The self-defeating nature of using "Privilege (Theory)" (in societal discourse)

[Timsup2nothin]

Women are fertile from, very roughly, fifteen to fifty, with the drop-off starting around thirty-five. Women very generally prefer partners of a similar age, or slightly older. In a time before effective family planning, it's not really a question of women start reproducing, but the window of reproduction. Most of a women's children will be conceived long after adolescent psychopaths ceased to impress her.

I'm thinking you might also be overestimating the lifespan of the wild human.

 

[Lexicus]

The fact that wild anythings reproduce as soon as they are capable, and it is highly unlikely that humans would be an exception.

There is no such thing as a wild human tho

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There is no such thing as a wild human tho

They are extinct.

 

[Lexicus]

They never existed. The whole Hobbesian war of all against all thing never actually happened.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

They never existed. The whole Hobbesian war of all against all thing never actually happened.

We have differing definitions of "wild."

 

[Lexicus]

We have differing definitions of "wild."

Apparently so. What's yours?

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm thinking you might also be overestimating the lifespan of the wild human.

And what are you basing that on?

Humans live to about seventy. That's pretty consistently true across time and space. What changes is the incidence of premature death, and paleolithic society is missing a lot of the terrors that pursued humanity for most of "civilised" history. Plague, war, famine; these aren't things that tend to happen to hunter-gatherers unless inflicted from the outside, and in the paleolithic, there wasn't any outside to do the inflicting.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Humans living on simple technology, if any. The ones we like to pretend are so far back that evolution has had ample opportunity to make us somehow different, but who are actually only removed from us by several hundred generations. They lived short, brutal lives. The @Traitorfish theory that their females were bearing children into their forties hundreds of generations ago is demonstrably absurd because life expectancy in undeveloped countries wasn't averaging forty when I was born.

Among wild humans a female being lucky enough to make it through the birth of five offspring would be unusual, and they'd generally pop out five by twenty-five if they were going to do it at all. That's supported by analyzing the far from wild humans in the Roman Empire, who had better medicine and safer lives. Nomadic hunter gatherers had no walls to hide behind, they had to meet predators more or less head on.

We look at predators who have learned that a human is the most dangerous thing they could possibly encounter, they dealt with predators who looked at humans as a snack food, so, yeah, they embraced levels of violence we like to pretend we don't possess. Traitorfish talks about how people at a boxing match don't want to be in the ring, and that's certainly true, but if you toss them in that ring and don't let them out they will bite, and scratch, and the blood dripping down their chin won't cause the slightest hint of revulsion as long as it is the other guy's.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

And what are you basing that on?

Humans live to about seventy. That's pretty consistently true across time and space. What changes is the incidence of premature death, and paleolithic society is missing a lot of the terrors that pursued humanity for most of "civilised" history. Plague, war, famine; these aren't things that tend to happen to hunter-gatherers unless inflicted from the outside, and in the paleolithic, there wasn't any outside to do the inflicting.

My bad. Should have used life expectancy. But undoubtedly you knew that and just think that a 'gotcha, wrong word' invalidates what I've been saying.

 

[Traitorfish]

My bad. Should have used life expectancy. But undoubtedly you knew that and just think that a 'gotcha, wrong word' invalidates what I've been saying.

I mean, the same applies. Women surviving to menopause was pretty commonplace in most agrarian societies, where the threat of smallpox, say, or the English, was considerably higher. There's no good reason to think that paleolithic women popped up two or three kids in their late teens before dropping dead. Even pessimistic estimates give a paleolithic life expectancy into the 30s, and many put it in the 50s, plenty of opportunity for a full reproductive life. The big killer was less likely to be dire weasels or cave-pox so much as the various heritable old person afflictions which are easily managed by modern medicine, but have lead to a steeper decline in health in societies without the ability to treat them.

 

[brennan]

Wikipedia doesn't list a likely life-expectancy over 40 until after the renaissance. For most of history it looks like you were lucky to get in your 30s.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wikipedia doesn't list a likely life-expectancy over 40 until after the renaissance. For most of history it looks like you were lucky to get in your 30s.

