Heritability of Pronatalism： Can We Evolve Our Way Out of Demographic Collapse？
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Summary
J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are right about falling birth rates, but here s where they get it all wrong. In this episode, Simone and I discuss an article in The Hill by Jacob Hornstein, a student in the class of 2028 at the University of Texas at Austin.
Transcript
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Hello, everybody. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I came across an article
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in The Hill by Wunderkin Jacob Hornstein, who's actually in the class of 2028 at UATX,
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the new renegade university. And he made this really key argument that I think is underrated
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in the world of prenatalism. The title of the article, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk are right about
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falling birth rates, but here's where they get it all wrong. What do you think is his point?
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You've told me about this already. He thinks it's genetics and that it will be washed out and he's
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just super wrong and not good at math. But continue, Simone. I think it's an important conversation to
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be had because he makes some valid points and he points to some valid information, but he is missing
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some very important details. So he starts the article with, their efforts are notable, but Vance and Musk
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both underappreciate the role of genetics in determining fertility. Without a proper understanding,
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their efforts will fail. Now, I think both Vance and Musk are really up to date on genetics. First,
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he points to the research of Ronald Fisher. And this is where I learned something new because I
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didn't realize that this concept that fertility is heritable goes back to as early of the 1930s.
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So in 1930, this guy named Ronald Fisher wrote a book called The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.
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And I love, genetical is a word. Can we bring that back? Yes. In which he talks about the
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correlation between genetics and fertility. From the article, Jacob writes, Fisher noted that the
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granddaughters of large families tended to have more children than those from small families.
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Fisher concluded that, quote, about 40% of the total variance, end quote, infertility was attributable
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to genetics. He continues, importantly, Fisher didn't just conclude that fertility varied between
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individuals because of different genetic abilities to have children. Instead, Fisher argued that the
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most important cause of variation was different genetic desire to have children. Fisher theorized
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that more fertile strains with a greater desire for children could become more common within a span of
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10 generations or approximately 250 years. So immediately, this is where the argument both is
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legitimate but incredibly flawed. And you see where the flaw is, right?
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Well, no, the flaw is not where you think it is. Okay. You think the flaw is, let me see if I'm
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getting you right here. You think the flaw is around timelines for impact?
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Well, we don't have 250 years to bounce back from the vertiginous drop in fertility.
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So it's timelines for impact. That's not sort of. I was exactly right.
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Oh, I thought you meant like, that it was going to take a long time.
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It literally doesn't understand evolution at the most base level.
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So, all right, let's see if I can condense the point I tried to make while talking but ended up
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being very long. Pointing out that fertility is heritable in humans or that people who have higher
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rates of fertility end up having kids who have more kids is not the same as pointing out something like
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blue eyes are heritable and people with blue eyes end up having more kids because fertility
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is a near direct correlate or marker for fitness within modern human populations where people
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aren't dying of diseases or from lack of food. Now, the very fact that we're seeing significant
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genetic variation in fertility-related behaviors within a population isn't evidence that one variant
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is strictly quote-unquote better in evolutionary terms. If it were consistently advantageous across
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environments, it would have been optimized through selection. Instead, this variation signals
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that the environmental pressures are changing, creating different selection conditions that
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temporarily favor certain genetic predispositions before changing again as society evolves.
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E.g., the very fact that in this initial study, he found that some women had these
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genetic precursors to predilections for having lots of kids and other women didn't have that
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meant that there must not have been this strong selective pressure that he was observing in his
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own time if you went back 150 years before his own time or that one behavior pattern would have
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already been selected for. So an example we can look at here is if you look at the distant past
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and food was scarce and there wasn't modern medicine, there would have been an evolutionary
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benefit for a woman not being overly impulsive in who she was sleeping with and ending up having too
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many kids, whereas there would have been pretty much a strict evolutionary benefit during a period where,
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you know, you have modern medicine and modern food to this level of impulsivity that might lead to
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tons of kids. But then this benefit may disappear when contraception comes onto the scene
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and evolutionary strategies that relied on impulsivity suddenly stop working. So you can see as the
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environment changes, the psychological correlates to high fertility also change. And right now we're dealing
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in a time where the evolutionary environment is completely doing somersaults every few years, if not at least
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every couple decades. I mean, evolution has been acting throughout this entire period. It didn't
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start in the 1930s, right? Yes. And so what he's noticing here is in the 1930s, certain genetic
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predilections or I'd say certain personality predilections that had genetic correlates led to a
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higher fertility rate then than they would have in the past and are now being strongly selected for.
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But here's the problem with all of that. The personality profile or predilections that
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differentially led to a high fertility rate in the 1930s versus let's say just a hundred years before
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that are radically different than the ones that lead to a high number of children today.
