If the only thing stopping a parent from killing their child is the illegalization of said act, then they shouldn’t be parents anyway. If you can’t control yourself with an infant, then the probability is pretty high that you are going to be some type of abusive parent. The child is likely going to be a net drain on society because of the low-level of upbringing.
It is probably better for the baby (and society) for it to be killed while it is a blicketless infant, than to grow up under the “care” of such a parent.
I can easily visualize that, in our world, some very quickly passing one-in-a-lifetime temptation to get rid of an infant is experienced by many even slightly unstable or emotionally volatile parents, then forgotten.
Would you really want to give that temptation a chance to realize itself in every case when the (appropriately huge—we’re talking about largely normal people here) social stigma extinguishes the temptation today?
Oh, and in no way it’s “only the illegalization”, it’s the meme in general too.
Suppose, for example, that what you’re describing here as instability/emotional volatility—or, more operationally, my likelihood of doing something unrecoverable-from which I generally abhor based on a very quickly passing once-in-a-lifetime temptation—is hereditable (either genetically or behaviorally, it doesn’t matter too much).
In that case, I suspect I would rather that infants born to emotionally volatile/unstable parents ten million years ago had not matured to breeding age, as I’d rather live in a species that’s less volatile in that way. So it seems to follow that if the social stigma is a social mechanism for compensating for such poor impulse control in humans, allowing humans with poor impulse control to successfully raise their children, I should also prefer that that stigma not have been implemented ten million years ago.
Of course, I’m not nearly so dispassionate about it when I think about present-day infants and their parents, but it’s not clear to me why I should endorse the more passionate view.
Incidentally, I also don’t think your hypothetical has much to do with the real reasons for an infanticide social stigma. I support the meme, I just don’t think this argument for it holds water.
Emotionally volatile people shouldn’t be automatically assumed to fail upon most such temptations, after all (when they fail in a big way, that’s when we hear about it the most), and might not even be a net negative for society in other spheres (although yeah, they probably are… still, it’s awfully cold just to unapologetically thin their numbers with eugenics. I know that a lot of things LWians (incl. me) would do or intend to do are awfully cold, but hell, this one concerns me directly!).
The “volatility” of one’s behavior is a sum of the individual’s psychological make-up—which might or might not be largely hereditary—and the weakness or strength of one’s tendency for self-control—which is definitely largely cultural/environmental.
Look at the Far Eastern and Scandinavian societies. Wouldn’t an emotionally unstable person being raised in one of them be trained to control their emotions to a much greater degree than e.g. in Southern Europe?
Further on the “hereditability” part; I’m really emotionally unstable (as you might have witnessed), but my parents are really stable and cool-headed most of the time; however, my aunt from my mother’s side is a whole lot like me. I attribute most of my mental weirdness to birth trauma (residual encephalopathy, I don’t know if it’s pre- or post-natal), but I don’t know whether part of it might be due to some recessive gene that manifested in my aunt and me, but not at all in my mother.
I agree that we shouldn’t assume that emotionally volatile people fail upon most such temptations. I agree that my reasoning here is cold (indeed, I said as much myself, though I used the differently-loaded word “dispassionate”). I agree that if impulse control is generally nonhereditable (and, again, I don’t just mean genetically), the argument I use above doesn’t apply. I agree that different cultures train their members to “control their emotions” to different degrees. (Or, rather, I don’t think that’s true in general, but we’ve specifically been talking about the likelihood of expressing transient rage in the form of violence, and I agree that cultures differ in terms of how acceptable that is.)
I understand that, independent of any of the above, you don’t like my reasoning. It doesn’t make me especially happy either, come to that.
I still, incidentally, don’t believe that the stigma against infanticide is primarily intended to protect infants from transient murderous impulses in their parents.
I still, incidentally, don’t believe that the stigma against infanticide is primarily intended to protect infants from transient murderous impulses in their parents.
Neither do I; the reasons for its development do need a lot of looking into. I just listed a function that it can likely accomplish with some success once it’s already firmly entrenched.
...”control their emotions” to different degrees. (Or, rather, I don’t think that’s true in general, but we’ve specifically been talking about the likelihood of expressing transient rage in the form of violence, and I agree that cultures differ in terms of how acceptable that is.)
