Based Camp - Could Cousin Marriages Fix Falling Fertility Rates？

00:00:00.000 Some hot, hot stats.

00:00:01.240 Some hot stats.

00:00:02.180 So Simone, one of the things that people always tease us for when they're looking at pictures. 0.52

00:00:07.400 I had a good intro for this.

00:00:08.780 Can I do an intro?

00:00:09.740 You can do the intro.

00:00:11.020 Would you like to know more?

00:00:11.900 So Malcolm, you know how like basically since we started working together and doing things together, people assumed that we were brother and sister.

00:00:19.380 And so at parties, when I was introducing myself and you to people and you were on the other side of the room and you weren't in the conversation.

00:00:28.040 And I was trying to point out where you were.

00:00:30.840 I would, I just gave up and started saying, oh, you know, he's the guy who looks like he's my brother.

00:00:35.220 And I went immediately knew who you were.

00:00:38.620 Oh yeah.

00:00:38.840 And pictures online of us, whenever we go viral for this or that thing that we've done recently, one of the most common insults is, well, they look like they're brother and sister.

00:00:47.500 Yeah.

00:00:47.860 And it's funny because I think what they're actually seeing, because one of the things that we often point out is our sort of cultural slash ethnic group used to be a very common ethnic group in this country and is now just a very, very rare one, which is sort of the larger Calvinist cultural group.

00:01:06.680 And it's just not that common anymore.

00:01:09.040 And it, what they're really noticing is just like, it's your first time meeting somebody who's like an Asian.

00:01:15.400 And then you look like you're related.

00:01:18.600 You look like you're related.

00:01:20.580 Like, but if you go to like the town I'm from, because my family came from like a small offshoot of that group, but that had tons and tons of kids.

00:01:28.120 So like every one of my family has over like three or four kids and historically we go a few generations back.

00:01:33.680 What was it?

00:01:34.080 14 kids per generation.

00:01:35.280 It's a lot.

00:01:36.120 Yeah.

00:01:36.320 They had a lot of kids, but yeah, if you go like rural area around Dallas, like everyone looks like me.

00:01:42.860 You'll be like, even, even in Dallas, people look like they could be related to you.

00:01:46.820 It's, it's a little bit creepy.

00:01:48.860 Yeah.

00:01:49.480 It's a little bit creepy.

00:01:50.740 Just generic Texan.

00:01:52.320 What makes somebody Texan?

00:01:53.800 But, but what I wanted to go into here on this particular topic was a very interesting statistic I saw recently, which brings up an interesting question, which is as pro natalist advocates, should we be promoting people marrying their cousins?

00:02:12.800 Oh boy.

00:02:13.620 Yeah.

00:02:14.220 I mean, a very, some very, very high birth rate cultures do have a lot of.

00:02:19.940 Simone, if you, I'm just going to give a quote here.

00:02:22.760 Okay.

00:02:22.980 Okay.

00:02:23.200 So this is a, a, a study that was done recently.

00:02:26.840 It was couples who are third or fourth cousins tend to have more kids and more grandkids than other couples.

00:02:34.000 The research, the researchers suggest marrying third and fourth cousins is so optimal for protection because they sort of have the quote, best of both worlds in quote.

00:02:46.300 Well, first cousins, while first cousin couples could have inbreeding problems, couples who are far removed from each other could have genetic incompatibilities.

00:02:57.380 And if you look at the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the study, if people want to read the study on this, it was called kissing cousins have more kids.

00:03:07.560 It was published in 2008.

00:03:09.000 It went for 2008.

00:03:09.900 They went for it.

00:03:11.140 Oh, no, wait, that was the name of the study.

00:03:12.440 That was the name of the article on the study, I guess.

00:03:14.180 Oh, oh man.

00:03:15.200 I really love it when academics just like fully go for it with funny titles and that I'm disappointed.

00:03:21.320 Yeah, and it makes, so there's, there's probably a few things at play here, right?

00:03:25.800 Okay, okay.

00:03:26.360 One thing I think they're, they are right, which is you are going to have genetically healthier children likely if you marry a third or fourth cousin than if you marry somebody completely unrelated to you.

00:03:38.340 I mean, like, do you, is there, did you read in, in this, any like clarity on like how much the, the risk is reduced?

00:03:47.740 Like if you're a third cousin, are you very, very unlikely to have genetic problems?

00:03:52.120 Oh, so you may not know this, but the most common marriage type in the world.

00:03:56.320 So this is, if you're talking not in terms of number, like, for example, if I say something like, what is it?

