Based Camp - Based Camp： How Leftist Media became Psychologically Blind to Reality

00:00:00.000 He is pro-aborting fetuses if they show signs of a potential medical problem, but against

00:00:10.940 not choosing a pre-implanted IVF embryo because they might end up showing one of those diseases.

00:00:19.620 So he is more pro-abortion, like even mid-stage abortion, than he is pro-embryo selection.

00:00:28.100 That is whack.

00:00:28.760 Well, it's not just whack, but I think what it shows is this, and this is a wider topic

00:00:33.480 I wanted to talk about here, is this insanity you get, and you see this on both the left

00:00:38.760 and the right, but right now the left is more in control of media, so they do it more, where

00:00:43.420 there are individuals who clearly put genuinely no thought into their actual beliefs about

00:00:50.440 the world, and they're choosing their beliefs on what they think will get them the most

00:00:55.380 social credit.

00:00:56.560 Yeah, that's right.

00:00:57.240 Yeah, it's absolutely a progressive status quo bias, because at one point in a debate that

00:01:02.480 we were having on Twitter months or years ago, Noah Carl said, let's say you could do prenatal

00:01:08.840 screening with blood on a woman, and a woman finds out that her baby's going to have a

00:01:13.280 lower IQ than she will on the basis of this genetic screening.

00:01:18.040 What do you think if that woman aborts the baby? 1.00

00:01:20.080 Is that eugenics? 0.97

00:01:20.880 And he says, I think that's misguided, but I don't think that's eugenics.

00:01:24.120 And so because he can't say that any abortion is in any way bad, because that is a sacred

00:01:30.220 progressive cow, right?

00:01:31.980 And so I remember when I used to teach, I taught human sexuality, and I taught some other topics

00:01:38.380 around philosophy of science to undergraduates.

00:01:41.280 I remember asking students, is it worse for a woman to abort a baby that she finds out is

00:01:46.480 a girl when she wants a boy? 0.98

00:01:48.040 Or is it worse for her to choose an embryo that's a boy, rather than choosing an embryo that's

00:01:53.600 a girl?

00:01:53.940 And almost, I mean, it was really profound that people thought the abortion was okay,

00:01:59.840 because abortion is a sacred value in the UK.

00:02:03.560 To abort for any reason is a sacred value. 0.99

00:02:07.120 Wow.

00:02:07.980 That is kind of terrifying.

00:02:09.980 The percentage of the population that are, I mean, so we on our podcast talk about like

00:02:15.480 this progressive memetic zombifying virus.

00:02:18.560 And I think that people might think we're going too far when we call it a virus that

00:02:22.800 sort of wipes out people's higher order logic.

00:02:26.220 Would you like to know more?

00:02:28.060 Hi, and we are excited to welcome back Diana Fleischman, author of the soon to come out book,

00:02:33.400 How to Train Your Boyfriend, but also an evolutionary psychologist, host of the Aporia podcast,

00:02:38.820 an overall amazing and awesome writer and reformed academic.

00:02:43.340 She's made it out, ladies and gentlemen, and thank God.

00:02:45.280 What we wanted to talk about today was an article that they've actually recently written on us.

00:02:51.200 It's called Bad Arguments Versus Healthy Babies, Rebutting Rutherford on Embryo Selection.

00:02:56.680 So it's about all of these deranged people who attack Simone and I online for selecting

00:03:02.940 against things like our kids getting cancer in terms of like the genetics of our embryos.

00:03:08.060 I've been arguing that this is just like, it'll always have terrible results to do this.

00:03:12.680 Even though whenever you're doing IVF, a lot of people don't know this.

00:03:15.660 They actually already sort your embryos by how pretty the embryos look, which isn't really

00:03:20.660 correlated with that much, but they're still getting selected based on a trait like that.

00:03:25.460 But what I wanted to talk about this podcast was specifically like the meta around this.

00:03:32.280 Why do people react like insanely to topics like this?

00:03:36.260 We can start with Adam Rutherford too, because he presents a lot of great examples of just also

00:03:41.180 being like he conflicts in a lot of areas.

00:03:43.640 It's very strange.

00:03:44.640 We want to look at an act.

00:03:46.060 I'll just give an overview of the piece really quickly.

00:03:48.280 So the piece talks about polygenic embryo screening.

00:03:50.800 Right now, people do look at single trait or single allele diseases for their offspring.

00:03:58.020 They look at aneuploidy when they're selecting an embryo.

00:04:01.100 But polygenic screening is fairly new.

00:04:02.800 You guys and Rafal Smigrotsky and some other people are, I don't know, are there 200 babies

00:04:09.040 that have been polygenically screened?

