5 ms·

The calculation is "not making the donation would have meant he valued his life at 4,000 times that of a stranger". That doesn't follow from the "expected value

The calculation is "not making the donation would have meant he valued his life at 4,000 times that of a stranger". That doesn't follow from the "expected value perspective". The "4000" is swapped, slight-of-hand like, between unequal, orthogonal values. One is the number of people who donate a kidney, the other is the value of a human life. It's counting 4000 apples and then saying "I got 4000 oranges". It's the old switcheroo, and it means nothing. Btw, you say "From an expected value perspective, one person donating a kidney is like 1/4000th of this." "Of this" what? What is "one person donating a kidney" 1/4000'th of? I am asking because I honestly have no idea what you mean. Sorry if my tone sounds combative, but in this I'm just confused.

civilized 4y ago
I think my post is pretty clear. There are four sentences. There is only one sentence the "this" can refer to, and it's the one that comes right before. Could you read it again?
- manwe150 4y ago
  The statements sound clear, and seems to pretty much match our intuition about how it should work. But perhaps incomplete in the math? Since you are not alone in saving 4000 people, but that 4000 people are saving 3999 lives. Or that you are saving 3999/4000 of a person, or roughly one person per donation. So the expected value of the profit of a donation is approximately 1 person saved. But the expected value of the cost of that is that 1 of 4000 people is personally sacrificed. Then, taking the ratio of those, we get that the expected value for social-value over the personal-cost is about 4000-to-1 (approximate, since this assumes that the life lost is of equal value to the average value of the lives saved). Or that society values the donation being about 4000x the value of your life. (your own personal utility function might disagree however)
  - tux3 4y ago
    A more precise model still might be to try to factor in the expected loss in healthy years for the donor, and the average lifespan gain of a kidney recipient. If you pull a child out of the way of a speeding truck, you've saved their life without losing any quality of life for yourself or for them. That's a "perfect" life save. Organ transplant is more subtle. If you already plan to donate your kidneys at death, donating one of them when younger seems less obviously good. It'd seem worthwhile to build a more detailed model before going through with it.
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    Edit: I need to learn to summarisy my thoughts better. What I'm saying below and above is that the expected value of live kidney donation to society is misapplied to calculate the value of live kidney donation to the donor. We tacitly accept as a society that some people will die so that others may get a new kidney. That has nothing to do with the value that one person donating a kidney places over another person's health (and not life, because you're not "saving" lives). Although I understand your comment much better than the OP -4000 to 1, not 1/4000- those maths don't make any sense at all to me. First of all, nobody saves anyone by donating a kidney. You certainly don't "save" an entire person that way. You add some quality-adjusted years of life to their life expectancy, but that's all. And they're not that many, average is about 10. So at best you can say that each person donating a kidney is "helping" or "supporting" one other person. So it makes no sense to say that 3999/4000th of a person is "saved" or "helped" or whatever by one's _personal_ sacrifice. If I was the person dying while donating my kidney, my death would not equal 4000 people living, or living longer. It would mean my life ending for one person's life lasting a little while longer. One person! That's how many people are directly affected by one person's donation of a kidney. To claim that it's 4000 instead, is just sophistry with fractions. Or rather, it's an oversimplification because understanding the trade-off between one entire life and 10-ish quality adjusted years of life is too hard and does not easily support self-aggrandising statements. Look at it the other way: you won't let 4000 people die by refusing to donate a kidney. But this is more or less what is claimed in the two opinions above. Everydobdy who does not donate a kidney is an asshole who values their own life more than that of 4000 strangers.
