I don't think I claimed any insights into the project, and it's not your fault you never met the GP personally.

Living there for thirty years now: true, but none that I could think of would make much sense for this project. Admittedly assuming that this is partly city marketing.

Not sure what you mean with 'Oog'; maybe Oost, after your spellchecker 'corrected' it? But, no argument about this not being certain. We'll see what gets built where and when.

Noted.

Yes, it's not exactly clean water, but now that all houses and house boats are supposed to be connected to the sewer system for a few decades, it's definitely less filthy than it used to be.

Zero-point-something. Not nearly as many as drunk tourists.

Sure, it's not necessarily a healthy idea, but it's allowed (and done a lot).

Sure, 18 years for alcohol/sigarettes, I assume for dope too, not sure.

You raise an interesting point. The article linked to in an earlier post quotes the robot manufacturer like this:

Sounds that comes straight from the marketing department, which suggests that something built using their technology is, at the moment, a more brittle, less durable, and not as cost-effective and scalable as something built using the traditional way. On the other hand, they do claim this new technology is making progress on these fronts.

According to story you linked to (thanks, by the way), it'll be built 'in the centre of Amsterdam'. Which makes sense, from a city marketing perspective. This implies it will definitely be over a gracht. Call a it a canal or kannal if you like - but I can assure you you're wrong in assuming the original poster didn't know what she was talking about.

Oops. Weird to hear about this on SlashDot first, I meant.

I just found a nice Q&A Page about this project.
Weird about this on SlashDot first, given that I live in Amsterdam...

Agreed, if you'd find a way to have most people make up their mind that might be enough. Combining it with a drivers license would make sure that 90-something percent of the people would at least think about it once.

And as for driving habits and risks.... You could do a lot worse than live in the US, trust me.

Basic decency?

There's certainly enough people already, and I'm not the Pope - birth control is just fine with me.

You have a funny way of arguing - first lashing out instead of just coming up with the point you want to make. No, I don't want to take your choice about what to do with your corpse after you died away from you. Just read my comment again and you'll see.

I'm afraid I would have to, if I were in serious financial problems. And I'd hate having to face that choice.
On the other hand, that stranger could also have them for free - if he would just wait for me to die first.
Live organ donors are rare indeed. But we could do much better with the other type and face less ethical challenges.

Agreed, after there's 'me' left that question makes more sense.

I understand that, and I would feel the same. But would you consider helping your family financially more important than helping an unknown person fighting for his life? To personally, the second thing would be more important, unless my family would be in a really desperate financial situation.

Absolutely true, and I understand the way this worked in this case. I was just thinking out loud about solving the problem of donor organ shortage in general. I'm not expecting most people to volunteer being an organ donor while alive - it's simply asking a bit much. But many people could be convinced to potentially become an organ donor after death simply for altruistic reasons. Neither organs nor money aren't going to be of any use to you. Why not help someone else, even if it's a person you don't know?

Exactly my thoughts, except that people who really have problems with this solution for religious or whatever reason should have a way to opt-out. Simply changing the default from opt-out to opt-in would already make a big difference, maybe enough, maybe not.
If that wouldn't be enough, the deal could be that people who choose to opt-out would be placed behind people who choose opt-in in on the waiting list in case they need an organ themselves. That would be fair and still leave people the choice to opt-out if they are really uncomfortable with the whole organ donation idea (personally, I'm not - dead is dead).

It's indeed a shame a lot of potential organ transplants go to the grave right now. Reasoning about this primarily in financial terms first makes no sense, though. After all, what am I going to do with the money when I'm dead? Bury it with me? OK, it could give me a good feeling if I knew it would help my relatives. But then it's about helping others, not about money, and this should be the starting point of reasoning about this issue.

You really don't need the invisible hand of the market to fix everything. A much more sensible solution, for example, would be to find ways more people would agree to be organ donors after death.
For example, switching the default from opt-in to opt-out would make a significant difference in organ availability without actually forcing anyone to make a choice they're not comfortable with or could have an adverse influence on their health.

If the organs of most people dying would be available for transplantation, only a small fraction would be needed. A significant minority of people dies with perfectly fine kidneys.
I once heard about a traumatologist cynically referring to motor cyclists as 'future organ donors', for example.