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That's a really good point. I hadn't even thought about that because we live in such a different
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landscape with so many different pressures. Right. And if it was conformist and cool to have kids back
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then, then you're the last person to have kids now. Exactly. As we've pointed out, actually, society
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was in this generation. And this is the primary thing I would argue that's leading to fertility
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collapse. Because if you look in Latin America, you look at the United States, it's mostly women under
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24 who are not having kids within all the other demographics. Fertility rates are going up or staying
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even, which implies that it's the accidental children that were being had due to people who had a
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personality profile for maybe more reckless decisions, maybe higher amounts of arousal or lust, maybe higher
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amounts of not thinking through things or impulsivity. And that strategy for motivating reproduction in
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in the world, both in Latin America, because that's also where we see it disappearing, and in the United
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States is no longer successful. And this transformation has only happened in about the past six years or so.
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So I think the problem is, is that- Well, I mean, so many things are happening, right? I mean,
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we've seen various demographic transitions take place. And I think they're in response to really
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complicated things. And this is why Dan has- Simone, the primary cause of demographic collapse
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right now that's, that's happened very recently that's led to this recent collapse isn't complicated.
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It's not a bunch of things. It's one thing that has disappeared that used to exist within the
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population. And it is entirely a genetically coded personality profile strategy for motivating fertility
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rate, which stopped being functional. This is incredibly important if you're trying to chart out
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long-term what's going to be selected for when we consider how quickly the genetically correlated
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personality profiles that are evolutionarily successful change with the change in technology.
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All right, to answer her what question, because I didn't hear it while this was recording,
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the thing that has disappeared from the population are the children who were born by accident.
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That's the vast majority, i.e. the parents were horny and made an impulsive decision and ended up
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getting pregnant without intending to end up getting pregnant. That is the category of birth that has
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dropped most precipitously if we assume that this category made up most of the births in the United
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States under the age of 24 and even more under the age of 18, which I think is a pretty safe assumption
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because those are the two categories where fertility rates have actually dropped. And yet we see stable
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or rising fertility rates for women of all other age brackets. And this was the strategy that was both
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cultural and culturally evolutionarily selected for historically and biologically evolutionarily
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selected for where if you paired an impulsive high arousal person with a cultural group that banned access to
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things like pornography and contraception, that individual is going to have more kids. The strategy just
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doesn't appear to be very effective anymore with most kids being born because parents intentionally
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chose to have those kids, even when they're from cultures that historically leaned on accidental
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By that, what I mean, Simone, is if we've already seen this radical shift just over the past 10 years
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or so, we are going to potentially see a completely different personality profile relevant
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in the next 20 years. And then 20 years after that, it'll be a completely different profile,
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which doesn't give evolution enough time to optimize around that.
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So you're kind of saying that given the rapidly shifting environment, any sort of genetic
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predisposition to have kids is irrelevant because whatever works today isn't going to work in 20 years
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and isn't going to work in 40. Yeah, because it's very important to note that it is not a genetic
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predisposition to have kids. Okay. What it is, is things like a genetic predisposition for impulsive
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decisions or a genetic predisposition to act on lust in the past. And for our generation, it is likely a
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genetic predisposition to be very goal directed, to be a long-term thinker, to be in fact,
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be less hedonic, more conscientious, more long-term oriented. Anti-hedonic, more conscientious,
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more, I'd say very, like, if you look at why are we high fertility? Why is everyone from my family
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high fertility, like across my family? I'm from a very high fertility family. None of these are kids
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that were had accidentally. Not a single person in my family that I'm ever aware of had gotten
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pregnant accidentally. Everyone in my family is very dedicated to, like, these are kids that exist
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because they got married and they wanted kids. But then secondarily, if you look at, like, my
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personality profile, the genetically coded trait I have within my personality profile that I think is
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most linked to me having a lot of kids is the trait that caused me, when I knew that my college degree
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was about to end, I already, like, couldn't focus on it. I was already focused on moving into the next
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city, getting a job, starting that job early. This was true, like, when I went to college, I arrived a week
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early and I took a map and I made a map of every important location in the city so I could be as
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effective as possible in that first week. When I, you know, when we first got married, I was like,
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okay, Simone, we need to start thinking about having kids. Like, when is that going to happen?
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Like, we need to start looking at this, this, and this. When I met you, I was like, Simone, I am so late
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to get married. I should have gotten married in college. I think it's two things overlapping. One,
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this intense initiative drive that I have, which isn't like a regular initiative. It's like a plan
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out, get to the next stage sort of initiative. And then the second is, and this is why we're always
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like starting new companies or new projects or anything like that. Like it can have deleterious
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effects as well, but we mostly complete those as well. So I guess that's not terrible, like,
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but the, the, the, the second trait that I have is an obsession with planning, not just a,
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I need to do this right now, but the other is, and I need to collect all of the data on this thing.
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Like she knows like, well, but that, that also is like the famous trait highlighted at the very
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beginning of the movie, idiocracy, implying this is why people stopped having kids because they were
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planning. And in fact, that is one of the same factors that is associated with the steepest drop
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in fertility. It's that people do now want to plan their children and not have mistake babies. And so
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now they're using birth control diligently. Psychologically, an interesting question.
