Based Camp - Based Camp： Is a Secular Religion Possible？

00:00:00.000 And this has happened throughout histories where people essentially deify the secular

00:00:05.020 understanding of the world at the time and our understanding of the world moves forwards.

00:00:11.080 It begins to look ridiculous and it gets thrown out.

00:00:13.380 This is why only the most conservative in terms of sticking with the original way of 0.82

00:00:17.780 viewing the text or the original way of practicing a religion.

00:00:20.660 Typically those are the iterations that survive rather than the ones that try to adapt.

00:00:25.420 But then there's the other problem, which was the other thing that some groups did is

00:00:29.160 they say, well, we will just outsource our metaphysical understanding of the universe

00:00:35.040 to the scientists, the scientific institutions.

00:00:38.900 But after the scientific institutions became infected with this progressive memetic virus,

00:00:46.000 it began to care less and less about truth.

00:00:48.680 And it basically became a tool for just infecting and injecting other cultures with this progressive

00:00:53.520 memetic virus.

00:00:54.780 The problem is, is the internet exists now.

00:00:57.520 Engaging with technology is intrinsically caustic to systems that try to tell people about

00:01:03.480 a metaphysical framework for reality that's wrong.

00:01:06.440 I think that many of these older systems that can only compete by telling people not to engage

00:01:11.840 with technology, which I think is going to be an increasingly successful strategy.

00:01:15.660 Yeah, they'll continue existing in the future, but they won't have economic power because technology

00:01:20.260 is critical to massive economic power and military power to an extent.

00:01:25.220 So even if you're a smaller cultural group, if you're the cultural group that is engaging

00:01:30.500 readily with AI in a way that isn't decreasing fertility rates, you are going to just dramatically

00:01:36.680 outcompete cultural groups that have been able to keep their fertility rates high by disengaging

00:01:41.860 from the internet, disengaging from AI, disengaging from cell phones, disengaging from genetic

00:01:47.040 research.

00:01:47.540 Okay, but Malcolm, I still think you're totally missing the beat here.

00:01:51.960 Would you like to know more?

00:01:53.460 Hello, Malcolm. 0.88

00:01:54.320 I am keen to talk with you today about maybe one of the stupidest projects we've ever taken

00:02:01.140 on in our lives because we are trying to do something that it doesn't seem anyone has really 0.95

00:02:06.880 successfully done ever yet.

00:02:09.780 Well, one of my pushbacks is going to be, I think you're wrong there.

00:02:12.060 Okay, but what we're going to talk about is, to save society, one of our theses is you need

00:02:19.780 to create an intergenerationally durable culture that is resistant to the current technological

00:02:27.200 environment that we live in, whether it's online dating or modernity or the mimetic viruses

00:02:33.500 that exist online.

00:02:34.440 And the initial pushback we often get from conservative groups is, why don't you just

00:02:42.660 adapt one of the existing conservative traditions that has been able to do this historically?

00:02:48.460 And our answer is twofold.

00:02:51.300 The first is that I don't think I've seen any other than maybe Judaism that seems durably 1.00

00:02:58.420 resistant to the current social and technological environment that doesn't have quickly falling

00:03:04.020 fertility rates.

00:03:05.200 But even they, the parts of Judaism that have the highest fertility rates still are often

00:03:09.180 the most technophobic forms of it.

00:03:11.560 So they are the least engaged with industry and technology, which is not something I want

00:03:16.620 for my family or their descendants.

00:03:17.800 I mean, many people would say you can't have these two things together, right?

00:03:21.300 No, I just think no one has intentionally created a culture that can work alongside this.

00:03:25.180 But then the question becomes historically, well, why haven't intentionally created, and when we call

00:03:31.260 a culture secular, what I mean is it has broadly concurrent views with the scientific community

00:03:38.680 about how sort of metaphysics in the world exists.

00:03:45.000 It believes in evolution and particle physics and the Big Bang and all of that, and it updates

00:03:51.920 those beliefs as new discoveries happen.

00:03:54.460 So first, this idea that no one has done this before, I think, is wrong.

00:04:00.060 I think, in many ways, you could think of the Catholic Church as one.

00:04:05.160 The Catholic Church had a system for recognizing scientific discoveries, even when they were initially

00:04:12.720 declared to go against biblical doctrine, you know, whether it's the earth isn't the center

00:04:17.820 of the universe anymore.

00:04:18.700 It took them a really long time to recognize them, longer than it probably should have, and

00:04:26.140 it slowed down the advancement of these types of scientific inquiries through generally offering

00:04:31.120 no reward mechanism for updating these heuristics.

00:04:35.040 But it did have the ability to eventually incorporate these scientific discoveries.

00:04:40.940 I mean...

00:04:41.180 You could even argue, actually, that the slowness of adoption was a feature, not a bug.

00:04:46.400 Because if you are having a culture adapt with the times or adapt with science, it's important

00:04:52.440 that you not jump on every latest potential discovery or trend, right?

00:04:56.800 I mean, that could be really damaging, I'm sure.

00:04:59.020 Yeah.

00:04:59.700 But to be a culture that has any level of adaption to this, if you are a traditional religious

00:05:05.080 group, you typically have to be a centralized and hierarchical religious group.

00:05:09.800 So, for example, both Catholics and Mormons would be able to incorporate new discoveries

00:05:15.340 into their religion pretty easily if they wanted to.

