Based Camp - How Civilization Alters DNA： New Study

00:00:00.000 hello simone this is going to be a spicy episode with a lot of data we are going to be talking

00:00:06.720 about a study and a write-up on the study the study was called pervasive findings of directional

00:00:11.720 selection realize the promise of ancient dna to elucidate human adaptation specifically they took

00:00:19.180 8 433 corpses from a period that went from 14 000 years ago to to modern times and then 510

00:00:33.700 contemporary people to develop baselines and they determined how much various things that we know

00:00:41.980 have genetic correlates today how those genetic correlates changed throughout history wow we're

00:00:48.660 going to be talking about things like intelligence earning potential schizophrenia potential

00:00:55.400 ratio how white people were how because this was all done in the european population

00:01:02.320 in an article that was bemoaning this called david reich vindicates corin and harpen's 10 000 year

00:01:07.540 explosion they were bemoaning that they're like it's so funny that like you cannot do this sort

00:01:12.520 of work even though we have tons and tons and tons of like native american skeletons and stuff like

00:01:16.440 that or skeletons from different regions they're all like now like reburying them and stuff like

00:01:22.520 destroying these historic artifacts because it's like oh this is all like western supremacy what it 0.82

00:01:27.680 means is like nobody cares when you mess with like white people skeletons so that they with all these 0.99

00:01:33.680 other skeletons they're just not going to have good data and we're destroying the data to know about

00:01:38.980 ethnic minorities but we will know what happened with white people and one of the interesting things

00:01:43.800 i guess i can go into first with some of the first graphs i shared with you simone if you go to

00:01:47.740 whatsapp yeah white people being white is actually a fairly modern thing what okay historically we

00:01:57.080 probably did not look that white specifically if you go 4 000 years ago or earlier a lot of the genes

00:02:05.220 and and this is just like across genes here the so you can look at this in the first look at that

00:02:10.620 yeah associate with whiteness or a darker skin color were just significantly more common and actually a

00:02:19.160 big part of this happened in the last 2 000 years it was like like big spikes there and so the idea

00:02:26.760 of for example jesus being black or dark-skinned may he was almost certainly more dark-skinned

00:02:35.440 than the most dark-skinned europeans today all those morven jesus paintings don't really he was

00:02:45.300 definitely not fair-skinned yes well very interesting though that that white skin is a fairly modern

00:02:51.480 evolutionary phenomenon but one that has been regularly selected for since about 6 000 years ago

00:02:58.600 huh interesting you also see a similar phenomenon here with hair yeah look at that so straight hair

00:03:06.640 slash baldness increase so you've seen the hair within the european population becoming much much

00:03:13.820 straighter over time you would have had hair or is that an offensive word here i do not know

00:03:20.740 maybe we can say more textured hair more textured hair in a historic phenomenon and they they yeah

00:03:30.180 the the but also baldness came along with this that is interesting are baldness and straight hair

00:03:37.800 known to be correlated genetically the genetics that code for them are correlated yeah that is

00:03:43.380 interesting all right the same was was a light hair this didn't start really getting selected for

00:03:49.000 until about 4 000 years ago so we probably all had black hair similar to asians or africans before

00:03:54.920 this that is interesting so like so pale blonde people are like these these new offshoot mutants and 1.00

00:04:01.880 everyone else is yeah the norm genuinely new mutants that over a certain period of history became

00:04:08.680 common because they out-competed other neighboring populations so body fat percentage i found really

00:04:15.460 interesting if you're looking at this one here one is that in the past it looks like a few hundred

00:04:22.240 years there has just been this really sharp rapid decline in the genetics we correlate with body fat

00:04:27.480 percentage since industrialization so we're we're we're thinner now is am i reading this right i'm yeah

00:04:34.040 now obviously this has changed if you look at the recent genetic data actually body fat percentage

00:04:38.960 predictors alongside iq predictors are the two things that are most tied to the low fertility of

00:04:45.620 a person like if i'm not iq but low educational attainment so low educational attainment and high

00:04:51.520 body fat correlate to having lots of kids in the current context right but it looks like post the

00:04:57.120 industrial revolution you had an opposite pressure and you had a very strong pressure as you can see here

00:05:02.540 against body fat since the agricultural revolution from a period of about 10 000 to 8 000 years ago

00:05:10.000 that is interesting it's hard for me to imagine a world in which we wouldn't be selecting for higher

00:05:17.780 body fat why would we be selecting for leaner people is it perhaps that body fat gets in the way of

00:05:24.040 agricultural collection i mean we would need to be leaner when we were hunting and corriger

00:05:28.720 is granaries is really what you're seeing the first selection event is do the people have the

00:05:35.000 capacity to survive the winter and other lean periods with stores of food like do they have