00:04:02.840 I think it's like 85% of all human cultures are polygynous, i.e. it's one man, many wives is the norm for people who are wealthy within those cultures.

00:04:11.940 I don't mean one, you know, that percent of people in the world, because the most successful cultures are obviously the monogamous ones.

00:04:18.980 Now, when I say this, what I'm talking about is on a per culture basis.

00:04:22.960 So most cultures, like if you're talking about the vast amount of cultural diversity, it's small cultural groups that like live in a rainforest somewhere because, you know, like the United States is largely like one or two cultural groups, right?

00:04:37.100 Where if you're talking about like one region of woods or something, you might have like a huge diversity of cultural groups.

00:04:42.840 Well, if you divide cultures this way, the vast majority of cultures prefer, no, not the vast majority, I think it's like two-thirds, prefer cross-cousin marriages.

00:04:53.180 By count.

00:04:54.740 By count.

00:04:55.720 Yeah, by, well, percent, count, however you want to put it.

00:04:58.360 Do they have like, by cousin, do they mean more removed cousins?

00:05:02.880 Like third, like I'm just really concerned about.

00:05:05.240 Cross-cousin means first cousin.

00:05:06.520 First cousin marriages.

00:05:08.320 So let's explain why they do this.

00:05:10.440 So do you know why you would choose a cross-cousin marriage?

00:05:17.700 A genetic reason why you would do this?

00:05:19.420 If you're living in a small group of humans, this is for the audience too.

00:05:22.900 Yes.

00:05:23.160 So the genetic reason for doing this in really small communities is it's the best way to make sure that you're not marrying someone even more closely related.

00:05:31.440 Like at least you're not, you know, marrying.

00:05:33.560 They marry cross-cousins because it reduces the rate of inbreeding rather than increases the rate of inbreeding, which is very counterintuitive to people.

00:05:42.500 Yeah.

00:05:42.900 That is because you're cross-cousin.

00:05:44.920 So a cross-cousin is the cousin of the opposite sex sibling to your parent. 0.97

00:05:52.340 So let me, that takes a little explanation.

00:05:55.100 Yeah.

00:05:55.240 Maybe give us some scenarios too.

00:05:56.880 So a cross-cousin would be my mom's brother's kids or my dad's sister's kids.

00:06:06.440 And the question is, why would you do that?

00:06:09.380 Why would you be marrying those people? 0.99

00:06:11.060 Because when you're in a small tribe where sometimes cheating happens, because apparently it must happen a lot in these small tribes,

00:06:16.540 with the, and I imagine pretty frequently, with the, like, most dominant male sleeping with lots of the females in these tribes.

00:06:24.320 Yeah.

00:06:24.480 And we know that cheating happened historically due to things, like, if you want to get an idea of, like, how impactful cheating has been on the evolution of humans,

00:06:32.160 when a woman is ovulating, like, when she is fertile, she will be more likely to be attracted to extra-masculine-looking men.

00:06:39.940 And there's a number of other changes in her behavior, which would only happen.

00:06:44.240 You would only see this differentiation, what a woman finds attractive, depending on her level of fertility. 0.78

00:06:49.520 If women were choosing, like, beta bucks for who they were marrying, and then, you know, the chatty von Chattington for who they were sleeping with when they were about to have a kid,

00:07:01.920 because that was an evolutionarily successful strategy.

00:07:04.900 So that is just, like, imprinted into the human genome that this was happening.

00:07:08.020 And I actually think with a great study, hold on, I'm going to research this really quickly.

00:07:12.120 So just so you know what, I'm Googling, I'm Googling what percent of kids are not their fathers?

00:07:17.280 Oh, do not, yeah, okay.

00:07:19.060 They're not related to their fathers.

00:07:22.200 Yes.

00:07:22.640 Or are not related, what percent of kids are not related to their mother's husband?

00:07:26.200 Yeah, I'm seeing numbers that range from 10% to 30%.

00:07:29.800 Right, and a lot of this came out when people started doing genetic testing, right?

00:07:35.240 Yeah, and they were like, oh, it's actually really common for women to cheat on their children that have to feel like a kid. 1.00

00:07:40.500 So you're in this small tribe, right?

00:07:43.100 You don't know if the person's parents cheated.

00:07:45.760 So you can't just say, like, oh, I won't, you know.

00:07:48.340 So how do you ensure that you don't end up marrying a half-sibling?

00:07:52.820 The best way to ensure that you are not marrying a half-sibling is cross-cousin marriages. 1.00

00:07:58.440 The person in a tribe a person is least likely to sleep with is their opposite-sex sibling. 0.95

00:08:06.440 Yeah, right.