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There is obviously, and you know what I mean when I'm talking about the way that I plan things,
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a psychological difference between me and like the planning procrastinator.
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What do you think that's like? Actually, I would say that you're not a planner.
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You are a figure out what's wrong and fix it while you're doing it person. You're not actually a planner.
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No, no, no. Okay. Actually, hold on. I'll, I'll, I'll word this differently because I am a planner,
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but it's a different. So these people are about to make a major life decision. And so they go into
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that major life decision and they say, okay, what's everything I need to know about this major life
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decision. Whereas the type of planning that I do is I have X goal for myself, have a lot of kids.
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Okay. While I'm 17, I need to look up all of the biological things that could get in the way of
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that. I need to look up all of the things that could get in the way of that. I need to, I think
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it's that I have a compulsion to plan out super long-term things. I mean, is that not what my
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interest in the pronatalist movement is, right? That I work back from a end desire with a lot of
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meticulousness. Well, and I think that big characteristic is long-termism of, of people
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having kids now and also comfort with delayed gratification. That is crucial, but yeah,
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planning, I would just reward that. But before we go apart, the point being is that these things
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may continue to be high fertility in the age of AI, but we don't know, like AI might be able to
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augment some of these things, like a person not thinking through that they're not going to be
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fertile if they wait until their late twenties to find a husband or wife.
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Yeah. Or it could just, you know, seamlessly help them make, you know, it can enable viable
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in vitro gametogenesis. So you don't need to plan a really good point. You just made there is just
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consider if medical technology increases the window, which it likely will that a woman can get pregnant
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so that she can get pregnant significantly later, you have entirely changed the personality profile,
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the genetically linked personality profile that's optimal for having lots of kids. But anyway, back
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to the article. Yeah. So I'm assuming, so after he talks about Fisher in the 1930s, and it's still
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wild to me that people thought that my birth rate was genetical so early. He talks about how, quote,
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twin studies from the US and Britain, Denmark, and Sweden have shown that as much as 50% of variation
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in fertility is genetically derived, supporting Fisher's earlier estimate, DNA sequencing has
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supported this, highlighting individual genes that are strongly associated with fertility.
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He continues that similarly, studies from Denmark and Quebec have shown that the role of genetics in
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determining fertility has increased in Western populations, supporting the idea of ongoing selection
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for the desire to have children. Genes have been identified that correlate with earlier age at first
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birth, later age at last birth, and total children ever born, and later menopause. So you think none of
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those matter? I mean, I imagine that- The menopause, no, it's the question here is not are certain things
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being selected for within this generation, but could those things reach an optimum level and then lead
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to fertility rates increasing again society-wide? These are two very different questions. Do I doubt,
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no, not at all that things are being selected for within this generation? I am also not somebody
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who doubts incredibly fast changes in human profiles, whether it is biology or psychology.
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Yeah, so for example, if it turned out that there was something within our generation
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that basically ensured that nobody who had a high degree of impulsivity was having kids,
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you would see a rapid and profound shift in the amount of impulsivity in just one generation.
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The problem being is the technological shifts. So around things like menopause, you could say,
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okay, well, like later menopause is going to be selected for, right?
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Yeah. But that'll likely take, because it's not being selected for that strongly within this
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generation, at least four generations to really be felt. With that being the case, in four generations,
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do I expect most babies, like, do I expect them to be able to medically increase the lengths of
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menopause? Do I expect- Well, and keep in mind, Fisher's theory was 10 generations or 250 years.
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Yeah. So the point I'm making is this stuff is going to be relevant in the developing world,
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but I do not think it'll be as relevant to the developed world or the portion of humanity that's
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aiming for the stars and everything like that. And I would note that what you're actually seeing here
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and what's really being sort of missed in the way this is being framed is it was in different social
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and economic contexts, different genes are going to be high fertility because they are associated with
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different fertility strategies. So for example, in the developing world, we might see more of a
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selection for impulsivity again, especially in areas of extreme poverty. You might see an increase
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in the rate of twin carrying. You might see an increase in the rate of extended menopause. For example,
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one of the genetic changes in the game that I'm writing that takes place in a post-fertility
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apocalypse world, a faction of humanity, it went for this dysgenic strategy, this strategy of low
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control, low education, everything like that. And in that community, because they're not going to be
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as augmented by technology as much, you're going to see the most genetic change. And one of the genetic
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changes that I presume will happen within this community is they'll begin to give birth
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more litters with smaller brain cases. Yeah, the primary thing that prevents this in humans and why
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you don't have twins that much in humans is that lowers the IQ of each of them. And then you've got the
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risk to the female of the giant brain case, which right now it's just like a huge problem for any
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population that isn't wealthy and it has access to technology because women die from that all the time.