00:05:18.760 And in many ways, you know, they benefit from being conservative in how they do this, but

00:05:22.660 they could.

00:05:23.800 Whereas most Protestant traditions, because they're decentralized, most Islamic traditions, 1.00

00:05:29.280 because they're decentralized, and most Jewish traditions, because they're decentralized,

00:05:33.240 if they are of the stricter iterations of those, they're not going to be able to.

00:05:37.460 Because they are basing their tradition on older texts.

00:05:41.520 Or they're not always going to be able to.

00:05:43.780 Now, there are some cultural groups that are more accelerationist within these decentralized

00:05:49.940 cultural groups, okay?

00:05:52.300 Classically Calvinist or what?

00:05:53.480 I mean, if you read Puritan Spotting, which Scott Alexander wrote, which is about Calvinist

00:05:57.380 stereotypes.

00:05:58.320 And this is the older form of Calvinist, not this newer cosplay, I'm theologically Calvinist,

00:06:03.380 but not cultural Calvinist.

00:06:04.900 You know, he'll say things like, oh yeah, plus one point if they're an atheist, deist, or

00:06:09.000 free thinker, plus three points if they wrote a book about their heterodox religious views,

00:06:14.360 plus three points if they invented a new religion, plus three points if they invented a new Christian

00:06:19.140 heresy, plus three points if they're obsessed with religious tolerance, plus three points

00:06:23.500 if they wrote a list of virtues, plus three points if they had plans to anestimatize the

00:06:28.420 eschaton that's trying to create a utopian society.

00:06:30.240 Okay, okay, okay, okay, we get it.

00:06:31.840 Okay, but the point I'm being is this is a cultural group that you and I are part of,

00:06:35.440 and a lot of what we do can look really weird to outsiders, when it really is just, we're

00:06:42.040 basically cultural stereotypes of our group.

00:06:46.220 But the point being is, these cultural groups have historically failed.

00:06:50.940 They disappeared.

00:06:52.060 You know, Calvinists went from being around 50% of the American, at least the American

00:06:56.320 white population at the time of the founding of the country, to now being like 0.5% to 0.2%

00:07:02.180 of the American population.

00:07:03.080 And your argument broadly is that Calvinists were really, really big about each person

00:07:07.400 has to find truth on their own, and they have to really ardently search for it, too.

00:07:12.120 So as soon as people did search for truth that came into conflict with, say, the Bible, they're

00:07:16.960 out, right?

00:07:18.180 Well, yes, and that's the problem with this, right?

00:07:21.340 Is if you force this sort of independent truth thinking and engagement with science, but then

00:07:27.740 you also have this background doctrine, which to some extent this is in disagreement with,

00:07:33.500 you're going to get conflict.

00:07:35.100 This is why, you know, if you look at like the Calvinist founders of America, many of them

00:07:39.740 would do things like try to update their Bible or edit it to be more in line with the science.

00:07:44.700 And that works for a generation, but then people stop obeying the stricter rules, which are really

00:07:51.900 important in terms of intergenerational cultural transfer.

00:07:54.780 And keep in mind, science is two things, right?

00:07:58.780 One science is this broad institution, which is controlled by the progressive urban monoculture,

00:08:05.660 and will blatantly lie about things.

00:08:09.340 Just falsify data, just do whatever it needs to to enforce its cultural hegemony on other groups.

00:08:15.340 And the other science is the scientific method, like the ability of having a hypothesis, going

00:08:21.100 out and testing that hypothesis in the world, something you can do yourself.

00:08:24.620 And these are two different things.

00:08:26.780 And what we're talking about is just this broad idea that you have predictive knowledge, right?

00:08:31.180 You can predict, oh, there's planets out in space and I can go visit them.

00:08:34.460 And those might not be in text, but I can, you know, that's what I'm talking about when I'm

00:08:37.980 talking about updating with science.

00:08:39.180 So historically, I think one of the reasons why one of these groups never really survived is because

00:08:45.100 as science moved, our metaphysical understanding of major parts of what it means to be human

00:08:52.140 and reality more broadly was shifting to an extent that any religion or culture that was

00:08:59.500 created to align with a current scientific understanding was going to be crushed by time.

00:09:06.700 Here you could think of belief about the humors in regards to what was the doctor who did that?

00:09:12.140 Oh, Hippocrates?

00:09:14.380 Yeah.

00:09:15.020 Oh yeah.

00:09:15.340 It was Hippocrates.

00:09:16.060 Sweet.

00:09:16.460 Oh my God, I'm not crazy.

00:09:18.620 You got it right.

00:09:19.260 Yeah.

00:09:19.420 So it's Hippocrates who, who, you know, developed this, this humorous system, which was essentially

00:09:25.100 building into theology and metaphysical understanding of the world, current science,

00:09:30.700 which then led that science to advance incredibly slowly because it became a metaphysical truth

00:09:39.340 instead of a scientific truth.

00:09:40.540 So it was negative there.

00:09:42.060 And then as soon as people accepted that humors don't exist in the way that they said they existed,

00:09:47.100 basically you had to throw out that entire system and it was now useless.

00:09:50.620 And a lot of the surrounding culture that had evolved alongside it ended up getting thrown out.

