Based Camp - Is Idiocracy Coming？ Genetics, IQ, & Realistic Outcomes

00:00:00.000 With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to reward those who reproduced the most.

00:00:06.020 Having kids is such an important decision.

00:00:09.660 We're just waiting for the right time.

00:00:11.420 It's not something you want to rush into, obviously. 0.99

00:00:13.860 Oh, shit, I'm pregnant again! 1.00

00:00:16.300 Shit! I got too many damn kids! 1.00

00:00:19.120 There's no way we could have a child now. 1.00

00:00:21.400 Not with the market the way it is, no.

00:00:23.160 Oh, God, no. 1.00

00:00:24.300 Come on over here, bitch! He don't care about you! 1.00

00:00:27.700 Well, we finally decided to have children, and it's not going well.

00:00:33.120 Yeah! Yeah! I'm gonna fuck all of y'all! 0.98

00:00:37.060 That's my boy! 1.00

00:00:38.560 Woo! 0.99

00:00:39.900 Yeah!

00:00:41.100 IQ is dropping by about 0.2 points annually in some regions.

00:00:45.700 This may seem like a trivial decline, but when you consider the standard deviation of IQ is 15 points,

00:00:51.140 such a decline, if sustained, will lead to a drop by one standard deviation every 75 years.

00:00:57.100 Should this trend hold in those regions, in just 125 years, your average human will have an IQ

00:01:03.720 that would, today, qualify someone as intellectually disabled.

00:01:07.740 Would you like to know more?

00:01:09.460 Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to be speaking with you today.

00:01:11.840 Today, we are going to be asking the question,

00:01:15.700 is an idiocracy-style future true?

00:01:18.240 Is the IQ of humanity declining over time?

00:01:22.760 I have read, in one of our comments, they're like,

00:01:24.720 well, you know, this person thinks that you guys believe that human IQ is declining over time,

00:01:29.520 and we stay away from a lot of the controversial genetic stuff.

00:01:33.900 However, this is the one controversial genetics topic where I'm like,

00:01:38.280 people really need to be realistic about the data.

00:01:41.760 You can't help yourself.

00:01:43.620 Well, yeah.

00:01:45.180 It's just the data in this is so loud and from so many different angles,

00:01:49.300 and it will create real problems from society if we try to ignore this or pretend it's not happening.

00:01:55.440 So, I mean, I'm just going to start with a recent study that I saw that was like,

00:01:58.840 okay, yeah, we've got to be taking this seriously.

00:02:00.340 So, this study shows that the mean IQ of U.S. college students has been dropping by 0.2 points per year

00:02:08.580 since the mid-20th century.

00:02:11.780 And this phenomenon has been well-documented in many sources,

00:02:14.980 and it's called the reverse Flynn effect.

00:02:17.200 Historically, you had something called the Flynn effect where all around the world,

00:02:20.520 IQ was increasing pretty much every year.

00:02:23.520 And the reason why you had the Flynn effect was because nutrition was increasing.

00:02:28.700 But once nutritional needs, as they relate to brain development saturated in the human population,

00:02:37.020 then dysgenics appears to be the primary cause that IQ was going down.

00:02:42.040 But we'll get into this in more detail with lots of citations for this one,

00:02:45.480 because I'm actually going to be going to a quote from our book.

00:02:49.320 So, we're going to read a little passage from the book,

00:02:51.520 The Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, and go over it.

00:02:53.940 All right.

00:02:54.620 Are we destined to become a society reminiscent of the nightmarish dystopia

00:02:58.680 depicted in the film Idiocracy?

00:03:01.160 Kick-ass. 0.99

00:03:02.800 Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, 1.00

00:03:05.300 but it says on your chart that you're fucked up. 1.00

00:03:08.660 You talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded. 1.00

00:03:12.060 What I do is just say, you know, you know what I mean? 1.00

00:03:18.080 Don't worry, Skrull.

00:03:19.500 Now there are plenty of tards out there living really kick-ass lives. 1.00

00:03:22.740 My first wife was tarded. 1.00

00:03:25.080 She's a pilot now.

00:03:26.040 We mostly steer clear of fearful discourse about genetic selection against high IQ and dropping IQs

00:03:32.820 in general, because it is such a charged topic,

00:03:35.620 and our concerns around demographic collapse stand regardless of this scenario's potential.

00:03:41.120 We only approach this philosophical third rail in order to dispel some common misconception.

00:03:46.480 IQ has a high level of genetic correlation and can be predicted by looking at a person's genome.

00:03:52.480 So I have a citation here. If you want to go through all of these citations,

00:03:56.580 I'll just mention when I run across the citation, just get the book.

00:04:00.240 It's like a dollar on Amazon, and it'll have all the citations listed.

00:04:03.120 This is in the appendix.

00:04:04.060 The association between genetics and IQ is not small.

00:04:07.120 In fact, this meta-study argues the IQ correlation between adopted brothers and sisters,

00:04:12.760 genetically unrelated people raised together, falls almost to zero in adulthood.

00:04:17.240 Again, another citation.

00:04:19.580 Note, we think this meta-study might be overstating the correlation a little.

00:04:23.760 Suffice it to say that there is very little argument in the scientific community over whether

00:04:28.840 there is some genetic correlation in IQ.

00:04:31.300 They debate things like how big that correlation is, whether that link is concentrated in specific

00:04:37.380 ethnicities, which we spend an entire chapter of this book arguing against, whether IQ is a

00:04:43.080 measure of what we mean when we talk about intelligence in the vernacular, a topic we

00:04:47.780 won't go into here, do your own research, and whether the genes associated with IQ are stable

00:04:52.860 in the population or declining, which we will focus on in this chapter.

00:04:56.640 For those who are not up to date with what is an quote-unquote offensive position in the

00:05:01.860 scientific consensus, we encourage you to read the Wikipedia page on this subject.

00:05:06.140 So the point that I'm making here is it is so commonly accepted that IQ is a genetic

00:05:10.860 thing that there is a Wikipedia page on this topic, or at least there was when I wrote the

00:05:15.220 book.