00:04:10.740 Something around that.

00:04:11.840 Yeah.

00:04:12.460 And so there's this very outspoken critic who's a BBC presenter.

00:04:16.740 His name is Adam Rutherford.

00:04:18.280 He's a geneticist.

00:04:19.660 And he's written a book against eugenics.

00:04:21.760 And he has a beef with Steve Suh because Steve Suh has written some blogs about making

00:04:26.480 super intelligent people.

00:04:27.760 And whenever I saw him come out saying polygenic screening is terrible, he kept saying, read

00:04:34.300 my book, read my book. 0.99

00:04:35.120 So I read the relevant whatever, 20 pages of his book, and it was almost entirely bullshit. 0.99

00:04:41.440 It's like really, it's very, very bad. 0.97

00:04:43.780 And the evidence he uses is really asymmetrical for his claim.

00:04:47.500 Of course, about seven pages of it is just like about how bad Steve Suh is and how he's

00:04:51.960 friends with Dominic Cummings.

00:04:52.940 And then how Dominic Cummings is associated with some other people that liberals don't

00:04:55.920 like.

00:04:56.360 And the actual meat and potatoes of like what his case is, is made very succinctly and

00:05:01.880 not very well in a smaller portion of that book.

00:05:05.240 So that's, there's, there's a few different arguments that I make.

00:05:07.900 Go ahead.

00:05:08.800 Oh, no, before you continue, I want to pull on something you said there, which was, I

00:05:12.060 just find it really rich that he could be arguing like that this guy who is clearly

00:05:18.100 a eugenicist, it's pretending to take an anti-eugenics position.

00:05:21.360 He is the guy here saying, we need genetically pure humans.

00:05:25.740 Don't alter human DNA.

00:05:27.460 I want to use the government to restrict the reproductive choices of individuals to maintain 0.97

00:05:32.960 humanity's genetic purity.

00:05:34.700 It's like, is there anything more eugenics than that? 0.96

00:05:37.820 Well, I don't actually know if he's, this one thing is like, it's pretty short on actual

00:05:41.720 policy.

00:05:42.860 So he often endorses this guy called Ewan Bernie, who says, yes, polygenic screening should

00:05:48.480 be banned, right?

00:05:49.900 Or not allowed in the, in the UK.

00:05:51.740 And it doesn't surprise, I mean, the UK is really has very strict laws, a lot of which

00:05:56.700 don't make a lot of sense about reproductive freedom.

00:05:59.340 And one of the best things I think about the United States is, is, is the reproductive

00:06:03.260 freedom here is the fact that people can do IVF and can do sex selection, can do polygenic

00:06:08.080 screening, can do, can do what they want.

00:06:09.520 But what I've thought was really weird about what, how Rutherford responded to this.

00:06:13.880 It's one thing to say polygenic screening won't work.

00:06:16.380 The people who are using it are like wasting their money, whatever, whatever.

00:06:19.320 He called you guys energy vampires.

00:06:21.900 He made fun of your appearance, like not once or like two or three times.

00:06:25.680 Like he was like very intensely against you both.

00:06:28.480 And I didn't really get it.

00:06:29.760 I know that there was a huge backlash against the pronatalism stuff more generally, but I

00:06:34.520 think that people bristled at the idea because they just read the, the title of that telegraph

00:06:40.640 piece that said that you were elite, but people bristle at the idea that you guys think that

00:06:45.540 you're going to have great kids.

00:06:47.600 Well, here's the, here's the first of all, like that's not what we're trying to do.

00:06:50.980 But one of the things that I've read in this article, I didn't know about that just to

00:06:54.340 me, like signals, this guy is a complete grifter is that he is pro aborting fetuses if they

00:07:04.020 show signs of a potential medical problem, but against not choosing a pre-implanted IVF

00:07:13.880 embryo because they might end up showing one of those diseases. 0.61

00:07:18.040 So he is more pro abortion, like even mid-stage abortion than he is pro embryo selection.

00:07:26.260 That is whack.

00:07:27.680 Well, that is whack, but I think what it shows is this, and this is a wider topic I wanted

00:07:32.200 to talk about here is this insanity you get, and you see this on both the left and the

00:07:37.580 right, but right now the left is more in control of media.

00:07:40.160 So they do it more where they, there are individuals who clearly like put genuinely no thought into

00:07:47.600 their actual beliefs about the world and they're choosing their beliefs on what they think will

00:07:53.020 get them the most social credit.

00:07:55.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:07:56.060 Yeah.