00:09:55.500 And so a lot of times when people will look at a group, you know, you've mentioned this in a few

00:09:59.660 times in the past, Judaism, and you've described this system within the Horeiti groups of debate to

00:10:05.820 determine one status within the hierarchy and debate that requires intense knowledge of the

00:10:11.020 text as an IQ shredder.

00:10:12.300 But it is, it is, it is debate of an unchanging text.

00:10:15.820 And I think that that's, that's really big.

00:10:17.820 And I think people have argued to us that if you don't have that unchanging base and you're

00:10:23.420 working on a moving foundation, you are going to have a culture that crumbles.

00:10:27.660 What's your refutation of that?

00:10:29.100 No, it's not.

00:10:29.820 That's the point I was making.

00:10:31.420 I was making that exact point, which is historically when you abandon these, these systems that evolve

00:10:39.340 for a reason, you know, like the reformed Jewish movement, you just get completely taken over by 0.87

00:10:44.620 this progressive urban monoculture very easily.

00:10:47.180 You lose a lot of your resistances to that.

00:10:50.060 Right.

00:10:51.020 But even groups that historically did what was best given scientific information at the time.

00:10:56.540 So I think a great example of this is Christian scientists.

00:10:59.260 So today, when people look at Christian scientists, they see them as, oh, they're the people who 0.88

00:11:03.420 like don't touch modern medicine and don't engage with like blood transfusions and stuff like that.

00:11:09.340 Exactly.

00:11:09.740 Like that they're, they're a very backwards group is sort of the way that people think of it.

00:11:14.460 But what most people don't know is when the movement was founded,

00:11:19.180 they had higher survival rates than people who were going to doctors at the time.

00:11:23.180 Right.

00:11:23.340 Because doctors would do things like, you know.

00:11:26.060 Cover you with leeches and, you know.

00:11:27.740 Well, worse than that, they were running postmortems on dead patients with diseases and then without

00:11:33.660 washing their hands, delivering babies and then killing mothers and babies doing so. 0.99

00:11:38.060 I mean, it made sense how at the time not going to a hospital left you better off.

00:11:41.740 Right.

00:11:42.620 Yeah.

00:11:43.020 Yeah.

00:11:43.500 So that's an example of building modern, like currently existing scientific knowledge into

00:11:49.580 a movement and then having that movement fall apart.

00:11:51.740 And this has happened throughout histories where people essentially deify the secular

00:11:57.260 understanding of the world at the time.

00:12:00.140 And then our understanding of the world moves forwards.

00:12:04.060 It begins to look ridiculous and it gets thrown out.

00:12:06.140 This is why only the most conservative in terms of sticking with the original way of 0.82

00:12:10.540 viewing the text or the original way of practicing a religion.

00:12:13.420 Typically, those are the iterations that survive rather than the ones that try to adapt.

00:12:17.740 But then there's the other problem, which was the other thing that some groups did is they

00:12:23.420 say, well, we will just outsource our metaphysical understanding of the universe to the scientists,

00:12:31.580 the scientific institutions.

00:12:33.820 And I think that worked for a while.

00:12:36.300 And this is where I'll get to an instance where people did this before and it was successful,

00:12:40.140 which I think was the American experiment.

00:12:41.660 But after the scientific institutions became infected with this progressive memetic virus,

00:12:49.660 it began to care less and less about truth.

00:12:52.300 And we will do another video on how academia basically broke and fell apart as a mechanism

00:12:57.820 for determining what's true.

00:12:59.260 But it basically became a tool for just infecting and injecting other cultures with this progressive

00:13:04.300 memetic virus.

00:13:05.500 So, and anyone who's looking at science today, I think broadly can see, you know, we had Spencer

00:13:11.580 Greenberg on the podcast, when you're dealing with a 50% replicability crisis within studies,

00:13:17.900 they are not really investigating truth anymore.

00:13:20.700 They're just enforcing ideological conformity.

00:13:22.860 And there was a great study that was done that showed that the replication crisis

00:13:26.220 was actually specifically tied to only studies that pushed either progressive agenda or a neutral

00:13:35.100 agenda.

00:13:35.820 But when a study was released that supported a conservative position, the replicability

00:13:40.620 crisis was actually really low.

00:13:42.540 And so basically what it is, is it's just the way that this memetic virus is able to insert

00:13:47.660 ideological conformity into what it's trying to broadcast with the academic system.

00:13:51.820 So let's get back to where I think this has been done successfully before.

00:13:56.540 Yeah.

00:13:56.860 That's the American experiment. 0.92

00:13:59.260 America was created by Christians, mostly Calvinists, well over 50% Calvinists. 0.91

00:14:05.580 There were other people involved, and this is by the Heritage Foundation.

00:14:08.540 So a conservative foundation that is not a Calvinist foundation says, yes, America with 50%

00:14:12.620 Calvinists, if you're talking about the population of America when it was founded.

00:14:15.100 Um, so it was created as this sort of cultural experiment and it worked really well for a while.

00:14:24.540 But it had some major flaws and it was secular.

00:14:28.700 It was a genuinely secular super government governing institution that allowed for pluralistic

00:14:36.140 groups.

00:14:36.460 If you look at the colonies, when they came together, yes, they may have been dominated

00:14:40.540 by the Calvinist cultural group, but there were, you know, the Quakers and the Catholics and

00:14:45.100 many other cultural groups at the time, the Cavaliers, the Backwoods people.

00:14:48.940 And when you say work really well, what do you mean?