00:05:41.000 in other words is is the is the food storage exogenous or endogenous is it outside the body or

00:05:48.400 inside the body i see that's interesting okay that makes sense i think that that's likely also

00:05:54.400 what we're seeing with the industrial revolution with canned foods and everything like that

00:05:57.940 you're always better if you're trying to you know optimize for like the fitness and ability to do

00:06:03.160 physical tasks of being very lean you don't want to keep a lot of this it's an expensive way to store

00:06:08.900 your calories that's true yeah yeah i guess that there are the hazards and the downsides both from a

00:06:14.060 constrained movement standpoint and from the health burdens but if you don't have a choice then you do

00:06:18.940 need to store it that's very interesting wow right yeah and i also think here what what is causing us to

00:06:27.180 be selecting for fatness now i think it's that basically within our current society the less

00:06:35.060 wealth you are when you're in this desperate degree of poverty a certain degree of maladaptiveness to

00:06:40.140 competing within our society leads to genetic fitness within this society i.e the ability to

00:06:46.400 um so if you're the type of person who's living off of medicare or the government and staying at home

00:06:52.200 24 7 you're just gonna have a lot more kids and you can see this in the data and so that's what ends

00:06:57.880 up selecting for like high body fat again now that we have this pathologically caring society that just 0.98

00:07:04.800 won't say well you know obviously they they are not you know we shouldn't be supporting somebody who is

00:07:12.120 so fat that they've grown into their bed you know anyway so we'll go to the next one here waist to hip

00:07:18.360 ratio i found really interesting so it was waist to hip ratio you can see it going down over time

00:07:25.080 but the big drop in waist to hip ratio happened with the agricultural revolution where it basically

00:07:31.640 went down to about a third of what it used to maybe even like a tenth of what it used to be

00:07:35.560 and then back up for a period so that's so interesting because i the thing i immediately

00:07:39.800 think of are those venus statues that have yes and they they've got the huge weight to hip ratio

00:07:46.040 quite sizable hips and fat yes they were fat and excited and this checks out now well they were

00:07:57.080 they may not be as cartoony as we imagine them to be today yeah they may have been describing what

00:08:05.580 women actually looked like or the idealized or high status woman yeah which was and another thing 1.00

00:08:11.180 about the venus statues which i've noticed and i hadn't noticed before now that you mentioned this

00:08:14.860 is even the european ones had like i don't know what to call it african style hair i'm trying to find

00:08:20.700 a lot of them having heads they mostly did not have heads no no many of them had uh like a heads was

00:08:26.060 like it it almost looks like like really um little like grown-in micro dreads is i guess what i'd call

00:08:32.860 it oh interesting which was probably common in the europeans at the time and i'd also note that a lot

00:08:38.460 of the venus statues are done on darker stone which may have been intentional they they may have just

00:08:44.940 been depicting yeah because everyone had darker skin yeah yeah yeah yeah and so the the guys who like

00:08:50.860 the big waist to hip ratio they are primeval men you could say now why did this change happen it

00:08:57.420 might have been due to survival rates of wives after like basically level of medical technology 1.00

00:09:04.620 where it's okay to risk a woman's wife in childbirth it makes her more because somebody with these really 1.00

00:09:11.820 wide hips it causes problems in humans walking that's the core reason why our hips shrunk oh yeah i guess

00:09:18.460 because men men don't have wide hips so basically if you don't need to give birth to children 1.00

00:09:23.980 there seems to be no reason to have very wide hips i mean we risk the child and the mother's wife 1.00

00:09:30.060 with our smaller narrow hips yeah yes and this was something that we evolved out of after you know

00:09:36.700 descending from the trees but what was the real pressure that caused this and when we say medical

00:09:40.540 technology people would be like what sort of medical technology coincides with the invention of

00:09:44.620 farming right and this is and i think it's what many people real like the the ability to stay in one

00:09:50.780 place with somebody who is injured and bring them water and food like you may not see that as a the

00:09:56.460 miraculous medical technology that's a pretty big medical technology to somebody who's just undergone

00:10:01.420 a very difficult pregnancy can they rest for two weeks in one location and and that is it appears to

00:10:07.660 be what led to the reduction here interesting right that is fascinating any thoughts before i go further

00:10:14.940 on any of this no i want to hear more now we're getting into some really spicy stuff bipolar disorder

00:10:23.580 so bipolar disorder you see go down a ton in the early agricultural period just continue to go down

00:10:31.500 until modern times was this accelerating yeah what's going on why why would there be more bipolar people

00:10:38.060 in the past i'm assuming like manic periods are really good for food storage i'm pulling here i'm

00:10:47.020 assuming the risky decision making led to higher amounts of pregnancy or or or because you know maybe

00:10:54.220 there were more expendable people in a population at least some of them were going to make risky bets