00:08:07.400 The question is, wait, why are people unlikely to sleep with?

00:08:11.120 Isn't that like a fetish?

00:08:12.520 Like brother-sister stuff and, like, pornography and stuff?

00:08:15.960 It's very interesting.

00:08:17.100 So there's something called the Western Mark effect.

00:08:19.080 The Western Mark effect is an effect where if you grow up with somebody else, like, and it doesn't need to be, it could be an adopted sibling, anything like that.

00:08:27.040 If you grow up with them between a specific age period in your development, you build an instinctual sexual disgust towards them.

00:08:35.660 And this, I think, also might happen with parents and their kids, which is why normally, as I was mentioning in another thing, normally parents, even if, like, my daughter was objectively hot, I wouldn't be able to be aroused by her and I would find sexual thoughts of her disgusting.

00:08:51.260 On that front, my theory as to why there are still some men who are attracted to their daughters, it's because they're mostly absentee parents.

00:08:59.340 That would make sense with Trump.

00:09:00.320 Mm-hmm.

00:09:01.340 Anyway.

00:09:01.980 Okay.

00:09:02.280 So next.

00:09:04.020 So, sorry.

00:09:05.020 Western Mark effect.

00:09:05.880 Western Mark effect.

00:09:07.080 Oh, and this is, so, yeah, with regard to people usually not being attracted to their siblings, scenarios in which people grew up in the absence of their siblings, and this happens, of course, especially with half siblings, there are actually some pretty serious issues of attraction.

00:09:21.160 There are support groups, for example, for people who accidentally meet siblings who are adopted out to different families, and especially in the IVF community, where, like, sometimes they're very prolific sperm donors, because this is not as well-regulated as it should be.

00:09:34.680 So, like, you know, one man might have a lot of kids, and then these kids can meet each other and be like, oh, you're hot.

00:09:40.460 And then discover.

00:09:41.380 People find people who are genetically similar to them more attractive than other people.

00:09:44.560 Yeah.

00:09:44.700 And this is, the Western Mark effect can cause problems, so there were some cultural groups where it caused a big problem where they had a practice of arranged marriages and buying people who their kids were going to marry, but at a very young age, like, at, like, five, basically, they would get their kids' wife.

00:10:00.900 Yes.

00:10:01.340 So it's like, okay, you have a five-year-old boy, and you're trying to find a wife for them.

00:10:05.680 And a lot of cultures, people, like, pay bride prices. 0.97

00:10:08.360 Bride price. 0.89

00:10:08.700 Okay, yeah.

00:10:09.100 So it's an arranged marriage with a bride price.

00:10:10.880 It's an arranged marriage with a bride price. 0.99

00:10:12.500 Okay.

00:10:12.640 But, I don't know, I call it buying, whatever.

00:10:13.920 So they would take the daughter at, like, five and then raise them with the person who was going to become their husband.

00:10:20.320 Oh, oh.

00:10:21.300 And they would get this instinctual disgust.

00:10:23.600 Like, super grossed out.

00:10:25.200 Low fertility rates in these cultures.

00:10:27.160 Oh, that's funny.

00:10:28.900 Which is really interesting.

00:10:30.040 But anyway, so to the brother-sister porn stuff, I think that the people who primarily consume this, and we should have looked into this when we were doing our research, I don't know if we checked this, are people who don't have brothers and sisters.

00:10:42.900 Oh.

00:10:43.580 Or when they're thinking about it, they're not thinking about their actual brother and sister.

00:10:48.500 Yeah.

00:10:48.780 They're just thinking about the concept of a brother or sister.

00:10:51.940 No, so I discovered how, like, common it was when I went through one of my deep dives of the Argonne Wild Audio subreddit.

00:11:00.820 And I was like, well, what are men listening to?

00:11:03.040 Like, what are the top rated posts for, like, women voice actors describing scenarios to male audiences?

00:11:09.900 And though incest really wasn't popular among, like, male voice actor to female audience posts in that subreddit, incest was super popular among the female voice actor to male audience subset.

00:11:26.220 And I would say that the themes were not, like, oh, we're related, oh, we're brother and sister, oh, my God, we're so, so, so, so related.

00:11:34.020 It was more like, I've known you for a long time.

00:11:36.500 Like, there's a lot of fondness and familiarity, which is, I think, that's, like, something that people like in intimacy scenarios.

00:11:43.200 Like, it's weirdly wholesome.

00:11:44.300 They can't imagine becoming, like, close to someone in any other circumstance in our sort of fallen society.