00:05:15.460 Who knows?

00:05:15.800 It could have been scrubbed by lefties by now.

00:05:17.760 But we're pretty sure the people who turn a blind eye to the role genetics plays in

00:05:21.300 privilege will be held in the same regard as those who claim they, quote-unquote, didn't

00:05:25.860 see race in the 1990s.

00:05:27.720 Acting as though none of your partially inherited traits gave you systemic advantages over others,

00:05:32.480 be they height, metabolism, attractiveness, or IQ, only serves to reinforce your unearned

00:05:38.140 privilege, and ultimately breeds more systemic inequality.

00:05:41.580 To be extremely clear, we refer to these two instances in relation to each other because

00:05:45.940 each represents an assumed moral high ground through feigned blindness to systemic advantages

00:05:51.080 one has over others.

00:05:52.360 We are not suggesting that any of these things are linked to race.

00:05:56.480 Multiple studies have demonstrated that IQ is dropping by about 0.2 points annually in

00:06:01.240 some regions.

00:06:02.200 Oh, you see, it's been held up by more recent research.

00:06:04.340 Though, the U.S. seems more resistant to this than other nations.

00:06:08.600 This may seem like a trivial decline, but when you consider the standard deviation of IQ

00:06:13.160 is 15 points, such a decline, if sustained, will lead to a drop by one standard deviation

00:06:18.740 every 75 years.

00:06:20.760 Should this trend hold in those regions, in just 125 years, your average human will have

00:06:26.380 an IQ that would, today, qualify someone as intellectually disabled.

00:06:30.680 Note, while our timelines are probably off, it is highly unlikely that we are wrong about

00:06:36.720 the general trend.

00:06:38.100 Quote, so here I'm pretending to be one of our detractors, but IQ is not a good measure

00:06:44.880 of intelligence.

00:06:46.320 We, too, find it tedious and often misleading to focus so heavily on IQ.

00:06:51.440 That said, while there is plenty of research separating out IQ from intelligence, we are the last people

00:06:57.340 to pedestalize it, carrying far more about initiative and willpower.

00:07:02.060 IQ does correlate with very common standards of achievement.

00:07:05.740 If all the outcomes with which IQ correlates began to plummet, we seriously would be worried,

00:07:11.200 and we think you would, too.

00:07:12.680 To anyone who wants to try to argue that this is not a thing that's happening, especially

00:07:17.840 we're not arguing about the speed that it's happening, you have to argue one of two, frankly,

00:07:23.340 completely unwinnable positions.

00:07:25.780 Either that there isn't evidence that IQ is correlated with genetics, which it just

00:07:30.440 super, super, super obviously is, and it's probably one of the most robust findings in

00:07:36.100 all of genetic science.

00:07:37.820 Actually, I saw one paper claiming that it was the single most robust finding in all of genetic

00:07:41.280 science.

00:07:41.700 Or, two, argue that people with lower IQs aren't having more kids than people with higher IQs.

00:07:48.880 Again, I cannot imagine how anyone could conceivably argue this looking at any source of data in

00:07:56.920 the world.

00:07:58.080 But people will try to say this, and they'll try to say it because it allows them to, one,

00:08:05.400 not take responsibility for their unearned privilege, and two, because it allows them to maintain

00:08:12.240 a world framework which is not correlated with reality.

00:08:16.360 Some papers have argued that this decline in IQ is purely environmental.

00:08:21.480 These arguments fall flat when combined with orthogonal source of evidence.

00:08:25.960 In his paper, Natural Selection May Be Making Society More Unequal, David Hugh Jones wrote,

00:08:31.400 quote,

00:08:31.640 We found that 23 out of 33 polygenic scores were significantly linked to a person having more

00:08:38.240 or fewer children over their lifetime, dot, dot, dot.

00:08:41.920 Scores which correlated with lower earnings in education predicted having more children.

00:08:46.360 Meaning those scores are being selected for, from an evolutionary perspective.

00:08:51.900 Scores which correlated with higher earnings in education predicted having fewer children.

00:08:57.620 Meaning that they are being selected against, end quote.

00:09:00.980 This study even shows the polygenic scores correlated with higher earnings in education decreasing

00:09:06.140 within a population over time.

00:09:07.780 This means it is measurable that genes which correlate with high IQ are appearing at lower frequencies

00:09:13.720 in the population over time, and genes correlating with a high IQ are correlated with lower fertility

00:09:19.780 rates.

00:09:20.820 So this, and I'm not quoting the book anymore, this directly connects with demographic collapse.

00:09:26.560 And when we talk about shifting populations resulting from shifting fertility rates, what we're saying

00:09:33.480 is that this, we have a lower educational attainment, lower earning future ahead of us based on these

00:09:40.720 trends, right?

00:09:42.380 So more from the book.

00:09:44.280 Imagine you are trying to determine the maximum speed of a car.

00:09:47.260 One person makes this determination by looking at the engine and running calculations.

00:09:51.940 This is analogous to the study of looking at how genes that correlate with IQ also correlate

00:09:56.240 with birth rate.

00:09:57.520 Another person makes this calculation by getting in the car and flooring the accelerator pedal.

00:10:02.600 This is analogous to the various studies measuring declines in IQ at the population level.

00:10:08.280 If the max speed each group independently determines is close, you can be fairly confident in its

00:10:13.800 accuracy.

00:10:15.020 This is what we see above, meaning we're probably experiencing a meaningful decline in genes associated

00:10:20.140 with high IQ that is likely to be sustained in the future.

00:10:24.200 So this is a really important point for people because a lot of people look at this decline in IQ

00:10:30.240 and they're like, well, you know, okay, it's, it's going down the IQ of people in college

00:10:36.700 or the IQ of the general population.

00:10:37.880 This could be due to something else, right?

00:10:40.640 Like there's all these ways that maybe the way we're testing IQ is a bit different over

00:10:44.060 time or something like that.

00:10:44.980 But the problem is, is that this decline aligns with the predicted decline we would see from

00:10:53.780 the fact that the people with the polygenic scores that we associate with high IQ are also

00:11:01.700 having fewer kids.