00:10:58.220 it really paid off high risk high reward yeah so that could be it well i mean a high risk is running

00:11:05.980 away with somebody starting a new tribe having way too many kids you know yeah all of those things may

00:11:11.340 have been rewarded historically now it also might be tied to bipolar's correlation to schizophrenia so you

00:11:18.700 could which also went down over time that's so interesting but i see that more as like oh maybe

00:11:24.780 schizophrenic people in the past had more of a role in society because they were seen as spiritual

00:11:28.860 leaders they heard voices they saw things no i think that's absolutely what we're seeing here is

00:11:32.860 historically speaking schizophrenic people were spiritual leaders and the currently schizophrenic

00:11:39.340 there's just like almost no advantage right now i think to having a ton of schizophrenia um

00:11:43.980 maybe a better ability to read other people if you have like prodromal levels of it i.e.

00:11:48.460 prodromal levels of the genetic precursors whereas the opposite of schizophrenia you can see

00:11:52.700 our autism versus schizophrenia what actually causes this video where i go into as somebody

00:11:57.260 who studied these spaces as a scientist as a neuroscientist somebody got so mad about that

00:12:01.820 video when i argued that they're essentially opposites they're like you need to take this down

00:12:06.460 this narrative this is malpractice this is but anyway the that particular video we we argue that these

00:12:15.340 things are genetically like very distant from each other and might actually be opposites in in like a

00:12:21.580 really high theory of mind and a very low theory of mind now i have a different understanding of

00:12:26.540 autism which is autism is partially a low theory of mind but it's mostly caused by genetic by neural

00:12:32.460 density in certain regions which we'll do a separate episode on when one of our fans sends

00:12:37.420 us i told him to email us the piece that he did on this because it was really good but i just didn't

00:12:40.860 put up my notes because it's like he's gonna email it to us anyway but it causes hypersensitization

00:12:46.300 really easily so if you're in any sort of environment where you have a lot of stimuli you're going to do

00:12:51.660 very badly and you're going to need to separate yourself from that and you're not going to fully

00:12:55.340 process everything but you're able to process narrow bands of stimuli much better and longer and with less

00:13:02.620 burnout and that this is hyper optimized for the online world to the extent where like again my wife is 0.99

00:13:10.620 diagnosed autistic my kids are diagnosed autistic i will say i think a few things are are called

00:13:15.900 autism right now but i think that one of the things we call autism whatever the thing is that you have

00:13:20.220 and elon has and a lot of other like really successful people have is like the most optimized

00:13:26.300 iteration of the human condition right now for the online environment and the the work at home environment

00:13:32.140 that that's created and i think when we joke about like at the

00:13:35.900 prenatalist convention a really disproportionate of autistic people like are autists going to replace 1.00

00:13:41.180 other people i don't know but i could see that happening with schizophrenics being less and less 0.98

00:13:48.300 useful in our current population and we can see the downsides to this you know i've pointed out where

00:13:53.820 i would point out simone on like one side of like the extreme autism spectrum and i might be in the 0.88

00:13:59.820 middle if you go to the side of me on the schizophrenia spectrum you're going to get like a ruby yard

00:14:05.500 type character who i really really really respect as an intellectual but i think we can see the

00:14:12.140 negative consequences which can come from having like basically telling your ai ai to creativity max

00:14:19.180 every decision they're making it's going to lead to some interesting ideas you hadn't thought of

00:14:23.740 but it's going to also lead to some very poor decisions occasionally which shows why that's selected

00:14:30.460 against in modern times and i note here that i don't even see what happened with him as that big

00:14:35.740 of a deal i mean first you've got to remember ruby yard's like 23 he's basically a kid like imagine if

00:14:42.540 every bad ayahuasca trip you ever took at 23 was videotaped for the entire internet to see with a lot

00:14:49.660 of this is just like oh we caught a kid doing kid like things like somebody like pearl davis right like

00:14:57.180 pearl davis is a kid okay she she makes the types of mistakes that kids make when they're exploring 0.97

00:15:03.980 the boundaries of what's normal i'd actually say that i'm actually disconcerted by the young

00:15:10.540 influencers who don't make these kinds of mistakes like brett cooper like it's weird that brett cooper

00:15:17.180 never accidentally pushes things too far so in a way i find this stuff uh humanizing to the young

00:15:24.140 influencers who make the types of mistakes i would have made if i had this level of no or notoriety

00:15:30.060 at their age in fact i'd go farther and find it shocking that he hasn't gotten involved in more

00:15:35.980 scandals i just ask you to think if you were 23 and had half a million people watching like almost

00:15:41.580 every video that you're uploading would would you not push it too hard and flirting with some of your

00:15:47.340 fans would you not you know is there no boundary that you would cross how is this is the only time 0.74