00:11:49.600 Yeah, maybe it's, yeah, maybe it's even a this generation thing, which is super interesting.

00:11:52.900 But, yeah, I would, I think that your theory, I mean, obviously it would be worth testing and it'd be really great to see that data, but it holds to me.

00:11:59.420 Like, I bet that a lot of this is, like, only children who just would want a partner who, like, really knows them and understands them and has known them all their lives.

00:12:06.620 And, like, well, in that scenario, your goth big-titty sister is totally that person, which is, by the way, like, one of the themes of the recordings that I listened to. 0.51

00:12:17.680 So, another really interesting thing here is something else you were asking, which is, like, actually what genetic effects does this have?

00:12:24.940 Yeah, I'm really, because I've heard stories.

00:12:28.200 This is well studied.

00:12:29.340 Okay.

00:12:29.820 So, if you're talking about first cousins, there are some issues, but not really that much.

00:12:34.800 Probably about as much as you'd expect from a woman who is 40 years old or older having kids. 1.00

00:12:39.880 I don't know.

00:12:40.740 I actually think it's probably less than that.

00:12:43.100 When you're talking second cousins, it's basically nothing.

00:12:46.780 It's basically nothing.

00:12:48.160 It is hugely overstated in Western cultural tradition that it is dangerous to marry your cousins.

00:12:56.440 And the question is, is why is this?

00:12:58.280 It's illegal in the U.S., right?

00:12:59.860 What?

00:13:00.520 It is illegal in the U.S.

00:13:02.300 I think it's illegal to marry your siblings, but not cousins.

00:13:06.200 I can Google this.

00:13:07.760 You're right.

00:13:08.600 Yeah, because I think this was, like, a plot point in the movie Splash, where I think the mermaid woman had to get a blood test and was worried about that.

00:13:15.740 And the blood test was to make sure they weren't related.

00:13:17.540 And she was like, oh, God, my secret.

00:13:20.560 Wait, they would test people?

00:13:22.620 What?

00:13:23.360 Yeah, I think they, yeah, I think in the movie Splash, Daryl Hannah.

00:13:26.160 But is that a real thing that they test people to make sure they're not related?

00:13:29.140 Like, she knew she wasn't related to him.

00:13:30.780 I mean, let's see, they were in the state of New York in this movie.

00:13:33.860 I'd have to go back.

00:13:34.740 I know in our state you can't marry a first cousin.

00:13:36.920 I just checked.

00:13:37.920 But unfortunately, not a problem for us.

00:13:40.480 I'm just saying.

00:13:42.140 I don't know.

00:13:42.860 We didn't get the blood test.

00:13:44.140 I'm very familiar with, like.

00:13:45.920 Yeah, you know, no.

00:13:46.460 We both know our genealogy well enough to know that we're not first cousins.

00:13:49.560 And also our family histories don't geographically overlap.

00:13:52.080 Why is there this huge negative stigma if it actually isn't that big of a genetic issue?

00:13:57.000 Right.

00:13:57.160 And the answer comes down to, and we wrote a lot on this.

00:14:00.240 So I'm going to see what I can remember off the top of my head because we've done a,

00:14:03.100 I think we did a detailed history of this in the Pragmatist Guide to Relationships.

00:14:06.000 Or it might be in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality.

00:14:07.800 I never remember which of our books.

00:14:09.180 But it's the Catholic Church is what caused this phenomenon.

00:14:11.240 So historically, when a wealthy person would die without any heirs, you would, all their

00:14:20.920 wealth and property would automatically go to the Catholic Church.

00:14:25.420 And when people were, had these closer related family networks, that was much less likely

00:14:33.700 to happen.

00:14:34.600 I forgot the actual mechanism of why that was less likely to happen, but it just, I think

00:14:39.600 it was like, it was easier to know where the, the, the stuff would go when they died.

00:14:44.500 So if they didn't have any heirs, there'd be like close family members somewhere or something

00:14:47.540 like that.

00:14:47.920 Because you have these interconnected family networks, like these clans of people who

00:14:51.540 would intermarry, intermarry, intermarry.

00:14:53.100 This wasn't good for the Catholic Church.

00:14:54.740 So I asked an AI about this, and the AI said, by barring marriages out to the extreme degree,

00:15:02.120 it's like fifth or seven cousins, the pool of eligible partners was extremely limited,

00:15:06.320 especially in smaller communities.

00:15:07.660 This led to more marriages being blocked or needing special dispensations from the church

00:15:12.660 after paying fees, increased church income and authority.

00:15:16.260 When marriages were barred or childless, property and inheritance lines were disrupted, lands

00:15:21.760 and assets flowed back to the church rather than being passed down in families.

