{"id":51003,"date":"2022-10-27T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T05:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=51003"},"modified":"2022-10-26T10:15:10","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T14:15:10","slug":"qotd-life-expectancy-before-the-modern-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/10\/27\/qotd-life-expectancy-before-the-modern-age\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Life expectancy before the modern age"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Locke held the same assumptions about life, because life was almost inconceivably cheap in his day. Locke was born in 1632. A person born then would have a decent shot at making it to age 50 if he survived until age 5 &#8230; but only about half did. And &#8220;a decent shot&#8221; needs to be understood blackjack-style. Conventional wisdom says to hit if the dealer shows 16 and you&#8217;re holding 16 yourself \u2014 even though you&#8217;ve got <a href=\"http:\/\/krigman.casinocitytimes.com\/article\/hit-or-stand-the-hard-16-dilemma-in-blackjack-7107\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a 62% chance of going bust<\/a>, you&#8217;re all but certain to lose money if you stand. Living to what we Postmoderns call &#8220;middle age&#8221; was, in Locke&#8217;s world, hitting on a 16. We Postmoderns hear of a guy who dies at 50 and we assume he did it to himself \u2014 he was a grossly obese smoker with a drug problem or a race car driver or something. In Locke&#8217;s world, they&#8217;d wonder what his secret was to have made it so long.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!-- <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/overturning-locke-life\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"> --> &#8220;Overturning Locke: Life&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em><\/a>, 2019-09-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Locke held the same assumptions about life, because life was almost inconceivably cheap in his day. Locke was born in 1632. A person born then would have a decent shot at making it to age 50 if he survived until age 5 &#8230; but only about half did. And &#8220;a decent shot&#8221; needs to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,7,41],"tags":[319,746,1462,290,1138],"class_list":["post-51003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-history","category-quotations","tag-demographics","tag-gambling","tag-severian","tag-statistics","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dgD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51003"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77450,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51003\/revisions\/77450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}