00:15:53.420 he's really fucked up and and overcrossed a boundary how is the only boundary that he's crossed the very 0.98

00:15:59.260 boundary that people show up to his his show for which is drawing insane connections between things 0.99

00:16:05.820 and out there ideas i mean that's what you signed up for if you're following him but i i think the greater

00:16:12.220 replacement theory has a lot more weight than other people might want to feel comfortable might feel

00:16:17.580 comfortable admitting with the autist replacing yeah i mean it's just hyper-optimized if you're in an

00:16:22.700 interview cast within today's well i just i love this idea too of having a lot of kids being a lot of

00:16:27.500 autists new special interests i am here for that well here's one that you're going to find really

00:16:33.900 interesting is walking pace yes why would why would we why would we start walking faster i mean i guess

00:16:43.980 this this i would assume there is no point to energy conservation in an industrialized society

00:16:51.020 and little point to energy conservation in a uh society once you have agriculture okay so this is

00:16:57.260 about energy conservation that makes a lot more sense and you can see like me i'm hyper on walking

00:17:01.980 to speed like just everything i remember thinking as a kid like why don't people run out everywhere

00:17:07.340 and i and i did that for a long time just whenever i have to go places that i always run because i

00:17:10.860 really go out why wouldn't you run it's faster it's healthy you know and you have to go between two

00:17:15.660 locations just run um yeah and your family constantly harringing you about the fact you're constantly

00:17:21.580 like twitching and fidgeting and that ultimately burning calories burning calories yeah yeah

00:17:29.660 now this next one is one of the most controversial from this but i found it really interesting is

00:17:34.380 intelligence you can see a huge spike of intelligence post agriculture and all this i just feel like is

00:17:42.860 humans optimizing more i mean i would expect on on average for humans to to broadly get more fit over

00:17:51.180 time because you have more time to select for stuff that is more competitive and intelligence seems to be

00:17:55.900 one of those things that is broadly more competitive is that what you think is not you

00:18:00.380 have something else well no it's about calorie conservation again intelligence is actually really

00:18:06.300 calorie heavy and so once you have the calories to begin optimizing around intelligence and i also

00:18:10.860 think intelligence is more useful to you know if you're a hunter-gatherer people you just have to be

00:18:16.540 good at catching the prey right you know and spending less calories than your neighbor and calorie

00:18:22.300 conservation is really important to hunter-gatherers in a way that i do not think that people really

00:18:26.780 think through just how you know you don't get the game that week you may eat once a week you know at

00:18:32.700 times you may eat once a month at times right like you need to be able to be that snake if you want

00:18:37.740 to survive especially in the winter when you don't have full food preservation methods and stuff like that

00:18:44.380 so it made sense to really uh be restrictive on this stuff where as soon as we became sedentary and

00:18:52.140 farming intelligence allowed you to for example in business interactions in local politics you know

00:18:58.620 begin interacting in these large groups to outcompete your rivals and here i'd note that what does this

00:19:05.340 mean about groups that didn't develop farming sorry i didn't ask that question i'm just saying if there

00:19:16.460 were any groups what conclusions could we draw from europeans before they developed farming

00:19:22.700 um which is okay now i hear this good controversial but i guess one one theme that you're pointing out

00:19:27.420 here that i didn't think was going to be the theme was basically what effect does the presence of

00:19:32.860 agriculture or civilization in general have on our genetics and it seems to be more about energy

00:19:39.180 conservation and where we store our energy and less about a bunch of other factors that i would generally

00:19:45.660 expect like if you'd ask me to make predictions around the trends that we're showing i would

00:19:49.900 expect to just see okay in general people are getting smarter and more healthy and more fit and

00:19:56.860 instead it is more like humans are adapting to their environment and they are living now in an

00:20:02.060 environment that has exogenous food storage an environment where they don't need to conserve energy

00:20:07.820 as much and they have to compete on other factors and that is really interesting because

00:20:11.900 we can start asking questions about what our future environment is going to put in terms of

00:20:18.540 selective pressures on us and how we're going to change in the future because of that

00:20:23.900 yes now the next one very spicy as well as household income so this is what's correlated so these are the

00:20:30.620 genetic correlates to household income within a 24th century environment obviously we don't know if these

00:20:38.460 had the same correlation to whatever the equivalent of household income would have been 6 000 10 000

00:20:44.140 years ago well actually i think we can see by this and we do know we do know that they were less

00:20:50.300 correlated with this they were less correlated with genetic success historically uh because they

00:20:55.420 began to become selected for more and more recently and what's really interesting here is you see

00:21:01.820 basically after the fall of rome do you see the big dip in this so after the fall of rome they began

00:21:09.260 to have genetic selection for whatever the inverse of of yeah yeah and you see this that showed up in