00:15:25.520 The intricate rules and genealogy tracking around consanguinity also gave more control, influence

00:15:31.500 and income generation for the medieval church.

00:15:34.120 However, it should be noted that this is still just a theory.

00:15:36.800 The Catholic Church may have truly believed such strict rules were religiously warranted

00:15:40.960 or necessary at the time. 1.00

00:15:42.600 Thank you for covering your butt, AI. 0.99

00:15:44.720 Thank you for covering your butt. 1.00

00:15:46.300 The Catholic Church made a ruling. 0.99

00:15:48.540 God, I want to say, I just remember it was like comical.

00:15:51.320 It was like up to 17th cousin.

00:15:53.500 It was between 5th and 7th cousin, but that's still insanely high.

00:15:57.920 You were not allowed to marry without special papal dispensation.

00:16:00.780 And this was used to control who could marry who really aggressively by the church, because

00:16:09.240 that basically meant, if you're talking like, you know, 16th century France or something

00:16:14.620 like that, you are never going to meet a human in your life who isn't a 16th cousin.

00:16:19.320 If you're in a little village, like good luck.

00:16:22.440 But then, I mean, I don't know if they were that cumbersome.

00:16:25.200 I'm sure people got married anyway.

00:16:26.940 Well, yeah, no, no, no, no.

00:16:27.880 So if you were poor, it didn't really matter.

00:16:30.000 But if you were rich, it gave the church the ability to control who could marry who.

00:16:34.640 And that's what really mattered, right?

00:16:35.720 It was about the money. 0.99

00:16:36.960 At that point of history, they got dispensations for this all the fucking time. 1.00

00:16:41.160 Oh, you just pay your fee to marry you. 0.99

00:16:42.820 Yeah, you just basically pay a fee to the church.

00:16:45.260 And that was another reason why these rules were useful.

00:16:48.260 So, but anyway, you know, obviously the fees are higher if you're richer, but all of the

00:16:52.720 royal families were inbreeding like crazy. 0.96

00:16:54.440 Like they completely ignored these rules.

00:16:58.260 So.

00:16:58.500 Yeah, somehow to their detriment, right?

00:16:59.880 Like the Habsburg line got a little, a little wonky.

00:17:03.040 No, massively to their detriment.

00:17:04.840 So this created a really negative phenomenon where, so this, this has been created a stigma

00:17:12.720 in the common population, which was like, well, don't marry anyone you're, you're even distantly

00:17:18.220 related to like third or fourth cousins.

00:17:20.420 When in reality, it is genetically optimal to marry a third or fourth cousin.

00:17:24.780 Being genetically optimal in a small community.

00:17:27.320 Now give me.

00:17:27.940 No, no, no.

00:17:28.400 A third or fourth cousin, not in a small community, period.

00:17:31.900 Just in terms of having more descendants.

00:17:33.840 No, in terms of having healthier descendants.

00:17:38.520 So, so you seem to be unfamiliar with this, but there are genetic incompatibilities between

00:17:43.320 people.

00:17:43.820 If you.

00:17:44.280 Okay.

00:17:44.440 Walk, walk me through this.

00:17:45.360 Cause I'm actually not really familiar with like genetic incompatibilities.

00:17:48.800 Yeah.

00:17:49.060 So the results aren't super high in humans.

00:17:51.660 Like it's not that big an issue, but there are some negative genetic effects from marrying

00:17:57.040 and having kids with someone who's distantly related to you.

00:17:59.380 A lot of people will say, well, who's like super, super, super not related to you.

00:18:04.520 Super, super, super not related to you.

00:18:05.900 Okay.

00:18:06.500 So there, there is something called hybrid vigor that you see in other animal populations.

00:18:11.740 This is like why a mule is stronger than a, you know, the two animals that make it up.

00:18:16.060 Like it's typically a better animal.

00:18:17.600 Generally when you have animals that are born of, so what is a mule?

00:18:21.080 It's a donkey and a horse.

00:18:22.380 I thought so.

00:18:23.920 Yeah.

00:18:24.140 And it's typically stronger, smarter, more resilient than either of the two parent species.

00:18:29.380 When you have two species create a, an animal, an offspring litter, like really distantly

00:18:36.140 related, you can get a phenomenon called hybrid vigor where these individuals like dramatically

00:18:40.320 outperform other individuals.

00:18:42.720 So what you're actually looking at is if you're talking like inter-ethnic marriages, right?

00:18:48.120 You might actually end up with genetically more fit kids than distantly related people of

00:18:55.320 your same ethnicity.

