Based Camp - Heritability of Pronatalism： Can We Evolve Our Way Out of Demographic Collapse？

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I came across an article

00:00:06.280 in The Hill by Wunderkin Jacob Hornstein, who's actually in the class of 2028 at UATX,

00:00:12.280 the new renegade university. And he made this really key argument that I think is underrated

00:00:17.060 in the world of prenatalism. The title of the article, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk are right about

00:00:22.820 falling birth rates, but here's where they get it all wrong. What do you think is his point?

00:00:28.420 You've told me about this already. He thinks it's genetics and that it will be washed out and he's

00:00:33.100 just super wrong and not good at math. But continue, Simone. I think it's an important conversation to

00:00:38.980 be had because he makes some valid points and he points to some valid information, but he is missing

00:00:45.860 some very important details. So he starts the article with, their efforts are notable, but Vance and Musk

00:00:51.300 both underappreciate the role of genetics in determining fertility. Without a proper understanding,

00:00:56.060 their efforts will fail. Now, I think both Vance and Musk are really up to date on genetics. First,

00:01:03.580 he points to the research of Ronald Fisher. And this is where I learned something new because I

00:01:08.600 didn't realize that this concept that fertility is heritable goes back to as early of the 1930s.

00:01:15.440 So in 1930, this guy named Ronald Fisher wrote a book called The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.

00:01:22.440 And I love, genetical is a word. Can we bring that back? Yes. In which he talks about the

00:01:28.040 correlation between genetics and fertility. From the article, Jacob writes, Fisher noted that the

00:01:34.420 granddaughters of large families tended to have more children than those from small families.

00:01:38.780 Fisher concluded that, quote, about 40% of the total variance, end quote, infertility was attributable

00:01:45.100 to genetics. He continues, importantly, Fisher didn't just conclude that fertility varied between

00:01:50.240 individuals because of different genetic abilities to have children. Instead, Fisher argued that the

00:01:55.880 most important cause of variation was different genetic desire to have children. Fisher theorized

00:02:01.460 that more fertile strains with a greater desire for children could become more common within a span of

00:02:06.680 10 generations or approximately 250 years. So immediately, this is where the argument both is

00:02:13.720 legitimate but incredibly flawed. And you see where the flaw is, right?

00:02:17.740 Well, no, the flaw is not where you think it is. Okay. You think the flaw is, let me see if I'm

00:02:23.280 getting you right here. You think the flaw is around timelines for impact?

00:02:29.360 Sort of.

00:02:30.800 What do you think the flaw is?

00:02:32.900 Well, we don't have 250 years to bounce back from the vertiginous drop in fertility.

00:02:38.020 So it's timelines for impact. That's not sort of. I was exactly right.

00:02:40.620 Oh, I thought you meant like, that it was going to take a long time.

00:02:45.480 Here's what it gets wrong. Okay.

00:02:47.320 It literally doesn't understand evolution at the most base level.

00:02:51.820 Okay.

00:02:52.480 So, all right, let's see if I can condense the point I tried to make while talking but ended up

00:02:57.280 being very long. Pointing out that fertility is heritable in humans or that people who have higher

00:03:03.840 rates of fertility end up having kids who have more kids is not the same as pointing out something like

00:03:09.660 blue eyes are heritable and people with blue eyes end up having more kids because fertility 0.96

00:03:14.620 is a near direct correlate or marker for fitness within modern human populations where people

00:03:21.300 aren't dying of diseases or from lack of food. Now, the very fact that we're seeing significant

00:03:29.460 genetic variation in fertility-related behaviors within a population isn't evidence that one variant

00:03:36.240 is strictly quote-unquote better in evolutionary terms. If it were consistently advantageous across

00:03:41.300 environments, it would have been optimized through selection. Instead, this variation signals

00:03:45.960 that the environmental pressures are changing, creating different selection conditions that

00:03:50.880 temporarily favor certain genetic predispositions before changing again as society evolves.

