In this episode, we talk about why it s a good idea to marry your cousins and why you should marry someone you are related to. We also talk about the benefits of polyamory and why we should encourage it.
00:00:11.900So Malcolm, you know how like basically since we started working together and doing things together, people assumed that we were brother and sister.
00:00:19.380And 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.
00:00:28.040And I was trying to point out where you were.
00:00:30.840I would, I just gave up and started saying, oh, you know, he's the guy who looks like he's my brother.
00:00:35.220And I went immediately knew who you were.
00:00:38.840And 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.
00:00:47.860And 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.
00:01:06.680And it's just not that common anymore.
00:01:09.040And it, what they're really noticing is just like, it's your first time meeting somebody who's like an Asian.
00:01:15.400And then you look like you're related.
00:01:20.580Like, 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.
00:01:28.120So like every one of my family has over like three or four kids and historically we go a few generations back.
00:01:53.800But, 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?
00:02:23.200So this is a, a, a study that was done recently.
00:02:26.840It was couples who are third or fourth cousins tend to have more kids and more grandkids than other couples.
00:02:34.000The 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.
00:02:46.300Well, first cousins, while first cousin couples could have inbreeding problems, couples who are far removed from each other could have genetic incompatibilities.
00:02:57.380And 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.
00:03:26.360One 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.
00:03:38.340I mean, like, do you, is there, did you read in, in this, any like clarity on like how much the, the risk is reduced?
00:03:47.740Like if you're a third cousin, are you very, very unlikely to have genetic problems?
00:03:52.120Oh, so you may not know this, but the most common marriage type in the world.
00:03:56.320So this is, if you're talking not in terms of number, like, for example, if I say something like, what is it?
00:04:02.840I 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.
00:04:11.940I don't mean one, you know, that percent of people in the world, because the most successful cultures are obviously the monogamous ones.
00:04:18.980Now, when I say this, what I'm talking about is on a per culture basis.
00:04:22.960So 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?
00:04:37.100Where if you're talking about like one region of woods or something, you might have like a huge diversity of cultural groups.
00:04:42.840Well, 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.
00:05:23.160So 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.
00:05:31.440Like at least you're not, you know, marrying.
00:05:33.560They marry cross-cousins because it reduces the rate of inbreeding rather than increases the rate of inbreeding, which is very counterintuitive to people.
00:06:24.480And 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,
00:06:32.160when a woman is ovulating, like, when she is fertile, she will be more likely to be attracted to extra-masculine-looking men.
00:06:39.940And there's a number of other changes in her behavior, which would only happen.
00:06:44.240You would only see this differentiation, what a woman finds attractive, depending on her level of fertility.
00:06:49.520If 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,
00:07:01.920because that was an evolutionarily successful strategy.
00:07:04.900So that is just, like, imprinted into the human genome that this was happening.
00:07:08.020And I actually think with a great study, hold on, I'm going to research this really quickly.
00:07:12.120So just so you know what, I'm Googling, I'm Googling what percent of kids are not their fathers?
00:08:17.100So there's something called the Western Mark effect.
00:08:19.080The 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.
00:08:27.040If you grow up with them between a specific age period in your development, you build an instinctual sexual disgust towards them.
00:08:35.660And 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.
00:08:51.260On 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.
00:09:07.080Oh, 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.
00:09:21.160There 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.
00:09:34.680So, 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.
00:09:44.700And 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.
00:10:30.040But 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.
00:10:48.780They're just thinking about the concept of a brother or sister.
00:10:51.940No, so I discovered how, like, common it was when I went through one of my deep dives of the Argonne Wild Audio subreddit.
00:11:00.820And I was like, well, what are men listening to?
00:11:03.040Like, what are the top rated posts for, like, women voice actors describing scenarios to male audiences?
00:11:09.900And 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.
00:11:26.220And 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.
00:11:34.020It was more like, I've known you for a long time.
00:11:36.500Like, there's a lot of fondness and familiarity, which is, I think, that's, like, something that people like in intimacy scenarios.
00:11:44.300They can't imagine becoming, like, close to someone in any other circumstance in our sort of fallen society.
00:11:49.600Yeah, maybe it's, yeah, maybe it's even a this generation thing, which is super interesting.
00:11:52.900But, 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.
00:11:59.420Like, 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.
00:12:06.620And, 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.
00:12:17.680So, another really interesting thing here is something else you were asking, which is, like, actually what genetic effects does this have?
00:12:24.940Yeah, I'm really, because I've heard stories.
00:13:08.600Yeah, 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.
00:13:15.740And the blood test was to make sure they weren't related.