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  No, your comment is not clear at all. I read it again. Here's what it reads like if I replace "this" with the sentence that comes before it: From an expected value perspective, one person donating a kidney is like 1/4000th of [if 4,000 people donated kidneys to people who needed them to survive, on average, one person would die and 4,000 lives would be saved]. Is there any chance you may want to try and help me become uncofused?
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  Btw, I'm arguing that the EAs' maths is wrong and you, and others here, are arguing that it's sound. So I have to ask you, and the rest who think the EAs' maths is sound: have you, or are you planning to donate your kidney to a stranger? Because either the EAs' maths is sound, or you donate a kidney to a stranger, or otherwise you think your life is worth more than 4000 or 3000 or however many other people. And sorry to be so lawyery about this, but I detect an undercurrent in this thread of "shut up, the maths have spoken" (see for example cjbprime's comment just below: I'm confused and the maths is sound). Well, if the maths is sound then go do the right thing, or else quit arguing just for the sake of argument. Because the two people up there, who justified their decision to live-donate a kidney, at least they followed their principles, however misguided, and nobody can fault them for that. And I think their thinking is wrong and I only have one kidney anyway. But who are you, and how do you live up to your morals?
  - cjbprime 4y ago
    There are several options here: One could think the math is correct, but conclude that they don't value other people that much. That doesn't mean the math is wrong. It means the assumptions behind the math ("I don't value myself more than 3000 other people") aren't held by them right now. Or one could think the math is correct, and be generally inclined towards kidney donation as a result, but think it would be better at a different time, such as when they don't have very young kids at home to care for, or when they have a job which is less demanding and would tolerate them taking a month away from work at once. Or one could believe in the general statistical inference, but think that the specific 3000 number is too high and insufficiently studied, and the actual risk to self is much higher. I don't believe this myself, but it sounds like you might. This is not a criticism of the method, just of the specific number being plugged in to it. You can argue against these philosophical positions and assumptions without having to retreat to questioning what numbers mean.
    - cheese_goddess 4y ago
      No, that doesn't work as you say and it's not a matter of accepting philosophical positions. That's because the EAs are not making a philosophical argument but a mathematical argument. And if you think their maths are right then you must agree with their agument, otherwise you must think the maths are wrong. What the EAs' maths are trying to do is to define an objective measure of morality. That's the point of attempting to quantify the value of a human life and that's the purpose of using maths in general: because maths is objectively true or false, while morality is otherwise not. So if they get the maths right, their conclusions must apply to everyone and anyone, regardless of other assumptions. That is the appeal that EA has to quantitatively-trained and generally mathematically-minded types. Let's do away with the subjectivity of moral philosophy and calculate the truth about morality. We face a question of morality? Calculemus! So if you think their maths are right you must accept their conclusions, and you must donate one of your kidneys or accept that you are acting immorally. It doesn't matter when you choose to do it or how moral you think it is, what matters is that you accept it is the moral thing to do. You can't have your cake and eat it: either the maths are wrong, or refusing to be a live kidney donor is wrong.
cjbprime 4y ago
In case it helps to hear it from someone else: you are confused and the statistics are sound and not a trick.
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  Good heavens, of course I wouldn't presume to question the wisdom of statistics! I'm just saying that the way the statistics are used doesn't make sense.