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Babies' heads getting stuck? Yes. Well, you couldn't give birth to kids. It's not just IVF. You also,
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our kids' heads are too big for you to give birth naturally. Like we need to maintain technology for
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our gene line to survive. And that's a completely different evolutionary strategy. And I think that we
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haven't seen a association or potential split in humans for a long time with these very, very
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differentiated selected strategies. Fair point. So I'm curious to see then what you think of his
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reference to France as a real world example. Jacob writes, in Europe, France was the first nation to
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experience significant modern birth rate declines. Yet today, France has the highest birth rate in all
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of Europe. And just to confirm, yes, it does. France's total fertility rate is now 1.79 live
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births per woman, at least as of 2022. This places it ahead of other European Union countries, followed
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by Romania 1.71 and Bulgaria 1.65. So correct. He writes, France's high fertility can't be explained by
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immigration. Regions with few immigrants lead the country in fertility. Culture, French-speaking areas
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of neighboring Belgium and Switzerland don't have elevated fertility or policy. France is below the
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OECD average for family aid. But it may be explainable through genetics. France's fertility
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transition occurred in the 1750s, matching Fisher's calculation that it would take approximately 10
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generations for genetic shifts to substantially increase birth rates. Now, you know, I'm a very
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incredulous person. So I read something like that. And I'm like, oh, I mean, like, I guess it's the
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genetics. I mean, so he is actually right about this, but not in a way that helps his overall argument.
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Okay. So the timelines line up. If you're familiar with the history of the region, France had a fertility
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crash before most of the other regions in Europe, because it's secularized before most of the other
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regions in Europe, the fertility crash in France aligned with the secularization. So what do we
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have here in France in the 1700s when we're talking about this initial fertility collapse? What you had
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was, remember how I said it is not that you have high birth rate genes or high fertility genes, it's
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that you have high fertility genes was in a specific social context. What happened to France is they went
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from a social context where the genes needed to motivate high fertility in a very religious society
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to genes that needed to motivate high fertility in an irreligious society. And those two genes were
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different, which led to a fertility crash. Since then, the genes that lead to or protect fertility rates,
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despite irreligiosity, have been selected for in France. Now we can ask what are those genes that could be
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interesting to study? I mean, clearly there's a strategy here. Is it that they are really focused
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on long-term planning, like the thing that causes my family to be high fertility? Or is it that they
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are really focused on like high impulsivity? And my family is high impulsivity as well, I guess I'd say
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it's like a long-term planning plus impulsivity. Do like what collection is it that works? And then we
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have to answer the second question. Hold on, you answered that first question. Remember the first
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thing that you chose to look at when our foundation started looking at demographic collapse of like,
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should we be concerned about this? Was you took data collected by Spencer Greenberg, which he collected
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after the 2016 presidential election in the United States, which also happened to collect information
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on how many kids participants had. And you looked for, with the help of someone from, I think,
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the Mayo Clinic or something that we hired for correlations in, in behavioral traits or beliefs
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or, you know, general characteristics between high fertility and these people. So what did you
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find, Malcolm? Well, high degrees of xenophobia lead to higher fertility rates, high degrees of
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authoritarian thinking lead to higher fertility rates. Those are the two core things. Religiosity was
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much lower on it than I expected. It was meant. It was going to be about religiosity and it turned
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out, no, no, no, it's about outgroup hatred and xenophobia. Oh, and very like sensitivity to
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hierarchy. But keep in mind, this is one particular genetic strategy. Yeah. And so, but I'm just saying
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like, that's the one that appears to be doing well. But we don't know what it was that was selected
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for between 1700s France and modern day France. But what I can say is that whatever the change in the
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genetic profile between pre 1700s France, you know, religious France and secular France,
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yes, it may have adopted to a secular society. Now, the problem is, is that the new things that
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are impacting fertility rate and impacting it incrementally more each generation. Now,
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specifically here, we're looking at like AI boyfriends and girlfriends, really difficult
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dating markets. Like these are two, like when I'm looking at like, actually, what are the biggest
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fertility challenges our kids need to overcome? For you and me, within our generation, it was
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overcoming the hedonism that was all around us and a society that- Well, it was even more,
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I think it was having the discipline to date, find, and marry a partner. No, no, no. It was,
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well, yeah, it was about having discipline, but also the will to go against what society was telling
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us. Now, for our kids, the key hurdles are actually quite different. Winning was in the modern
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dating market requires a completely different set of sociological profiles than was necessary to win
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in our generation. Not, I think less so for me. I think that women can still have a huge advantage
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by being a first mover, by like actively and proactively reaching out to men and engaging
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with them because women still just don't do that. So women, okay, this is a, this is a great point.
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I do not think that women being first movers is what was selected for between religious France
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and secular France. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. This is an entirely
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new genetic strategy that became relevant, and I think it is super relevant for this generation.
00:25:39.140
I think women, young women born in this generation who are sexually aggressive first movers are going
00:25:46.360
to be dramatically more reproductively successful than their counterparts. Yet, I do not think that this is
00:25:52.200
like a long-term. Well, sexually aggressive first movers and closers. Let's be clear about that.
