juliawise comments on Altruistic Kidney Donation - Less Wrong

18 Post author: jkaufman 17 June 2012 08:02PM

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Comment author: juliawise 21 June 2012 11:02:48PM 2 points [-]

Wow, thanks for writing that.

changes the tenor of conversations with people who might be more typically emotional in their giving.

What has been your experience of this tenor change?

Comment author: AlexanderB 23 June 2012 07:19:27PM 3 points [-]

Not sure what to say about this. I don't talk about it much with strangers. My friends and family seemed to think that donating a kidney was a bigger deal than giving away or foregoing a lot of income; I don't really agree. Broadly, I think that donating a kidney has convinced people I have more "skin in the game" than just working for GiveWell has, and I can think of one or two cases where this has made them more likely to take my advice on charitable donations. I think that if I were more comfortable talking about organ donation, it would be possible to use that as an entree into talking about charity: "... but you don't have to donate a kidney to make a huge difference! Just donating money can also be transformative."

On the other hand, I think it's at least possible that the net effect could be harmful. Kidney donation is still widely perceived (incorrectly, I've argued) as a big deal, so if you're trying to convince people that donating a portion of their income is easy, it could be a disadvantage.