00:14:52.460 Well, so it stitched multiple cultural groups together in a way that instead of leading to

00:14:59.420 conflict between those groups, made all of the groups stronger.

00:15:04.620 And I think it showed that that was possible.

00:15:07.580 It showed that a pluralistic, largely secular or not necessarily secular, secular society.

00:15:14.940 Well, so it did it in a very interesting way.

00:15:17.820 It said, we're going to have this secular super governing institution, the federal government.

00:15:22.460 Most of the states were not secular.

00:15:25.660 What it said is you, Catholic state, Maryland, you can create a, you know, you can build Catholic 0.69

00:15:32.220 rules into the way you're doing things.

00:15:33.820 You, Calvinist state, you can build Calvinist rules into the way you're doing things.

00:15:36.940 You, Cavalier state, you know, Pennsylvania, you, Quaker state, you do things in your way, 1.00

00:15:42.060 right?

00:15:42.940 Actually, that's a misunderstanding.

00:15:44.380 Quakers were always the minority.

00:15:45.740 Pennsylvania should be thought of as more of an Anabaptist state than a Quaker state, 0.97

00:15:48.860 but the Anabaptists never really strove for political power.

00:15:51.820 So they didn't hold the actual offices.

00:15:53.900 So we misunderstand many of the political movements in Pennsylvania as being Quaker driven

00:15:57.820 instead of Anabaptist driven when they're actually more Anabaptist driven.

00:16:00.780 That's a whole different conversation.

00:16:02.620 The point being is for a system like this to work.

00:16:07.500 I think what you need is sub-governing institutions, which are culturally dominated.

00:16:13.660 Basically you need a cultural representatives.

00:16:17.260 And historically in America, many of these people were geographically locked.

00:16:21.020 Most of the people who thought this way moved to this city.

00:16:23.180 Most of the people who thought this way moved to this city.

00:16:25.420 And then they would elect a representative.

00:16:27.980 And I think that that was a fairly good system that showed one way you can have a multicultural

00:16:32.700 system work, but it broke down over time.

00:16:35.420 And this is where I want to get to something else, which is to say, you know,

00:16:38.460 Simone, you and I see ourselves very much as contiguous with our ancestors and contiguous

00:16:45.020 with our descendants, you know, getting to try things again.

00:16:48.780 And so when people look at us, they're like, you guys are insane for trying to start a country.

00:16:53.420 Yet we have had many ancestors who have tried to do this in the past.

00:17:00.060 If I go way back, who I don't really consider myself that contiguous with, you know, I could

00:17:03.580 get someone like Robert the Bruce or Charlemagne, who I'm a direct descendant of both of those,

00:17:07.100 but pretty much every Scottish person of descent I know from the Southern United States is a

00:17:11.180 descendant of Robert the Bruce.

00:17:12.220 Not so much.

00:17:12.780 Seriously.

00:17:13.740 But if you look more recently, I mean, Simone, through two different pathways, you are a descendant

00:17:18.780 of George Washington and not George Washington himself, but his siblings, because he didn't

00:17:24.060 have any kids himself.

00:17:24.780 But as close as a living descendant of your generation can be to him.

00:17:28.860 So you are a descendant of two of his siblings.

00:17:31.420 And he was one of the people who tried to start a new country.

00:17:33.580 And I think it was a fairly successful experiment.

00:17:36.940 You look at my groups that the two more recent ancestors would be Oliver Cromwell, who I learned

00:17:44.140 from, he tried to create a Calvinist, many people would see as dictatorial state, but it wasn't

00:17:50.060 exactly a dictatorial state.

00:17:51.580 He really wanted to leave monarchy and create a democracy.

00:17:56.940 But every time he would, the people he would put in power would start bickering with each other.

00:18:02.300 And he lacked the moral constitution to allow that to happen.

00:18:06.780 And so then he'd come back in and take over as like a fascist dictator for a while.

00:18:10.620 And then he'd try to set up an elected government system and they'd start fighting with each other.

00:18:14.860 Whereas someone like George Washington, your ancestor had much more patience with people.

00:18:19.660 And he saw the two factions that succeeded him fighting bitterly.

00:18:23.980 And they, various people asked him, come back into power, come back into power.

00:18:28.060 And he didn't.

00:18:29.020 And I think what we see in the difference between these two characters is you, you got to expect

00:18:35.980 any system you create to be dominated by infighting in the early days and have the decency to step

00:18:44.780 back.

00:18:45.020 I think the other thing I learned from Oliver Cromwell is, yes, I think the sort of Calvinist

00:18:51.740 tradition and the secular Calvinist tradition that we're a part of is the correct way to structure

00:18:55.260 your life.

00:18:56.220 But I cannot force that on other people.

00:18:58.380 And if I do, that will lead to atrocities.

00:19:00.860 You know, he's particularly known for his atrocities against Catholic groups in Ireland,

00:19:05.260 who he didn't understand why they didn't just agree with him.

00:19:09.580 His way of living life was better than their way of living life. 0.91

00:19:12.700 And I think that part of that knowledge might be why I am so pro-pluralism in a way that other

00:19:17.820 people aren't.

00:19:18.380 A different iteration of me from the past had a chance to try to enforce my cultural views

00:19:23.340 on everyone else.

00:19:24.380 And it failed.

00:19:25.740 It was bad and it led to atrocities.