00:03:57.100 E.g., the very fact that in this initial study, he found that some women had these

00:04:02.720 genetic precursors to predilections for having lots of kids and other women didn't have that 1.00

00:04:09.880 meant that there must not have been this strong selective pressure that he was observing in his

00:04:15.100 own time if you went back 150 years before his own time or that one behavior pattern would have

00:04:22.420 already been selected for. So an example we can look at here is if you look at the distant past

00:04:29.240 and food was scarce and there wasn't modern medicine, there would have been an evolutionary

00:04:34.420 benefit for a woman not being overly impulsive in who she was sleeping with and ending up having too

00:04:40.980 many kids, whereas there would have been pretty much a strict evolutionary benefit during a period where,

00:04:49.680 you know, you have modern medicine and modern food to this level of impulsivity that might lead to

00:04:56.420 tons of kids. But then this benefit may disappear when contraception comes onto the scene 1.00

00:05:02.040 and evolutionary strategies that relied on impulsivity suddenly stop working. So you can see as the

00:05:08.280 environment changes, the psychological correlates to high fertility also change. And right now we're dealing

00:05:15.900 in a time where the evolutionary environment is completely doing somersaults every few years, if not at least

00:05:22.860 every couple decades. I mean, evolution has been acting throughout this entire period. It didn't

00:05:27.860 start in the 1930s, right? Yes. And so what he's noticing here is in the 1930s, certain genetic

00:05:38.080 predilections or I'd say certain personality predilections that had genetic correlates led to a

00:05:45.400 higher fertility rate then than they would have in the past and are now being strongly selected for.

00:05:51.040 But here's the problem with all of that. The personality profile or predilections that

00:05:58.420 differentially led to a high fertility rate in the 1930s versus let's say just a hundred years before

00:06:06.120 that are radically different than the ones that lead to a high number of children today.

00:06:13.420 That's a really good point. I hadn't even thought about that because we live in such a different

00:06:16.520 landscape with so many different pressures. Right. And if it was conformist and cool to have kids back

00:06:22.440 then, then you're the last person to have kids now. Exactly. As we've pointed out, actually, society

00:06:29.800 was in this generation. And this is the primary thing I would argue that's leading to fertility

00:06:35.480 collapse. Because if you look in Latin America, you look at the United States, it's mostly women under 1.00

00:06:40.000 24 who are not having kids within all the other demographics. Fertility rates are going up or staying

00:06:44.400 even, which implies that it's the accidental children that were being had due to people who had a

00:06:51.360 personality profile for maybe more reckless decisions, maybe higher amounts of arousal or lust, maybe higher

00:06:59.000 amounts of not thinking through things or impulsivity. And that strategy for motivating reproduction in

00:07:08.000 in the world, both in Latin America, because that's also where we see it disappearing, and in the United

00:07:12.920 States is no longer successful. And this transformation has only happened in about the past six years or so.

00:07:20.280 So I think the problem is, is that- Well, I mean, so many things are happening, right? I mean,

00:07:24.660 we've seen various demographic transitions take place. And I think they're in response to really

00:07:29.760 complicated things. And this is why Dan has- Simone, the primary cause of demographic collapse 0.55

00:07:36.140 right now that's, that's happened very recently that's led to this recent collapse isn't complicated.

00:07:42.140 It's not a bunch of things. It's one thing that has disappeared that used to exist within the

00:07:48.580 population. And it is entirely a genetically coded personality profile strategy for motivating fertility

00:07:58.240 rate, which stopped being functional. This is incredibly important if you're trying to chart out

00:08:04.880 long-term what's going to be selected for when we consider how quickly the genetically correlated

00:08:13.260 personality profiles that are evolutionarily successful change with the change in technology.

00:08:21.560 All right, to answer her what question, because I didn't hear it while this was recording,

00:08:24.960 the thing that has disappeared from the population are the children who were born by accident.

00:08:30.760 That's the vast majority, i.e. the parents were horny and made an impulsive decision and ended up

00:08:37.460 getting pregnant without intending to end up getting pregnant. That is the category of birth that has

00:08:43.900 dropped most precipitously if we assume that this category made up most of the births in the United

00:08:50.280 States under the age of 24 and even more under the age of 18, which I think is a pretty safe assumption 1.00

00:08:57.240 because those are the two categories where fertility rates have actually dropped. And yet we see stable

00:09:02.780 or rising fertility rates for women of all other age brackets. And this was the strategy that was both

00:09:09.300 cultural and culturally evolutionarily selected for historically and biologically evolutionarily

00:09:15.420 selected for where if you paired an impulsive high arousal person with a cultural group that banned access to

00:09:22.820 things like pornography and contraception, that individual is going to have more kids. The strategy just 1.00

00:09:27.200 doesn't appear to be very effective anymore with most kids being born because parents intentionally

00:09:32.040 chose to have those kids, even when they're from cultures that historically leaned on accidental

00:09:38.000 pregnancies to pad their populations.