00:07:56.240 It's absolutely a progressive status quo bias because at one point in a debate that we were

00:08:01.140 having on Twitter months or years ago, Noah Carl said, let's say you could do prenatal

00:08:07.240 screening with blood on a woman and a woman finds out that her baby's going to have a

00:08:11.700 lower IQ than she will on the basis of this genetic screening.

00:08:16.460 What do you think if that woman aborts the baby? 1.00

00:08:18.500 Is that eugenics? 0.97

00:08:19.460 And he says, I think that's misguided, but I don't think that's eugenics.

00:08:22.200 And so because he can't say that any abortion is in any way bad, because that is a sacred

00:08:28.640 progressive cow, right?

00:08:30.860 And so I remember when I used to teach, I taught human sexuality and I taught some other topics

00:08:36.800 around philosophy of science to undergraduates.

00:08:39.720 I remember asking students, is it worse for a woman to abort a baby that she finds out as

00:08:44.900 a girl when she wants a boy, or is it worse for her to choose an embryo that's a boy rather

00:08:50.940 than choosing an embryo that's a girl?

00:08:52.860 And almost, I mean, it was really profound that people thought the abortion was okay,

00:08:58.000 because abortion is a sacred value in the UK.

00:09:02.000 To abort for any reason is a sacred value. 0.99

00:09:05.620 Wow.

00:09:06.420 That is kind of terrifying.

00:09:07.940 The percentage of the population that are, I mean, so when we, we on our podcast talk

00:09:13.540 about like this progressive memetic zombifying virus, and I think that people might think

00:09:18.620 we're going too far when we call it a virus that sort of wipes out people's higher order

00:09:23.680 logic in the same way that one of these funguses like replaces an ant's instincts and causes

00:09:29.480 the ant to become a zombie ant.

00:09:31.080 That's only job is to replicate this fungus. 0.75

00:09:33.780 But when you hear things like this and you see this even in majority population surveys,

00:09:37.920 especially with an educated group like students, I really don't think I am underselling how

00:09:43.080 zombifying this virus is, because to me, there's just no logical argument where you could be

00:09:47.680 anti, it is wrong to select something at the stage of the embryo, but right to do it at

00:09:54.920 the stage of the fetus.

00:09:56.220 Yep.

00:09:56.580 And not only that, so one of the arguments that Rutherford makes where I got it, I pulled

00:10:00.140 a few quotes from Simone is that he says that doing IVF in order to do polygenic screening

00:10:05.640 is somehow exploitative of women.

00:10:08.160 The people who talk about polygenic screening are mostly men, and therefore it's a feminist

00:10:12.480 position to be against polygenic screening.

00:10:15.720 I've heard this exact same argument about a sex-selective abortion or even abortion more

00:10:20.400 generally, that women are going to be pushed into aborting babies if they don't want to. 1.00

00:10:23.700 And he talks about IVF not being fun.

00:10:26.900 Abortions are also not fun.

00:10:28.480 And it seems very strange to me that he hasn't thought about all these alternative arguments,

00:10:33.980 which is there's a ton of arguments in the feminist sphere, which are things like we should 1.00

00:10:39.480 outlaw surrogacy because surrogacy can exploit women. 0.98

00:10:42.880 We should outlaw IVF because IVF can exploit women. 1.00

00:10:45.980 Pornography, prostitution, abortion, because women can't make their own choices. 1.00

00:10:50.320 And he doesn't realize that he's actually making the same really, I think, kind of misogynistic 0.59

00:10:55.700 argument.

00:10:57.580 So what I'm realizing after listening to this is that there are two elements of discourse

00:11:01.840 or two spheres of discourse online.

00:11:03.580 One is just people sending signals to rise in their own local status hierarchy, and they're

00:11:09.960 not actually engaging in discourse.

00:11:12.020 And then there are people who actually enjoy kind of discussing these things or seeing if

00:11:16.920 they can win a debate and actually engage with the ideas.

00:11:20.320 But how can one separate those out and know when it's worth it to engage or not?

00:11:25.680 I mean, I think the communities are pretty separated from each other.

00:11:28.340 The sad thing is, is I think the first group that you're talking about controls our university

00:11:32.880 system, which many people see as the priest class in our society that determines what's

00:11:38.500 true and what's not true.

00:11:39.680 But I'd love your take.

00:11:40.420 I'm not sure.

00:11:44.200 But I just think that people, one thing that happens on Twitter that I see a lot is that

00:11:49.000 people curate a following, and then they're beholden to the whims of that following, right?

00:11:54.320 Right, right.