00:19:27.820 I look at a more recent iteration of my family that tried to start a new country.

00:19:32.060 The Free State of Jones, 15 of the 50 founding members of the Free State of Jones, there's

00:19:36.300 a movie about it if you want to see it.

00:19:37.820 I guess you could just watch the trailer, were either siblings of my ancestors or kids

00:19:43.340 of siblings of my ancestors.

00:19:45.020 So that's a lot.

00:19:45.740 That's just basically my cultural, very recent cultural group.

00:19:48.620 Okay, but none of them have created anything that lasted.

00:19:51.500 And I think I have, I have a feeling that something that's missing from all of these

00:19:57.500 failed experiments, quite frankly.

00:19:59.660 I mean, I know you, you know, America worked for a while, but you know, I wouldn't say that

00:20:03.340 there's any cohesive culture that has, has survived.

00:20:06.140 You know, I mean, there's, there's like general trends and stuff.

00:20:08.780 Americana, what are you talking about?

00:20:10.540 The American cultural export is now the world's dominant culture.

00:20:14.860 In fact, the super virus evolved in America.

00:20:16.700 Various American subcultures have inspired other, other cultural movements, but I wouldn't

00:20:22.780 say that there's any sort of cohesive worldview or mindset.

00:20:26.300 And I think this is one reason why we're seeing...

00:20:28.220 The super virus is an American, we may hate it because it's... 1.00

00:20:31.580 But it's self extinguishing.

00:20:32.460 It's not, it's not going to be intergenerationally durable.

00:20:35.100 I think my intuition is that if you have a secular culture or religion, you need to have

00:20:41.100 something that is unchanging or a set of values that is cohesive, a set of traditions that

00:20:47.340 is cohesive, because there does need to be something consistent for a group to cling to,

00:20:51.900 or hold to, or say, this is what makes us different.

00:20:54.300 Because if you don't have something that says, this is what makes us who we are, it's going

00:20:58.940 to fall apart.

00:20:59.900 And I think that even happened with the colonies and with the early Americas is, well, a lot of

00:21:06.540 people I think would like to argue, oh, this is America.

00:21:09.100 There's a lot of disagreement over what that is.

00:21:11.660 And there are plenty of arguments about, oh, America is this and America is that.

00:21:14.940 But there is, there is no sort of standard agreement and there is no cohesive sense of

00:21:19.900 community.

00:21:20.540 Like, it's very different if you go to a nation like Japan and people will actually say things

00:21:24.780 like, oh, well, we Japanese do this.

00:21:26.300 We Japanese do that.

00:21:29.020 People might be like, well, this is America and we do things this way.

00:21:31.340 And they might all like consistently talk really loudly and wear shorts and stuff.

00:21:35.340 And I don't know, you set up the problem.

00:21:38.060 You set up the problem, which is to say no one has durably accomplished this before.

00:21:43.900 But I think America as a cultural institution came the closest to doing this.

00:21:47.740 Okay.

00:21:48.300 Now, the question is, how do you, we set up the way that various groups fail by saying,

00:21:53.340 oh, just trust science or whatever.

00:21:54.700 What you need to do is you need a mechanism for determining what's true that is strongly

00:22:02.940 culturally adhered to, but that is not based on a static text, basically.

00:22:09.500 So the criteria for authenticity we lay out in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion could

00:22:14.380 be an example of one of these, where it is clearly differentiated from what is quote unquote,

00:22:21.180 science today.

00:22:22.060 We believe a lot of things that the scientific community doesn't believe, right?

00:22:26.780 We doubt a lot of what the scientific community says, but it is a different cultural institution

00:22:33.820 for accessing truth.

00:22:35.260 But a cultural institution that doesn't say truth is X, it says, this is how you determine truth.

00:22:44.380 I'm, I'm cool with that.

00:22:45.740 And I like that, but I think you're totally missing the beat here, which is that the standards

00:22:50.460 of truth are not what make a culture special.

00:22:53.180 What makes a culture special is a sense of belonging, a sense of pride, a sense of identity.

00:22:58.700 I mean, that's what makes kids want to raise their children in that culture.

00:23:02.060 You honestly think that people of a certain culture are going to raise their kids with a

00:23:05.980 certain standard of truth.

00:23:06.940 And those kids are going to be like, oh yeah, it's that standard of truth.

00:23:10.140 It really makes me want to have kids.

00:23:11.260 You're absolutely right.

00:23:11.980 You have to create cultural pride and cultural identity, which are two things that we work

00:23:16.940 really hard to do as our kids.

00:23:18.060 You need a lifestyle, you need a psychology, you need tradition, and you need a sense of

00:23:23.100 belonging and pride.

00:23:24.620 Right.

00:23:24.860 But the point being, okay, is historically, right, there are cultures that have came very

00:23:31.180 close to being true, I would say, secular religions.

00:23:34.540 I'd actually argue that early Judaism very much was a secular religion.

00:23:38.780 It was a cultural system, a system of laws for how humans interact with each other and

00:23:45.340 how humans interact with their government.

00:23:46.780 And this I'm talking about pre-Second Temple Judaism, you know, when the temple and the 0.95

00:23:51.260 state and the, it was all one thing.

00:23:53.180 It was a religion and a state and a, and it adapted to current, at the time, understandings of reality.

00:24:02.140 The problem is, is it encoded some of those and said, this is what you must believe in the future.

