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mushroom comments on Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014 - Less Wrong
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In the modern evaluation of historic infanticide practices, we should remember the astronomically high infant mortality rate.
Or perhaps the other way around? :)
Do you mean that we should be careful not to count cases of natural infant mortality as infanticide; or that the high infant mortality rate changes the moral calculus of infanticide; or something else?
I meant "evaluation" only in the limited sense of "understanding the mental states of someone else". I bring this up for the boring reason that people seem to forget this (most prominently in the butchered interpretation of life-expectancy at birth as being life expectancy at 18, which has only become a good approximation in modern times)
See also modern attitudes toward abortion. In various points in history both would have been considered equally acceptable (at least taking herbs believe to help induce miscariges) or equally abhorrent.
Now the Netherlands allows to "abort" a newborn with a birth defect that would make survival impossible. We've gone full circle.