civilized 4y ago

I think my post is pretty clear. There are four sentences. There is only one sentence the "this" can refer to, and it's the one that comes right before. Could you read it again?

manwe150 4y ago
The statements sound clear, and seems to pretty much match our intuition about how it should work. But perhaps incomplete in the math? Since you are not alone in saving 4000 people, but that 4000 people are saving 3999 lives. Or that you are saving 3999/4000 of a person, or roughly one person per donation. So the expected value of the profit of a donation is approximately 1 person saved. But the expected value of the cost of that is that 1 of 4000 people is personally sacrificed. Then, taking the ratio of those, we get that the expected value for social-value over the personal-cost is about 4000-to-1 (approximate, since this assumes that the life lost is of equal value to the average value of the lives saved). Or that society values the donation being about 4000x the value of your life. (your own personal utility function might disagree however)
- tux3 4y ago
  A more precise model still might be to try to factor in the expected loss in healthy years for the donor, and the average lifespan gain of a kidney recipient. If you pull a child out of the way of a speeding truck, you've saved their life without losing any quality of life for yourself or for them. That's a "perfect" life save. Organ transplant is more subtle. If you already plan to donate your kidneys at death, donating one of them when younger seems less obviously good. It'd seem worthwhile to build a more detailed model before going through with it.
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  Edit: I need to learn to summarisy my thoughts better. What I'm saying below and above is that the expected value of live kidney donation to society is misapplied to calculate the value of live kidney donation to the donor. We tacitly accept as a society that some people will die so that others may get a new kidney. That has nothing to do with the value that one person donating a kidney places over another person's health (and not life, because you're not "saving" lives). Although I understand your comment much better than the OP -4000 to 1, not 1/4000- those maths don't make any sense at all to me. First of all, nobody saves anyone by donating a kidney. You certainly don't "save" an entire person that way. You add some quality-adjusted years of life to their life expectancy, but that's all. And they're not that many, average is about 10. So at best you can say that each person donating a kidney is "helping" or "supporting" one other person. So it makes no sense to say that 3999/4000th of a person is "saved" or "helped" or whatever by one's _personal_ sacrifice. If I was the person dying while donating my kidney, my death would not equal 4000 people living, or living longer. It would mean my life ending for one person's life lasting a little while longer. One person! That's how many people are directly affected by one person's donation of a kidney. To claim that it's 4000 instead, is just sophistry with fractions. Or rather, it's an oversimplification because understanding the trade-off between one entire life and 10-ish quality adjusted years of life is too hard and does not easily support self-aggrandising statements. Look at it the other way: you won't let 4000 people die by refusing to donate a kidney. But this is more or less what is claimed in the two opinions above. Everydobdy who does not donate a kidney is an asshole who values their own life more than that of 4000 strangers.
cheese_goddess 4y ago
No, your comment is not clear at all. I read it again. Here's what it reads like if I replace "this" with the sentence that comes before it: From an expected value perspective, one person donating a kidney is like 1/4000th of [if 4,000 people donated kidneys to people who needed them to survive, on average, one person would die and 4,000 lives would be saved]. Is there any chance you may want to try and help me become uncofused?
cheese_goddess 4y ago
Btw, I'm arguing that the EAs' maths is wrong and you, and others here, are arguing that it's sound. So I have to ask you, and the rest who think the EAs' maths is sound: have you, or are you planning to donate your kidney to a stranger? Because either the EAs' maths is sound, or you donate a kidney to a stranger, or otherwise you think your life is worth more than 4000 or 3000 or however many other people. And sorry to be so lawyery about this, but I detect an undercurrent in this thread of "shut up, the maths have spoken" (see for example cjbprime's comment just below: I'm confused and the maths is sound). Well, if the maths is sound then go do the right thing, or else quit arguing just for the sake of argument. Because the two people up there, who justified their decision to live-donate a kidney, at least they followed their principles, however misguided, and nobody can fault them for that. And I think their thinking is wrong and I only have one kidney anyway. But who are you, and how do you live up to your morals?
- cjbprime 4y ago
  There are several options here: One could think the math is correct, but conclude that they don't value other people that much. That doesn't mean the math is wrong. It means the assumptions behind the math ("I don't value myself more than 3000 other people") aren't held by them right now. Or one could think the math is correct, and be generally inclined towards kidney donation as a result, but think it would be better at a different time, such as when they don't have very young kids at home to care for, or when they have a job which is less demanding and would tolerate them taking a month away from work at once. Or one could believe in the general statistical inference, but think that the specific 3000 number is too high and insufficiently studied, and the actual risk to self is much higher. I don't believe this myself, but it sounds like you might. This is not a criticism of the method, just of the specific number being plugged in to it. You can argue against these philosophical positions and assumptions without having to retreat to questioning what numbers mean.
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    No, that doesn't work as you say and it's not a matter of accepting philosophical positions. That's because the EAs are not making a philosophical argument but a mathematical argument. And if you think their maths are right then you must agree with their agument, otherwise you must think the maths are wrong. What the EAs' maths are trying to do is to define an objective measure of morality. That's the point of attempting to quantify the value of a human life and that's the purpose of using maths in general: because maths is objectively true or false, while morality is otherwise not. So if they get the maths right, their conclusions must apply to everyone and anyone, regardless of other assumptions. That is the appeal that EA has to quantitatively-trained and generally mathematically-minded types. Let's do away with the subjectivity of moral philosophy and calculate the truth about morality. We face a question of morality? Calculemus! So if you think their maths are right you must accept their conclusions, and you must donate one of your kidneys or accept that you are acting immorally. It doesn't matter when you choose to do it or how moral you think it is, what matters is that you accept it is the moral thing to do. You can't have your cake and eat it: either the maths are wrong, or refusing to be a live kidney donor is wrong.

cjbprime 4y ago

In case it helps to hear it from someone else: you are confused and the statistics are sound and not a trick.

cheese_goddess 4y ago
Good heavens, of course I wouldn't presume to question the wisdom of statistics! I'm just saying that the way the statistics are used doesn't make sense.