00:11:54.940 They're like, there's some people who I see bite bullets all the time, and their audience

00:11:58.220 loves that they bite bullets. 0.81

00:11:59.520 There's people like Rutherford who I see attacking other people.

00:12:03.000 Like, I think he called Boris Johnson like a saturated bin rag or something.

00:12:07.520 And he's like, oh, that's wonderful.

00:12:09.500 A floored language.

00:12:10.380 You do get points for that.

00:12:11.400 I like him like 10% more. 0.99

00:12:12.920 Like, he's got a million different synonyms for shit that he uses like against people, 0.99

00:12:16.660 right? 0.99

00:12:17.660 There's all these kinds of insults that he used.

00:12:19.940 And his audience is like, they love that red meat.

00:12:22.540 But one time, which is like a few years back, Richard Dawkins says, you might be against

00:12:27.500 eugenics, but eugenics works, right? 1.00

00:12:30.060 Remember?

00:12:30.860 I don't know if you guys saw that.

00:12:32.080 There was a tweet by Dawkins saying, you might be against it, but selective breeding definitely

00:12:36.620 does work, right?

00:12:37.940 And this is the only time where I was like, okay, Rutherford says, you're right, it would

00:12:41.580 work.

00:12:41.940 And he like went through it and he said, eugenics actually would work, right?

00:12:45.360 Like selective breeding actually would work. 1.00

00:12:47.240 And he had so much shit. 1.00

00:12:50.060 And since then, I have not seen him bite a bullet. 1.00

00:12:53.340 And that was 2020, I think.

00:12:56.040 Interesting.

00:12:56.760 That's really sad.

00:12:58.960 I'm in the middle of reading How Minds Change by David McRaney, because I think it's really

00:13:03.480 interesting to go into like the psychology of how humans are able to change minds.

00:13:07.520 And in this one chapter on reasoning, he goes into a lot of the research on how and why

00:13:12.240 humans reason.

00:13:13.480 And there's one study where it's suggested that basically when subjects were provided

00:13:20.280 with their own reasoning for coming to a conclusion as though it was someone else's

00:13:24.000 reasoning, they would criticize it.

00:13:26.460 They were like, oh no, here's where it's wrong.

00:13:27.840 This isn't logical.

00:13:28.500 Because they didn't realize that they were arguing against their own reasoning.

00:13:32.540 And it indicates or suggests that human reasoning is really meant to happen in some kind of

00:13:38.620 social format where people present their thoughts.

00:13:42.220 They present why they came to the conclusions they came to.

00:13:44.500 And those are, they can criticize others' conclusions.

00:13:47.000 And also their conclusions are criticized.

00:13:48.900 And then that in a social environment, especially where people are motivated to be somewhat cohesive,

00:13:54.360 which makes sense, and that social cohesion does play a big role in why we believe what

00:13:58.580 we believe or what we choose to believe, then you're able to get to the truth in an interesting

00:14:02.860 way.

00:14:03.600 So I'm hearing this research.

00:14:05.840 I'm interested in it.

00:14:06.660 I'm reading about it.

00:14:07.720 And I'm like, oh, wow.

00:14:08.400 I mean, you would think that in the right conditions, social media would be perfect for

00:14:13.120 this.

00:14:13.360 We would present our reasoning as to why we believe certain things are good, like apologetic risk

00:14:17.300 score selection.

00:14:18.620 And then some people would say, ah, here's the flaw in your reasoning.

00:14:21.520 And because we want to be accepted by them, then we would do that.

00:14:25.480 And yet that doesn't seem to be how it ultimately plays out at all, especially for people like

00:14:30.700 David Rutherford, because instead of being able to survive flaws in his reasoning being

00:14:36.380 pointed out, he's just like drawn out.

00:14:39.100 Here's what I think you're missing.

00:14:40.240 He's a high priest of the existing priest cast of our society, given that he's still within

00:14:45.080 the university system, which Diana has escaped.

00:14:47.960 And being was in that system, given how spicy these topics are, if he deviates even a little

00:14:54.360 bit from the socially accepted norms within that ideological tribe, he can lose his job.

00:15:00.460 Like, it's not a small thing.

00:15:02.060 You get fired and you're that kind of a personality.

00:15:04.960 No one else will hire you because your only audience is this, you know, far.

00:15:09.080 He's already pushed out any other audience he may have.

00:15:11.440 He's got no real skills other than being in this priest cast.

00:15:16.120 I don't know.

00:15:16.900 He also works for the BBC.

00:15:18.180 So, I mean, when I was in academia, I felt like I could say whatever I wanted.

