As several readers pointed out, this doesn't mean that we should ordinarily be calculating on the margins, since it's not like you can use a pint of blood for something else instead; in terms of moral credit, you should think of yourself as part of a reference class of people who all choose to donate blood for around the same reasons, and who all get an equal share of the lives saved.
However, the Red Cross has already decided that they're willing to X out the entire homosexual community, and I would expect the reference class of those who refrain from sexual activity in order to continue donating blood to be small, and I would guess that if this entire reference class refrained from donating blood, not a single additional life might be lost.
Modern-day hospitals are not, so far as I know, blood-limited. They need a routine flow of blood in order to routinely save lives. They do not need more blood to save more lives. That's the impression I got, anyway; some quick Googling even said that they usually have enough blood to just use O-negative instead of matching types.
I hate to say this, but I think you're making the wrong sacrifices here. I estimate a very high information value for further investigation on your part; I would expect it to show that you were safe to stop donating blood and resume sexual activity without costing anyone one-twentieth of a life. If you're really feeling guilty or worried, resume sexual activity and send a donation to the Singularity Institute as a carbon offset. If you can speed up a positive Singularity by one minute that works out to around 100 lives, never mind increasing the probability.
I think I was accidentally misleading by failing to add that I'm bisexual. Not giving blood reduces my pool of potential romantic partners by roughly 10%, and doesn't prevent me from having fulfilling relationships. I don't think I would abstain from sex in order to give blood even if I knew I could save a life with each donation. Even if that's an incredibly selfish decision, I'm just not that good a person.
Regardless, the support of everyone who replied is very much appreciated.
...technically, doesn't speeding up a negative singularity also save lives-- the lives of those who would otherwise have been born and then killed but were instead never born and therefore couldn't be killed? In fact, I think speeding up a negative singularity actually "saves" more lives than speeding up a positive one using this calculation-- a quick Google search indicates ~250 people are born every minute and ~100 people die every minute.
Replace "save lives" with "extend lifespans." All the math will suddenly start working out better.
Agreed, I retrospect I should have phrased the original question in terms of QALYs or some similar metric.
In a fairly meaningful sense, no life has ever been saved before. Nobody has actually been prevented from dying yet. A positive singularity could change that.