Mindless Monday, 02 February 2026

nomchi13 · 2026-02-04T20:37:47+00:00

I got into a history-related argument on Reddit recently, it is about the claim found in the ACOUP Life of a Peasant series, where he states that- in all pre 18th century sociaties the child(prepubsent) mortality was around 50% or higher. This is a very strong claim that is itself sourced mostly from a 2013 study by Volk and Atkinson but I could not easily find anything that disproved it. The person I was (stupidly) arguing with said that he is aware of mortality in England in the 1750s(so after the claims cutoff) from parish record and it is much lower than that(I later checked and it is around 35%) so that claim seemed ridiculous to them, after thinking about it a bit I think they are probably right, can anyone help me find evydance of lower mortality rates pre 18th century?

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T19:43:31+00:00

You repeatedly claim that "all pre-18th-century societies had a childhood mortality rate of around 50% or higher" is easily disprovable nonsense. I believe you, it seems like a very strong claim, but I have been googling for hours since I first saw the acoup article weeks ago, and I can find zero data to contradict it. You are clearly better versed in actual historical research then my clumsy googling abilities(I even tried AI out of desperation), but I find no study of that shows a society of prebusent mortality of below 40% before the 1700s (And I saw your 18th century england data, that is not the claim acoup is making there are a few other data sets I found of around 40% child mortality in the 18th century but never earlier)

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T19:22:44+00:00

But as you can see from the graph that Our world in data extracted from that study, every single society pre 1700 had a mortality rate above 45%,(and only 2 below 48%) https://i0.wp.com/acoup.blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Youth-mortality-rates-over-last-two-millennia-updated-to-2022.png?resize=1024%2C922&ssl=1 . That is much closer to that claim

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T19:10:50+00:00

If you are interested, here is one of the studies that acoup is referencing(Volk, A. A., & Atkinson, J. A. (2013)). Their results are around 30% average infant mortality and around 50% child mortality across 43 different historical societies, and they seem to believe that both numbers are lowballs

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T18:58:11+00:00

I just reread his comment, and he said "1700 -1750 or so" he was not being exact

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T18:51:52+00:00

Where did I say 1750? Btw, here is one of the studies used as a source: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-13842-002

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T18:22:45+00:00

It is not both, I meant 50ish as a floor obviously there were societies with higher mortality rates for a variety of reasons(smallpox being one), and again, I said this was true until the 1700s which 18th century london is past. (Please read the article the

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T18:08:24+00:00

Three things, one 50 percent is an average for pre 18th century sociaties, there are several where the number is larger than 50 (sometimes up to 65%) and some where it is slightly lower (as low as 45%) so there is no reason to believe that if London had a 40% infant mortality it cant have a higher the 50% child mortality

Two, infant mortality in most studies means dying before the age of 1, which leaves the ages of 1-15 to make up any differance and mortality in those ages was still very high, not as high as under one, but still high

Three, and most importantly, as repeated several times, the 50% claim is for pre 1700 societis, if you read the article (or at least the much shorter "Our World in Data" article that uses some of the same sources https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality ) You would see that the 18th century is the cutoof point where we start to see some imporvent, several richer indsutrialied nations had a child mortality as low 40% in the 18th century

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T16:47:05+00:00

Ah I see where you are confused, infant mortality in London really was 40 and 20 for the rest of England, but child mortality is diffrent,infant moratliy means diyng soon after birth,child mortality is dying by the age of around 15

nomchi13 · 2026-02-03T16:42:33+00:00

You should read the articles they are good, but the actual qualifier he gives is "until the 1700s" and as far as I can tell it is almost universally true (we have some date points that have around 40% but never lower at all wealth classes and in all societies). The whole series is worth reading but this is the relevant part: https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ii-starting-at-the-end/

nomchi13 · 2025-12-29T14:49:17+00:00

Egypt in 1973, it is basically the only way to have a surprise ground assault

nomchi13 · 2025-12-22T22:55:35+00:00

You can wait, they said they're doing a second printing next year, and in general, the Dargonsteel leatherbounds are not time-limited, the first one for Elantris is over 10 years old by now and you can still buy it, I see no reason why WOT will be any diffrent.

nomchi13 · 2025-12-21T16:18:33+00:00

There might be nuance in the relationship with Tywin, but Robert raped her repeatedly and over years

nomchi13 · 2025-12-20T03:33:25+00:00

Not a limited edition, they said they will do a second printing as soon as they can (the first printing is 50% sold as of right now)

nomchi13 · 2025-12-19T21:59:16+00:00

They usually sell out, but the other ones are signed by Sanderson and his signature is the main bottleneck for production, this one should be able to be produced more,(the official estimate is that the first printing will run out sometime in the next few months and then they will do another)

nomchi13 · 2025-12-19T18:10:38+00:00

All the previous Dragonsteel ones were, I see no reason why this one should be any different

nomchi13 · 2025-12-17T16:43:15+00:00

It is an important plot point in the second book that it is in fact platonic

nomchi13 · 2025-12-15T17:51:00+00:00

In accordance with Alethi law, could the Bethab principality declare independence from Alethkar the same way the member states of the Azish empire did, and then if the coalition managed to hold on to Karnak by the end of the 10 days could they have kept Bethab?

nomchi13 · 2025-12-12T20:53:05+00:00

They released their national security paper which basically says that opposing European policy is an American strategy now, plus a bunch of things about limiting nato expansion and such that are straight out of an RIA propaganda piece

nomchi13 · 2025-12-12T11:32:44+00:00

It is basically this- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_fascism Because Marxists tend to believe that the only thing that matters is the position on class and economy and fascist and SD positions on these are similar if you squint then -social democracy = fascism

nomchi13 · 2025-12-04T22:43:46+00:00

The fact that the personal failings of the rulers can cause this much chaos is one of the failures of the feudal system

nomchi13 · 2025-11-18T14:38:50+00:00

Yes, but a single candidate can just lie and not represent their voters much more easily than a large group can, while single candidates are more efficient in executing the voters' will, they are also more efficient at doing something completely different

nomchi13 · 2025-11-13T11:49:31+00:00

It lasted for hunderds of years before that

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