00:11:03.880 And I should note something else that was pointed out about above paragraph where people are like,

00:11:07.500 why are you guys focused so much on IQ?

00:11:09.300 It's like, you don't need to focus just on IQ.

00:11:11.320 If you, for example, focus on the polygenic score associated with making a lot of money,

00:11:15.800 that also predicts low fertility.

00:11:18.620 That also, and when we say predicts low fertility, what we're really saying is that is

00:11:22.260 disadvantageous from a natural selection standpoint within a modern environment, meaning it's being

00:11:28.680 selected out of the general human gene pool.

00:11:31.540 But not only do you have these studies, it's actually more accurate because there's a separate

00:11:36.440 study that I might not have put in the book that looked at the polygenic scores that are

00:11:41.020 associated with high IQ over time within genome databases.

00:11:45.480 Because, you know, we've been collecting full genomes for a while now, like 10, 20 years at

00:11:50.320 this point.

00:11:50.980 And we can look at the frequency of specific genetic sequences over time.

00:11:55.640 And the frequency in the developed world, at least, that we are seeing these high IQ predicting

00:12:03.440 polygenic scores occurring in the population is decreasing at the rate you would predict

00:12:09.560 it to be decreasing if we really were seeing the 0.2 point decrease over time.

00:12:13.960 But about this sustained into the future thing, part of me, I mean, so when we look at demographic

00:12:22.740 collapse, we're also looking at populations getting lumpy and siloed and kind of walling

00:12:27.100 themselves off.

00:12:28.500 Part of me, because of the growth of AI, is a little bit less concerned about this than

00:12:33.760 I used to be, because I feel like the number of people we need who are quite smart is now

00:12:41.340 reduced due to the existence of AI.

00:12:44.080 And if you have a sufficient number, like minimum critical mass of people super humanly boosted

00:12:52.140 by the resources of AI, which we've recently discovered can even really augment creativity,

00:12:58.080 scientific or artistic, et cetera, that maybe we'll be okay.

00:13:02.420 What are your thoughts on that?

00:13:05.360 Was dropping IQs?

00:13:06.620 No.

00:13:07.360 No?

00:13:08.300 No.

00:13:08.920 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:13:09.880 These people cannot use a, like, so one of the things that I've become increasingly aware

00:13:16.280 of given the direction that AI development has gone, and we'll have another episode where

00:13:20.320 we focus on this because we actually bought exclusive rights to a theme song for the show.

00:13:24.700 And the theme song was made in part due to AI.

00:13:32.420 The really great AI art and stories are coming from people who in the past would have been

00:13:59.920 artists or writers or something like that.

00:14:02.600 Yeah.

00:14:02.940 They, the AI is very useful at augmenting an individual's personal genius.

00:14:11.300 Yes.

00:14:11.460 And that's where you get the really, really high quality stuff.

00:14:14.920 Like when I get the AI songs that are of the quality of a professional musician, these

00:14:19.920 aren't necessarily the songs that the AI is just spitting out, right?

00:14:23.520 They are the songs that have been mediated by somebody who has a unique talent for this sort

00:14:27.500 of stuff.

00:14:28.260 Yeah.

00:14:28.500 They just allow that individual to create a lot more really high quality music a lot

00:14:34.680 faster.

00:14:35.280 Right.

00:14:35.720 But so let's just say if we have very, very few geniuses in the future, is that so much

00:14:42.500 of a problem when the output of those geniuses can be 10X'd by AI?

00:14:46.400 Oh, that's a good point.

00:14:47.580 I mean, that's my point.

00:14:49.180 Yeah. 0.98

00:14:49.400 Well, the problem is, is that we live in democracies and the, these people are going like the dumb 0.92

00:14:56.160 ones are going to be more and more of the general population as time goes on. 0.97

00:15:00.740 Yeah.

00:15:01.260 And, and, and, and so they will be electing and building bureaucracies that make it harder

00:15:08.140 and harder for the geniuses to do their jobs.

00:15:10.660 And I guess that also break in a road society in general.

00:15:15.180 We also need to consider the geopolitics of how a declining number of competent, productive

00:15:22.500 individuals impacts the solutions that countries are going to have access to when demographic

00:15:28.260 collapse really hits.

00:15:29.480 We had some reporters from the Wall Street Journal over at our house yesterday, and we

00:15:34.420 were talking with them about how, one, if you look at like the United States, if you look

00:15:39.780 at the low income earners in the United States, it was something like 80% of them are living

00:15:45.100 paycheck to paycheck, and yet most of their life is covered by social services, most of

00:15:50.640 the, the food that they eat or their housing, et cetera.

00:15:53.780 And when that social service disappears, these people are genuinely effed.

00:15:59.580 Now, the problem here becomes as demographic collapse gets worse, it is hurting the more productive

00:16:06.520 populations, economically speaking, i.e. the people who are paying more taxes, more than

00:16:12.200 it's hurting the populations that are taking taxes.

00:16:16.480 Now, this becomes a uniquely big problem in the face of AI empowering these productive individuals

00:16:23.540 because it means that these productive individuals no longer have the same geographic ties that they

00:16:30.360 would have had in a historic context.

00:16:32.800 By that, what I mean is, you know, both Simone and I do work in venture capital.

00:16:35.680 For example, when you look at the venture capital deals that are being done in Silicon

00:16:39.640 Valley these days, what everyone will tell you, it's like two guys in the United States,

00:16:44.060 maybe 20 people in the Philippines, and then just tons of AIs.

00:16:47.960 It is not like it used to be with Google or something like that, where you could get these

00:16:52.260 giant companies that can't easily pick up and leave.

00:16:55.580 If you think that you can make up for the rapid decrease in the number of productive people

00:17:02.840 by taxing the few that are left more, these people will just pick up and leave.