Yeah. I used “control” in the meaning of “steer”, not “rule over”.
If the only thing stopping a parent from killing their child is the illegalization of said act, then they shouldn’t be parents anyway. If you can’t control yourself with an infant, then the probability is pretty high that you are going to be some type of abusive parent. The child is likely going to be a net drain on society because of the low-level of upbringing.
It is probably better for the baby (and society) for it to be killed while it is a blicketless infant, than to grow up under the “care” of such a parent.
I can easily visualize that, in our world, some very quickly passing one-in-a-lifetime temptation to get rid of an infant is experienced by many even slightly unstable or emotionally volatile parents, then forgotten.
Would you really want to give that temptation a chance to realize itself in every case when the (appropriately huge—we’re talking about largely normal people here) social stigma extinguishes the temptation today?
Oh, and in no way it’s “only the illegalization”, it’s the meme in general too.
Maybe.
Suppose, for example, that what you’re describing here as instability/emotional volatility—or, more operationally, my likelihood of doing something unrecoverable-from which I generally abhor based on a very quickly passing once-in-a-lifetime temptation—is hereditable (either genetically or behaviorally, it doesn’t matter too much).
In that case, I suspect I would rather that infants born to emotionally volatile/unstable parents ten million years ago had not matured to breeding age, as I’d rather live in a species that’s less volatile in that way. So it seems to follow that if the social stigma is a social mechanism for compensating for such poor impulse control in humans, allowing humans with poor impulse control to successfully raise their children, I should also prefer that that stigma not have been implemented ten million years ago.
Of course, I’m not nearly so dispassionate about it when I think about present-day infants and their parents, but it’s not clear to me why I should endorse the more passionate view.
Incidentally, I also don’t think your hypothetical has much to do with the real reasons for an infanticide social stigma. I support the meme, I just don’t think this argument for it holds water.
Sorry, but I don’t like your reasoning.
Emotionally volatile people shouldn’t be automatically assumed to fail upon most such temptations, after all (when they fail in a big way, that’s when we hear about it the most), and might not even be a net negative for society in other spheres (although yeah, they probably are… still, it’s awfully cold just to unapologetically thin their numbers with eugenics. I know that a lot of things LWians (incl. me) would do or intend to do are awfully cold, but hell, this one concerns me directly!).
The “volatility” of one’s behavior is a sum of the individual’s psychological make-up—which might or might not be largely hereditary—and the weakness or strength of one’s tendency for self-control—which is definitely largely cultural/environmental.
Look at the Far Eastern and Scandinavian societies. Wouldn’t an emotionally unstable person being raised in one of them be trained to control their emotions to a much greater degree than e.g. in Southern Europe?
Further on the “hereditability” part; I’m really emotionally unstable (as you might have witnessed), but my parents are really stable and cool-headed most of the time; however, my aunt from my mother’s side is a whole lot like me. I attribute most of my mental weirdness to birth trauma (residual encephalopathy, I don’t know if it’s pre- or post-natal), but I don’t know whether part of it might be due to some recessive gene that manifested in my aunt and me, but not at all in my mother.
I agree that we shouldn’t assume that emotionally volatile people fail upon most such temptations.
I agree that my reasoning here is cold (indeed, I said as much myself, though I used the differently-loaded word “dispassionate”).
I agree that if impulse control is generally nonhereditable (and, again, I don’t just mean genetically), the argument I use above doesn’t apply.
I agree that different cultures train their members to “control their emotions” to different degrees. (Or, rather, I don’t think that’s true in general, but we’ve specifically been talking about the likelihood of expressing transient rage in the form of violence, and I agree that cultures differ in terms of how acceptable that is.)
I understand that, independent of any of the above, you don’t like my reasoning. It doesn’t make me especially happy either, come to that.
I still, incidentally, don’t believe that the stigma against infanticide is primarily intended to protect infants from transient murderous impulses in their parents.
Neither do I; the reasons for its development do need a lot of looking into. I just listed a function that it can likely accomplish with some success once it’s already firmly entrenched.
Yeah. I used “control” in the meaning of “steer”, not “rule over”.