00:21:18.380 kirkegaard's research as well when they were looking wasn't it kirkegaard or was it someone else when

00:21:22.620 they're looking at polygenic risk scores adjacent to educational attainment and found that around the fall of rome

00:21:28.540 that dropped so that this this is showing up in other people's research as well as you can sort of

00:21:35.500 genetically exhaust a population and create an environment why the fall of rome matters is because

00:21:39.980 there's a lot of analogs to the fall of rome and the genetic effects that may have been had at the

00:21:46.620 peak of roman civilization in our current civilization of the you know the wealthy or elite cast having very 0.89

00:21:53.100 very few kids because they can just indulge in the pleasures of this world instead of focusing

00:21:58.380 on the next generation or society or any sort of true moral good you'll also notice a drop in

00:22:04.460 walking pace after the fall of the roman empire hold on i want to look did we get a drop in whiteness

00:22:10.380 no didn't affect pigmentation interesting now where the fall of the roman empire was really big in its

00:22:17.020 effects is the genetic correlates to being a current smoker yeah this just seems out of left field why

00:22:24.300 were they looking at this i mean is does it have to do oral fixations that people have or the need

00:22:29.980 for stimulation i imagine it's it's it's addiction to specific pathways my family for example has a

00:22:35.900 lot of addictive tendencies but not to smoking naltrexone does not work on smoking it's a unique

00:22:40.460 addictive pathway something about this pathway was very advantageous in times of difficulty you see it

00:22:47.820 shooting up after the fall of the roman empire and you see it shooting up you know when some 0.99

00:22:53.020 groups are beginning to develop agriculture but before they all had which is really interesting

00:22:57.420 pattern here i'd also note that with schizophrenia we also see a big jump in the schizophrenia genes was

00:23:02.380 the fall of the roman empire which is interesting yeah i feel like super soft religion to your point

00:23:08.780 right sorry i realize this requires some context so super soft religion what she's talking about here

00:23:14.540 is in the pragmat described to crafting religion we describe religions existing on a spectrum from

00:23:19.980 hard to soft where a hard religion is you know has a strict dress code maybe even has a different

00:23:26.460 language associated with it has a very large differentiators from the rest of society and a lot

00:23:32.940 of very strict rules whereas softer religions would be something like unitarian universalism would be a

00:23:39.980 great example of a soft religion or reformed judaism would be a soft religion now a

00:23:44.300 super soft religion is a very specific religion so super soft is what we argue happens when you drain

00:23:50.940 all of the religion out of a pool and you basically are looking at the pre-evolved religious instincts

00:23:56.460 in humans where you'll get fetish worship and by this i don't mean like sexual fetishes i mean like

00:24:01.580 figures that you assign spiritual value to you begin to categorize people very similar to uh star signs

00:24:10.540 stuff like that you begin to basically modern wiccanism is very similar to a super soft religion

00:24:17.580 but these will reappear whenever you drain the built-up religious foundation of a region and look at

00:24:25.660 what's underneath that ocean and we saw a period of flourishing super soft religions after the collapse

00:24:31.820 of the roman empire and as i suppose should be obvious people will assume of somebody seeing visions and

00:24:37.740 they're of a super soft religion that that person has access to some sort of extra degree of truth

00:24:43.660 that other people do not have access to and so they will elevate people with schizophrenia or schizophrenia

00:24:50.300 related symptoms to higher social status allowing these genes to be adaptive rather than maladaptive

00:24:57.740 whereas we are currently i think civilizationally moving into a period where people who have fallen for

00:25:04.620 super soft religions are having virtually no children and the only people who can really 1.00

00:25:09.980 motivate reproduction are those who are incredibly mentally disciplined and ignore random errant mental

00:25:18.220 signals of the type that are associated with schizophrenia yeah and now to the final one here years of

00:25:24.460 schooling or educational attainment so you see here it goes up a ton with the agricultural revolution then

00:25:31.420 continues to go up and then you get the collapse in it as the fall of the roman empire

00:25:35.340 and then you get it rising again in modern times now no all of these things intelligence

00:25:40.140 years of schooling all this are declining in their genetic pool like all of these markers right here we can

00:25:45.100 look at how many people these kids these people are having and they're declining dramatically

00:25:48.940 if you look at our video of is an integrocracy possible we're likely looking at a one standard deviation decline

00:25:55.420 in things like iq was in just the next 75 years so dramatic dramatic dramatic but historically they've

00:26:03.260 been going up and there was this narrative which i you know i kind of believed it i was like

00:26:12.300 is it true that people become sort of civilized and the civilizing forces tame them and leave them impotent

00:26:19.820 right because historically whenever people like blew up onto the stage they typically came from a

00:26:25.980 population that civilization hadn't overly molested yet but you know whether they are the arabs with 1.00