00:24:07.180 As if somebody was creating a religion today.

00:24:10.460 And I told my kids, axiomatically, evolution is something we believe in.

00:24:15.020 The big bang is something we believe in.

00:24:16.780 Our current understanding of physics is something we believe in.

00:24:19.500 Instead of saying, no, here is a system for how you should investigate reality.

00:24:23.980 And this is what's true.

00:24:25.340 And this is how, and I think another thing that you mentioned here, culturally and psychologically,

00:24:30.220 we are very different from the mainstream population.

00:24:32.860 And we engage disproportionately with people of our cultural and psychological systems.

00:24:38.460 Now, fortunately, I think our psychological systems are fairly intuitive to people of a 0.97

00:24:42.220 specific sociological disposition.

00:24:44.860 And we've been able to build up a network of families with that sociological disposition

00:24:50.140 to the extent that I am very confident that our kids will be able to find wives within that community

00:24:55.660 and husbands within that community, and that they will be able to feel this is who I am.

00:25:00.140 And this is how I'm different than the world at large.

00:25:02.620 But that does require intentionally othering them to an extent through the ways that they're named,

00:25:09.340 through the ways that we, we raise them through the holidays we raise them with,

00:25:12.860 through the ways we tell them to engage with concepts like, you know, trauma, sadness, et cetera.

00:25:17.420 These are sinful from our cultural perspective, which is considered pretty weird and distasteful

00:25:22.060 by society's value system.

00:25:24.300 So through creating these strong differentiators, but very carefully not encoding science accidentally,

00:25:31.980 like modern understandings of the world into the core belief system,

00:25:36.940 we can create something that other existing religious cultural traditions can't do.

00:25:45.660 So yes, historically, always going back to the old texts allowed for more intergenerational

00:25:52.540 fidelity of information transfer, cultural transfer, and allowed these cultures to out-compete

00:25:57.660 other cultures that were more open to adapting.

00:26:00.140 And the problem is, is the internet exists now.

00:26:04.700 And the problem is, is that certain scientific facts are really, really hard to ignore.

00:26:12.540 Whether it's, you know, the earth, it revolves around the sun and there's planets,

00:26:18.700 I mean, there's not like a dome over us with holes poked in it or evolution or dinosaurs or,

00:26:25.180 you know, stuff like that.

00:26:26.220 These are becoming increasingly hard to teach your kids these things aren't true

00:26:32.540 and still have those kids stay with your tradition.

00:26:35.020 They are basically big holes that allow any sort of engagement with the outside world or

00:26:40.380 the internet to begin to stab your tradition.

00:26:43.100 Okay.

00:26:43.580 But Malcolm, I still think you're totally missing the beat here.

00:26:46.300 You've spent the vast majority of this entire conversation obsessing over standards of truth.

00:26:50.940 And I get that this is, we're talking about secular religions, but what you're totally

00:26:54.620 missing here is I think even in super faith-heavy religions, what they actually believe about

00:27:00.860 that faith is kind of like on the side.

00:27:04.140 Look at the LDS church.

00:27:05.340 I mean, I'm sure that there are some people who are deep in the doctrine, but really this

00:27:08.780 is a lifestyle religion and people are in it.

00:27:11.260 They stay in it, they raise their families in it, and they have their own kids and raise them

00:27:14.700 in it because the lifestyle is great.

00:27:16.940 They feel really good.

00:27:17.740 They have good mental health.

00:27:18.700 They're thriving professionally.

00:27:20.300 And I think that what you're missing here is the true key.

00:27:23.660 What you're missing is the levels of deconversion within the LDS church.

00:27:27.260 No, but then that's the problem, right?

00:27:30.060 Because we're talking about a secular religion.

00:27:31.820 So I think the point is have strong criterias for truth.

00:27:34.940 Don't be married to any particular scientific doctrine.

00:27:37.740 That's a simple fix.

00:27:38.940 And the rest of it is, and the reason why no other secular experiment has really succeeded

00:27:44.220 is that they all had standards of truth.

00:27:46.780 They all had broad concepts, but they didn't have othering, like you were pointing out.

00:27:50.860 They didn't have cultural traditions.

00:27:52.780 They didn't have a sense of pride and cohesion.

00:27:54.620 They didn't have a cohesive community.

00:27:56.460 And so there was no culture.

00:27:58.540 It wasn't a culture.

00:27:59.500 It was a series of scientific philosophies.

00:28:03.020 You are absolutely right.

00:28:03.820 And that is how we will outcompete previous secular experiments.

00:28:06.860 Yeah.

00:28:07.420 I guess the difference between our conversation here is you wanted to highlight, and I think

00:28:13.500 you highlighted it very eloquently, why we will outcompete previous secular traditions.

00:28:19.580 And I was trying to highlight the advantage that we have over current religious traditions.

00:28:24.860 Religious, yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:28:25.500 Which is to say that if you leave these vulnerabilities in your system, to you, they might be trivial.

00:28:31.260 You might be like, oh, secular things don't have these vulnerabilities.

00:28:33.980 But most of the future, like most secular traditions are going to die out of the near future because

00:28:40.300 they're not able to motivate reproductive capacity. 0.83

00:28:42.940 So I personally, like when I'm looking at the future, I'm not asking how are we going to

00:28:48.940 compete with or outcompete secular society because most of secular society is going to die.