00:09:41.280 By that, what I mean, Simone, is if we've already seen this radical shift just over the past 10 years

00:09:47.020 or so, we are going to potentially see a completely different personality profile relevant

00:09:52.780 in the next 20 years. And then 20 years after that, it'll be a completely different profile,

00:09:57.300 which doesn't give evolution enough time to optimize around that.

00:10:02.220 So you're kind of saying that given the rapidly shifting environment, any sort of genetic

00:10:10.500 predisposition to have kids is irrelevant because whatever works today isn't going to work in 20 years

00:10:16.560 and isn't going to work in 40. Yeah, because it's very important to note that it is not a genetic

00:10:21.240 predisposition to have kids. Okay. What it is, is things like a genetic predisposition for impulsive

00:10:29.320 decisions or a genetic predisposition to act on lust in the past. And for our generation, it is likely a

00:10:36.920 genetic predisposition to be very goal directed, to be a long-term thinker, to be in fact,

00:10:43.700 be less hedonic, more conscientious, more long-term oriented. Anti-hedonic, more conscientious,

00:10:49.340 more, I'd say very, like, if you look at why are we high fertility? Why is everyone from my family

00:10:56.500 high fertility, like across my family? I'm from a very high fertility family. None of these are kids

00:11:02.160 that were had accidentally. Not a single person in my family that I'm ever aware of had gotten

00:11:05.680 pregnant accidentally. Everyone in my family is very dedicated to, like, these are kids that exist

00:11:10.880 because they got married and they wanted kids. But then secondarily, if you look at, like, my

00:11:15.920 personality profile, the genetically coded trait I have within my personality profile that I think is

00:11:21.940 most linked to me having a lot of kids is the trait that caused me, when I knew that my college degree

00:11:27.840 was about to end, I already, like, couldn't focus on it. I was already focused on moving into the next

00:11:33.480 city, getting a job, starting that job early. This was true, like, when I went to college, I arrived a week

00:11:39.100 early and I took a map and I made a map of every important location in the city so I could be as

00:11:44.040 effective as possible in that first week. When I, you know, when we first got married, I was like,

00:11:49.260 okay, Simone, we need to start thinking about having kids. Like, when is that going to happen?

00:11:52.300 Like, we need to start looking at this, this, and this. When I met you, I was like, Simone, I am so late

00:11:57.280 to get married. I should have gotten married in college. I think it's two things overlapping. One,

00:12:02.320 this intense initiative drive that I have, which isn't like a regular initiative. It's like a plan

00:12:08.980 out, get to the next stage sort of initiative. And then the second is, and this is why we're always

00:12:14.440 like starting new companies or new projects or anything like that. Like it can have deleterious

00:12:19.200 effects as well, but we mostly complete those as well. So I guess that's not terrible, like,

00:12:23.060 but the, the, the, the second trait that I have is an obsession with planning, not just a,

00:12:31.540 I need to do this right now, but the other is, and I need to collect all of the data on this thing.

00:12:36.980 Like she knows like, well, but that, that also is like the famous trait highlighted at the very

00:12:44.140 beginning of the movie, idiocracy, implying this is why people stopped having kids because they were

00:12:49.080 planning. And in fact, that is one of the same factors that is associated with the steepest drop

00:12:54.320 in fertility. It's that people do now want to plan their children and not have mistake babies. And so

00:12:59.740 now they're using birth control diligently. Psychologically, an interesting question.

00:13:05.480 There is obviously, and you know what I mean when I'm talking about the way that I plan things,

00:13:10.000 a psychological difference between me and like the planning procrastinator.

00:13:13.900 What do you think that's like? Actually, I would say that you're not a planner.

00:13:17.680 You are a figure out what's wrong and fix it while you're doing it person. You're not actually a planner.

00:13:25.380 No, no, no. Okay. Actually, hold on. I'll, I'll, I'll word this differently because I am a planner,

00:13:29.800 but it's a different. So these people are about to make a major life decision. And so they go into

00:13:35.660 that major life decision and they say, okay, what's everything I need to know about this major life

00:13:40.340 decision. Whereas the type of planning that I do is I have X goal for myself, have a lot of kids.