00:26:32.300 the islamic revolution or the vikings or the well the original romans or the like the people like what

00:26:40.060 the romans didn't you've read the greek and and miss and the you know the miss from the uh middle east and

00:26:48.220 the miss from the nobody was talking about what was going on freaking rome back then it was like a

00:26:52.940 total barbarian backwater place or the macedonians coming out of a backwater place it seemed to me that 0.83

00:27:00.860 genetic fitness was hampered by civilization which the rome timeline here could be arguing but i actually

00:27:08.460 noticed that a lot of the hits from rome well they seem to start a bit before 2000 years ago so a bit

00:27:15.340 before the time of christ so yeah it does seem that like the ultra bureaucracy of rome ended up

00:27:20.460 with a collapse of a lot of the a lot of dysgenic collapse here and i love when people are feeling

00:27:25.740 like oh that's so arrogant to say it's dysgenic because it was eugenic was in that particular

00:27:32.540 context and i can mean well yeah but like it's obviously dysgenic in a broader world context like

00:27:40.220 you know you can be like oh when the bunnies have no natural parasites it is eugenic to become bigger

00:27:46.300 culture cancerous blobs that have no you know it's like yeah but the moment a predator comes in they're 0.96

00:27:52.220 all going to go extinct that that adapted those genes so thoughts simone i'm a little concerned about

00:27:59.660 where we are in society now then i mean if we're talking about generally not healthy things being more

00:28:06.700 likely to be prevalent in future populations but where we are with science means that we can

00:28:14.620 intervene yeah with anything from germline germline editing to pgtp so maybe i'm not so worried i don't

00:28:22.220 know but that is interesting yeah i mean hopefully hopefully we can fix this before the you know

00:28:29.900 civilization falls off a cliff here well yeah i mean theoretically relatively soon we can just edit

00:28:38.140 out baldness we can just edit out predisposition to be unhealthily overweight predisposition to be

00:28:45.500 addicted to smoking predisposition to have damaging low levels of intelligence etc yeah by the way an

00:28:54.460 interesting one here is over 6 000 years blood type b also exploded in commonality huh yeah what's

00:29:01.900 going on there it's not like anyone was doing well it has to do something probably some disease risk

00:29:07.660 but here's a fun one you're talking about editing genes that's one of the things that people are like

00:29:12.060 what sort of things is the hardy a foundation if i was going to donate money to this foundation what

00:29:17.020 sort of things are you investing in one of the things that we have already funded is a project

00:29:22.540 designed to edit adult human dna so whether you want to invest in that project you can let us know

00:29:29.100 and we can connect you with the team or and i think it's one of the more competent efforts right

00:29:32.940 now there's a number of efforts and we're aware of them and we invested in this one because we think

00:29:36.220 it's one of the most likely to be promising i think we might be actually invested in two companies

00:29:41.180 doing that with the non-profit but point being is we are trying to make this stuff a reality

00:29:47.100 not just talking about making it a reality and hardy a.org by the way

00:29:53.420 yeah that stuff matters we have to rise above it it is clear especially given how i think plausible

00:30:02.060 your theories are around these different tendencies and traits arising mostly reactively in response to

00:30:10.300 our environments that again like you say in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion and in other 0.95

00:30:17.500 books of ours that that um evolution is a a lazy or dumb programmer like it's it's not it's going to

00:30:23.740 reuse stuff it's not going to be very efficient or intentional about anything we should be intentional

00:30:29.900 about it we should be yeah thinking thoughtfully what not what will the future shape us to be but what

00:30:37.420 do we want to be what should we be and in the discussion of things like germline editing and

00:30:44.060 designer babies and polygenic risk score selection there's a lot of discussion about oh won't it be

00:30:49.660 terrible if people select for this or that and people make a lot of assumptions around what we what

00:30:55.580 people will select for but i don't think people are having a lot of very productive conversations about what

00:31:00.940 people should or likely will be selecting for there are concerns people are going to select for only

00:31:07.980 super intelligence and height and aggression and

00:31:12.780 sort of specials in scott westerfield's ugly series just these like terrifying strong

00:31:19.740 sociopathic superhuman i mean we will be but you know obviously that's our thing but

00:31:25.820 but like jonathan anomaly has found in his research people are primarily selecting for

00:31:30.700 kindness pro-sociality and i mean intelligence certainly correlates with that but that's also

00:31:35.020 because you know intelligence correlates with higher health whether that be because it's tied to those

00:31:41.020 things just in general or because also intelligent people are more conscientious more likely to go

00:31:47.100 you know brush their teeth every night and go to doctor checkups and try to eat healthy foods

00:31:51.660 so there's actually a research that i found last night that i was reviewing that was going over