00:18:57.420 Oh.

00:18:57.860 Ah, ah, interesting.

00:19:01.440 Yeah.

00:19:01.700 So if you're looking at like optimize for genetics marriages, the two probably best are going 0.84

00:19:06.880 to be inter-ethnic marriages from like really distantly related people and people who marry

00:19:12.400 fairly close, but not like siblings or first cousins.

00:19:15.780 Oh, that's really interesting.

00:19:17.120 So like second, third cousins.

00:19:17.340 Well, and I guess the easiest way to marry someone who is more likely to be genetically similar

00:19:25.700 to you if you're marrying within your own ethnic group is to look for an inherited cultural

00:19:32.960 match.

00:19:33.440 So if like both of you have a Jewish history or an Islamic history or a Calvinist history

00:19:39.940 or a Catholic history, then you're more likely to be of a group that like kind of was relational

00:19:46.200 within the past.

00:19:47.480 Well, that's what we would recommend.

00:19:48.940 I actually think that all of the effects we're talking about here are like basically trivial.

00:19:52.560 It's like a fun game to talk about them, but certainly I wouldn't optimize who you're

00:19:56.600 actually marrying off of this sort of stuff.

00:19:58.860 So you're not saying we should go on 23andMe and find our cousins and then reach out to

00:20:05.660 them and be like BTWs. 0.99

00:20:07.360 You're that of the marriage platform.

00:20:09.380 No, I am not saying you do that.

00:20:11.640 So there's also other effects that could be at play here.

00:20:14.000 It could be that less wealthy people have more kids than more wealthy people.

00:20:17.040 Less educated people have more kids than more educated people.

00:20:19.540 Those two things probably correlate with people who marry like first cousins and stuff like

00:20:23.200 that.

00:20:23.900 So, you know, there's probably a lot of other factors at play here.

00:20:26.880 I assume the study probably controlled for that, but hey, it might not have.

00:20:30.440 Who knows?

00:20:31.180 But I have a lot of time people are like, here's the thing I bet the study didn't control for

00:20:35.840 and they don't go to check to see if the study controlled for it.

00:20:37.880 And I'm almost certain the study controlled for that.

00:20:39.760 So I'm just going to throw out that.

00:20:41.060 See, I thought.

00:20:41.740 But anyway, so hold on, hold on, hold on.

00:20:43.340 Okay.

00:20:44.440 The actual genetic effects of all this are trivial, completely trivial.

00:20:49.420 Like I would not take this into account.

00:20:52.020 Um, I would say, yeah, do marry somebody who has like a similar world perspective as

00:20:58.520 you, which can often be like a shared history of religious perspective or something like

00:21:03.280 that.

00:21:03.580 I think that's just useful from like a marriage and cultural fidelity standpoint.

00:21:07.320 It'll make it easier to pass your culture and your values down intergenerationally.

00:21:11.420 Right.

00:21:11.900 But outside of that, the positive effects you would get from any of this are pretty trivial.

00:21:17.000 And it's mostly, we made this episode to have a funny title about people marrying cousins

00:21:22.120 because people would guffaw and be like, no, no, no.

00:21:25.620 And then we talk about some data and some science and some kinks.

00:21:28.740 And is that what Basecamp is all about, Simone?

00:21:31.680 That and religious craziness. 0.80

00:21:33.580 We only talk about sex, politics, and religion. 0.95

00:21:36.260 As one should.

00:21:37.460 Very appropriate.

00:21:38.500 But wait, give another thought on this topic, Simone.

00:21:41.140 I thought your original pitch was really going to be just, you know, your third or fourth

00:21:45.400 cousin is more likely to be intuitively culturally aligned.

00:21:49.620 So even if, you know, one of you became Baptist and the other one's an atheist, your intuitions

00:21:55.720 that like had, you know, shaped your family over generations that ultimately I think affected

00:22:02.540 their sociological traits that are genetically coded would be more compatible.

00:22:07.960 That's, that's where I thought you were going to go with this.

00:22:10.760 And I don't know, I mean, maybe, yeah.

00:22:13.120 Simone, as genetic selection technology gets better and gene editing gets better, it will

00:22:19.000 become easy to, for people to be able to marry their siblings without the negative genetic

00:22:25.100 effects that we have today.

00:22:26.300 Oh, to just fix it.

00:22:27.640 Yeah.

00:22:28.220 Yeah.