00:13:47.040 Okay. While I'm 17, I need to look up all of the biological things that could get in the way of

00:13:51.560 that. I need to look up all of the things that could get in the way of that. I need to, I think

00:13:55.580 it's that I have a compulsion to plan out super long-term things. I mean, is that not what my

00:14:02.040 interest in the pronatalist movement is, right? That I work back from a end desire with a lot of

00:14:09.520 meticulousness. Well, and I think that big characteristic is long-termism of, of people

00:14:15.780 having kids now and also comfort with delayed gratification. That is crucial, but yeah,

00:14:22.400 planning, I would just reward that. But before we go apart, the point being is that these things

00:14:28.440 may continue to be high fertility in the age of AI, but we don't know, like AI might be able to

00:14:35.200 augment some of these things, like a person not thinking through that they're not going to be

00:14:40.080 fertile if they wait until their late twenties to find a husband or wife. 0.99

00:14:43.760 Yeah. Or it could just, you know, seamlessly help them make, you know, it can enable viable

00:14:52.100 in vitro gametogenesis. So you don't need to plan a really good point. You just made there is just

00:14:58.180 consider if medical technology increases the window, which it likely will that a woman can get pregnant 0.73

00:15:04.320 so that she can get pregnant significantly later, you have entirely changed the personality profile,

00:15:10.000 the genetically linked personality profile that's optimal for having lots of kids. But anyway, back

00:15:14.320 to the article. Yeah. So I'm assuming, so after he talks about Fisher in the 1930s, and it's still

00:15:22.400 wild to me that people thought that my birth rate was genetical so early. He talks about how, quote,

00:15:30.300 twin studies from the US and Britain, Denmark, and Sweden have shown that as much as 50% of variation

00:15:35.860 in fertility is genetically derived, supporting Fisher's earlier estimate, DNA sequencing has

00:15:40.800 supported this, highlighting individual genes that are strongly associated with fertility.

00:15:45.060 He continues that similarly, studies from Denmark and Quebec have shown that the role of genetics in

00:15:49.880 determining fertility has increased in Western populations, supporting the idea of ongoing selection

00:15:55.100 for the desire to have children. Genes have been identified that correlate with earlier age at first

00:16:00.840 birth, later age at last birth, and total children ever born, and later menopause. So you think none of

00:16:09.540 those matter? I mean, I imagine that- The menopause, no, it's the question here is not are certain things

00:16:16.180 being selected for within this generation, but could those things reach an optimum level and then lead

00:16:23.660 to fertility rates increasing again society-wide? These are two very different questions. Do I doubt,

00:16:30.580 no, not at all that things are being selected for within this generation? I am also not somebody

00:16:36.200 who doubts incredibly fast changes in human profiles, whether it is biology or psychology.

00:16:45.260 Someone at toe point, yeah, can really-

00:16:47.140 Yeah, so for example, if it turned out that there was something within our generation

00:16:51.620 that basically ensured that nobody who had a high degree of impulsivity was having kids,

00:16:56.660 you would see a rapid and profound shift in the amount of impulsivity in just one generation.

00:17:03.280 The problem being is the technological shifts. So around things like menopause, you could say,

00:17:09.500 okay, well, like later menopause is going to be selected for, right?

00:17:12.460 Yeah. But that'll likely take, because it's not being selected for that strongly within this

00:17:19.480 generation, at least four generations to really be felt. With that being the case, in four generations,

00:17:26.160 do I expect most babies, like, do I expect them to be able to medically increase the lengths of

00:17:30.960 menopause? Do I expect- Well, and keep in mind, Fisher's theory was 10 generations or 250 years.

00:17:36.020 Yeah. So the point I'm making is this stuff is going to be relevant in the developing world,

00:17:45.420 but I do not think it'll be as relevant to the developed world or the portion of humanity that's

00:17:52.280 aiming for the stars and everything like that. And I would note that what you're actually seeing here

00:17:57.620 and what's really being sort of missed in the way this is being framed is it was in different social

00:18:03.660 and economic contexts, different genes are going to be high fertility because they are associated with

00:18:11.640 different fertility strategies. So for example, in the developing world, we might see more of a

00:18:17.240 selection for impulsivity again, especially in areas of extreme poverty. You might see an increase

00:18:23.600 in the rate of twin carrying. You might see an increase in the rate of extended menopause. For example,

00:18:30.920 one of the genetic changes in the game that I'm writing that takes place in a post-fertility

00:18:35.620 apocalypse world, a faction of humanity, it went for this dysgenic strategy, this strategy of low 0.72