00:31:57.420 basically that rationality and intelligence are extremely correlated if someone behaves rationally

00:32:03.340 it is it is probably because they are very intelligent so yeah i mean people should be selecting for

00:32:10.700 intelligence but people are also going to be selecting for kindness and pro-sociality and all these things

00:32:14.620 in the end are connected so if someone just wanted someone who was super kind they were probably going to

00:32:18.540 end up with one of their more intelligent or a more intelligent human anyway it's just kind of going

00:32:24.620 to work out that way but yeah i i don't know i i would rather we take ownership of what we want

00:32:33.740 rather than reactively become things just because you humanity is next to a refrigerator now or now that

00:32:42.220 humanity has smart and this is a great thing about them being like well that's not really eugenic whatever

00:32:47.100 wins in the moment is eugenic and i what i would say is okay your population can take that hypothesis

00:32:53.260 and our population will take the hypothesis that eventually these things will be eugenic

00:32:57.980 and we'll see in a thousand years which population ends up going to the stars and which one returns to

00:33:04.380 the woods you know like it's it doesn't take a big you don't have to be big brain to see where this

00:33:09.740 is heading long term if you take this incredibly lackadaisical approach to something that i think that we

00:33:15.820 really now that we have the capacity to have a responsibility to take responsibility for

00:33:22.540 yeah rise above people we don't have to be animals well anyway love you did us simone what are we doing

00:33:31.900 for dinner tonight i was going to saute some onions and add some of the slow cooker meat that we have

00:33:39.900 sort of saved add that to coconut rice and could you cook that with coconut milk and penang

00:33:48.780 i can remember to mix up the penang in the coconut coconut milk before i add anything else i can do that

00:33:57.340 do you still want sauteed onion and if so do you want ribbons that sauteed i'm okay if the onion adds a

00:34:05.100 bit of crunch like onion is not something you need to go overboard about making sure it's cooked

00:34:10.140 if you're doing caramelized onion yes but no like nobody and this is the big the conspiracy of

00:34:14.940 caramelized onion it's something i've gone on about before but people need to know it takes 30 minutes

00:34:19.980 to caramelize any recipe that tells you you're caramelizing an onion before 30 minutes is just

00:34:25.740 creating a soggy well anyway okay so you want lightly sauteed onion added to the the meat and coconut

00:34:34.780 milk after the penang is fully dissolved within it do you want ribbons or confetti for onion ribbon

00:34:42.300 confetti confetti okay cool all right well then i will get that started i love you so much

00:34:48.380 and i'll see you as a reminder everyone please don't miss natal con this march in austin it is

00:34:57.500 going to be amazing we're going to be there a lot of really incredible cool people are going to be there

00:35:03.340 and you can get a 10 discount on your registration by entering the word collins at checkout all right

00:35:11.980 anything you learned today simone actually i thought this was really interesting because it's

00:35:16.700 this is relevant from the perspective of where culture and religion has an impact that actually

00:35:22.140 matters so there's a preprint i don't know how they actually pronounce their name but it's titled

00:35:28.780 the freedom to believe in free will evidence from an adoption study against the first law of behavioral

00:35:33.900 genetics so as you and i know and most of our listeners know most most of the things that we do and

00:35:41.340 believe end up being really heritable yeah somebody thought we were blank slatist in in the in the

00:35:47.020 discord that's like wild that is from the truth possible we acknowledge that we are definitely not

00:35:53.340 blank slatists and most research has found most of the stuff people end up doing is really heritable

00:35:59.420 when you when you separate twins at birth i understand what he meant by that oh yeah well yeah so i think

00:36:06.540 that some hbd bros are so obsessed with ethnic non-blank slatism oh they are confused when

00:36:14.460 somebody isn't an ethnocentrist non-blank slatus that's interesting anyway what this research found

00:36:22.220 was one of the few things that is not genetically determined is at very best very very weakly correlated

00:36:28.860 to our genetics is belief in free will so the context and culture in which you're raised the religion

00:36:34.300 in which you're raised is going to affect your belief in free will and um predetermination and i

00:36:41.500 think something you can extrapolate from that too is i think to a certain extent that will affect your

00:36:48.300 internal or external locus of control and it means that religion and culture really does matter from

00:36:53.500 that perspective because you're the way that you contextualize and believe in and think about things

00:36:59.580 like free will predetermination and your role in the larger universe really does affect your

00:37:04.780 action uh regardless of other things that you could have calvinist cultural clusters uh which

00:37:10.140 believes in predestination and some people see that as invalidating free will is you could have cultural

00:37:15.420 clusters where individuals who lived alongside these communities and they often lived alongside different

00:37:19.900 christian factions would disproportionately convert to the community where people who didn't have this

00:37:23.900 genetic cluster would disproportionately convert out which can lead to a genetic vortex really quickly really