00:28:54.060 I'm asking how do we compete the religious frameworks?

00:28:57.820 How do we outcompete the religious frameworks? And if we are able to do that, if we are able to have 1.00

00:29:03.420 rapid technological advancement, right, and technological engagement from our descendants,

00:29:09.180 if, as many people say, engaging with technology intrinsically calls its birth race to collapse.

00:29:14.860 That's what they tell us, right? I don't think that's true.

00:29:17.660 Engaging with technology is intrinsically caustic to systems that try to tell people

00:29:23.100 about a metaphysical framework for reality that's wrong.

00:29:25.820 Well, I think what the problem that we're seeing, too, is is engaging with technology

00:29:30.380 is highly correlated with the lifestyle of someone who doesn't have a religious tradition.

00:29:35.340 And so people just assume, oh, well, it is therefore causational,

00:29:38.700 that engaging with technology causes you to lose your faith.

00:29:42.140 Whereas really, we just this is actually on easy mode.

00:29:45.100 No one has tried to combine secularism with a strong, cohesive culture before.

00:29:51.180 It just hasn't happened yet.

00:29:52.620 Yeah.

00:29:53.980 Which actually makes things really exciting, because basically,

00:29:57.500 if you want to create a new secular dynasty, you know, in culture, whatever.

00:30:00.300 Well, what happened before was a very specific caveat, which I've mentioned,

00:30:03.580 and I don't think that you realize how important this caveat is.

00:30:06.220 All right, play it up again. Use different words.

00:30:08.140 They do not encode current scientific dogma into their beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality.

00:30:16.460 And they do not outsource how they search for truth to the quote unquote experts or scientific community.

00:30:24.540 So because there have been previous attempts that have done that.

00:30:27.660 I think that you might not have read as many Victorian like weird family experiments as I have,

00:30:33.820 but there have been a few attempts to do that, and they've fallen apart.

00:30:38.060 But they haven't done all of these things together, which I think is where the power of this comes from.

00:30:44.220 When people have done these sort of secular experiments before, they focus on one concept, like evolution.

00:30:49.260 And they've tried to build the entire religious system around the concept of evolution.

00:30:53.580 And that just leads to everything falling apart.

00:30:56.380 What you need is a system to be based around a differential from mainstream scientific consensus system for determining what is true,

00:31:05.580 but that is able to quickly adapt and do so in a non-hierarchical fashion.

00:31:14.140 Because again, like to some extent Catholics and Mormons have figured this out, 0.98

00:31:18.220 but they're just very slow to adapt because of the hierarchical organization and they slow down technological progress within these institutions.

00:31:25.340 And they're hurt through technological engagement.

00:31:28.060 You know, a Catholic who uses cell phones is going to have way less kids than a Catholic who doesn't. 0.94

00:31:34.220 I mean, you could just look, even if they're conservative, I'm sure you can just look at the data on this and you'll see this.

00:31:38.220 Whereas if you create a cultural institution that tells people what they're meant to optimize for and adapt using current information on the world,

00:31:48.140 you might be able to have a cultural group that does not, like cell phone use, AI use, is not going to decrease the number of offspring people have.

00:31:58.460 And this is really important when you consider that the difficulty level that our kids are going to experiment in terms of cultural temptations is going to be higher than our generation's difficulty level.

00:32:10.620 They are going to have to be able to engage with AIs that can be the perfect girlfriend or husband, right? 0.92

00:32:17.340 In a world where it is likely even harder to build sustainable relationships.

00:32:22.460 So what motivates them to do that? What motivates them to breed in that environment?

00:32:27.340 I think that many of these older systems that can only compete by telling people not to engage with technology, which I think is going to be an increasingly successful strategy.

00:32:36.540 Yeah, they'll continue existing in the future, but they won't have economic power because I think technology is critical to massive economic power and military power to an extent.

00:32:47.660 So you're engaging with these systems, even if you're a smaller cultural group,

00:32:52.540 if you're the cultural group that is engaging readily with AI in a way that isn't decreasing fertility rates, you are going to just dramatically outcompete cultural groups that have been able to keep their fertility rates high by disengaging from the internet, disengaging from AI, disengaging from cell phones, disengaging from genetic research.

00:33:11.740 So obligatory shout out, we're creating essentially a show us yours and we'll show you ours index of different cultural experiments in which various families of cultural entrepreneurs basically share their metrics, you know, like how many members you have, what's your birth rate?

00:33:30.020 What, you know, is your income rate, you know, like what level of security do you have, et cetera, educational outcomes, like a lot of different measures, mental health, et cetera.

00:33:38.960 Because over generations, we want a lot of these independent cultures, religious and secular, that are trying to endure into the future to be able to compare notes and cultural technologies, meaning that if one culture notices it like, oh, this culture over here, like really great birth rates, amazing mental health, a lot of security and stability.

00:33:57.300 Like they seem to be killing it, like they seem to be killing it, hey, what are some traditions we can learn from here, you know, that we might adopt, like for our own people.

00:34:04.700 It allows a memetic lateral gene transfer or memetic horizontal gene transfer, whichever example you want to use.

00:34:12.400 Yeah. So, I mean, we don't think that we necessarily have the answers, but we also think that this experiment is something that should be run.

00:34:18.800 Obviously, we will not know what cultural technologies will end up working in the long run.

