Notes on Effective Altruism
&gt; Quoting scientific studies that show the risk of dying as a result of making a
kidney donation to be only 1 in 4,000, he says that not making the donation would have meant he valued his life at 4,000 times that of a stranger, a valuation he finds totally unjustified.<p>Well that&#x27;s some real dodgy use of numbers, right there. In &quot;1 in 4000&quot;, &quot;1&quot; is the number of people who died as a result of donating a kidney and &quot;4000&quot; are the number of people who didn&#x27;t, counted over some sample of living kidney donors.<p>These two numbers, &quot;1&quot; and &quot;4000&quot; have no obvious relation to the value one places on one&#x27;s life compared to the lives of others. For example, &quot;4000&quot; is not the number of others lives saved by donating one kidney. By donating one kidney one can &quot;save&quot; one other person&#x27;s life at most (and it&#x27;s not really &quot;saving&quot; as it is delaying the inevitable).<p>Equally dodgy is the calculation of &quot;1&#x2F;3,000 risk of death in surgery is like sacrificing yourself to save 3,000 people&quot; earlier in the article.<p>Where does this dodgy statistical thinking (like magical thinking, but with statistics) come from I know not, but, anecdotally it&#x27;s very common in discussions about doing good with numbers and it seems to be designed to shut down debate by claiming &quot;sciense says&quot;.<p>Btw, if I wanted to know how much I value my life over that of a stranger all I&#x27;d have to do is ask myself: how many people would I sacrifice to save my life?  I am guessing that for the majority of people on the planet the answer is &quot;0&quot;.  Simple question, simple answer, and no dodgy &quot;maths&quot;.