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If you're going to get super utilitarian about it, strict years of life lost is not the best measure. As nearly all of human history proved out, very young chil
by nonameiguess 6y ago
If you're going to get super utilitarian about it, strict years of life lost is not the best measure. As nearly all of human history proved out, very young children, especially infants, are particularly easy to replace. It's losing people in the prime years that really hurts a society, why for instance the US Civil War and the two World Wars were so terrible, where huge regions lost a majority of 20-40 year old men. Although again, if we're being very utilitarian, men are a lot less valuable than women, which is at least one reason we've usually sent men to war. Childbearing doesn't scale nearly as easily as child seeding.
- maerF0x0 6y agointerestingly i take it more from an intergenerational contract that at some point it's the duty of the old to senesce and optimize for the good of subsequent generations. As I understand it this intergenerational contract used to be quite strong as people would see that previous generations invested in them and as a pay it forward sort of mechanism, they would in turn pay it forward to generations that proceed them . I suppose there was some "take care of me when I'm old" in the intergenerational contract too, but I understood that as secondary to the propagation aspect...