00:17:10.300 They'll either go to another country, or if no other stable democracies exist, they'll go

00:17:15.820 to a charter city, which are increasingly being opened up, which allow them to not have to pay

00:17:21.060 into these large socialized systems, which means that millions of people are going to starve,

00:17:29.620 or old people are going to die. 0.99

00:17:31.820 I mean, the scale of the human tragedy that is going to happen, because people are not being

00:17:38.780 realistic about the fact that not all humans, even when you control for their childhood,

00:17:43.580 are born with the same opportunities due to genetic differences in terms of how we perceive the world,

00:17:49.700 or relate to AI, or relate to whatever, right?

00:17:53.120 It's going to be catastrophic.

00:17:54.480 It's going to be catastrophic at the scale, or likely bigger than the scale, of something

00:18:00.080 like the Great Leap Forward in China, which, depending on the stats you're looking at, more

00:18:04.820 people died in that five-year period trying to move their economy forwards than died during

00:18:09.160 the entire American slave trade.

00:18:11.180 Just because something had good intentions doesn't mean people won't die.

00:18:16.560 It doesn't mean you don't bear moral culpability for ignoring it when people told you, hey,

00:18:23.460 you really need to pay attention to the fact that not all humans are born equally competent.

00:18:28.980 Yeah.

00:18:29.480 Also, I should note for people who are like, IQ doesn't matter, and you shouldn't look at 1.00

00:18:34.420 it.

00:18:34.900 We have another video that goes really strong on the core arguments against that, that

00:18:38.840 were done by Nazeep Talid or something like that.

00:18:41.220 I can't remember who it was.

00:18:42.180 Oh, yeah.

00:18:43.520 But basically, the people who argue this are lying to you.

00:18:46.980 In a way where I don't know if they're intelligent and have engaged with the data, I don't think

00:18:53.620 they believe what they're saying, really.

00:18:55.760 Because you can look at their own arguments, and they're structured like arguments.

00:19:00.140 And this is the point that we were making in the last episode that we did on this particular

00:19:03.160 thing ages ago, that the way that the arguments are structured, it's structured like the person

00:19:09.680 who's getting it knows that they're lying to the audience, but is trying to figure out

00:19:13.480 how to take the PC perspective, not by somebody who's genuinely been confused by the data.

00:19:19.060 Because it's like, they'll be like, well, it only really matters when you get to really

00:19:24.020 low IQs and stuff like that.

00:19:25.820 And it's like, yeah, but that's where the whole world's going to be in 100 years.

00:19:29.140 Right?

00:19:29.800 And that's what really gets me, that the average person in the developed world within

00:19:34.020 125 years that's born is going to be what today would be categorized as mentally disabled.

00:19:39.920 That is not like a small problem.

00:19:42.640 Right.

00:19:43.100 Well, hold on, though.

00:19:44.620 I do think that things are a little bit clouded.

00:19:47.560 I was listening this morning to a YouTube video on the evil history of eugenics, and it 0.99

00:19:52.960 was talking about all these different IQ surveys and bits of research that had taken place.

00:19:58.300 And based on contemporary definitions of basic intelligence, something like 45% of people

00:20:05.960 coming through Ellis Island were seen as having the intelligence of a five-year-old or below,

00:20:11.600 et cetera, et cetera.

00:20:12.420 And yet, these are people who had figured out from positions of quite meager means, we'll

00:20:19.440 say, how to get across an ocean to America.

00:20:23.980 You know, like, these are people with hustle.

00:20:26.760 They're people that we might define as-

00:20:27.920 Well, I challenge you.

00:20:28.740 I would say these were people who came from an environment that were incredibly low-nutrition

00:20:33.120 environments.

00:20:33.640 They grew up starving.

00:20:35.160 I would not be surprised, given the amount of lead that was used in products back then,

00:20:39.780 given the amount of starvation that would have happened back in.

00:20:42.580 Yeah.

00:20:43.640 Actually, half the people going through Ellis Island did have the intelligence of a five-year-old.

00:20:47.260 And that may be.

00:20:48.240 And so another one of the arguments that I want to present is throughout the vast majority

00:20:52.360 of human history, due to nutritional constraints, due to immense poverty, pervasive poverty, and

00:20:58.900 or just a very small class that was given the resources to even just be literate, that we,

00:21:06.140 for a very, very long time, have gotten by on an extremely small percentage.

00:21:10.720 I think the most interesting element of this, to me, is what's different now and why is

00:21:15.920 this risky now?

00:21:16.860 And perhaps the biggest issue here is that in the past, those who counted as intelligent

00:21:21.820 by contemporary measures were the ones who ruled society and built the things and decided

00:21:28.360 how things were going to work.

00:21:29.820 Whereas now, society is going to be run by, to a certain extent, the lowest or most mediocre

00:21:36.180 common denominator, which means that either what's very urgent, if the reverse of, I mean,

00:21:42.100 basically given that the reverse effect, reverse Flynn effect is real, is we have to automate

00:21:47.620 and eliminate as much of government as possible so that there is as little deep state as possible

00:21:53.840 because every person working in government is going to increasingly become a liability as 0.95

00:22:00.260 the average person becomes dumber, essentially. 0.89

00:22:03.740 And then, does that make sense to you? 0.82

00:22:05.400 But what you're missing here, and this is the point I was going to make, is you're not

00:22:09.980 taking into account the effect that a decreasing average has on long tails.

00:22:16.540 So, what's really not being taken into account here is-

00:22:19.960 Right, that whole saying of like, have you met the average person? 0.99

00:22:23.040 Well, half are dumber than that. 0.99

00:22:24.420 So, the point you're making- 0.99

00:22:25.320 No, that's not the point I'm making.

00:22:26.380 Okay.

00:22:26.720 Are you familiar with what I mean by long tails?

00:22:29.600 I think so, but you're probably going to expand on it.

00:22:32.720 I'm not really sure where you're going with this. 0.99

00:22:34.440 I'm assuming you're saying that just this means that the dumbest people are going to 1.00

00:22:38.060 be very dangerous. 0.99

00:22:39.300 No, it doesn't mean that.

00:22:40.820 So, suppose you had two populations, right?

00:22:43.520 And one population had an average IQ that was five points above the other population.

00:22:48.180 Okay?

00:22:48.440 If you then, in that society, find the top 1% of people, right?