00:18:42.200 control, low education, everything like that. And in that community, because they're not going to be

00:18:46.760 as augmented by technology as much, you're going to see the most genetic change. And one of the genetic

00:18:52.460 changes that I presume will happen within this community is they'll begin to give birth

00:18:56.400 more litters with smaller brain cases. Yeah, the primary thing that prevents this in humans and why

00:19:03.020 you don't have twins that much in humans is that lowers the IQ of each of them. And then you've got the

00:19:08.000 risk to the female of the giant brain case, which right now it's just like a huge problem for any 1.00

00:19:14.020 population that isn't wealthy and it has access to technology because women die from that all the time. 1.00

00:19:18.280 Babies' heads getting stuck? Yes. Well, you couldn't give birth to kids. It's not just IVF. You also, 0.99

00:19:25.920 our kids' heads are too big for you to give birth naturally. Like we need to maintain technology for 1.00

00:19:31.940 our gene line to survive. And that's a completely different evolutionary strategy. And I think that we

00:19:39.160 haven't seen a association or potential split in humans for a long time with these very, very

00:19:46.860 differentiated selected strategies. Fair point. So I'm curious to see then what you think of his

00:19:54.100 reference to France as a real world example. Jacob writes, in Europe, France was the first nation to

00:19:59.500 experience significant modern birth rate declines. Yet today, France has the highest birth rate in all

00:20:04.820 of Europe. And just to confirm, yes, it does. France's total fertility rate is now 1.79 live

00:20:10.900 births per woman, at least as of 2022. This places it ahead of other European Union countries, followed

00:20:16.320 by Romania 1.71 and Bulgaria 1.65. So correct. He writes, France's high fertility can't be explained by 0.76

00:20:24.880 immigration. Regions with few immigrants lead the country in fertility. Culture, French-speaking areas

00:20:31.160 of neighboring Belgium and Switzerland don't have elevated fertility or policy. France is below the

00:20:37.200 OECD average for family aid. But it may be explainable through genetics. France's fertility 0.65

00:20:43.140 transition occurred in the 1750s, matching Fisher's calculation that it would take approximately 10

00:20:49.820 generations for genetic shifts to substantially increase birth rates. Now, you know, I'm a very

00:20:55.580 incredulous person. So I read something like that. And I'm like, oh, I mean, like, I guess it's the

00:21:02.320 genetics. I mean, so he is actually right about this, but not in a way that helps his overall argument.

00:21:09.660 Okay. So the timelines line up. If you're familiar with the history of the region, France had a fertility

00:21:15.280 crash before most of the other regions in Europe, because it's secularized before most of the other 0.97

00:21:19.960 regions in Europe, the fertility crash in France aligned with the secularization. So what do we

00:21:26.340 have here in France in the 1700s when we're talking about this initial fertility collapse? What you had 0.99

00:21:31.880 was, remember how I said it is not that you have high birth rate genes or high fertility genes, it's

00:21:38.860 that you have high fertility genes was in a specific social context. What happened to France is they went

00:21:47.200 from a social context where the genes needed to motivate high fertility in a very religious society

00:21:54.060 to genes that needed to motivate high fertility in an irreligious society. And those two genes were

00:22:00.840 different, which led to a fertility crash. Since then, the genes that lead to or protect fertility rates,

00:22:10.260 despite irreligiosity, have been selected for in France. Now we can ask what are those genes that could be

00:22:17.120 interesting to study? I mean, clearly there's a strategy here. Is it that they are really focused

00:22:21.820 on long-term planning, like the thing that causes my family to be high fertility? Or is it that they

00:22:27.100 are really focused on like high impulsivity? And my family is high impulsivity as well, I guess I'd say

00:22:33.040 it's like a long-term planning plus impulsivity. Do like what collection is it that works? And then we

00:22:41.140 have to answer the second question. Hold on, you answered that first question. Remember the first

00:22:45.880 thing that you chose to look at when our foundation started looking at demographic collapse of like,

00:22:52.280 should we be concerned about this? Was you took data collected by Spencer Greenberg, which he collected

00:22:58.540 after the 2016 presidential election in the United States, which also happened to collect information

00:23:04.420 on how many kids participants had. And you looked for, with the help of someone from, I think,

00:23:09.320 the Mayo Clinic or something that we hired for correlations in, in behavioral traits or beliefs

00:23:17.460 or, you know, general characteristics between high fertility and these people. So what did you