00:34:23.580 Only our descendants will know. But if you're interested in joining us in this experiment, please email us through our foundation.

00:34:31.200 We will add you to our growing, essentially, list of people who are entering this.

00:34:36.180 And then as it grows and as we get off the ground and get started, we'll start sending out these initial reports and surveys so everyone can report on where they are and what they're doing.

00:34:44.680 Well, I mean, so the index, the point of it, that's what this institution is called, it really only has two rules for people who join or cultural groups that join, which is you get your kids until they decide to get married.

00:34:58.760 And when they're married, they get to choose what culture they create for their family and for their kids.

00:35:04.620 Basically, that means up to 18 years of age, right?

00:35:07.100 So the first 18 years of a person's life are your chance to culturally pitch them, but you cannot mandate that they stay in your culture.

00:35:13.060 If they don't agree that the culture they were raised in was a good culture, they get to choose to leave.

00:35:17.400 And this is, you know, a lot of people sometimes will ask us questions when we have this sort of radical, you own your kids to an extent as a culture.

00:35:26.100 They're like, yeah, but what if a culture abuses their kids or what if a culture disfigures their kids or something?

00:35:31.080 Yeah, well, then their kids will leave that culture at disproportionate rates. 0.99

00:35:34.400 You know, historically, kids weren't able to do that.

00:35:36.540 But today, yeah, especially within an institution like the index.

00:35:39.640 And the other thing is that you record this information and you allow your kids to record, you know, how they did as an adult.

00:35:45.280 And you can have all your kids say, oh, yeah, that thing my family did really messed me up.

00:35:48.920 We're not going to do that with our kids.

00:35:49.980 Let's look for different cultural practices within the index system that we can adapt.

00:35:54.740 And when I'm talking about lateral or horizontal gene transfers, so people know what that is, that's like in a bacteria where a bacteria might exchange genes with another bacteria that end up being useful to both bacteria without needing to actually breed with them.

00:36:07.660 A lot of people can be like, this is a weird system to build is we allow for some intercultural practices that require economies of scale.

00:36:18.260 So examples of this would be things like marriage markets, which require economies of scale to work or, you know, dating markets, stuff like that.

00:36:26.100 Right. Or educational systems.

00:36:27.800 You know, we're developing our educational system, but in a way that won't ideologically indoctrinate kids.

00:36:32.680 Everyone who's part of the index would gain value from a system like that.

00:36:36.740 So there is value in everyone who's part of the index, whatever weird culture they're experimenting with to engage with us.

00:36:43.420 And it raises our kids within this mindset and this knowledge that, you know, when they have kids, when they start a family, they get to choose to massively adapt whatever systems we raise them with, which leads their culture to be very accelerationist.

00:36:59.400 But again, you know, if you look at Puritan spotting, traditionally Calvinist cultures have done that.

00:37:04.740 So it's, it's, it's, it's, again, it's weird, it may sound weird to people, but it's not that weird from the perspective of our cultural tradition.

00:37:11.760 We're just adding a few additional rules to see if we can stop this death spiral our culture has been in basically ever since America was founded.

00:37:20.240 Yep. Well, I hope that our culture does well.

00:37:23.960 I think it's pretty fun for a culture that doesn't believe in happiness or fun.

00:37:28.580 Not that it's a selling point.

00:37:31.760 But yeah, we have a lot of fun and I love you so much, Malcolm.

00:37:34.740 I love you too, Simone.

00:37:35.720 Have a spectacular day.

00:37:37.920 I am so excited to have dinner with you.

00:37:39.820 I'm so excited.

00:37:40.440 You're going to make burgers for the family and they're going to be delicious and the kids are going to enjoy them.

00:37:45.060 And then we're going to go play with our chicks in the bar. 1.00

00:37:47.500 And we are so excited that we get to cosplay a trad lifestyle.

00:37:55.720 Cosplay it.

00:37:56.480 Yeah.

00:37:57.020 You cosplay.

00:37:57.680 Well, that's the thing you cos, what's the difference between living something and cosplaying it?

00:38:01.380 But yeah, we're just, it's like this weird kink where we're like 24-7 trad cosplayers.

00:38:08.140 We're cosplaying this.

00:38:09.600 I really, yeah.

00:38:10.320 What is the difference between cosplaying and reality in the end?

00:38:13.840 Or is it?

00:38:14.340 It's just we're pretending we're doing it ironically.

00:38:16.180 Yeah, that's a thing people do a lot these days.

00:38:20.420 All right, well, let's get to it.

00:38:21.620 Because I don't want people to judge me for not doing it perfectly.

00:38:23.920 But yeah, I mean, we live in a farm.

00:38:27.080 We have chickens and lots of kids and a weird religion. 0.99

00:38:32.020 And it's, yeah.

00:38:33.360 It's a thing.

00:38:33.820 It's actually not far from where your ancestor, George Washington, fought the battle right next to the-

00:38:38.300 He didn't fight a battle.

00:38:39.320 He just spent a really shitty winter there. 0.80

00:38:41.120 Let's be honest here. 0.80

00:38:42.220 Yeah, bad history there.

00:38:43.560 You're right.

00:38:45.140 I love you, Malcolm.

00:38:46.200 See you downstairs.

00:38:47.420 You too.

00:38:47.800 You too.

Based Camp - August 11, 2023

Based Camp： Is a Secular Religion Possible？

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