00:22:55.380 90% of that top 1% are going to be from the population that's just five IQ points higher

00:23:02.460 than the other population if those two groups are equal numbered in society.

00:23:06.820 It's the mass of long tail distributions.

00:23:10.100 When you have a move in the middle, it disproportionately affects the long tail.

00:23:17.120 So, if you have a move five points or 10 points down in the middle, that's going to vastly, vastly,

00:23:26.300 vastly decrease the number of geniuses that are being born.

00:23:29.340 Much more than you would expect from just like, say, a 30 or 40% decrease in general intelligence.

00:23:35.980 It would cause the level of like genius level today, people being born to drop by like 98%,

00:23:42.240 99%.

00:23:43.460 Do you think that's really going to happen when a portion of the population that values

00:23:51.480 intelligence and begins using polygenic risk score selection, not just because they're

00:23:56.600 obsessed with intelligence, but because more and more people are going to be forced to use

00:24:00.960 IVF and PGDP polygenic risk score selection is going to become just more common practice.

00:24:05.980 That people will sort of by accident select for intelligence, even if they don't value it,

00:24:10.740 that this population of people delaying fertility, using IVF, and then inadvertently selecting

00:24:16.500 for intelligence is going to create more super geniuses.

00:24:21.120 I mean, we have the Kwisat Khadarak of our family, right? 0.71

00:24:24.580 And like, they're what, in like the top 99.8% of intelligence.

00:24:29.600 I think we're going to see more of those children being born as people select for them.

00:24:36.040 So I think that what is going to happen in the future, so if I'm like actually trying

00:24:40.740 to predict the most likely scenario in the future, this plays into that scenario, but

00:24:45.180 doing polygenic selection to increase the IQ of your kids, given how quickly polygenic

00:24:50.520 scores are decreasing, isn't actually going to protect your family line that much, unless

00:24:57.380 your family line is genetically isolating itself from the general population.

00:25:01.400 Right, because you've got reversion to the mean, and in the end, you shouldn't be dating

00:25:04.540 someone because they themselves are smart, but because their entire family is smart.

00:25:08.660 Yeah.

00:25:09.180 Like on first date, you should be asking like, so what did your grandfather do?

00:25:13.500 Yeah, what did your parents do?

00:25:15.600 I like this point because people often go to you and they'll be like, well, your wife is

00:25:19.420 smart, but aren't you afraid of reversion to the mean?

00:25:21.900 And I'm like, yeah, that's why I checked that she was from a smart family, because the mean 0.99

00:25:25.620 is high, because you're not reverting to, like we often talk about reversion to the mean

00:25:30.220 as being like to the population mean, but functionally what's happening in reversion to

00:25:34.700 the mean is you're reverting to the mean of your individual families and ancestors.

00:25:39.880 Yeah.

00:25:40.020 And so if that mean is high and you are genius or intelligent due to some random mutation,

00:25:46.960 that random mutation isn't going to occur in your kids at a high level, so they're not

00:25:50.800 going to get, you know, your unique intelligence.

00:25:52.500 However, I'm not smart because I'm like a mutant.

00:25:55.960 I'm smart because like my brother is a genius and my parents are geniuses.

00:26:01.460 And what's quite interesting is this actually shows up in the polygenic scores related to

00:26:05.700 intelligence of our embryos.

00:26:07.660 So there is only one embryo of all of our embryos for which we have polygenic scores that is either

00:26:17.340 at the exact average for the population or like two or 3% below average.

00:26:26.220 So the, the vast majority of our embryos are clustered like a third to halfway in between like

00:26:37.720 the 95% range and the mean.

00:26:41.880 So all kind of above average.

00:26:43.800 So you can really see like there's this clustering and you see this with almost all polygenic

00:26:47.340 risk scores.

00:26:48.420 If you get any, like you look at polygenic risk scores of your embryos for something like

00:26:52.580 gum disease or for schizophrenia or for depression, you're not actually, you might see one outlier

00:26:59.260 here or there, but for the most part, you are just going to see them all kind of clustered.

00:27:03.780 So for some of our kids, they just have equally shitty outcomes around certain things like acne.

00:27:09.120 For example, we're all going to have a bunch of pizza faced kids because that's just our genetic

00:27:13.880 heritage.

00:27:14.400 You were pizza faced and I was pizza faced.

00:27:16.780 So we're going to have pizza faced kids and our grandparents probably were pizza faced too.

00:27:21.320 Yeah.

00:27:21.520 So we have, what was I going to say?

00:27:23.720 So yeah, what's actually going to happen?

00:27:26.360 Do I think that some populations are going to begin to genetically isolate themselves as

00:27:30.380 the general population really isn't doing anything about this?

00:27:33.440 Yes, I do think they're going to.

00:27:35.320 Another thing to remember from a historic standpoint, and we mentioned this in another video,

00:27:39.220 but it's good to come back to is the effect that current child support laws have on out

00:27:46.160 group breeding, which is to say that historically you would have some individuals develop or some

00:27:52.000 families develop genes that were more associated with success in that society, i.e. earning lots

00:27:58.380 of money, building up lots of power.

00:28:00.360 But then these individuals would, when they were male, impregnate lots of women who they 0.99

00:28:05.520 weren't married to, which we can also see from the data.

00:28:08.580 Fidelity historically was really common.

00:28:11.260 And through that, like a guy might rise up to a local lord, but he'd impregnate a bunch of

00:28:16.220 peasants.

00:28:16.640 And so you never really got that much of a differentiation between the competent people

00:28:21.520 and the incompetent people. 0.67

00:28:23.160 That has changed recently, specifically due to child support laws, because now when a person

00:28:30.060 is super wealthy, when a male is super wealthy or successful in some other means, they are

00:28:34.520 going to be very wary about getting a woman pregnant who they don't see as their equal

00:28:39.700 or someone they want to spend their entire life with.

00:28:41.700 Because they're going to be on the hook to pay for any children they have with them.

00:28:45.460 Yeah, which is hugely dysgenic because that means that individuals who, like a man who is 0.98

00:28:51.020 not successful, who doesn't have much money, there actually isn't really that much of a

00:28:55.580 cost to him in getting a bunch of women pregnant.