00:25:56.560
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not like sleep around with a lot of people, but like they choose their target and
00:26:01.080
they, they- They're on it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I, yeah, that's my thought. I think he's pointing to a
00:26:08.400
real phenomenon here that there was actually a genetic selection, a genetic change in France after this
00:26:14.420
period, but it was a one-off thing that was really only allowed by a fairly stable change in society
00:26:21.900
that lasted for like a hundred years, which is not what we're dealing with now. I'd also point out
00:26:27.600
that we can see, you know, we're talking about, remember I said, it's about having a genetic
00:26:31.700
optimum for a specific society instead of social rules and norms. This is, as we have mentioned
00:26:36.840
many times, why I think that previously Catholic populations, now France doesn't really count here
00:26:43.240
because again, they secularize really early, but if you're talking about your average Catholic-
00:26:46.380
I mean, I think what he's describing here is, is rural French speaking genetically, like
00:26:53.820
But with France, the thing that led to the population collapse was secularization. So we
00:27:00.640
can ignore France in this part of the conversation, Simone. So specifically here, if you're looking
00:27:06.260
at Catholic populations, I always point out they have a much lower, like historically, genetically
00:27:11.760
Catholic populations, i.e. populations where you had a, a strongly held Catholic belief system
00:27:18.040
alongside genes and, and different genes are going to be successful in this environment,
00:27:24.180
right? Because a, a, a population that bans things like pornography and contraception and,
00:27:30.980
and stuff like that is going to cause specific genes to be more successful, specifically just
00:27:36.900
genes around like low impulsivity control, high arousal, everything like that.
00:27:40.620
This is particularly compounded in something like Catholic culture, where you have that
00:27:45.960
line, you know, Matthew 19, 6, which states, what therefore God has joined together, let
00:27:51.340
not man separate. Basically, it means that if you as a young person sleep around and get
00:27:56.540
knocked up, it's shotgun wedding time, that's who you're going to marry. So that impulsivity
00:28:01.560
doesn't leave you out of the sex market. In other cultures, a woman who sleeps around and
00:28:07.320
gets knocked up while she's young, basically becomes unmarriable for the rest of her life
00:28:11.420
and is stuck in poverty with that one kid, which makes impulsivity a very bad evolutionary
00:28:18.040
As an aside here, I denote that the stereotype of the Catholic schoolgirl being extra horny
00:28:24.820
and sleeping around a lot, and the takeaway lesson from this, that this is because if
00:28:30.500
you repress someone or you don't give them access to sexual outlets, they end up acting
00:28:34.940
in this way, may actually be wrong. It may just be that Catholics have been intergenerationally
00:28:42.420
selected for high horniness when contrasted with other religious groups because that had
00:28:48.780
a higher impact on their fertility than other religious groups. And as somebody who's slept
00:28:53.200
around a lot, I can say anecdotally, and I've mentioned this before, Catholic girls are just
00:28:58.620
way hornier than any other group of girls who I slept with and way more engaged in bed than
00:29:06.300
any other group that I've slept with. And this would make sense because those traits would
00:29:11.240
have led to differential higher fertility given Catholic culture within Catholic populations
00:29:44.140
And that now that this strategy no longer works or is no longer like socially enforced enough
00:29:49.860
to be successful, we are seeing populations that leaned on it have a unique crash in fertility
00:29:55.560
rates, specifically the Latin American fertility crash and the Catholic majority European country
00:30:01.040
fertility crash, which is much lower than the rest of Europe.
00:30:03.380
Fair. I want to hear what you think of Jacob's recommendations, because I, I agree with half
00:30:13.080
of what he says and the other half, I'm like, you're totally misreading things. He writes first
00:30:17.900
one size fits all proposals to raise birth rates while ignoring genetics won't work. Vance has argued
00:30:23.100
for increasing the child tax credit while Musk has called for giving medals to increase the social
00:30:28.460
status of motherhood. But as we've seen in Hungary and Norway, which both generously subsidize births
00:30:34.780
solutions that focus on extrinsic motivations are ineffective at raising fertility. Instead,
00:30:40.500
policies to counter population decline will be most effective if they consider genetics by
00:30:45.880
subsidizing those with demonstrated fertility desires. For example, governments should offer
00:30:51.000
increased tax credits to larger families rather than by evenly distributing incentives for a child.
00:30:56.100
He also argues that we'll just naturally rebound, which I would totally disagree with.
00:31:00.540
So that's actually like, okay, so this person sounds like an otherwise smart person.
00:31:05.700
This natural rebound idea is just so preposterous. We are looking at the timelines we're looking at
00:31:12.760
here and the crash. It is, it is, it, this is somebody who like, well, I think we never, we never argued
00:31:20.180
there wasn't going to be a rebound. We just knew that the rebound would be into a post-apocalyptic
00:31:25.060
post-civilization. Yeah. The rebounds happens post-apocalypse, post-speciation, post a lot of
00:31:30.520
other really big things. They like, yeah, you get a rebound, but after like, and you don't just be
00:31:35.280
like, ah, this is, this is like saying, oh yeah, our car is heading towards a cliff, but don't worry.