00:22:28.540 What do you, do you think that that should be allowed or do you approve of what are,

00:22:34.300 or, and let's be clear, like it is eugenics for a government to say, we will make it illegal 0.57

00:22:39.540 for people to marry their siblings or cousins because of the negative genetic effects that

00:22:43.740 that has on their offspring. 0.95

00:22:45.260 So do you support that type of eugenic regulation?

00:22:50.020 So I'm, so yeah, intuitively I could never condone a policy that allows for, you know,

00:22:59.480 unnecessarily people to be born who suffer from, you know, pretty serious conditions.

00:23:04.540 And these can be, you know, just like crippling, either life shortening or life, you know, they'll

00:23:09.460 never, they'll never be able to live independently.

00:23:10.880 Like I cannot condone that.

00:23:12.360 So I cannot condone like sibling marriage and to a certain extent, even cousin marriage,

00:23:16.380 because I I've heard of these devastating effects and I can't deal with it because I care a lot

00:23:20.440 about babies and children and people.

00:23:21.920 And I hate that.

00:23:22.600 I hate that I care, but I do now, if we could just eliminate that, I don't even think that

00:23:28.980 society is as grossed out by sibling marriage as we would like to think when you look back

00:23:34.880 at like the Egyptian gods and the Greek gods and like Japanese anime being weird about

00:23:42.280 like twins being romantically entwined, like there seems to be all that.

00:23:46.660 That's interesting.

00:23:47.500 There seems to be a deep human intuition.

00:23:49.040 That's like kind of hot for sibling relationships and sibling romances.

00:23:53.140 Even when you look at like the hunger games, there's a district one sibling like group that,

00:23:59.980 you know, kind of has a little bit of a, I'm sure there's some slash fiction there.

00:24:04.320 Interesting.

00:24:05.120 I mean, I wonder, yeah, it's like conceptually, I understand, but the Western Mark effect and

00:24:09.620 you grew up basically as a single kid, so you wouldn't have the Western Mark effect as

00:24:13.520 strongly as I would.

00:24:14.740 I grew up with-

00:24:15.380 Also, you didn't have a female sibling, so you wouldn't know.

00:24:17.080 No, but I had a brother and the Western Mark effect works strongly enough in me that

00:24:22.020 I would find the idea of sleeping with anyone who he has slept with or even kissed.

00:24:26.440 Oh my gosh.

00:24:27.520 It's that strong. 0.98

00:24:28.640 Hugely disgusting. 0.94

00:24:29.920 Oh, that's so weird. 0.83

00:24:31.440 But then what about all those- 1.00

00:24:32.300 Like I would rather eat a spoonful of shit than do that. 1.00

00:24:36.300 Literally, I would rather eat a spoonful of shit. 0.99

00:24:38.480 Well, I mean, lots of rationalists are now doing that just to get someone else's microbiome, 0.99

00:24:43.260 so it's kind of funny.

00:24:44.160 Oh, yeah, oh, trendy.

00:24:46.380 But no, and this is one of the things where like when I look at the setup that Andrew Tate

00:24:49.960 has with his brother, where like I think they share-

00:24:51.740 Oh, where you're like-

00:24:52.300 I'm like, how can he like, but he must not have this effect.

00:24:56.480 It must not have affected him as strongly as it affected me.

00:24:58.280 Or maybe they have different women.

00:25:00.420 Like it is not clear exactly whether they share female partners or whether they don't.

00:25:04.300 And so probably they don't share female partners because, yeah, that would be kind of gross. 0.99

00:25:10.680 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:11.500 I mean, but you can understand why it'd be really gross, the idea of hooking up with someone

00:25:14.580 who you're sibling and hooked up with.

00:25:16.180 I'm so disinterested in hooking up with anyone who's not you that like I can't even imagine

00:25:19.920 like I've never wanted to hook up with anyone before I met you.

00:25:23.180 Like, so I just, like I can't-

00:25:26.520 Oh my gosh, this also reminds me of those like identical twin fantasies.

00:25:29.800 Where is somebody finding identical twins who also did, because the twins had to have

00:25:33.560 not grown up around each other.

00:25:35.320 Otherwise, they'll find each other disgusting, like normally.

00:25:38.360 So not only-

00:25:38.920 Yeah, I know, but we also found like your whole theory that you came up with that I think

00:25:42.640 is really strong in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality is that normally people are, you

00:25:48.960 know, attracted to and repulsed by the same things, you know, attracted to this, you

00:25:54.740 know, youth and repulsed by poop.

00:25:57.100 But then sometimes people have a sign switch.

00:25:59.180 So it is possible that on the repulsed by siblings front, people could have a sign switch.

00:26:04.680 And just like-

00:26:05.220 Oh, that's a strong point.