00:28:57.800 So if I'm the type of guy who's in and out of pregnant, in and out of prison, tons of debt,

00:29:03.080 no wealth, can't really hold a job, there's no reason for me not to knock up a bunch of

00:29:07.640 girls.

00:29:07.800 Yeah, they're not even wages to be garnished.

00:29:10.040 Yeah, there's not even wages to be garnished.

00:29:11.580 And that's why you see the people who are knocking up lots of people and having a lot of

00:29:15.440 children out of wedlock are the people who don't have a lot to lose, really.

00:29:20.080 And that's hugely dysgenic in its effects.

00:29:23.220 But the larger point being to all of this, when people are like, we can just keep doing

00:29:29.200 what we're doing, genetically speaking, without polygenic selection, without gene editing,

00:29:34.580 you really can't.

00:29:36.320 And if you're in a community that is not ruthlessly selecting for the intelligence of your children's

00:29:42.400 mates and building a culture that does that, in the future, you're just not going to be

00:29:48.420 one of the few groups on earth that end up mattering.

00:29:51.180 And even we can't engender that within our kids in terms of their mates. 0.92

00:29:54.960 You know, don't pay attention to how attractive they are.

00:29:57.860 Look only at work ethic, ambition, IQ, you know, stuff like this.

00:30:03.200 And then eventually, given the direction of the general population, you know, when you're

00:30:09.260 talking about a two standard deviation decrease in the next hundred years, the only way some

00:30:14.920 part of our current civilization ends up surviving is if some population does genetically isolate

00:30:22.300 themselves.

00:30:23.180 Gosh, this is reminding me.

00:30:24.220 I've been reading this book called Red Rising, which if you have Audible right now, it's presently

00:30:29.320 available for free if you have an Audible subscription, which is why I'm listening to it.

00:30:33.380 But it was also recommended to us.

00:30:34.440 It's the one I described to you where it has these striations in population.

00:30:38.800 There are the golds, there are the pinks and purples and coppers and silvers and reds.

00:30:44.320 But the golds are at the very top of society and they rule. 0.94

00:30:47.720 Humanity is an intergalactic empire.

00:30:49.500 And they are brutally eugenic to the extent that in their top leadership academies, there

00:30:58.160 are literal, not battle royales.

00:31:00.820 It's not like only one will be left, but they definitely have quotas of people that are totally

00:31:06.940 permitted to be died.

00:31:07.940 Like, you know, 10% of the student population is going to die. 0.99

00:31:10.880 And that's a good thing because you want the weak ones to die. 0.99

00:31:13.100 And they are therefore taller and bigger and they look different. 0.85

00:31:18.840 They're incredibly smart.

00:31:19.960 They're incredibly agile.

00:31:21.520 Their bones are stronger.

00:31:23.800 And it, yeah.

00:31:25.440 Is that what you're saying we need?

00:31:27.520 Do we need the golds of red rising?

00:31:29.760 I'm saying that people can be like, well, we can, there isn't a way basically to keep

00:31:35.480 the IQ stable with the selective pressures that are created by modernity.

00:31:40.100 So you have two options, right?

00:31:41.860 Either you're in one of the groups that's striving to increase your IQ, ambition, other

00:31:47.500 genetically correlated traits, or you're not paying attention to this in terms of your

00:31:51.900 groups of breeding practices, and you are in a downwards and rapidly downward spiral to

00:31:58.400 cultural irrelevance. 0.86

00:32:00.240 And it's an important thing to note as well.

00:32:02.540 When we talk about the correlatories to IQ, a lot of people assume IQ is just how smart

00:32:09.020 you are.

00:32:09.440 But like, what, what are things that are really correlated with IQ?

00:32:12.940 How likely you are to grape someone?

00:32:15.360 People with low IQs are much more likely to grape someone than people with high IQs.

00:32:19.900 Well, even health outcomes.

00:32:21.080 How likely to go to murder you?

00:32:21.560 Health outcomes.

00:32:22.740 Are correlated with IQ.

00:32:25.100 Yeah.

00:32:25.340 So is somebody going to rob you?

00:32:27.940 Is somebody going to murder you?

00:32:29.120 General prosociality is correlated with IQ.

00:32:31.900 So just broadly, being a nice person, helping other people out, contributing to society,

00:32:37.940 being healthy, all of these things correlate positively with IQ.

00:32:41.980 Which is why I implied earlier that if people do polygenic risk or selection with their embryos,

00:32:46.700 and they're only looking at things like being kind, having a sense of humor, or being healthy,

00:32:52.220 they're going to inadvertently select for IQ.

00:32:55.360 But something that you point out, yeah, sure, you can, you can focus on this or you cannot

00:32:59.120 in terms of your family's breeding practices or whatever.

00:33:02.340 But I think the bigger issue is either, like I said, you have to figure out how to streamline

00:33:08.300 government as much as possible to avoid the human liability problem as people get on average

00:33:13.240 less intelligent, or we need to really double down among those communities that are maintaining

00:33:19.120 high IQs with this city-state concept whereby people are just going to their walled off gardens.

00:33:25.260 And well, you can have city-states in terms of, what's that term that everybody likes to

00:33:30.300 use now, the network state, you can have network state marriage markets and stuff like that,

00:33:35.260 right?

00:33:35.460 Which is what we're trying to do. 0.94

00:33:36.440 Yeah, but if you're still being governed by a nation that is increasingly inept and dangerous, 0.83

00:33:43.680 then you are at risk.

00:33:46.740 Well, and this is why I predict that city-states are the future.

00:33:49.480 Yeah.

00:33:50.180 As it becomes clearer that there are some subpopulations that through AI, as you pointed out,

00:33:54.640 are going to be even more efficacious than they would be in today's world, and that we'll

00:33:59.580 have a dramatically higher IQ than the general population.

00:34:03.620 But also that government, which is increasingly deep state-driven and still very much human-run, 0.98

00:34:09.780 becomes increasingly dumber, which can you imagine government getting dumber than it is 0.98

00:34:14.800 now? 1.00

00:34:16.940 That's scary.