00:31:41.220
Eventually, you know, it'll be made into a new car. And you're like, wait, wait, what, what do you
00:31:45.980
mean? It'll be made into a new car. It's like, you know, a lot of cars after they get wrecked,
00:31:50.340
they get sent to the inbound and they get crushed, like in Brave Little Toaster.
00:32:10.340
Don't have the heart to live in the fast lane. All that is past and gone.
00:32:15.060
And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So you're basically saying
00:32:20.820
I have a car now. There will be a car at some point in the future. And you are ignoring that
00:32:27.440
entire musical scene in Brave Little Toaster, which is happening in between those two scenes.
00:32:33.060
No, it's just like those, those evil person, that evil person trope in a movie when he's like,
00:32:53.480
yes, tell me the secret and I will set you free. And then, you know, they say, they say whatever it
00:32:58.220
is. And then they shoot them in the head and they're like, from your mortal coil. It's like,
00:33:02.640
yeah, well, we'll get through that. I mean, after society has completely collapsed, sure.
00:33:09.440
There will be nothing left, but whatever. But what I do appreciate, where he does get it right,
00:33:15.300
though, is he, he basically roughly says that the important thing is to protect
00:33:21.580
already high fertility populations. And that is 100% the most important thing to do.
00:33:27.820
No, he said to me, just take into account the different genetics of populations that are having
00:33:32.260
lots of kids. And here, I would argue he is absolutely right, but he's not being specific.
00:33:38.420
And he needs to be specific here because he, when you get specific, it gets offensive, but it's important.
00:33:44.300
Okay. Okay. So you have to say, what are the offensive parts of this?
00:33:49.260
Well, some genetically selected reproductive strategies are based around parasitizing the
00:33:58.380
state. For example, there are certain like personality profiles that have some genetic
00:34:04.740
correlates to them, which would lead to one, choosing to live off the state at a higher rate.
00:34:10.380
And two, using that to have lots of kids. If we, as a state lean into solutions that target this
00:34:20.720
genetic strategy, that's going to make everything worse for everyone. If we alternatively look around
00:34:29.560
and say, okay, what other strategies are there right now? Okay. Let's look at the quiverful strategy,
00:34:34.720
right? The quiverful strategy is very different from your in mind strategy. Okay. This is a,
00:34:40.380
religious family who has a stay at home mom and who is biologically with natural sex, just having
00:34:48.160
sex a lot and hoping that she gets pregnant a bunch of times. So what's going to be selected
00:34:53.020
for in a family? It's letting Jesus take the wheel. Yeah. Letting Jesus take the wheel. So a family
00:34:58.020
that's doing that intergenerationally. Okay. What is going to lead to a higher number of kids?
00:35:02.940
You're likely going to get, this is where I think authoritarianism is being selected for because
00:35:07.360
families will stay together longer. If there is a tendency to trust like the authority of the family,
00:35:12.140
even when he might be going against things and also trusting God. I think that that's part of
00:35:16.580
what we're seeing there, not religiosity, but just like I obey the authority. And then secondarily,
00:35:22.060
I think that they're going to do better if they have higher degrees of female submissiveness and,
00:35:27.920
and preference for traditional feminine roles, as we've seen that those do have a genetic link that,
00:35:32.820
those preferences. I love the slip there because both traditional feminine roles and traditional
00:35:38.440
fremen roles both work here. Fremen roles. Yes. Also you're going to get later menopause
00:35:44.340
selection. You're going to get a higher degree of ability to get pregnant, like fecundity,
00:35:50.820
like actual biological fecundity, which is just completely irrelevant for Simone and I because we
00:35:55.840
use like IVF and, and people are like, Oh, human factors like health span broadly, like how, how do I
00:36:04.380
think matter? Because that, that influences. Well, actually long you can kind of, but people who are
00:36:12.320
like, Oh, with you guys, you cannot intergenerationally use a technology like IVF so much that it affects your
00:36:21.540
genes so that you're reliant on the technology to which I would point them to C-sections where this
00:36:27.320
has already happened to a huge portion of the developed world where they now have kids whose
00:36:34.380
craniums are so large on average that they would just die. Like if we lost the technology for C-sections
00:36:42.140
as a society, and we attempted to just survive naturally. And this is something that's like not
00:36:47.240
described in like post-apocalyptic novels or stuff like that. We probably have, I think about 25 to
00:36:53.300
30% of women die before they got to three kids. Like we have. Well, isn't that more or less what
00:36:58.620
happened in the past? No, you, you couldn't possibly survive as a species if you couldn't get to three
00:37:04.240
kids on average biologically. No, biologically, if you could not get to three kids because not everyone
00:37:11.420
is reproductively successful. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. That's true. So this is a new
00:37:15.860
thing. And it's the same with IVF and stuff like that. The point that I'm making here is the quiverful
00:37:21.420
reproductive strategy and our reproductive strategies are two different, but symbiotic and economically
00:37:31.320
productive reproductive strategies that lead to groups that bring America forward. And so I think
00:37:37.960
that government policies that recognize, ah, quiverful, this is a beneficial reproductive strategy for the
00:37:45.140
state. It is okay to look for ways to promote this reproductive strategy. For example, preventing their
00:37:51.100
kids from being brainwashed and everything like that. Maybe helping lower types of fertility technology
00:37:57.160
cost that these types of families use. Like those fertility technologies that like Catholics like to
00:38:02.460
use for getting pregnant naturally at a higher rate and stuff like that. And, and increased training
00:38:07.100
around those types of technology within our school system. I'd promote all of that, even though it
00:38:11.040
doesn't benefit my reproductive strategy, it benefits one of the, I don't know how to say it, non-parasitic
00:38:17.260
reproductive strategies. And, and I would hope that they would have the magnanimity to also promote
00:38:24.320
technology that helps our reproductive strategy as Trump and J.D. Vance have already done with their
00:38:30.620
signing into an executive order, an executive order, reducing the cost of IVF.
