Is Human Reproduction Un-Ethical?

[Mister Agenda]

First off, could you make sure that your quote tags are attributing the quotes to the correct person?  The first quote was said by Brometheus, not me, and the second was was mine, not Boru's.

I'm finding the changes made in this transition very awkward for my system. Had you reported it, I'm sure it would have been fixed by now.

---

As for addressing the 100% ethical part, Boru's premise said that

2. The likelihood that highly ethical people will behave unethically is not statistically significant.

Which I disagree with.  Ethical people regularly behave unethically.  It's not statistically insignificant, it's a statistical guarantee.

You seem to be claiming that ethical people are unethical. Do you think that is a reasonable statement? Do you think that 'statistically insignificant' means 'does not occur with regularity'?  Most people familiar with statistics would, I think, interpret that as meaning that an ethical person's ethical acts are far more frequent than their unethical acts, and that that is the very thing that makes a person ethical, not ethical perfection, which is an impossible standard. That said, since it's not really a statistical matter, I would not have used the language of statistics in the first place.

---

What could be argued is whether the unethical behavior is mildly unethical or majorly unethical and where that dividing line falls.

Most ethical people commit mildly unethical acts but we nevertheless still call them ethical people - which is why I say that it's a statistical guarantee that ethical people nevertheless behave unethically.

What do we call an otherwise ethical person who commits one majorly unethical act in their life?  Are they still an ethical person? How many unethical acts (minor or major) must one commit before they lose the label "ethical person"?

If Boru is limiting "unethical" behavior to committing repeated, majorly unethical acts, then I would agree that ethical people behaving in such an unethical manner would not be statistically significant because they would no longer be considered ethical people.

Perhaps you should consider the possibility that what Boru means by an ethical person is what most people mean by an ethical person: someone who is generally ethical, and who's unethical acts fall sharply in frequency according to degree of unethicalness, and no unethical acts on their record that are so serious that they ought not to be considered an ethical person. Again, I acknowledge that the language of statistics was not a good choice for such a squishy topic.