00:15:21.320 And I did say almost whatever I wanted, bar a certain like certain edge cases, but actually

00:15:26.340 working for the BBC.

00:15:27.780 And so what he says reflects on the BBC.

00:15:30.440 And also it reflects on Humanist UK, which is where he's president.

00:15:34.400 The thing that shocked me about his attacks on you guys is that if I frame this a certain

00:15:40.200 way, which I have in this article, is that he's attacking people who chose an embryo with

00:15:45.760 a low risk of cancer.

00:15:47.360 He's attacking people for using their reproductive freedom, a mother for using their reproductive 0.70

00:15:51.020 freedom to prevent her daughter from dying what her grandmother died of.

00:15:54.720 Like, that sounds awful. 0.99

00:15:56.640 And yet nobody gives a shit because you guys are eugenicists, right? 0.99

00:16:00.340 Again, I need to keep pointing this out. 0.98

00:16:02.340 We do not support eugenics. 0.94

00:16:03.520 I know you don't.

00:16:04.380 Exactly.

00:16:04.840 But you guys are labeled as eugenicists.

00:16:06.680 But we're labeled as that.

00:16:07.720 We're labeled as that.

00:16:08.320 He is definitionally a eugenicist if he wants to use the government to maintain the genetic

00:16:12.660 purity of our species.

00:16:14.120 That is what eugenics is. 0.99

00:16:15.340 So a few months back, I talked to Brian Kaplan for Aporia and Brian Kaplan, who wrote Selfish

00:16:21.040 Reasons to Have More Kids.

00:16:22.480 And I asked him if there was backlash against Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.

00:16:26.320 Because right at that time, I was thinking about pronatalism.

00:16:29.500 You guys were getting really attacked on Twitter.

00:16:31.860 And he said that, yes, he got attacked a lot for Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.

00:16:36.520 It seems like pronatalism now is more controversial than even antinatalism.

00:16:41.960 Telling people they should have kids is more controversial.

00:16:44.760 And the way he framed it was, when I tell you, with Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, I said,

00:16:49.580 I'm giving you a 20% coupon for having children.

00:16:52.460 Having children is 20% less work than you think it's going to be.

00:16:55.000 He's like, if I gave you a 20% coupon for chocolate, and you're like, I don't like chocolate,

00:16:59.620 would you attack me online for having given you a 20% coupon offer for chocolate?

00:17:03.380 That's a great way of putting it.

00:17:04.900 Yeah.

00:17:05.320 And so obviously not.

00:17:07.580 But when it comes to this question about child rearing, and even things like the other

00:17:13.500 day, my husband, Jeffrey, asked somebody if they were interested in having more kids.

00:17:17.780 And we're very close to these people.

00:17:19.100 So I think it was OK.

00:17:19.940 But questions like, are you planning on having more children?

00:17:22.900 How many children do you want to have? 0.94

00:17:24.500 What kinds of conditions are keeping you from having kids have become really touchy.

00:17:29.120 And maybe it's because people are waiting to bear children. 0.68

00:17:32.440 Maybe because people who are infertile see it as a form of inferiority.

00:17:36.600 You guys grapple with all of this stuff.

00:17:38.500 But it's very tricky for me to untangle why this is such a dumpster fire.

00:17:43.680 Well, yeah.

00:17:44.300 So there's a few topics I want to touch on here.

00:17:46.240 One is he said that he was like, because he was able to frame us as the whole eugenics

00:17:50.680 thing really has nothing to do with it from his perspective.

00:17:52.780 It's that we are conservatives and he is a progressive.

00:17:55.680 And therefore, he can call us any slur, no matter how illogical, and his side will buy

00:18:01.100 that.

00:18:01.480 And I think it's the same thing with like the coupon argument.

00:18:03.680 Like if somebody was giving out coupons for like 20% off a gun or something like that,

00:18:08.320 progressives are like guns are evil.

00:18:09.800 And the reason why the mind virus went to this position of kids are evil is because people 0.69

00:18:15.560 who are, quote unquote, from the virus's perspective, wasting their time not proselytizing and instead

00:18:20.880 caring for kids, they are not following the sort of reproductive strategy of the virus and

00:18:27.000 therefore are less efficient at it.

00:18:28.820 And those brands of progressivism are outcompeted by the other brands of progressivism.

00:18:34.140 And so I think what you're really seeing when you talk about antinatalism versus pronatalism

00:18:37.720 is it's really just in the same way that if I went to a conservative event and I said

00:18:42.980 something like about global warming being a problem or like pro-environmentalism, I might

00:18:47.240 be immediately attacked, even though there's no reason for them to really be intrinsically

00:18:51.060 anti-environmentalist.

00:18:52.220 It's more just that this has become a calling card of people who they see as their enemies.

00:18:56.740 So let me, yeah, let me build on that actually.

00:18:58.760 I mean, Malcolm argues that the key differentiating point between progressives and conservatives is

00:19:03.040 that progressives are optimizing for intergenerational fitness and well-being, also for like minimizing

00:19:09.760 in the moment suffering or discomfort, whereas conservatives are not really caring about in

00:19:15.120 the moment suffering and discomfort.

00:19:16.360 And they're more optimizing for intra-generation, so from generation to generation, well-being.

00:19:21.240 And there's basically, I mean, having kids inherently means in the moment suffering over comfort,

00:19:30.020 right?

00:19:30.200 It's the hard choice initially and for like a good 18 to 30 to 40 to 50 years, however many

00:19:35.660 years it is.

00:19:36.540 And it is definitely not about having like an easier time in the moment or a more pleasant

00:19:42.040 time in the moment.

00:19:42.800 It is really about intra-generation.

00:19:46.240 Well, and I think it also, to something else you pointed out is I think that people, and

00:19:50.580 this is an issue that is just not as talked about as it should be talked about, given that

00:19:54.860 it's the progressive, like the super virus doesn't really care about this as a concept,

00:19:59.700 which is the increasing of fertility of our species.

00:20:02.580 And this is causing a lot of heartache for a lot of families.

00:20:06.340 And it requires the use of, unfortunately, I think a lot more aggressive fertility technology 0.98

00:20:11.600 than was needed in the past.

00:20:13.120 Yeah, which still runs counter to the progressive thing.

00:20:15.380 If the progressive thing is, oh, if this hurts your feelings, don't engage with it.

00:20:18.700 If this hurts your feelings, look the other way, give up, stay inside, don't go outside,

00:20:22.700 don't do the hard thing.

00:20:23.380 Have a little mission in front of somebody if it could hurt their feelings.

00:20:25.300 Even if you're talking about technology, like you couldn't go to someone and be like,

00:20:29.300 hey, there's this technology you might not have tried yet.

00:20:31.260 That would be seen as wrong and unethical.

00:20:33.940 Actually, it shows up in Rutherford's argument, right?

00:20:36.060 Like one of his core arguments is, oh, IVF is hard and it's painful for women.

00:20:40.400 Like how dare you imply that women should go through IVF?

00:20:43.580 And I think that is fairly indicative of this general theme that anything that requires suffering

00:20:50.240 or discomfort or obligates it is therefore bad.

00:20:53.920 And having kids is kind of, I mean, obviously like the joy you get from kids is so much more,

00:20:58.740 right?

00:20:59.060 And the meaning in life and all this amazing contentment, but definitely like the in the

00:21:03.580 moment convenience and comfort does take a major hit with everything.

00:21:07.900 I mean, I've been through IVF lots of times because I've been also, I was an altruistic

00:21:11.240 egg donor and I just say in the piece, I say like, I'd rather do IVF than have four hours

00:21:16.360 of early labor.

00:21:17.560 And I've been through early labor.

00:21:19.180 Early labor is no fun at all.

00:21:20.680 And also the actual sleep training or the early whatever months or weeks, like to me, this is

00:21:28.560 like complaining about traffic on the way to a 10 year prison sentence.

00:21:32.340 So like, yeah, seriously, although that frames it all very negatively, but like nobody, nobody

00:21:37.000 would do that.

00:21:37.800 Right.

00:21:38.620 Yeah.

00:21:38.880 This is the, another thing about demographic collapse, this idea of demographic collapse

00:21:42.500 being incredibly controversial is that you're saying a variety of things that are anti-progressive

00:21:46.660 views, which is they're interested in doing things for the greater good.

00:21:50.460 So to speak like recycling or not flying or being vegetarian or whatever the case may be.

00:21:56.180 And so what you're saying is like, you guys are doing the opposite of what you should

00:21:58.860 do for the greater good.

00:21:59.800 But another one of their key tenets is that immigration can solve all these problems.

00:22:04.300 And by saying that we should have our own children, what you're saying is that immigrants 0.98

00:22:08.020 can't solve this problem.

00:22:09.140 So it's like implicitly an anti-immigration sentiment.

00:22:12.300 And for our listeners, I just want to touch on this point really quickly, because a lot

00:22:15.280 of people in the US don't know this, but as of 2019, by the UN's own statistics, and

00:22:19.080 they are famously really aggressive with these.

00:22:21.660 So it's almost certainly worse than this.