00:38:34.700
That was more just calling for advice on policy that would make IVF more affordable for people.
00:38:44.960
Yeah, no, that's true. Yes. An executive order with the goal to do that.
00:38:47.760
And I, and I'd also point out, with this executive order, somebody on the discord was saying the only
00:38:51.720
thing they care about in their big fear is that the possibility for IVF would be banned. And they're
00:38:56.300
like, Malcolm, like, which, like, seriously, can we trust that Trump's not going to do that? And I'm,
00:39:00.440
I think we can see now. No, he's not going to do that. Yeah. Come on. He's like, called himself
00:39:07.620
the father of IVF. I don't think he's kind of go back. Especially with Elon around, but.
00:39:14.140
I'm, I would be surprised if Trump did not have any children through IVF. So I think once you,
00:39:20.840
once you go through it, you are much more likely to be supportive of it. I think another thing that
00:39:27.240
Jacob misses is if you just let this thing play out, the amount of diversity that you're losing
00:39:32.840
is, is huge. And as much as I'm all for evolution playing out some kind of, you know, game of
00:39:39.800
optimization, I also don't want to lose a lot of really valuable perspectives and cultures that have
00:39:46.160
sprung up that have, especially given your point about this rapidly evolving climate.
00:39:52.420
You know, in the past it made sense because for thousands of years, things wouldn't really change.
00:39:57.860
So of course it's, it's good to just delete from the genome, the stuff that at one point in time
00:40:02.500
isn't fit right now. If we delete from the genome, something that right now isn't useful, but we're
00:40:08.580
like the singularity is here and things are about to rapidly go into clown world times, you know,
00:40:13.380
like squared cubed to infinity. We're making a big mistake. And I think that's another really
00:40:19.300
important point is that we really don't, we cannot afford to, to like miss out on, on all that
00:40:27.060
diversity. Another really important point. And you and I've looked at this from our nebula genomic
00:40:32.580
sequencing, because actually two of the scores that Jacob mentions here are scores that we can see for
00:40:36.820
ourselves in nebula. We can see our scores for age at first birth, which are not really remarkable.
00:40:43.380
So your polygenic score for age at first birth is 42nd. You're in the 42nd percentile. So you're
00:40:50.260
40% of the average score to be, to have an older age at first birth. Yeah. Meaning, meaning you're more
00:40:56.900
likely to be younger with first birth because this is, this is a polygenic score for people who are more
00:41:03.260
likely to be older when they have their first kid. And I'm in the 29th percentile. So I'm even more likely
00:41:08.820
to have kids young, which actually makes sense given when some of my ancestors had kids. So the more
00:41:15.660
important one is childlessness. More interestingly is the childlessness scores, which I think one are
00:41:25.160
accurate for you and me, but also show how genetics aren't everything, how life is about nature and
00:41:32.780
nurture. So your childlessness percentile is 59%, which kind of makes sense. I mean, your family,
00:41:41.780
they're like, yeah, we're definitely having kids, but they cap it at three.