It seems to have been ignored, but as I already pointed out average life expectancy in Asia and Africa wasn't much over forty when I was born.

 

[Ryika]

Wikipedia doesn't list a likely life-expectancy over 40 until after the renaissance. For most of history it looks like you were lucky to get in your 30s.

But if you got to your 30s, you were very likely also got to your 50s. The raw number of average life expectancy tells us only half the story, because those averages are largely a result of high infant and child mortality.

Which is also why we gave birth once every three to four years or so, only a portion of people made it to adult life.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

But if you got to your 30s, you were very likely also got to your 50s. The raw number of average life expectancy tells us only half the story, because those averages are largely a result of high infant and child mortality.

Which is also why we gave birth once every three to four years or so, only a portion of people made it to adult life.

Actually, many sources correct for infant mortality and give an average life expectancy for people who get past that. A thirty year old Roman woman was old, and a grandmother, and very unlikely to make it to her fifties. She was also very unlikely to still be capable of childbearing at all, and surviving it if she did.

 

[Ryika]

Actually, many sources correct for infant mortality and give an average life expectancy for people who get past that. A thirty year old Roman woman was old, and a grandmother, and very unlikely to make it to her fifties. She was also very unlikely to still be capable of childbearing at all, and surviving it if she did.

Wikipedia disagrees.

When the high infant mortality rate is factored in (life expectancy at birth) inhabitants of the Roman Empire had a life expectancy at birth of about 25 years. However, when infant mortality is factored out, life expectancy is doubled to the late-50s. If a Roman survived infancy to their mid-teens, they could, on average, expect near six decades of life, although of course many lived much longer or shorter lives for varied reasons. Although this figure relies more on conjecture than ancient evidence, which is sparse and of dubious quality, it is a point of general consensus among historians of the period. It originates in cross-country comparison: given the known social and economic conditions of the Roman Empire, we should expect a life expectancy near the lower bound of known pre-modern populations. Roman demography bears comparison to available data for India and rural China in the early 20th century, where life expectancies at birth were also in the low 20s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire

 

[brennan]

No it doesn't.

39% of women reached the age of 52.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's not quite fair to completely discount infant mortality. While many infants would have died of non-natural causes (war, starvation due to agricultural collapse, plagues that were intensified by settled life), many of them would have died of totally natural things we've since cured. It's not so cut and dry and it's probably fair that we can say a 'natural' lifespan of a human is somewhere between 30 and 50 which is far below the current figure for developed nations.

No it doesn't.

Does that include all females born or just all females who lived past infancy?

 

[Traitorfish]

Wikipedia doesn't list a likely life-expectancy over 40 until after the renaissance. For most of history it looks like you were lucky to get in your 30s.

I mean, the Wikipedia article cites one source of giving a maximum paleolithic life expectancy of 34, and immediately cites another giving a life expectancy of 59. Splitting the difference and calling it 46.5, that puts either estimate at the far end of a 27% margin of error. Fair to say that a lot of this is speculative.

It seems to have been ignored, but as I already pointed out average life expectancy in Asia and Africa wasn't much over forty when I was born.

Agriculture wasn't kind to life expectancy. The state, even less so. Colonialism? Forget about it.

At any rate, if we're accepting that most women could expect to reach their thirties, we're accepting that most of them could live fairly long reproductive lives, enough so that we have to start imagining more complex selective pressures than an assumption that they were all horny teenagers with a thing for bad boys.

Which is also why we gave birth once every three to four years or so, only a portion of people made it to adult life.

That's another important part of it, the idea that women hit fifteen, pop out a half dozen kids and then die is specific to agrarian societies. Women in hunter-gatherer societies don't seem to spend their fertile years in this permanent cycle of pregnancy and nursing. I mean, consider that a woman's menstrual cycle halts if her body fat drops too low: hard to read that as anything but an evolutionary adaptation to learn years.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wikipedia disagrees.

You may recall my earlier statement on using the internet. The funniest part being that I could support my argument using the exact same source you just used to "refute" it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Women in hunter-gatherer societies don't seem to spend their fertile years in this permanent cycle of pregnancy and nursing.

They don't? Huh, news to me. How do they avoid it?