> Without a standard deviation on the average, there is no way to say whether or not 14% is reasonable.
There is no reason to expect the expectation of preemies to be above average, never mind 14%, never mind standard deviations. And there is substantial empirical evidence which I linked you to expect it to be far below average. Rescuing a preemie, even if it were free, would be a bad idea compared to alternatives like simply trying again.
> Even if the child winds up providing 50% of the value of an average person, it can still be a net gain.
And we're right back to your original problem: you are not thinking on the margin. The alternative to spending millions on premature babies is not no babies ever. (And even if it was, there's still superior alternatives: for example, lobbying for Open Borders. Think of all the millions of immigrants who'd love to come to the USA, for free! We wouldn't even have to pay them! Why, even if they're 99% below average, it's still a gain!)
> The stats you cite are for extreme cases on the edge of viability and the odds still slightly favor normal or near-normal development.
Which is what we are discussing, is it not? Or do even slightly premature babies come with million-dollar pricetags...?
> That's horrible reasoning. The human body has evolved over millions of years for birth. It is the optimal gestation machine. We're working on approximating this optimal machine with artificial machines
I'm not seeing any disagreement here. Yes, the human body is the optimal gestation machine. That's why premature babies come with all the penalties. (And note that those citations are just the penalties sufficient to be documented with small samples; there's not much reason to expect the penalty to abruptly cut off somewhere, it's just the long-term effects shrink enough to be hidden by noise and methodological problems and researcher careers' limits.)
> That starts at birth.
An arbitrary line is not a good basis for a system of ethics and governance.
> What you're proposing is barbaric and borderline infantcide.
I'm happy to own to that. It is infanticide. Premature fetuses are not humans in the moral sense: they have no hopes, they have no dreams, they have no desires or preferences, they do not think, and they have the moral status of a puppy or kitten. Given the disabilities they come with, throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars in heroic medical measures is a crime against society and the person the parents could have raised instead.
There is no reason to expect the expectation of preemies to be above average, never mind 14%, never mind standard deviations. And there is substantial empirical evidence which I linked you to expect it to be far below average. Rescuing a preemie, even if it were free, would be a bad idea compared to alternatives like simply trying again.
> Even if the child winds up providing 50% of the value of an average person, it can still be a net gain.
And we're right back to your original problem: you are not thinking on the margin. The alternative to spending millions on premature babies is not no babies ever. (And even if it was, there's still superior alternatives: for example, lobbying for Open Borders. Think of all the millions of immigrants who'd love to come to the USA, for free! We wouldn't even have to pay them! Why, even if they're 99% below average, it's still a gain!)
> The stats you cite are for extreme cases on the edge of viability and the odds still slightly favor normal or near-normal development.
Which is what we are discussing, is it not? Or do even slightly premature babies come with million-dollar pricetags...?
> That's horrible reasoning. The human body has evolved over millions of years for birth. It is the optimal gestation machine. We're working on approximating this optimal machine with artificial machines
I'm not seeing any disagreement here. Yes, the human body is the optimal gestation machine. That's why premature babies come with all the penalties. (And note that those citations are just the penalties sufficient to be documented with small samples; there's not much reason to expect the penalty to abruptly cut off somewhere, it's just the long-term effects shrink enough to be hidden by noise and methodological problems and researcher careers' limits.)
> That starts at birth.
An arbitrary line is not a good basis for a system of ethics and governance.
> What you're proposing is barbaric and borderline infantcide.
I'm happy to own to that. It is infanticide. Premature fetuses are not humans in the moral sense: they have no hopes, they have no dreams, they have no desires or preferences, they do not think, and they have the moral status of a puppy or kitten. Given the disabilities they come with, throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars in heroic medical measures is a crime against society and the person the parents could have raised instead.