4 ms·

To be a bit morbid, one could also explain OPs observation that "people are more fragile" by the lower child mortality by the hypothesis that these more fragile

by rocqua 1y ago

To be a bit morbid, one could also explain OPs observation that "people are more fragile" by the lower child mortality by the hypothesis that these more fragile people wouldn't have made it through infancy before. I don't particularly believe this, but it fits Occam's razor, so it seems to deserve some examination.

Hendrikto 1y ago
> but it fits Occam's razor How? You can use that to decide between two (or more) explanations, but you only presented one.
- Spare_account 1y ago
  It was implicit, at least to my eye, that other explanation which was being offered a counterpoint was the grandfather comment. For clarity, I will include both here: The two explanations for increased adult fragility are: forgotoldacc> Parents shelter their children too much and have created adults that have additional allergies as a result of lack of childhood exposure rocqua> Increased sheltering of children has allowed more of the fragile ones to survive to adulthood, increasing the number of fragile adults we observe today.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    What’s this increase in fragile adults you’re talking about? Are you sure it’s a real thing? Are you aware how staggeringly high rates of institutionalisation were in most western countries in the early to mid 20th century? And then there were the adults who were considered ‘sickly’. Like, _fainting_ wasn’t considered dramatically abnormal behaviour until quite recently. A lot of people who today would be considered to have a condition which is entirely treatable by doing (a), taking (b), not doing/avoiding (c), etc, would, a century ago, have just been kind of deemed broken. Coeliac disease is a particularly obvious example; it was known that there was _something_ wrong with coeliacs, but they were generally just filed under the 'sickly' label, lived badly and died young. (And it generally just gets worse the further you go back; in many parts of the world vitamin deficiency diseases were just _normal_ til the 20th century, say).
IanCal 1y ago
That makes a huge amount of assumptions but also wouldn’t fit their experience. If it was this then it would add a few percent of the population being “more fragile” and I’d wager they see it as a broader trend.
anal_reactor 1y ago
Intuitively, this does make a lot of sense, and it's easy to make an argument that if civilizational progress continues, in the far future people will in general have very weak bodies, simply because reliance on medical equipment won't be an evolutionary disadvantage.
vanderZwan 1y ago
Occam's razor is basically (paraphrased) "given two explanations where all else is equal, the one with the fewest added assumptions is most likely true." Based on that Occam's razor is already out the window because all else isn't equal. Also this "more fragile people" argument assumes the "fragility" is both inherent and of a lifelong kind. This ignores that most causes of infant mortility are external, and that for many of those being exposed to them results in a lifelong increased mortality risk. Excessive hygiene leading to more allergies is a direct example of this.

by rocqua 1y ago

Hendrikto 1y ago

> but it fits Occam's razor How? You can use that to decide between two (or more) explanations, but you only presented one.

Spare_account 1y ago
It was implicit, at least to my eye, that other explanation which was being offered a counterpoint was the grandfather comment. For clarity, I will include both here: The two explanations for increased adult fragility are: forgotoldacc> Parents shelter their children too much and have created adults that have additional allergies as a result of lack of childhood exposure rocqua> Increased sheltering of children has allowed more of the fragile ones to survive to adulthood, increasing the number of fragile adults we observe today.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  What’s this increase in fragile adults you’re talking about? Are you sure it’s a real thing? Are you aware how staggeringly high rates of institutionalisation were in most western countries in the early to mid 20th century? And then there were the adults who were considered ‘sickly’. Like, _fainting_ wasn’t considered dramatically abnormal behaviour until quite recently. A lot of people who today would be considered to have a condition which is entirely treatable by doing (a), taking (b), not doing/avoiding (c), etc, would, a century ago, have just been kind of deemed broken. Coeliac disease is a particularly obvious example; it was known that there was _something_ wrong with coeliacs, but they were generally just filed under the 'sickly' label, lived badly and died young. (And it generally just gets worse the further you go back; in many parts of the world vitamin deficiency diseases were just _normal_ til the 20th century, say).

IanCal 1y ago

That makes a huge amount of assumptions but also wouldn’t fit their experience. If it was this then it would add a few percent of the population being “more fragile” and I’d wager they see it as a broader trend.

anal_reactor 1y ago

Intuitively, this does make a lot of sense, and it's easy to make an argument that if civilizational progress continues, in the far future people will in general have very weak bodies, simply because reliance on medical equipment won't be an evolutionary disadvantage.

vanderZwan 1y ago

Occam's razor is basically (paraphrased) "given two explanations where all else is equal, the one with the fewest added assumptions is most likely true." Based on that Occam's razor is already out the window because all else isn't equal. Also this "more fragile people" argument assumes the "fragility" is both inherent and of a lifelong kind. This ignores that most causes of infant mortility are external, and that for many of those being exposed to them results in a lifelong increased mortality risk. Excessive hygiene leading to more allergies is a direct example of this.