00:22:23.160 By 2019, all of Latin America, so Central America, South America, and the Caribbean collectively

00:22:28.300 fell below repopulation rate.

00:22:30.400 So we are draining from an evaporating pond, and they refuse to look at that.

00:22:36.120 Yeah.

00:22:36.580 I mean, I just, I don't know how much brain drain, I tried to do a deep dive on brain drain

00:22:40.560 the other day.

00:22:41.040 I don't know how much that's the case.

00:22:42.380 I know that you guys say when you import people from other places, they acquire the 0.99

00:22:47.340 sterilizing meme.

00:22:48.600 They do.

00:22:48.820 And so then they end up having fewer children.

00:22:51.160 Although apparently Japanese people have more children when they come our career.

00:22:54.240 This is really interesting.

00:22:55.740 So actually, I want to touch on this a little bit.

00:22:57.600 So one of the things that I think goes against the conservative meme, which is that typically

00:23:01.960 the more diverse an environment someone is in, the more children they will have, which

00:23:07.060 is one of the reasons why in prosperous countries, the US and Israel have some of the lowest cases

00:23:12.880 of fertility collapse, whereas monocultures like Korea have some of the highest levels of 0.99

00:23:17.340 fertility collapse.

00:23:18.440 But if you take a Korean immigrant and they come to the US, their fertility rate actually increases

00:23:22.480 by I think around 50% on average from when we were doing the statistics, which is just

00:23:26.660 insane.

00:23:27.380 But obviously, they're in a much more diverse environment.

00:23:29.640 Now, if you're talking about first generation immigrants on average to the US, the fertility

00:23:33.080 rate is 1.7 right now, which is around the US average.

00:23:37.440 It's a bit higher.

00:23:38.160 It's like 0.5, I think, is US average.

00:23:40.440 I mean, 1.5 is US average right now.

00:23:42.260 But what's really interesting there is it's not that much above the US average, even when people

00:23:46.120 come from really high fertility rate cultures.

00:23:47.920 So what you were seeing there is that there's all of these talks about like, we're not good

00:23:53.360 at adapting people to our culture or whatever.

00:23:55.540 But in terms of fertility rate, it actually happens really, really, really quickly.

00:23:59.160 And what that means from a progressive standpoint is you can't like bring in an immigrant population 1.00

00:24:03.040 that's high fertility and have that work. 1.00

00:24:04.720 You need to continually import these people for it to be a solution. 1.00

00:24:10.100 And the only way that you are able to continually import them is if their countries stay high fertility.

00:24:16.100 And on average, a country only has above repopulation fertility rate right now if the average citizen

00:24:20.640 is earning less than 5,000 USD per year.

00:24:22.940 So you basically need to keep these other countries poor.

00:24:26.640 Not optimal.

00:24:28.340 Yeah.

00:24:29.020 Yeah.

00:24:29.360 It is interesting in terms of the incentive structures and how all these things don't work.

00:24:35.360 And I'm really interested in digging into the immigration debate.

00:24:37.680 I just feel like I need to devote like two solid weeks to it because, you know, Richard

00:24:41.320 Hanania and Noah Carl and all these people, Garrett Jones, have been writing about

00:24:45.540 immigration and whether or not it's good or bad.

00:24:48.220 There was a very funny tweet about basically about how Confederate whites moved up North

00:24:53.180 and about how they changed the culture of the North throughout the United States.

00:24:58.540 And Philip Lemoine, who's on Twitter, was like, yes, of course, Confederate whites changed

00:25:03.080 the culture of the North forever when they immigrated there. 0.99

00:25:05.180 But of course, that would never happen with immigrants coming to the United States today. 1.00

00:25:08.620 And so he was basically making fun of this idea that this was actually a very, it was a

00:25:13.440 progressive talking point, was about this historical phenomenon, which is something that they would

00:25:18.600 never extrapolate towards the future, right?

00:25:20.940 Well, I mean, for our listeners, our position on immigration, because I bet they're wondering

00:25:24.500 here, I mean, we are very pro policies that let in productive individuals to immigrate.

00:25:29.200 I'm really in no way against productive immigration to the United States because we live in a different

00:25:35.140 world today.

00:25:35.820 If something makes the U.S.'s economy strong, we need to focus on individual cultural groups 1.00

00:25:40.120 thriving, and your individual cultural group is going to die if you seal it off from the

00:25:45.480 world.

00:25:46.020 I mean, look, what do you want?

00:25:47.180 What's your best case scenario?

00:25:48.160 You're like, okay, one country, one people.