00:34:18.660 You have to be...

00:34:19.600 It's not just about having the 10x power or more of AI.

00:34:23.060 It's about being pushed away from quite a liability of governance.

00:34:28.660 I think you're absolutely right.

00:34:30.700 Well, any final thoughts on this, Simone?

00:34:33.980 Yikes.

00:34:34.960 But also, you say that people with low IQ are moving in the direction of cultural irrelevance,

00:34:42.020 whereas I think that that is not true.

00:34:43.960 And I would expect something a little bit closer to idiocracy, where that is the pervasive culture.

00:34:48.840 And it's huge, and it's big, and it's everywhere, and it's loud, and it's amusing.

00:34:53.980 I think closer than idiocracy is removing to WALL-E, you know, with the AIs and everything

00:35:00.200 like that, that are basically making all the decisions for these.

00:35:03.520 But unlike WALL-E, the people won't just be...

00:35:05.980 Because the other thing that's really correlated with high fertility rates, people might be

00:35:09.440 surprised by this, are the polygenic scores.

00:35:11.880 The single most correlated with fertility rate of all the polygenic scores a person has

00:35:15.520 is the one that is actually meant for correlating with IQ.

00:35:19.420 But the second one in a study that was looking at this is the one that's correlated with obesity.

00:35:23.420 Just fat negative podcast.

00:35:25.800 Well, I guess Zimpik exists today, so maybe that won't be an issue.

00:35:28.820 It'll be some sort of weird, sad form of, I don't know, hedonism, whatever.

00:35:37.160 But yeah, I don't think it'll be exactly like idiocracy, because I think that AI does sort

00:35:40.780 of prevent a true idiocracy future.

00:35:43.340 But the question is, what the general pop...

00:35:46.240 It's not a question.

00:35:47.040 The general pop's IQ is decreasing rapidly, way more rapidly than people think.

00:35:52.020 The one standard deviation in 75 years is shockingly fast.

00:35:56.500 And that you see this across all measures and pretty much everywhere you look.

00:36:00.720 And it is so interesting to me that the powers that be are just pretending like it's not happening.

00:36:06.040 Oh, I suppose the question is, what do you do about that?

00:36:11.380 I think people just have to support human dignity and respect that maybe intelligence...

00:36:20.760 Listen, in the end, the thing that deserves whatever is the thing that takes it.

00:36:26.740 And if obesity and lower educational attainment are what manage to inherit the future genetically,

00:36:35.240 then power to the people.

00:36:37.340 You know, that's what earns it.

00:36:39.820 Intelligence clearly isn't everything. 0.92

00:36:42.260 And a big theme that we've seen in low fertility rates is people being so far up their asses in 0.98

00:36:48.260 terms of thought. 0.94

00:36:49.100 And we're probably going to do a separate episode on this, but people overanalyzing things and

00:36:54.680 overthinking things without having enough of an emphasis on action in their lives,

00:36:58.600 really just not having kids, also not doing anything with their careers, not doing anything

00:37:02.420 with life.

00:37:03.180 In fact, I argue that there is an immense portion of the quote-unquote intelligent population

00:37:08.460 that contributes probably less to society than significantly less intelligent.

00:37:14.240 And we're talking quite below average people in this world.

00:37:16.880 Because they spend all of their time strategizing and writing and managing and analyzing and 0.99

00:37:23.080 doing absolutely fuck all. 0.99

00:37:25.100 And it makes me so fucking mad. 1.00

00:37:27.260 So maybe in the end, IQ isn't all you make it out to be.

00:37:31.680 Maybe in the end, only the small number of people who are both intelligent and action-oriented,

00:37:37.040 like Elon Musk, who can both think and do things, which is quite unusual, are the ones

00:37:42.120 who matter.

00:37:42.720 And a lot of the people, even God bless you all, but people who listen to this podcast,

00:37:46.880 who are very smart, but aren't doing anything with their lives, don't matter.

00:37:51.080 In fact, matter less than the obese, high school-educated person who's having a ton of kids.

00:37:56.760 So if you want to be among the elect, dear Based Camp listener, I hope that you are actually

00:38:02.680 doing something with your life and actually having kids.

00:38:05.540 Because you may be among the entire reason why IQ is disappearing. 1.00

00:38:09.360 Because you guys can't keep your fucking acts together. 1.00

00:38:12.080 The end. 1.00

00:38:13.080 Thank you and I love you very much, Malcolm.

00:38:14.840 You're the best.

00:38:15.520 I love you too, Sylvain.

00:38:18.120 Unrelated to today's discussion, because I didn't even know we were talking about this,

00:38:21.780 I was looking up quotes from Idiocracy.

00:38:25.640 Can't believe you like money too.

00:38:27.980 We should hang out.

00:38:29.480 Totally.

00:38:29.880 Because I was looking for fun things that we could use in a Base Camp intro.

00:38:33.660 And I'm reading these and I'm thinking, these are just things that we say around the house. 0.99

00:38:39.000 Not what the protagonist says, just what people from the future idiot world say. 0.99

00:38:45.220 Like what? 1.00

00:38:46.040 Like water.

00:38:47.660 Like out of a toilet.

00:38:48.820 But I mean, who drinks water when you have Diet Coke?

00:39:04.280 I was just looking for some regular water.

00:39:07.220 Water?

00:39:07.940 Yeah.

00:39:08.600 You mean like in the toilet?

00:39:10.180 What for?

00:39:12.100 Just to drink.

00:39:18.820 No, there are so many great lines in it though, but also, I don't, I think it's interesting 0.87

00:39:27.880 that a lot of what's considered to be the epitome of dumb comments in Idiocracy are actually 0.97

00:39:34.680 super-based comments that I would consider to be dumb. 0.98

00:39:38.940 I mean, yeah, obviously there's a lot, like watering fields with the equivalent of Gatorade 0.97

00:39:43.380 isn't exactly smart.

00:39:44.440 I was just going through Idiocracy clips and this scene reminds me so much of what I am

00:39:52.000 trying to talk to brainwashed ultra-progressives.

