My Left Kidney

His account of donating a kidney to a stranger, braiding memoir with substance. The comic ordeal (peeing on himself in an Uber, the screening gauntlet, UCSF rejecting him over childhood OCD, decamping to Weill Cornell) frames a careful risk analysis (his then-girlfriend's catch that the CT screening's radiation risk rivals the surgery's; the GFR and donor-mortality studies) and a sharp EA reflection: the 'suffering as a heuristic for goodness' fallacy (why the castle-buying EAs were right), the gap between the 25-50% who say they'd donate and the 0.0001% who do, the decisive role of social permission, and a push to compensate donors (Modify NOTA).

Quality 79 · Excellent. One of his best personal essays: funny and moving as memoir, genuinely informative as risk analysis, and sharp as EA psychology (the suffering-heuristic and social-permission points), and consequential in normalizing altruistic donation. Excellent.

Claude’s paradigm shift 45 · Moderate. Largely applies and popularizes existing EA discourse; the 'suffering as a proxy for goodness' critique and the photogenic-vs-effective framing are fresh angles rather than new concepts. Moderate.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. His account of donating a kidney to a stranger — funny and moving memoir, genuine risk analysis, and sharp EA psychology — with a modest material angle in helping normalize altruistic donation. Mostly personal-essay reach, so low RWI.

Humor 1/5 · Lizardman’s Constant. Serious EA/kidney-donation advocacy essay; a deliberate comic opening (peeing in the Uber) and scattered wit (the Mines-of-Moria catheter), but humor is minor seasoning → 1.