00:41:45.260
Well, I think I, well, it's a couple of four, but yeah, I think that my family is motivated,
00:41:51.540
as I said, to be high fertility through a completely different mechanism than was particularly successful
00:41:57.860
within the last few generations. Even though my family has always had lots of kids. Like if you read
00:42:02.520
our family books, it was 12 kids per generation, like three generations in a row. So, you know,
00:42:07.640
very high fertility, historically high fertility still, but I think it was a different strategy
00:42:13.420
being used than the one being captured here, but continue. More importantly, and this checks out,
00:42:19.720
I'm in the 97th percentile for childlessness. So I am among those in the population who based on my
00:42:25.940
genetics is way less likely to have kids, any kids at all, which kind of checks out, right? I mean,
00:42:31.720
like my counterfactual was going to be childlessness. My plan in life before I met you
00:42:38.600
was childlessness. But I think the fact that I met you and that you changed my, my surroundings and
00:42:45.360
environment and culture, which can happen to anyone, especially based on things like government policy
00:42:50.640
and various incentives demonstrates just how weak genetic determinism is because suddenly, well,
00:42:57.900
not suddenly like, you know, over years or whatever, but based on external exogenous factors,
00:43:03.680
Jake, I went from wanting zero kids. In fact, to being really excited about the idea of like sterilizing
00:43:09.240
myself, even though I didn't have, I was a virgin. I was just like, I don't know. I went to being like,
00:43:14.980
well, I want five kids. No, seven kids. No, 10 kids. No, 14. You know, just like endless,
00:43:20.420
endless. What you're missing here is you see this as an argument against genetic determinism when it's
00:43:28.640
not at all an argument against genetic determinism. It's an argument for genetic determinism. What you
00:43:33.620
are missing is the thing that transformed for you is you internally frame it as I am what changed for
00:43:41.280
you, but that's not really it. It's the culture and worldview, the memetic framework that I brought
00:43:48.840
worked really, really well to motivate high fertility with the very same impulses that may have motivated
00:43:58.320
a very low fertility rate when these numbers were being calculated. So you being a person who is not
00:44:05.360
motivated by arousal, being a person who is incredibly deliberate, being a person who really
00:44:10.560
likes setting out numbers and goals and hitting more metrics is in the last generation and was in the
00:44:17.560
framework that most of society is using. This is going to be a very low fertility genetic profile.
00:44:24.160
However, it was in the techno puritan worldview and framework that we hopefully can pass on to our
00:44:30.580
kids. This is the most high profile and high fertility genetic profile you can have, which is again,
00:44:37.660
why there is utility in preserving some degree of genetic diversity into the future because you,
00:44:43.740
you don't know what environment they might suddenly thrive in.
00:44:47.420
Well, and, and you've got to, and this is why I often tell people when you're crafting a culture
00:44:51.380
for yourself and your kids, this is why it's so dangerous to just borrow somebody else's culture,
00:44:56.340
like lock and barrel, right? Instead of tweaking it for your own proclivities, way of seeing the
00:45:03.400
world, vices, et cetera. And this techno puritan mindset, if you've watched our tracks on this and
00:45:08.380
everything that's very much about, you do not breed for arousal. You do not do anything for pleasure.
00:45:12.560
You do not, you know, you are doing it for the intergenerational improvement of humanity for
00:45:17.800
your kids, for your, you know, it is a, a task reframing fertility as a task and a task of value
00:45:27.760
is how I made it conducive with this genetic profile for you.
00:45:33.000
Yeah. Which is still a very compelling argument for people, not looking at genetics and thinking
00:45:39.360
this means this is how this person's life is going to play out. And, and no one should,
00:45:44.760
no, but they, they should, they should, they should look at genetics and say, Oh, these traits,
00:45:52.020
like your personality is highly heredible. It is not something that's going to change over the course
00:45:57.300
of your life. So if you want to alter the fertility rate of somebody with this genetic profile, that in
00:46:04.860
the existing social context leads to very low fertility rates, what you need to change is
00:46:10.780
the social context and scaffolding that is on top of them, because that is the thing that you can
00:46:16.760
actually change. You cannot change their genetics. Well, yes. Okay. Rule number one is allow for
00:46:23.540
cultural and religious freedom. Let high fertility families do their thing. Rule two is if you want to
00:46:30.360
create a new additional environment that is very conducive to high fertility, look at those factors.
00:46:40.280
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. That is, that is favorable. All right. I love you, Simone. You are a perfect
00:46:48.820
woman. All right. I have a recording for when you're ready. I realized something, Simone. Yeah. You are not
00:46:57.480
just post-wall, but you're like seven years post-wall now. Is wall exactly 30? Yeah. That's a common
00:47:04.800
understanding. It's 30 or 32 or the two that I often hear. No way. Yeah. See, I thought it was,
00:47:09.160
I don't know. I thought it was 32. That's sort of like what I've anchored to, but who knows? I've been
00:47:15.740
post-wall for my entire life. Just being post-wall is irrelevant if you have four kids and a fifth
00:47:23.900
on the way. I don't think we've announced that yet. Have we? We, we tweeted the frozen embryo
00:47:29.020
transfer and then subsequently got the, we've got a heartbeat. So pneumonia. Yeah. So hopefully the
00:47:34.920
pregnancy won't be lost. We have to see how the next appointment goes. And if everything still looks
00:47:42.500
healthy, then the odds of losing this pregnancy go down to around 2%, which would be ideal. So fingers
00:47:49.420
crossed. And I wonder if the audience notices when we're doing like backlog content. I I've
00:47:55.100
been gone for the past week for anyone who doesn't, didn't recognize that all the episodes were ever
00:47:59.040
gleaned and filmed a while ago. Evergreen. Evergreen. I love when people were like, oh, they still got all
00:48:04.240
their Christmas ornaments up. I'm like, no, we don't have Christmas ornaments up. We filmed all of that
00:48:07.700
ages ago. Like you think we can film an episode every day? Like that makes no sense. We have jobs and