00:25:50.220 So you end up like Korea, like a desperate old man in a hermetic tube who's slowly dying. 1.00

00:25:55.960 Keeping immigrants out because you're weak, it just allows you to die in peace. 1.00

00:26:01.880 Either strengthen yourself or don't.

00:26:03.740 So for me, there's two different arguments that are very compelling that pull me in diametrically

00:26:08.100 opposed directions.

00:26:09.480 So there's this Peter Singer utilitarian child in the pond thing that Brian Kaplan talks about,

00:26:14.320 which is like, why wouldn't we take anyone and everyone who wants to come to our country? 1.00

00:26:17.680 We make their lives better.

00:26:19.000 They increase our GDP.

00:26:20.140 They increase their country's GDP.

00:26:21.680 It's a win-win, not even selecting people, just letting anybody in.

00:26:25.800 And he also says that immigrant crime stats are overblown.

00:26:29.380 And that's very anti-conservative kind of talking point, even though Brian Kaplan is

00:26:34.000 quite conservative in many ways.

00:26:35.660 There's this other kind of IQ realist idea that I have.

00:26:39.380 Also, I think that people are often happier in more homogenous societies.

00:26:43.840 It can be very difficult to get along with neighbors and people that you have nothing

00:26:46.320 in common with.

00:26:47.180 But I also wonder, what is the tipping point?

00:26:50.000 Is there a tipping point in terms of people who are from very culturally diverse backgrounds?

00:26:54.880 What is the tipping point in order to be able to sustain the civilization and institutions

00:26:59.800 that we have come to enjoy and rely on for prosperity and stability?

00:27:04.240 Like, is that a possibility that there could be some kind of voter base or letting in a certain

00:27:12.660 number of immigrants?

00:27:13.380 To me, I was looking at this stat the other day, the idea that a Sweden with 40% Muslim

00:27:18.580 population and a Sweden with 5% Muslim population are going to sustain the same institutions the

00:27:24.900 same way without any difficulties seems really far-fetched to me.

00:27:29.260 So these are all difficult questions, I think, to grapple with.

00:27:32.420 Yeah, they really are.

00:27:33.500 It's going to be interesting to see it play out.

00:27:35.480 We do do an immigration podcast sometimes because we have a lot of thoughts on that that are

00:27:39.460 very controversial.

00:27:40.620 You guys should talk to Kaplan about it because he is like, he knows everything and he's just

00:27:45.360 the best faith interlocutor about immigration that I've ever heard.

00:27:49.860 He's just amazing.

00:27:50.780 Yeah.

00:27:51.280 Yeah.

00:27:51.700 Although, Diane, I have to say, I'm already dying to talk with you again.

00:27:54.760 When you're ready, when your book is closer to coming out, will you come back on and talk

00:27:58.300 about how to train your boyfriend?

00:27:59.920 And you can check out her podcast right now, which is similar how we divided the world into

00:28:04.660 two spheres.

00:28:05.380 One is people just trying to ideologically signal to their tribe and the other is people trying

00:28:09.260 to get to the truth.

00:28:09.940 They're very much in the get to the truth camp.

00:28:11.840 Gloria is really great.

00:28:13.760 And I'm grateful that given that I have a small child and another on the way that I managed

00:28:18.360 to find a place with them because I really feel good about what I'm doing.

00:28:21.440 So yeah, my most recent interview is with Paul Bloom.

00:28:24.100 I recorded an interview with Simone.

00:28:25.640 That's going to be great.

00:28:27.300 And there's some on the back burner.

00:28:29.180 Ayla, Mike Bailey, those people are all coming out at some point.

00:28:31.860 Oh, good.

00:28:32.440 Oh my gosh.

00:28:33.140 Okay.

00:28:33.300 I'm looking forward to those.

00:28:34.320 That's really exciting.

00:28:34.940 And where else can people find your work, read more of what you write?

00:28:37.860 I'm on Twitter too much.

00:28:40.020 I'm at sentientist and yeah, check me out there.

00:28:44.200 That's great.

00:28:44.580 Oh, Diana, you were such a delight to speak with.

00:28:46.560 I'm looking forward to all of your upcoming podcasts and articles.

00:28:49.480 I just love every time something from you comes out.

00:28:51.900 So everyone check out Diana's work if you haven't already, and hopefully we'll have you

00:28:55.200 back on the podcast soon.

00:28:56.560 Love to talk to you guys again.

00:28:57.680 Thank you.

00:28:58.100 Thank you.

00:29:00.100 Woohoo.

Based Camp - June 29, 2023

Based Camp： How Leftist Media became Psychologically Blind to Reality

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