19 extra years of life

[dehro]

I wanted to reply to this thread with an adaptation of the rifleman's creed.. but I give up..also, it would sound rather crass and not a little creepy.

but..hell no, I'm having too much fun with them, thankyouverymuch.

[Eldariel]

If you asked my 15-year old self and if this data were accurate, I would've definitely answered "Yes". Bloody hormones get in the way of intellectual activity, after all, and don't really produce anything of value, while extra years of life are more time to do something worthwhile such as come up with a cure for cancer or some such.

Since then I've developed an acceptance and even understood the need for irrationality too, and and I've seen enough to realize that I'll probably only want to live for about a 100 years and then I'll welcome a rest. And what my 15-yo. self didn't understand, I find sexuality isn't all that worthless after all. So at this point I'd say "Thanks, but no thanks".

[The Succubus]

Originally Posted by Mikhailangelo

Indeed - Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep

Sheep are awesome. Quit picking on teh sheep.

[Brother Oni]

Originally Posted by Elder Tsofu

A problem could be that out of 351 eunuchs they could only identify the life-span of 81 leaving room for bias regarding exceptional cases or that eunuchs dying young didn't get properly recorded in those texts. They unfortunately just failed to mention why the others weren't included.

According to the supplemental information, it's to do how the Koreans used to record dates. Since they apparently used a 60 year cycle (so 1700 and 1761 are both 'year 1'), they could only work out the lifespan of the eunuch if the King and their ruling year was also recorded.

Using the example given, Yoon-Muk Lee was born in the seventeenth year of King Young-Jo's reign (AD 1741) and died in the sixteenth year of King Soon-Jo's reign (AD 1816). As I understand it, it would normally be recorded as 'b. year 41, d. year 56', if at all.

Originally Posted by Elder Tsofu

The other groups apparently have far more deaths of young members in the family (except the Seo family which also had a low sample-size), when did they start to castrate boys to count them as enuchs? Did some even die of the procedure?

As I understand it, the other groups were contemporary men of similar social and economic status to function as a control group, thus highlighting the effects of castration.

Judging from the age ranges, I think infant mortality and deaths from the procedure are also included in the data set.

Originally Posted by Elder Tsofu

I'd like some more general discussion of the source of the data, which might be in supplementary, but the link leads to a discussion about social conformity and signalling in cortex (or somesuch).

It might be interesting if they can get some more data (and are allowed to write a bit longer about it), but to me there are too many question marks floating around at the moment.

Well the abstract with all available information I can find is here: Link.

The main source was the geneology record, the Yang-Se-Gye-Bo, and information from there was cross referenced with the Annals of the Chosun Dynasty (Korean) and the Diary of the Royal Secretariat (Korean).

Apparently the former is a daily account on national affair and state activities (and runs to 1893 volumes), while the latter is a daily diary of the King's public life and interaction with the bureaucracy (3245 volumes).

I agree that there's quite a few question marks, but the team have said they'd like to look at the records of eunuchs of the Chinese and the Ottoman empires to see if the same longevity also crops up.

[willpell]

Y'know, maybe the eunuchs just lived longer because they were getting better food or something. While not stressing out over women (or men) certainly couldn't hurt in terms of health benefits, it might well have had more to do with their social status.

[Brother Oni]

Originally Posted by willpell

Y'know, maybe the eunuchs just lived longer because they were getting better food or something.

Already accounted for in the research (they were compared to other palace bound males of the royal family, including the kings). The eunuchs still lived longer, unless you're implying that the eunuchs somehow got better treatment than the royal family.

[Elder Tsofu]

The supplementary material fleshed it out better (really, they should have put that in the paper instead). Thanks for the link.

[Johnny Blade]

I'm in my mid-twenties, willing to give one nut.

How many years do I get?

Is there a chart I can look at somewhere?

Please help me in my pursuit of longevity and testicular asymmetry.