00:26:06.200 There could be people who are in disciplines.

00:26:07.300 The concept that she's going over here from our Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality is that 0.56

00:26:11.700 sexuality should be thought of as like a switchboard of like positive to negative signals

00:26:16.840 generated by certain environmental stimuli, where a positive signal would be arousal and

00:26:22.140 a negative signal would be disgust.

00:26:23.980 But these are operating using broadly the same neural pathways just with an inverse signal

00:26:28.860 applied.

00:26:29.820 And so it means that in humans, most of the volume settings are sort of preset, but it is

00:26:36.500 possible for some time in a person's development for the modifier, the like basically multiplying

00:26:43.120 it by negative one gets switched.

00:26:45.300 So if it's something like the Western mark effect, which would normally have a very,

00:26:49.240 very strong negative modifier affiliated with it, if it gets switched, it becomes a very,

00:26:55.440 very strong positive multiplier.

00:26:57.720 Or if it's something that's usually a really, really strong positive multiplier, when it gets

00:27:01.620 switched, it becomes a really, really strong negative modifier.

00:27:04.280 Mm-hmm.

00:27:05.380 Yeah.

00:27:05.840 So that's what I assume is going on.

00:27:06.920 But I do want to like just emphasize again that across cultures, you know, we're talking

00:27:11.620 ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and then like modern Japan, that there's like this kind

00:27:17.760 of weird fascination and almost reverence for sibling romances and pairings.

00:27:23.880 So I don't like, I feel like once society gets past the genuine health hazards of sibling

00:27:31.460 pairings, that maybe there wouldn't be the same intuitive collective disgust that we would

00:27:36.320 expect based on the way that society is seen as the sign of a hedonistic decline of a society.

00:27:41.740 I mean, when I think about periods of history where sibling marriages became more common and

00:27:45.640 stuff like that, I'm thinking like elite Roman families right before the collapse.

00:27:50.100 I'm thinking like, you know, where it's actually practiced, just fetishized.

00:27:56.840 Yeah, it seems to, well, I think they're probably cross correlated and I think it's a sign of

00:28:01.700 a collapsing system.

00:28:03.180 Hmm.

00:28:04.700 And it's a sign of a collapsing system not because it is like intrinsically immoral or

00:28:08.720 anything like that.

00:28:09.620 It's a sign of a collapsing system because it's a system that is beginning to throw out the

00:28:14.380 cultural rules that evolved, you know, usually with their religion and with their culture,

00:28:18.800 like we talk about in the practice guide to crafting religion, how cultures evolve over

00:28:22.140 time.

00:28:22.860 Well, almost every culture is going to evolve a disdain towards sibling relationships because

00:28:29.440 of the negative effect that had the cultures that allowed that ended up dying out.

00:28:33.540 So when you see a wealthy group in a society or a powerful group in a society throwing out

00:28:39.180 that one rule, which is core to almost every cultural group in human history for basic

00:28:44.780 evolutionary, like cultural evolutionary reasons, that is a group that is likely throwing out

00:28:49.200 a lot of other things that lead to civilization or collapse.

00:28:52.620 It's just a sign of how much they've been willing to ignore of their ancestry and their

00:28:58.080 culture in the pursuit of in the moment hedonism or removing in the moment suffering, i.e.

00:29:04.020 the suffering of I want that.

00:29:05.540 Why can't I have that now?

00:29:06.620 And that is the people who do that.

00:29:11.000 They are the people who are lost and who will be wiped out by this wave of infertility we're 0.97

00:29:15.880 seeing in our society now.

00:29:17.560 But anyway, I love you, Simone.

00:29:19.480 And what a cursed world it would be in if you had been born my sister.

00:29:26.740 Yeah.

00:29:27.340 Thank goodness I just look like your sister.

00:29:30.140 Hi, I'm Todd Richards.

00:29:32.320 I know.

00:29:33.000 We're in love.

00:29:33.620 And so we were wondering if it's possible if you could put us down in the same town.

00:29:40.260 Right.

00:29:40.820 Or the same street.

00:29:42.040 At least at the same time, if possible.

00:29:44.520 How about the same family?

00:29:45.600 Yes.

00:29:45.740 That would be great, yeah.

00:29:46.540 No.

00:29:47.180 Oh, no.

00:29:48.100 No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:29:49.680 Yeah.

00:29:51.740 I love you too, Simone.

00:29:52.420 I love you to death, Simone.

00:29:53.540 Thank you so much.

Based Camp - December 22, 2023

Could Cousin Marriages Fix Falling Fertility Rates？

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