Massimo Pigliucci on Stoicism | Hacker News Reader

Massimo Pigliucci on Stoicism

fivebooks.com

87 pointsmagda_wang12 comments

> He lived in Nicopolis to a ripe age of 80, which for the time was remarkable.

> That’s the equivalent of 200 today presumably.

While 80 was certainly impressive, it wasn't like 200. It was quite achievable. Average life expectancies were low because of infant mortality, not because people actually died at 30 on average. If you made it past childhood, lived in a decent part of the world (that is, generally food and water and shelter available, didn't risk starvation or injury in war or hunting), you could easily live a long life. Someone living in a metropolitan area, like Rome at the time, who made it to adulthood and didn't have to hunt or go to war could live a decently long life.

I think it's pretty obvious that this was meant as a joke; conflating something that depreciates with time (e.g., 1950 dollars vs. 2016 dollars) with something that does not, but shows a similar effect for other reasons (e.g., improvements in medicine). I thought it was pretty funny.

> Average life expectancies were low because of infant mortality

I heard this argument many many times, including in reputable places, and I never quite understood it. Just to make sure, the argument is something like "in stone age/bronze age/ancient times/medieval Europe/etc. average life expectancy was 30/40/50/whatever, but only if we factor in child mortality, otherwise people lived reasonable # of years".

Do we have any reliable estimates about child mortality in those times to make such a claim? What about other accidents/violence/etc. Was it different from one place to the other? Do we have any data on this to come up with _any_ estimate? Could it be that child mortality was so high, that avg. life expectency was like 10 years? When we informally say that people in those times "lived less" is it really reasonable to consider such factors? What did people actually live in those times?

> Do we have any reliable estimates about child mortality in those times to make such a claim?

I'm guessing you could make a start by counting how many child skeletons vs adult skeletons you dig up? Plus if you're looking at a literate society, they'll be some written records, even if not formal death registries: receipts for payments for funerals, personal letters, diaries, etc.

Yes, I agree, but my point was more that I doubt that those who suggest a value of, say, 29.4 for stone age humans, have gone through any these calculations.

They don't just make the numbers up. They have a reason for them. Either historical records, dated human remains, or by comparison to similar populations from other eras/locations where those exist.

I very much doubt that we have that kind of information available about prehistoric (say, Neantherthal) humans, except perhaps in very sparse and unreliable form.

A little searching found this article by Robert Woods [1]:

> The London Bills of Mortality offer a tantalising challenge to historical demographers. Since they give the number of burials and baptisms, the causes of death, and the ages of those buried for various periods and combinations of parishes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it has been tempting to use the data they provide as a basis for the estimation of mortality rates. This contribution focuses on the period 1728 to 1830 for which the age structure of burials is available. It employs the compendium of Bills material compiled by John Marshall and published in 1832 as Mortality of the Metropolis.

Even though we're only looking back a few hundred years (but perhaps also that we're looking at London of all places) the child and infant mortality rates are pretty grim:

    * London, 1728-1737: child mortality rate (death before 10yo): 59.0% [1]
    * London, 1841: child mortality rate (death before 10yo): 12.2% [1]

There's a pretty big drop in life expectancy at birth compared to more recent history:

    * London, 1730-1739: life expectancy at birth: 26.0 years [1]
    * London, 1820-1829: life expectancy at birth: 38.9 years [1]
    * UK, 2012-2014: male life expectancy at birth: 79.1 years [2]
    * UK, 2012-2014: female life expectancy at birth: 82.8 years [2]

    * London, 1730-1739: infant mortality rate (death during first year): 26.3% [1]
    * London, 1820-1829: infant mortality rate (death during first year): 17.7% [1]
    * UK, 2015: infant mortality rate (death during first year): 4.38% [3]

There was also a ~1% chance of dying in childbirth, per birth:

    * London, 1700-1724: maternal mortality 134 / 10,000 [1]
    * London, 1800-1824: maternal mortality 63 / 10,000 [1]
    * UK, 2015: maternal mortality in first 6 weeks after giving birth 9 / 10,000 [4]
    * UK, 2015: maternal mortality in first year after giving birth 25 / 10,000 [4]

That's a pretty big improvement in infant and child survival over the last few hundred years.

My condolences to you, dear reader, if you have lost someone recently.

[1] http://www.localpopulationstudies.org.uk/pdf/lps77/article_1...

[2] http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mo...

[4] https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/mbrrace-uk/reports

> not because people actually died at 30 on average.

Ok, I miswrote this statement. Clearly, that was (well, young, not 30 precisely) the average life expectancy for the whole population. I meant to qualify this with something like: for people who lived past childhood.

I really enjoyed reading this article as an overview of both what ideas of stoicism are practically applicable to our daily lives, but also for the historical sense of how the Greeks and Romans saw it.

Perhaps it glossed over some of Stoicism's less correct beliefs, the "physics" that the article refers to. However, the part that has always drawn me to the subject is how much the Stoics got right about consciously managing your emotions in a healthy way. The part about distinguishing indignation/rage from having a strong sense of justice really resonates with me given some of the more recent social controversies.

"""

[Q] Just in passing, that strategy of turning insults into humour could result in a broken nose in certain contexts. 

[A] Yes. Funny you should say so. Epictetus says exactly this in the Discourses, he says: ‘I used to go round responding humorously to people and then I got my nose broken.’ And he adds: ‘— so I don’t do it anymore, I just walk away.’

"""

Now that we have the internet, snark's up to stratospheric levels. Went up a lot with the press, but there was still the odd horse-whip wielding aggrieved party to consider.

> The very reason why you can keep on going, struggling on, and living your life, and trying to do your best, is precisely because you know that if it becomes unbearable, you do have another option.

While I’m against the de-facto suicide prohibition that we today observe in our societies, I find it worth acknowledging that in what’s ultimately an unknown-length-run it’s an inevitability, not an option.

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