00:39:55.720 So when you're watching this scene, replace Brondo with DEI and Electrolytes with Equality 0.68

00:40:03.020 and this is me like talking to my friends who are higher-ups at Disney or whatever.

00:40:08.380 It is insane, these conversations that I have.

00:40:11.080 For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brondo stuff. 0.95

00:40:17.040 But Brondo's got what plants crave.

00:40:18.740 It's got electrolytes.

00:40:20.000 So wait a minute.

00:40:21.040 What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops?

00:40:26.100 Yes.

00:40:26.880 Water.

00:40:27.980 Like out the toilet?

00:40:29.240 Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but yeah, that's the idea.

00:40:33.100 But Brondo's got what plants crave.

00:40:35.100 It's got electrolytes.

00:40:36.440 Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.

00:40:41.360 Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.

00:40:45.040 Hey, that's good.

00:40:45.980 You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?

00:40:47.460 Yeah.

00:40:49.100 Okay, look, you want to solve this problem, so why don't we just try it, okay?

00:40:53.820 And not worry about what plants crave.

00:40:56.780 Brondo's got what plants crave.

00:40:58.880 Yeah, it's got electrolytes.

00:41:00.740 What are electrolytes?

00:41:02.400 Do you even know?

00:41:03.500 It's what they use to make Brondo.

00:41:06.440 Yeah, but why did they use them to make Brondo?

00:41:09.720 Because Brondo's got electrolytes.

00:41:14.840 But do you know why there is Diet Coke and Coke Zero as two separate products?

00:41:24.200 I feel like I knew this once.

00:41:26.420 Yeah.

00:41:26.660 So Coke Zero came about when they invented a formula that could create a Coke that tasted more like the original Coke.

00:41:35.440 And they decided to use this opportunity to see if they could create a diet product that targeted the male audience instead of the female audience.

00:41:45.800 Because diet soda before that was predominantly consumed by women who were worried about their figure. 1.00

00:41:51.540 So they were the ones who were more willing to compromise on flavor to attempt to stay thin, right?

00:41:59.040 Yes, because nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

00:42:02.460 That is why Coke Zero, it's called Coke Zero instead of like Coke Light or Diet Coke or Diet Coke Blue.

00:42:10.400 Because diet as a word in branding is associated with women, female products. 1.00

00:42:16.160 Yeah, you don't want to be a girl. 1.00

00:42:17.380 And so they're like, how can we make it male?

00:42:21.140 And so what they did is they were like zero.

00:42:23.800 And then it's like red and black and masculine.

00:42:26.620 Yeah, that's very interesting.

00:42:30.100 It is, yeah, that light has also been considered a sufficiently male term.

00:42:36.360 Now, I've never had campaigns when we've had TVs on while traveling, like in the rooms we've been in, for the new light beer, I think it's Dos Equis Oro, like gold.

00:42:50.120 They're not even trying to put in any indicator of low-caloriness anymore.

00:42:55.500 They're just telling people and advertising that it's a light beer.

00:42:59.200 I just think it's that toxic for men to be seen.

00:43:02.660 And here we have Duff, Duff Light, and our newest flavor, Duff Drime.

00:43:08.600 Oh, here's another fun advertising story.

00:43:12.120 This will be ending the video here, Wiz.

00:43:14.480 It's the story of, and these are things I learned in business school or like around that time.

00:43:19.280 This one I learned in business school.

00:43:20.500 The Diet Coke thing was before business school.

00:43:21.940 This one is the story of Lighthouse and Coors Light.

00:43:27.720 What is Lighthouse a beer?

00:43:30.600 Yes, Lighthouse was a light beer made by the Samuel Adams Brewing Company.

00:43:35.440 And it kept winning every light beer competition, you know, in terms of like taste, right?

00:43:41.040 So it would keep winning all the big taste testing competitions.

00:43:44.720 But it just wasn't selling that well, especially when compared to the top light beer on the market, which was Coors Light.

00:43:49.860 Which, you know, everyone is like, this does not taste like a beer.

00:43:55.340 Like, why is it winning all of these, like in the actual mind of the consumer when we know?

00:44:02.420 Okay, so they then did user testing and they went out to try to find, you know,

00:44:09.780 why was everybody buying Coors Light and not the Lighthouse?

00:44:13.060 And it turned out it was because they were optimizing around completely the wrong problem.

00:44:19.040 What they had been trying to do with Lighthouse was to create a beer that was lower calorie than a normal beer,

00:44:26.660 but tasted as close as possible to a normal beer.

00:44:29.160 Provided the beer experience.

00:44:31.200 But with Coors Light, they didn't want a beer experience?

00:44:34.240 No, what they wanted was something refreshing to drink after a hard day's work.

00:44:38.940 More like a lemonade.

00:44:41.220 They literally wanted beer flavored water.

00:44:43.560 Yeah, they wanted beer flavored water.

00:44:44.660 They wanted masculine water. 1.00

00:44:45.900 They wanted masculine water. 1.00

00:44:46.660 Yes, they wanted man water.

00:44:48.600 That is what, like, that is honestly what Coors Light is.

00:44:52.160 It is man water.

00:44:54.560 It is.

00:44:55.160 It is.

00:44:55.400 Oh my God.

00:44:59.160 Okay.

00:45:00.860 Oh, mysteries have been solved today.

00:45:04.300 That is what Coors Light is.

00:45:05.640 Correct.

00:45:05.880 With you.

00:45:06.320 thanks.

00:45:06.400 Thank you.

00:45:06.480 Thank you.

00:45:06.500 Thank you.

00:45:07.420 Thanks, everybody.

00:45:23.540 Thanks for joining.

00:45:25.380 Thanks for joining us.

00:45:25.820 It is so interesting.

00:45:26.440 Thanks for joining us today.

00:45:27.840 Thanks.

00:45:28.280 Bye, guys.

00:45:29.940 Bye.

00:45:30.840 Bye,, guys.

Based Camp - August 20, 2024

Is Idiocracy Coming？ Genetics, IQ, & Realistic Outcomes

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