00:37:29.180 really strengthening a view like this which i think is why some people like us find it so easy to hold

00:37:36.300 views around predestination where other people who haven't been through this genetic washing machine

00:37:41.260 around this find it to be so absolutely perplexing um and difficult to engage with as a concept

00:37:49.020 yeah very interesting well so here's what he said i thought was interesting so one of our most hated

00:37:53.820 episodes ever we did today did you get to the comments by the way no that's gonna have to be tonight

00:37:58.380 thing it turns out okay well anyway it was the h1bp third episode and i did not expect i thought like

00:38:05.580 people knew our stance on this like i've been like we've signaled this many times but what i've come to

00:38:10.620 realize is the real reason why this is so spicy because like our audience is like the tech right right you

00:38:17.340 know like it's it's not like you know and that video only had an 80 upvote ratio which is very low for us we

00:38:24.540 almost never break below 90 percent yeah and a normal is like 97 to 95 of them so and we do

00:38:30.860 controversial topics too you know so this was like why why and then i got it i was like oh my god when

00:38:36.620 i was talking about this h1b visas seem like the smartest thing ever if you are a tech right elite

00:38:44.620 i.e you are you are a vc or you run a company but if you are a tech right rank and file you are it's

00:38:55.660 literally about your job and your income yeah but because the tech right sorts it's sort of like who

00:39:03.260 you're going to hear from in the movement based on their proven competency at building and running

00:39:09.020 companies the ones with the pro h1bd visa are the ones you're going to hear from where all of the

00:39:14.700 masses like on twitter or among our fans are going to be the ones who are predominantly affected by this

00:39:20.460 that's rich because what i've seen a lot of people on twitter talking about is well that we also need

00:39:26.700 low-skilled workers too who's gonna you know i can't do my job as a tech worker if there isn't some

00:39:33.660 nanny to watch my kids and i need an immigrant to do that work and they're just they just want 1.00

00:39:41.340 someone else's job to be taken it seems like they i don't know i honestly think that when it comes to

00:39:46.380 a lot of the domestic work or whatever like unwanted jobs that people want immigrants to complete 0.86

00:39:55.180 i'm more of the mind that either you should be doing that yourself or you should be doing that

00:39:59.820 domestically leaving that for low-skilled people in the united states because we've taken all those

00:40:04.860 jobs away and i'm i'm much more of the mind that we really need to bring in high-skilled high-tax paying

00:40:13.500 i don't know i'm actually moderating my views on this in response to the comments because they're like

00:40:18.140 like you've got to look into how many of these people are lowering the price that you would pay to

00:40:23.580 american coders but here i wonder if that's really true you know like large bureaucratic forms it

00:40:31.660 probably is whereas like for us like we hire our coding teams in africa you know like i'm like why

00:40:36.620 not just outsource entirely right you know their living costs are in africa but the thing i was going

00:40:44.220 to ask you or no the other thing he mentioned which i thought was really big for me is he was pointing

00:40:50.060 out and like i didn't realize this but it's totally true is it was in like the center of the trans

00:40:55.260 community they've already accepted that this is mostly a social phenomenon and this happened with

00:41:01.900 the fight between the two cutes and the true scums and we'll do a separate episode on this but the 0.66

00:41:07.820 true scums were the ones who wanted to medicalize transness and the two cutes were the ones who say no 1.00

00:41:11.580 anyone who chooses to be trans can choose to be trans okay and i was like oh that's really true i do 0.89

00:41:19.820 remember that fight but i hadn't contextualized it as them accepting that this is a social phenomenon

00:41:24.940 and then or i realized and he was pointing out to me he goes yeah but also what this creates is a

00:41:31.420 phenomenon in which the two cutes who ended up winning you you can't have something like transness 1.00

00:41:38.780 where you can't actively talk about targeting someone for recruitment like this idea of an egg and

00:41:44.220 then potentially recruiting them and you're not doing that you know if you if you believe that this is

00:41:49.340 all biological you're not going to target people for recruitment in the same way because you're

00:41:52.700 going to think well they'll come to it if you know but if you're you're going to go out there

00:41:56.540 and basically hunt for people and you can you can see this in their internal message boards

00:42:00.780 it makes a lot of sense and i was like yeah actually that's that's true that's going to grow

00:42:04.540 much faster as a movement than the iterations that denied that like you can really convert anyone

00:42:09.660 who's socially isolated and autistic if you try hard enough hmm oh that's fascinating all right 0.96

00:42:14.700 okay i don't like our talks all right all right let's go whoa what did you make here

00:42:20.540 oh that's your fire exit in case there's a fire yeah hey you're breaking it oh dear

Based Camp - January 02, 2025

How Civilization Alters DNA： New Study

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