00:23:24.520 find, Malcolm? Well, high degrees of xenophobia lead to higher fertility rates, high degrees of

00:23:29.720 authoritarian thinking lead to higher fertility rates. Those are the two core things. Religiosity was 0.99

00:23:36.120 much lower on it than I expected. It was meant. It was going to be about religiosity and it turned

00:23:41.340 out, no, no, no, it's about outgroup hatred and xenophobia. Oh, and very like sensitivity to

00:23:45.660 hierarchy. But keep in mind, this is one particular genetic strategy. Yeah. And so, but I'm just saying

00:23:52.400 like, that's the one that appears to be doing well. But we don't know what it was that was selected

00:23:57.320 for between 1700s France and modern day France. But what I can say is that whatever the change in the

00:24:04.440 genetic profile between pre 1700s France, you know, religious France and secular France,

00:24:10.120 yes, it may have adopted to a secular society. Now, the problem is, is that the new things that

00:24:15.700 are impacting fertility rate and impacting it incrementally more each generation. Now,

00:24:21.320 specifically here, we're looking at like AI boyfriends and girlfriends, really difficult

00:24:25.180 dating markets. Like these are two, like when I'm looking at like, actually, what are the biggest

00:24:30.500 fertility challenges our kids need to overcome? For you and me, within our generation, it was

00:24:35.180 overcoming the hedonism that was all around us and a society that- Well, it was even more,

00:24:40.120 I think it was having the discipline to date, find, and marry a partner. No, no, no. It was,

00:24:44.600 well, yeah, it was about having discipline, but also the will to go against what society was telling

00:24:49.300 us. Now, for our kids, the key hurdles are actually quite different. Winning was in the modern

00:24:56.760 dating market requires a completely different set of sociological profiles than was necessary to win

00:25:03.400 in our generation. Not, I think less so for me. I think that women can still have a huge advantage 1.00

00:25:11.860 by being a first mover, by like actively and proactively reaching out to men and engaging

00:25:16.760 with them because women still just don't do that. So women, okay, this is a, this is a great point. 0.99

00:25:22.340 I do not think that women being first movers is what was selected for between religious France

00:25:28.360 and secular France. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. This is an entirely 0.95

00:25:32.920 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 1.00

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

00:26:52.260 historically French.

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

00:28:01.560 doesn't leave you out of the sex market. In other cultures, a woman who sleeps around and 1.00

00:28:07.320 gets knocked up while she's young, basically becomes unmarriable for the rest of her life 0.56

00:28:11.420 and is stuck in poverty with that one kid, which makes impulsivity a very bad evolutionary

00:28:16.880 strategy for that population. 0.91

00:28:18.040 As an aside here, I denote that the stereotype of the Catholic schoolgirl being extra horny 0.64

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 1.00

00:28:58.620 way hornier than any other group of girls who I slept with and way more engaged in bed than 0.98

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

00:29:19.040 and thus been selected for. 1.00

00:29:20.940 Fuck me. I like your shiny hair. 1.00

00:29:27.920 Hello, children.

00:29:29.360 Hello, Father.

00:29:30.860 Please, call me Peter.

00:29:33.080 Christ.

00:29:34.760 Think of me as a friend.

00:29:37.460 Look.

00:29:37.700 Just like you now.

00:29:43.280 Doce.

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.

00:31:53.800 There ain't nothing you can do about it.

00:31:57.800 Meanwhile, I panic.

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, 0.99

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 0.98

00:34:48.160 sex a lot and hoping that she gets pregnant a bunch of times. So what's going to be selected 0.95

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, 1.00

00:35:27.920 and preference for traditional feminine roles, as we've seen that those do have a genetic link that, 0.75

00:35:32.820 those preferences. I love the slip there because both traditional feminine roles and traditional 0.87

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, 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.97

00:37:51.100 kids from being brainwashed and everything like that. Maybe helping lower types of fertility technology 0.88

00:37:57.160 cost that these types of families use. Like those fertility technologies that like Catholics like to 1.00

00:38:02.460 use for getting pregnant naturally at a higher rate and stuff like that. And, and increased training 0.59

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 0.80

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.

00:38:42.380 Their goal was to reduce the price of IVF.

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. 0.99

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 0.99

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 1.00

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

00:48:14.400 other things that we're working on.

Based Camp - February 27, 2025

Heritability of Pronatalism： Can We Evolve Our Way Out of Demographic Collapse？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript