Based Camp - Overcoming the Genetics of Happiness： The One Thing Antinatalism Got Right

00:00:00.360 Hello, Simone! It's wonderful to have you here today. Today we are going to be talking about the one area, the people who want all humans dead, the antinatalist, David Benatar, that they are right, which is David Benatar makes this argument that, well, people can learn to or come to, he uses like a boiling frog analogy here, think that a genuinely terrible life is worth living.

00:00:26.480 Like he's like these people who are like starving in Africa. Oh, and who say, but I still want to live. I still wish I was born. And he's like, this is proof that like you don't know if your life is any good because these people think their lives are good. And clearly from my privileged perspective, their lives are not good. How dare you want to exist? You're incorrect.

00:00:46.960 What he is missing and what we will be going over is these individuals' subjective experience of both happiness and life satisfaction is likely higher than or at least around the same as his own. I'd argue it's probably quite a bit higher than with some of the stats that we're going to go into.

00:01:05.300 They are experiencing a better life than David Benatar. And this is where we have to talk about hedonism, the way you choose to spend your time and red queening.

00:01:17.280 So for people who don't know red queening, red queening is a scene from Alice in Wonderland where they say, you know, running as fast as I can, but every time they run faster, the red queen runs faster. 0.82

00:01:27.700 So it's as if they're not moving at all. And the red queen is often used as an analogy with an evolution between predator and prey evolution.

00:01:35.340 So the prey will develop some defense against the predator and the predator develop something that gives it an extra edge and then back and forth, back and forth.

00:01:41.440 But it's the same with happiness in your life. As you gain more things that give you like subjective experiences of happiness, you very, very quickly normalize to those things.

00:01:54.280 And as such, pursuit of those things is an enormous waste of time. Just complete waste of time.

00:02:02.000 Like, it's one of the reasons why I think a religious life is so much better or finding something to dedicate yourself to is so much better. And it's one of the reasons why the urban monoculture is so toxic.

00:02:09.600 In fact, I would argue that religious life is even a better, an austere religious life is better if you want to maximize hedonism.

00:02:17.460 Because the best way to begin to enjoy things again is to go on a dopamine fast. And most hard religions have those where you like have to give up in front of a dopaminergic.

00:02:28.460 Exactly. And that's, it's after that 30, I think it's a 30 day period. I was listening, I think it was an Andrew Huberman podcast interview with a woman who wrote a book.

00:02:37.400 You shouldn't fast to increase the amount of dopamine. The point being is-

00:02:41.080 I'm just saying, look, we respect that people have different objective functions and some people's objective function is just to feel good. And if you want to be able to feel good, you have to go on dopamine fast.

00:02:49.340 But the point I'm making is that if your objective function is to feel good, marginally, you might feel 5% better than somebody whose life objective isn't to feel good.

00:03:00.460 And what we'll go over here is-

00:03:02.280 Actually, I would argue you're going to be a lot less happy.

00:03:05.660 I'd actually argue that the, if you try everything you can, even dopamine fast, everything like that, from the data, which we'll go into, you will likely live a less fulfilled life and a less happy life than your average religious person.

00:03:21.120 Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

00:03:24.440 You see a similar thing with mental health. I think when you want to be mentally healthy, and it's like a big thing for you, you are way less mentally healthy.

00:03:32.520 Because every time you feel sad or not perfect, you think it's a problem. And then you're contextualizing it as a problem, makes it a problem, and then makes it worse. And then you're ruminating it. And then suddenly you're actually really depressed or you actually have a serious anxiety issue.

00:03:45.640 It's the same way that, yeah, you're right. People obsess with mental health, like they end up having the worst mental health.

00:03:50.460 And it's the same with happiness. If suddenly for a moment, you're like, I'm not happy. Oh God, this is a big problem because my whole thing is I need to be happy. What do I do to make myself happy?

00:03:57.640 I think this happened a lot with your mother where like happiness didn't matter to her. And then when she, it would be like a big deal to her when she wasn't happy. And she kept searching for it in all the wrong places.

00:04:05.980 And she had all the money she could want to do things. She'd go to five-star restaurants every night.

00:04:09.880 Oh, but she used to think like, if I just get this David Webb set, you know, that costs like $64,000, then I'll be happy.

00:04:17.440 Then I'll be happy.

00:04:18.540 Yeah.

00:04:18.680 It didn't make her happy.

00:04:19.760 Then I'll be happy.

00:04:20.640 And she could never understand. She's like, why do you care so much about this wholesome lifestyle that you would love?

00:04:25.080 She got really annoyed that I was like, wholesome maxing. And I was like, because wholesome maxing 0.99

00:04:30.840 maximizes everything else down the pipeline as we'll go over. But I think that this is a really

00:04:37.240 important, like, this isn't like a side thing to note in your life. Someone was like, is this really

00:04:40.500 worth the full episode to go into all the data on this?

00:04:42.780 I just feel like it's so obvious. And most of our audience probably understands this really well.

00:04:46.740 I don't think it is. I think a lot of people still in the back of their head will say, if I do this

00:04:51.900 thing that makes me happy, I will be better off. If I, you know, oh, I would, at least I need like

00:04:56.460 certain amounts of happiness. At least I need. And the reality is, is this is just not what the data

00:05:01.160 says. Oh, this is a false God.

00:05:04.400 Your happiness is a false God. If I get the boat, if I get the, the, whatever, like everything will be

00:05:10.200 better. No, it probably won't be better. There's a few things that'll make a permanent impact.

00:05:14.600 A good partner. Yes. Wife, husband, kids, and religion. Oh no. We're the conservatives right

00:05:22.980 all along. But we'll go into this. We'll go into this. We'll go into this. When you see like the

00:05:26.980 average, when you look at those amalgam images of conservatives versus progressives, the conservatives

00:05:32.000 look healthier and happier. They're like smiling. Like that's the core difference in the progressive

00:05:36.140 face. Yeah. This is probably why since records started in the U S at least, conservatives have

00:05:42.040 always been significantly happier than progressives. Because it turns out that as the urban monoculture

00:05:47.000 preachers, do whatever you feel would give you fulfillment. Do whatever you feel would make you

00:05:52.380 happy. Do whatever you want to be validated for, like be validated for whatever you want to believe

00:05:57.360 about yourself. Of course, this leads to the worst possible. It's almost like the, the conceivable

00:06:03.120 lowest possible happiness and subjective feeling of fulfillment you could have in a life attempting to

00:06:08.980 maximize those things within a culture that affirms you for it. These people live literally the worst

00:06:14.060 life a human is capable of living, even though our own like biology, like updates for like no arms,

00:06:20.800 no legs, no, you know, et cetera. So we'll go into all this. All right. All right. So I can start

00:06:25.360 studies here before I go into studies thoughts. No, let's go ahead. All right. We're going to go one

00:06:30.580 study here. Genes, economics, and happiness. A national longitudinal study of adolescent health. The study

00:06:35.300 estimated the heritability of subjective wellbeing at around 33%, indicating

00:06:38.820 that about one third of the variance in individual life satisfaction can be attributed to genetic

00:06:44.140 influences. So first of all, it's mostly genetic anyway. This is why it might make sense to do gene

00:06:49.960 editing of your children or to do gene editing of humans. If you do care about happiness,

00:06:54.180 the number one thing that's going to influence that is genes more than literally anything else.

00:06:58.380 Keep it in mind, we're talking about a third here. We'll be looking at how little other things

00:07:01.620 matter, like winning the lottery. Even during the period in which you've won the lottery, it does not

00:07:06.260 bring happiness up by a third. Exploring the biological basis for happiness. World happiness

00:07:10.880 report, a meta-analysis of multiple studies, including 55,000 individuals estimated that weighted

00:07:16.580 average heritability being at around 36%, 95% confidence interval at 34 to 38%. While the weighted

00:07:23.580 average heritability for life satisfaction was at 32%, 95% confidence interval between 29 and 35.

00:07:30.940 genetics, personality and wellbeing, a twin study of traits, facets and life satisfaction that was

00:07:36.740 published in Nature, a very reputable journal. This study found that the heritability of life

00:07:40.100 satisfaction at 0.31, of which 65% was explained by personality related genetic influences. Consistent

00:07:49.560 effects on genetic happiness across lifespan and brain structure. This is in nature of human behavior.

00:07:54.800 This research demonstrated the genetic basis for general happiness levels appears to have a

00:07:59.140 consistent effect on happiness and wellbeing measures throughout the lifespan across multiple

00:08:03.580 ancestral backgrounds and multiple brain structures. So this isn't just one ancestry, i.e. one

00:08:08.220 ethnicity. This is across ethnicities you see this heritability. The happiness in behavioral genetics, 1.00

00:08:13.300 an update on heritability and changeability journal of happiness studies. Recent metadata reported in a

00:08:19.300 study indicate genetic influences account for 32 to 40% of the variation of overall happiness,

00:08:24.140 subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction. And then a review and meta-analysis of heritability

00:08:28.840 studies in behavioral genetics is focused on a sample size around 60,000 individuals found the

00:08:34.900 rated average for heritability being at around 36 from 34% to 38%. This is wellbeing. While the

00:08:40.520 weighted average of life satisfaction, 32%, 29 to 35%. So like, even if you're talking like within

00:08:48.120 standard deviations, you're still getting like at the bottom here, like around 30%. These studies

00:08:54.120 consistently show that happiness related measures such as life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing have a

00:08:58.240 readable component, which estimates generally range from around 30 to 40%. So first and foremost,

00:09:04.360 the number one thing that determines how satisfied you are was your life is your genetics. And this is

00:09:09.280 why I support antinatalists having no kids. If you have this, this world perspective that is

00:09:14.400 predominated by pessimism and always seeing the worst in everything and looking at people in poor

00:09:20.300 countries and being like, how can they be happier than me? How can they be more satisfied than me?

00:09:24.180 They must be delusional. You are wrong. It's not that they're delusional. It's just that the number

00:09:29.300 one thing that affects your happiness is your genetics. And you appear to be low on that particular

00:09:34.440 marker. In post, I'll try to look up in Nebula, what our happiness levels are. That's on the website.

00:09:40.220 While I'm talking, if you want to try.

00:09:42.940 Yeah. And I mean, you could also, let's say you're pro natalist and really concerned about passing on

00:09:48.320 depression. You can, cause we did actually screen our children for depression, anxiety.

00:09:55.840 And they're unusually happy.

00:09:57.820 Yeah. They are. I mean, well, who knows about all, we didn't have a polygenic scores for all of them.

00:10:03.860 Yeah. The sad one didn't have his polygenic scores done. All right. So look this up, Simone,

00:10:08.440 and I will keep going here. Lottery winners and accident victims is happiness relative.

00:10:15.640 So this study interview based study comparing three groups, lottery winners, paraplegics,

00:10:20.600 and a control group. So obviously lottery winning, good, losing your arms and legs, bad.

00:10:24.820 Lottery winners rated their happiness from four out of five immediately after winning,

00:10:29.740 but returned to a baseline of 3.5 out of five within a year. You lose all the lottery to happen.

00:10:35.020 Oh, ouch.

00:10:37.240 Paraplegics initially reported a happiness lower, 2.96 out of five, but adapted over time and reached

00:10:43.700 a three out of five similar to the control group. Now, no, they didn't go all the way back to control.

00:10:49.160 Three is a control group. So 3.5 isn't all the way down to the control group, but they're mostly to

00:10:52.660 the control group, the lottery winners. Conclusion, both groups demonstrated hedonic adaptation,

00:10:56.920 returning to near baseline happiness levels after significant positive or negative life events.

00:11:00.540 All right. Next one here is subjective wellbeing and adaptation to life events. A meta analysis,

00:11:06.200 a study design, longitudinal analysis of large data sets, tracking individuals before and after

00:11:10.020 major life events, marriage, divorce, and employment findings. Marriage increased life

00:11:14.300 satisfaction by about one point on a 10 point scale, but this effect diminished completely within

00:11:19.500 two years. We'll see other things was marriage. This is, this is all marriages. Good marriages actually

00:11:24.680 increased permanently, but we'll get to that in a second. Divorce caused an initial drop of 1.5 points,

00:11:29.560 but individuals returned to in your baseline was in five years. So you lose the benefit of marriage

00:11:33.840 in one year, you lose the benefit of divorce. It takes five years and it's a much bigger negative

00:11:37.800 than the happiness benefit to marriage. 1.5 to the one, so 50% higher. Unemployment had a more

00:11:42.980 lasting effect with a drop of negative one point that persisted for several years. Conclusion,

00:11:47.780 positive events led to faster adaptation while negative events like unemployment caused slower and

00:11:52.460 incomplete adaptation. Fascinating, but it does show that like if you strive for hedonism,

00:11:58.560 you're just not winning much. Did you get the results on Nebula?

00:12:02.840 Yeah. So they do. Yeah. There are apologetic scores for depression and a bunch of other things like

00:12:08.640 anxiety. I'm in the 18th percentile binge eating disorder, 54th percentile ADHD, 63rd percentile.

00:12:15.120 Okay. So there's a wellbeing and I'm in the 78th percentile for wellbeing.

00:12:20.420 So you're very high on wellbeing.

00:12:23.140 Yeah. So that's interesting. Characterized by, oh yeah. Characterized by high life satisfaction,

00:12:27.980 positive affect and absence of neuroticism as well as depressive symptoms. Okay. So wellbeing

00:12:32.380 is really the score to look at here.

00:12:34.060 You're in 79th percentile of that?

00:12:35.760 78th percentile. I wonder where you are.

00:12:38.040 Wow. You're in the 80th percentile. That's a winning, that's a, like a,

00:12:40.620 that's a good minus there.

00:12:42.420 Yeah. Let's see where you are on wellbeing. I'm very curious.

00:12:46.860 You're in the 72nd percentile for depression. So your depression risk is much higher than mine.

00:12:53.320 Good thing we're screening for it.

00:12:54.600 But another score for your depression is 14th percentile. And that's the thing is there are

00:12:58.760 different, there are different polygenic scores.

00:13:00.460 No, this doesn't invalidate either score.

00:13:02.720 I know, I know. There are just different things that may lead to, wait, what's this?

00:13:06.260 Problematic alcohol use, but you're in the 50th percentile, but your alcohol use is not problematic.

00:13:11.480 So.

00:13:12.000 Okay. So go to wellbeing.

00:13:13.400 Uh-huh. Oh, you're just in the 46th percentile.

00:13:17.580 Oh, interesting. I would think that I was happier.

00:13:19.740 Yeah. You'd be the happier, go luckier person. Wait, these are just polygenic scores. Again,

00:13:25.760 you know, you've got.

00:13:27.360 No, I can see why you are. You are way lower neuroticism than I am.

00:13:32.720 Ah.

00:13:33.680 Which is important to wellbeing.

00:13:35.380 Well, I'm way higher in systematizing and I have sensory issues. So I don't know. It all comes out.

00:13:40.560 I'll keep going with studies here. Hedonic adaptation prevention model, study design,

00:13:45.400 a three-month longitudinal study involving 481 participants who experienced positive life

00:13:48.900 changes, e.g. new relationships or promotions. Findings, initial wellbeing gains were around

00:13:54.740 0.8 points on a seven-point scale, but these gains eroded by approximately 50% within just three

00:14:01.080 months. Conclusion, adaptation occurs through two mechanisms, declining positive emotions over time,

00:14:06.480 increased aspirations for greater achievements. The happiness of millionaires. So study design

00:14:12.480 surveyed over 4,000 millionaires about their happiness on a 10-point scale. Findings, millionaires

00:14:18.320 with net worth between 1 million and 2 million reported an average happiness score of 6, sorry,

00:14:23.820 7.8 out of 10, while those with over 10 million scored slightly higher at 8.0 out of 10.

00:14:31.320 The increase in happiness was about plus 0.25 points, showing diminishing returns as wealth

00:14:38.000 increases. Wealth contributes modestly to happiness at very high levels, but does not significantly

00:14:44.160 alter overall wellbeing. Hedonic adaptation to positive and negative experiences. Study design

00:14:50.640 reviewed longitudinal studies tracking wellbeing before and after major life changes. A person moving to a

00:14:54.680 better neighborhood might initially rate their life satisfaction as increasing from 6.10 to 8.10,

00:14:59.840 but this would typically revert back to 6 out of 10 within six months to two years. That's moving

00:15:05.140 neighborhoods. I doubt that would be true moving to a countryside like us. My life satisfaction

00:15:10.640 definitely increased permanently after moving out of a city to live in nature.

00:15:15.300 Agreed. I think that it's possible to have persistent acute negative shocks. Like you pointed out how winning

00:15:22.960 the lottery and similar things like getting cancer or losing your legs, they can cause sort of short-lived

00:15:28.240 shocks. But I think that there are some environments and lifestyles that cause the regular reintroduction

00:15:34.720 of negative shocks from which you need to recover, which can cause a sort of permanent sadness. Does that make

00:15:43.120 sense?

00:15:43.920 Yeah. So here we'll look at some, like a chart that was created by perplexity, which I love that it created a

00:15:48.720 chart on this when I asked it out for all these studies.

00:15:50.640 Perplexity is so wonderful. I know you're all about Claude, but I'm still very hooked on perplexity.

00:15:55.200 And Claude's my favorite, I gotta say. Although I use perplexity almost as much. Claude's the best for

00:16:00.320 religious stuff, which I do a ton of and you guys don't see because you don't know that I probably work

00:16:04.560 as much on the tracks as on all other podcasts combined. But you guys just see those and you're like,

00:16:09.200 hey, by the way, if you want a religion, check out the track series. If you're like, hey, atheism,

00:16:13.680 all the religions seem kind of stupid. This one isn't stupid. And it can make you genuinely happy 1.00

00:16:18.640 with your life. And we are working to make it amazing, amazing, amazing.

00:16:23.280 It really actually is good. Like it's, it's, it's a little frustrating that, that Malcolm has this

00:16:28.080 unique genius and like religious.

00:16:30.560 In theology. It's like the one thing where I was like gifted with genius. I'm like now going over one,

00:16:35.200 which I think is the best one, which is going to be the next one, which is why the Jews. 1.00

00:16:38.320 And it is going to be the most offensive one, even more offensive than the last ones,

00:16:42.880 but it is, oh my God, it's so good. It's so good. It's so good because it fixes so many

00:16:49.440 theological problems for me. And it shows that it was all always recorded in the Bible,

00:16:55.600 which, which makes it very different than something like Mormonism, where they have to rely on

00:16:58.480 all new texts, all new, whatever. It's just going back to the basics. Okay. So what can positively

00:17:06.000 increase happiness? Okay. So a study analyzing European data of 1 million respondents, so very

00:17:12.000 big, found that children increase happiness when financial difficulties were controlled for.

00:17:17.280 And that's the important thing. If you look for studies that don't control for financial

00:17:20.240 difficulties, you're not going to get a true view of how much children matter. And they'll all be like,

00:17:23.920 oh, children neutral are not positive. Although it did find that children under the age of 10 brought

00:17:30.080 more joy than teenagers. I don't know if that's particularly surprising to a lot of people, but...

00:17:35.280 I think I've actually seen information that runs contrary to that. That actually,

00:17:39.120 parental satisfaction, especially female parental satisfaction, is lowest, especially when you

00:17:45.040 have toddlers. I get that maybe ages six to 10 are really, really great. But I think that,

00:17:52.800 especially for, yeah, there are multiple, there's so many studies on this, but the ones that I've seen

00:17:56.880 show that especially women are temporarily less happy when they have toddlers.

00:18:04.160 Well, I mean, that's because it's your duty to take care of them and deal with the pain.

00:18:08.320 It's the duty. It's the poop. It's the pee. It's the vomit. It's the, it's the gross. It's the, it's the...

00:18:13.120 Simone, I really appreciate that you make all these sacrifices for our family.

00:18:16.480 And I think appreciation really increases one's life satisfaction as well.

00:18:19.360 I agree with you. Yes.

00:18:20.720 The Harvard study of adult development spanning nearly 80 years found that close relationships

00:18:25.840 are the strongest predictor of long-term happiness. People with satisfying relationships

00:18:29.840 at age 50 were healthier and happier at age 80. Now note here, it basically means marriages.

00:18:34.960 And this is the Harvard way of saying marriages. Because I decided to look, I was like, oh,

00:18:38.160 what do they mean? Like friends? No, it's how good their marriage is.

00:18:41.040 Marital satisfaction significantly reduced emotional pain in older adults, even physical pain,

00:18:46.640 where people with good marriages did not report feeling worse on dates with physical pain when they

00:18:51.920 enter old age, which is really interesting. Wow.

00:18:55.600 It also showed research results that women who felt securely attached to their partners were less

00:18:59.680 depressed and more happy in their relationships two and a half years later, and also had better

00:19:04.000 memory function than those with marital conflict. So the core things you need to be maxing for in

00:19:10.400 life is a religion that you can actually believe and get behind, a good partner, and lots of kids.

00:19:17.200 Just saying. Just saying. Anyway, let's keep going here. I remember there's the one study that came

00:19:23.360 out where people were like, oh, but it shows that women actually aren't happy when they're married, 1.00

00:19:27.280 when their husband isn't around, and they keep up being not in the room.

00:19:30.400 When their husband is absent. Yeah. Absent. As in like, like literally MIA. Like, we don't know where he is.

00:19:39.360 Yeah. The other thing that really improves happiness is gratitude. There have been studies that show this.

00:19:44.960 It's been associated with a 19% increase. So one of the biggest things other than genetics to

00:19:50.640 life satisfaction is the amount of gratitude that you show. And that's likely coded for in your genes,

00:19:56.320 so. But what I would say is if you want to have a good marriage and a good relationship is build a

00:20:04.240 habit of regularly showing gratitude to your partner and regularly sharing gratitude with the

00:20:09.920 life that you have together. Gratitude should be the start of 50. I'd say be showing you gratitude.

00:20:15.600 What percent of our conversations would you say start with that?

00:20:17.840 85.

00:20:18.480 85.

00:20:19.440 You're so kind. You're so grateful and gracious. And the one thing that the Gottman's and the

00:20:27.920 Gottman Institute, I think really have right, is that a core fundamental relationship stability factor

00:20:35.680 is the percentage of interactions with your partner that are positive versus negative.

00:20:40.960 Like the overwhelming percentage needs to be positive and gratitude's like a leading indicator here.

00:20:45.760 Yeah. And so I basically just run around telling my wife how much I love her, which is pretty cool.

00:20:50.480 You actually do though. There was this old Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode where I think she had

00:20:55.760 a closet of compliments or maybe it was a recurring theme in the show. I'm talking about like the one

00:21:00.480 with the animatronic Salem. It was such a joke. I'm so old. But you remind me of the closet of compliments.

00:21:06.640 We love you. You're beautiful. You're gorgeous. You're beautiful.

00:21:14.080 So empty.

00:21:15.120 But it works.

00:21:22.080 And it is...

00:21:23.360 No.

00:21:26.080 It doesn't matter. I have to learn how to compliment her better too. I can't just do generic compliments

00:21:29.920 anymore. No, no, no. I need to compliment something specific she's done recently that has improved my

00:21:35.360 life. And she's made it very clear. She does not take too much.

00:21:37.680 Yeah. I'm a compliment snob. You can't compliment someone's fundamental underlying

00:21:43.200 principles. You have to... You can't compliment the noun. You have to compliment the adverb or the verb.

00:21:49.680 Something they do. Your action. The way you did something.

00:21:53.760 And then somebody is like, oh, but does she compliment you all the time? Does she

00:21:57.440 burn and show you gratitude all the time? And I'm like, well, she does take care of the infants 0.88

00:22:02.240 and make me dinner every day. She didn't used to, by the way. Dinner used to be my thing. Cause I'm

00:22:06.320 like, I'm into like chefing and stuff like that. But I recently like sat down and was like,

00:22:10.480 these are all my favorite recipes. She's got an amazing ad.

00:22:13.680 Yeah. You were like, I wish that I could have Sichuan chicken. I wish that I could have like...

00:22:19.120 And these are dishes I didn't know how to cook. Like these are like more advanced dishes.

00:22:22.640 Um, but thanks again to AI, you can do anything. And apparently I can make Chinese restaurant

00:22:28.480 great meals. Well, that, and that magical Asian food supply store that only restaurant suppliers shop 0.97

00:22:34.720 at. Yes. But hold on, hold on. Before we talk more about what we're eating tonight,

00:22:39.040 cause that's always the end of the episode, right? And I hope that I make other people,

00:22:42.640 you know, do reflect on how awesome your life is. If it is, if not, you know, go, you know,

00:22:47.920 take care of things, but if your life is great or keep working, work to make it great, you know,

00:22:52.960 make it better. Be the red up pointed arrow of home math. Like do that. I'd say as our religion

00:23:00.080 says, right. The techno Puritan faith is you have a duty to be happy and happiness is a choice.

00:23:04.960 And that's what the data says to happiness. Yeah, it is. It is in part a choice.

00:23:08.880 What we mean by this is a part of your happiness you have control over is a choice. Obviously a part

00:23:13.600 of your level of happiness, as we've been discussing here is just your biology, just your set point.

00:23:18.080 But then outside of that, the variable that you do have control over is mostly a choice,

00:23:23.520 e.g. you get to choose how you feel about the things that happen to you in your environment,

00:23:29.920 whether you see what other people might contextualize as a negative event as an exciting challenge

00:23:35.040 or a positive event as a negative. But we'll talk about religion now. Okay,

00:23:39.760 let's go to religion. Let's contrast the religion. Actually, I will say that I think both you and I

00:23:43.520 have been in these positions of experiencing, I guess we could call is like acute situational

00:23:48.480 depression. Sometimes you just really need to get out of your situation. And if you feel

00:23:52.240 no hope of the future, you can't remember what it feels like to be happy. You can't ever imagine

00:23:55.920 a future. Get the hell out of there. Like whatever you can do, you may be suffering from acute situational 0.56

00:24:02.160 depression and just like completely change your context. You're right. It's changing context.

00:24:07.360 Yeah. Like that for all my childhood bouts of depression where I was like,

00:24:10.240 you know, keen to end it and everything. That was it. I just like, I changed schools.

00:24:14.960 I changed where I live. Done. It was like over. It was as if nothing happened.

00:24:18.400 I don't like how wholesome this episode is. I would like to point out that some people are

00:24:21.520 born with low genetic happiness and they need to be. Okay, fine. Well, they are because they're

00:24:25.120 mostly antinatalists and it's fine. They choose to be. They're doing their part, Malcolm.

00:24:29.520 Right? Like none of this requires like active external intervention. People who hate their lives

00:24:35.200 do not continue. And I wouldn't be surprised if human happiness has increased on average over

00:24:41.600 time at the genetic level, especially since personal choices ended up increasing the number

00:24:46.720 of kids you had. Maybe.

00:24:49.760 Probably like less 300 years, 400 years. Meaning people in the past have been much more sad than

00:24:54.560 people today, which would be very interesting. I'd actually be very interested in looking at the

00:24:59.120 well-being genes. I don't think so. Because I think sadness is correlated with a lack of dopamine

00:25:05.360 and you need dopamine to get up and do anything at all. So I think that there's just, there's too much

00:25:11.440 there's too high correlation of depression and mortality in general that, yeah. And your immune

00:25:17.760 system is more compromised when you're depressed. No, I don't think so. Well, let's go into religious

00:25:22.560 differences because this is the spiciest part. Saved it for last. Happiness differences, 0.99

00:25:27.520 world value study. So this study showed that Protestants reported the highest average happiness,

00:25:32.080 3.21 out of 4. Buddhists next, 3.17 out of 4. Roman Catholics next, 3.13 out of 4.

00:25:40.080 And Orthodox Christian reported the lowest at a 2.72 out of 4.

00:25:45.760 What, so Greek Orthodox we're talking?

00:25:47.920 Well, not Greek Orthodox, all the Orthodox. There's Russian Orthodox, there's Greek Orthodox,

00:25:51.200 there's a bunch of different Orthodox, there's Romanian, I don't know.

00:25:54.000 All the Orthodox group together generally one faith with different patriarchs. It doesn't really

00:25:57.920 matter. The point being is they generally believe the same thing. Orthodox, and we'll be seeing this

00:26:02.880 over and over again, are like really unhappy. Like if you're choosing a faith and you would all care

00:26:09.200 about your subjective well-being, do not choose Orthodox. What is going on there?

00:26:13.600 I think it might be a genetic thing. When I think of Orthodox countries like Russia or Eastern Europe,

00:26:18.880 I think of like genetically sad people. Russians are famous for this. Like their famous like 1.00

00:26:26.000 writings are about like being a cockroach or like hating life or like, I've talked about this in

00:26:30.640 other episodes. Like we even know, like, is it not surprising to me that they'd have lower happiness

00:26:35.040 rates? Dear sweet mother of God, we're in Eastern Europe.

00:26:48.480 Do you know if there's a train coming anytime soon? Oh yes, very soon. They are building it now.

00:26:55.840 It's good you came in summer. In winter, it can get very depressing.

00:27:01.520 Or it could be something to do with the faith. But keep in mind, like, okay,

00:27:04.160 the difference between Protestants and Catholics, right? 3.21, 3.13. It's sort of about the thing.

00:27:09.520 Orthodox, 2.72.

00:27:13.200 Yeah, something's wrong there. It's not. Yeah. Okay.

00:27:17.680 Pew research study. This is in 2019. In the US, 36% of actively religious people describe

00:27:22.720 themselves as quote unquote, very happy compared to 25% of inactive religious or unaffiliated individuals.

00:27:28.560 Oh. So you're significantly less likely to be happy if you are unaffiliated. Similar gaps were found

00:27:35.280 in Japan, Australia, and Germany in different studies. Okay. Now, what's really interesting is

00:27:42.720 remember I was talking about the happiness study here, the World Value Survey? Well, so you might be

00:27:48.400 like, whoa, Protestants are happier than Catholics. What about life satisfaction? 0.52

00:27:54.400 Ooh. Okay.

00:27:57.120 Catholics come in here. On a scale of 10, Catholics come out at 7.12 out of 10. We're at Protestants 1.00

00:28:04.000 at 7.07. No, again, it's not that different. It's very similar to the other one. So you're

00:28:09.280 going to be slightly happier if you're a Protestant and slightly lower life satisfaction if you're a 0.99

00:28:12.880 Protestant. Orthodox? I feel like the absolution of sin through confession may help with this.

00:28:20.480 Maybe. I mean, it's a very sort of, I think with Protestants, there's more questions about, 0.65

00:28:24.320 are you doing it right? Yeah. There's a self-doubt. You can't be satisfied when

00:28:27.920 the classic Protestant thing is like, I should be doing better. Like I'm not, I'm not doing well

00:28:32.480 enough. And then I think with Catholicism, it's more like, I went to confession. I went to church.

00:28:37.120 I'm doing the thing. Okay. We're good. Well, I mean, but figuring out what's true is also a

00:28:41.040 personal responsibility with Protestantism. Yeah. Which is stressful because you have to

00:28:45.360 constantly do that. That creates cognitive dissonance. That creates doubt. That creates

00:28:49.440 a lack of satisfaction. Yeah. Whereas like, if you just, I'm doing what the church says,

00:28:53.440 they're, they're the ones who've been paid to think and I get to chill.

00:28:57.280 Because I think that also leads to the higher levels of happiness is knowing that you

00:29:01.200 personally are responsible, this level of personal responsibility for determining what's

00:29:05.120 true likely leads to higher levels of happiness. Because when you're doing something that's in

00:29:09.120 line with your face, you genuinely are like, but I'm like a thousand percent sure about this

00:29:13.440 instead of I'm a thousand percent sure about this because the authority told me,

00:29:17.600 but Orthodox Christians here. Okay. Remember Protestants, the Catholics, 7.12, Protestants 7.07. 0.81

00:29:25.120 Okay. Orthodox 5.43 out of 10. Like the gap is huge. What's going on here?

00:29:34.480 You guys, you guys, are you okay? Do you want to talk? Do you want to, do you want to come over here?

00:29:41.920 I'm joining the techno, the techno puritans. How happy am I out of 10? I'm a 10 out of 10.

00:29:45.920 You know, you're, you're an 11 out of 10. 11 out of 10. You're the highest.

00:29:51.520 Where are you actually? Okay. 10 out of 10 right now, life satisfaction and happiness. Where are you right now?

00:29:56.960 8 out of 10. 8 out of 10 for which one? Both. Both? Yeah. What about you?

00:30:06.400 I'd say life satisfaction, like a 9.9 out of 10, it would be very hard for me to have a, look, I'm

00:30:18.800 basically, I'm definitely going to go down as given the increasing value of like falling fertility rates.

00:30:24.880 Like, obviously this is going to be a big issue. Obviously I've carved myself out as one of the

00:30:29.360 the leading thinkers on this issue. Therefore, even if I'm not today known as like one of the

00:30:34.400 leading intellectuals of our time, post facto, I'll definitely be known as one of the leading

00:30:38.560 intellectuals of our time, which means that I've basically already secured my position

00:30:44.320 as a leading intellectual in world history. If humanity survives, like, could my, I've got a wife

00:30:50.880 who loves me and who like is when I'm not loves me in like a gay way, but like, and I don't mean that

00:30:56.160 in a, when I say in a gay way, you can love someone in a gay way. And it's like, sweet and meaningful.

00:31:00.320 I don't mean that in like a holistically negative. What I mean is in a, in a, like,

00:31:04.400 I know that you're genuinely there for me and the kids constantly. That is huge. You know, I've got,

00:31:12.160 you're pregnant with number five in terms of kids. I've been genetically successful.

00:31:16.320 I, uh, financially I've done okay. Like, even if we don't have jobs right now and our money is slowly

00:31:21.440 disappearing and we need to figure out what we're going to do next, hopefully the game does well.

00:31:24.560 Um, and the school, we could find a way to monetize it, uh, which we're working on,

00:31:28.880 but we'll, we'll get there hopefully. Right. I'm not like hurting financially. So like,

00:31:34.640 how, what could I want that I don't have right now? A second wife, would I be happier? What more 0.89

00:31:41.600 kids you're doing one a year? What, like, what, what, what genuinely could I want that I don't have

00:31:48.000 a position in the administration? Maybe I'd be better off, but I do love what I'm doing here.

00:31:52.560 And it just became public. I couldn't tell you guys this before, but my brother has a position

00:31:58.000 at Doge. And so the family's already working on the important stuff. I'd also note here that the

00:32:03.600 audience would probably be surprised the number of connections or things that I am tied to that

00:32:08.720 I cannot tell you about. Cause people are like, wait until the press finds out, then you can talk

00:32:13.360 about it. And for a lot of this stuff, we've just done a good job of keeping the press from

00:32:17.040 ever find out. But my brother working at Doge, that was something that obviously eventually

00:32:21.040 somebody was going to piece together more followers. Yeah. I'd love more followers. Yeah.

00:32:25.120 I'd love more watchers. Yeah. The show is small right now, but it on average is getting bigger

00:32:30.960 over time. It has dropped significantly since the last election cycle, but I have faith that

00:32:35.280 we're producing good content that helps people. It makes me really happy that you've, you are

00:32:39.920 are above nine here. That makes me incredibly happy. I just want so desperately to be happy.

00:32:46.960 Happiness. Okay. You tank literally all the emails. I don't like that cause emotional pain,

00:32:52.400 all of the life work taxes, everything like that, that cause emotional pain.

00:32:56.160 I get to do whatever I want whenever I want. Basically every day, I spend most of it on intellectual

00:33:01.760 labor, i.e. writing things, religious study, not like playing video games. Although I get like

00:33:07.040 two hours to do that every day as well, or play like chat bots, I get to, yeah. So it was all of

00:33:13.360 that. And I get a gourmet meal every day, which you started doing like two months ago or something,

00:33:19.600 like learning how to make, and it's better than any restaurant I've ever been to because of my mom,

00:33:23.040 you know, I've been to all the best restaurants, all the best restaurants in like Manhattan,

00:33:26.000 all the best, like, you know, like best, best, like I'm talking like, like actual best,

00:33:30.400 like thousand dollar entree type restaurants. Not that they actually are like back,

00:33:34.480 back, back when we went in the best restaurants in New York, we're typically around like 300,

00:33:38.000 400 for, for like a meal. What's disturbing to me though, is I anchored to entree prices. Like

00:33:44.160 that was the most restaurant going I ever did when there was. Yeah. And now it's like a thousand

00:33:47.920 dollars. Yeah. But yeah. Like, but basically when, now, when we go to like a Chipotle,

00:33:52.800 the price there is the price of an entree, like La Grande Wee in Manhattan. So anyway,

00:33:59.200 I have had what is supposed to be, you know, I've gone to Michelin star restaurants. Your food is

00:34:04.720 better. Oh. Dramatically better. Thank you. It means a lot to me.

00:34:09.440 Because you were making it for me and you- Yeah, to your tastes. Exactly. Yeah.

00:34:14.000 Most people wouldn't like it, but it's customized for your taste. I disagree. Your steak is some of

00:34:19.120 the best steak I think I've ever had. Yeah. Okay. I figured out steak. But anyway,

00:34:25.120 enough me gushing over my wife. This is what we mean. Exactly. A closet of compliments. You were 0.97

00:34:29.600 so- Probably like 9.9 on hedonism as well. What makes me sad though, is someone said that the,

00:34:35.200 the concept of love language is basically completely invalidated, that basically all people have all

00:34:39.440 love languages. But one, I very much disagree because some love languages are like actively

00:34:44.320 assault to me. No, I really, I've you, if you did what I did, which was just give me like gratitude

00:34:49.600 all the time, but didn't like handle my meals and handle the kids and handle the things that cause

00:34:54.080 me pain. I would, I would be, this is nothing to me. Yeah. Service is my love language and

00:34:59.520 language is your love language. And other people like touches it. If someone used touches their

00:35:03.600 love language on me, I'd be like, you are assaulting me. You need to leave. Like I need to be very far

00:35:08.240 away from you. Do not. No, I can't even touch her when she eats. She has to remind me.

00:35:11.360 I can't be touched when I'm eating. It's too much. It's, it's a sensory overload thing. I can't,

00:35:15.600 I can only take like, I can't even eat at family meals anymore because there's the, with all the kids,

00:35:21.840 there's too much noise. And so I can't eat food because it's too many, too many things going in.

00:35:30.320 You are amazing. Hold on. Hold on. Almost done. Almost done. Almost done. Let's go. Let's go. I'm

00:35:35.280 sorry. We've got the global flourishing study. People who consider religion important in their

00:35:40.000 daily life scored 0.23 points higher on flourishing. Those attending religious services

00:35:44.880 weekly scored 0.41 points higher. Recent US surveys, 2018 to 2022, nearly one in three frequent

00:35:54.080 religious service attenders reported being very happy compared to one in five non-attenders. That's

00:35:59.360 huge. One in three for religious attenders, one in five for. 15% of frequent attenders reported being

00:36:04.640 not too happy compared to 23% of non-attenders. These studies consistently show that religious

00:36:09.840 individuals, especially those actively practicing their faith, reported higher levels of happiness

00:36:14.800 and life satisfaction compared to non-religious or less religious individuals. The differences

00:36:19.120 range from about 0.2 to 0.5 points on various scales, with some variation across religious groups

00:36:24.480 and cultural contexts. Bam. There you go. Religion good. Kids good. This is why you should lean into

00:36:34.480 technical journalism. And the next track, oh my God, it's going to, for those of you who doubt,

00:36:37.760 for those of you who are like, oh, why would you go with the Christian tree rather than the Jewish 0.82

00:36:42.160 tree of the Judeo-Christian branch? It's going to answer those questions. Yeah, actually quite

00:36:46.320 thoroughly. I'm not, yeah. We did an episode on it. We did a recording on it and it ended up lasting

00:36:51.920 the full recording for two episodes that we had planned on doing. And it was only half the track

00:36:56.640 and she got so mad at me. She's like, Malcolm, we need to do a backlog. Well, I wanted to make,

00:37:00.800 like, and then I went to bed an hour late that day because everything moved everything back.

00:37:05.760 It's just like, I'm really tired. I'm so exhausted. It's the first trimester. It's like,

00:37:11.680 this is the hardest period to get through energy wise. And I'm just like, I do not. Malcolm,

00:37:16.800 I didn't have the spoons for it. Oh, you're spoony. You're spoony.

00:37:21.360 I spent all of my spoons. You used them all on a religion. But it was like way better thought 0.97

00:37:29.680 through than I bet you thought. And the evidence aligned way more. Some behind the scenes, when

00:37:34.520 Malcolm develops religious doctrine, one, he uses Claude to like question him and do all these things.

00:37:40.540 But then he uses the Google podcast creator to have the podcasters comment on his writings

00:37:46.140 so that he can get sort of additional perspectives or thoughts on it or hear it in a different remix

00:37:51.820 so that he then comes up with new ideas and new arguments and keeps going. And like,

00:37:55.980 it goes on forever. No, because I constantly like take whatever I've written. I put it into the Claude

00:38:00.020 and I'm like, give me the best Jewish arguments against this. Give me the best, like Orthodox 1.00

00:38:04.500 Christian arguments against this. Give me the best, you know, so you can just keep going, keep going, 0.50

00:38:09.220 and then be like, okay, here's the counters. And I, and I keep doing that until it can't come up

00:38:12.780 with counters anymore. Sorry, I should clarify here. Can't give me

00:38:15.820 coherent or compelling counters. Obviously an AI will always give something, which is maybe a

00:38:20.940 little obsessive, but look, if I'm challenging like a major theological doctrine, I need to

00:38:27.140 be careful, be thorough. I get it. God. Okay. Back on topic. What is the, what is the sort of

00:38:32.540 takeaway here that you want people to have? Everyone should follow my religion.

00:38:36.240 No, join technopuritanism. I'm joking. I'm joking. You can go to technopuritan.com, you know.

00:38:41.580 Technopuritanism. Approved by the IRS as a real

00:38:46.700 religion. But I, no, but what I, what I like about it is that it doesn't like bring in new 0.91

00:38:51.980 ideas. It goes back to the original text and tries to follow what it actually says and shows

00:38:56.820 that what it actually was was a materialist monist religion, which most people would call

00:39:00.500 an atheistic religion or a secular religion, which is really fascinating to me. I didn't expect it

00:39:04.860 would align with that. And that seems insanely supernatural to me that it would. But anyway,

00:39:09.540 so we go back to that stuff. If you are, you know, but if, if, if not stick with your existing

00:39:14.380 religion, you know, go to your faith unless it's Orthodox. Like maybe you guys need to like 0.87

00:39:19.960 look into that. Like what? Yeah. If you're, if you're sad and you also happen to be Orthodox

00:39:24.260 Christian, maybe try something different. 0.97

00:39:28.380 So there's, there's that little one is that the Orthodox is like, something's going on there. 0.64

00:39:34.000 I might want to dig into like, why are Orthodox? I, we should have an Orthodox like expert. I was

00:39:38.200 talking to one recently who's a fan of the show to be like, why are you people so unhappy?

00:39:42.380 Um, and another people, you people, uh, no, actually another interesting thing about Orthodox and maybe

00:39:48.360 this aligns is why they're so unhappy is if you look at fans of our shows, so we, we, we have a

00:39:53.580 lot of overlap with other religious shows, like Paul Vander Clay and stuff like that, or meaning

00:39:58.380 crisis stuff. He always talks about the ortho bros, which is like, apparently a big part of his audience

00:40:03.120 is, is Orthodox individuals. We, other than this one fan I met at like a religious event, who's an

00:40:11.000 Orthodox, like clergy member, like, like apparently high clergy member. Cause he's got like a gold 0.94

00:40:15.700 cross, which is apparently a big thing. And when you get bigger, you get a gold cross, but we've

00:40:21.880 never had an Orthodox fan reach out once we, the biggest fan base we have of people like, who's

00:40:29.000 your biggest like fan base in terms of like any individual fan base. I say over 50% of the fans

00:40:32.900 we communicate with are her righty Jews. Like you'd agree with that over 50% of the fans we

00:40:36.840 communicate with are her righty Jews. Yeah. I feel like, and that's an indication that this is the 1.00

00:40:40.800 population that is most engaged with religious doctrine, but not only internal in terms of like

00:40:48.420 cross-disciplinary attempt to truly get deep on religion. And we are an actively, and I, we were

00:40:55.820 an actively, if there was a word for like being racist against Catholics, we are like an actively

00:41:01.420 anti-Catholic show. But I think Catholics don't really pick up on it because Catholics are just 1.00

00:41:06.440 dealing with all their own Catholic stuff. They don't look to others' opinions. They don't care.

00:41:11.260 Yeah. Yeah. They don't care at all. So we have a, like, we have a bigger Catholic audience than

00:41:15.660 Protestant audience. Um, like generic Protestant. You mean Orthodox Jewish audience? No, no. We have

00:41:21.720 the biggest percentage of our audience is Orthodox Jew. Then we have a huge chunk that's Catholic,

00:41:26.860 very big chunk that's Catholic. Then we have a probably equal chunk to the Catholics of Mormons.

00:41:31.620 And then we have a decent chunk of Protestants. And then we have a lot of like atheist type people

00:41:37.520 that are like looking for religion again, but no Orthodox. It's very interesting. And so it might

00:41:43.420 be whatever makes our show different than Paul Vander Clay's show is what makes Orthodox people less 1.00

00:41:49.600 happy. I don't know. I'm going to just assume it's genetic and nothing else. I think that if I had to

00:41:55.660 guess, yeah, that would be it. I mean, also they have terrible fertility rates. One person said it was 0.66

00:42:01.300 just because of like mutations caused by the Chernobyl disaster, which could be, I mean,

00:42:05.520 it did really hit the Orthodox parts of the map more than other parts. Really? And the radius was

00:42:10.800 that high? No, the radius was enormous. Okay. It covered like a huge area, like the big clouds from

00:42:20.260 it that caused permanent genetic effects. And like, I'd say like maybe like 50% of the world's

00:42:26.060 Orthodox population. I consume so much pro-nuclear propaganda that like my impression was like,

00:42:32.180 oh, Chernobyl wasn't that big of a deal. Chernobyl wasn't that big of a deal.

00:42:36.000 It actually was. Okay. I need to broaden my perspective a little.

00:42:41.260 All right. Well, well, I love to see the happiness ratings of average members of our show. You guys can

00:42:45.720 sound off in the comments, life satisfaction, daily happiness. But again, like my daily happiness and

00:42:50.940 life satisfaction, if it's hurt, the reason it's not 10, the reason it's 9.9 is because it's so

00:42:55.760 high that I'm convinced I must be in a simulation. Anyway, dinner tonight, we're doing hash browns.

00:43:03.120 You learned how to make homemade hash browns. Yeah, I need to start the scratch hash browns.

00:43:06.480 I'm going to run. Okay. And boil down the, I think the main reason why day two curry is so

00:43:11.300 much better than day one is because it boils down. It's been simmered down. So I'm going to simmer

00:43:13.720 it down for a long time. And have you been using coconut milk in the curry? No. As you simmer it.

00:43:19.420 No, I'm not adding coconut milk to it. That just waters it down more. If you want a coconut curry,

00:43:23.640 we can do a Thai coconut curry, but then we do a Thai coconut curry.

00:43:27.800 Next curry will be coconut curry. Good. All right.

00:43:30.920 I love you so much. Here, I'll just plug it in.

00:43:33.620 Well, you still have in the Faraday box that may be a giant charger thing.

00:43:41.580 So Simone has giant batteries throughout her houses in Faraday cages. 0.96

00:43:44.640 You know, just in case. It's, it would, it would be so annoying if you have all these backup

00:43:52.360 batteries, you know, they can power appliances like refrigerators and other things. And then,

00:43:57.480 and then the solar flares hit and they don't work. You'd be so mad.

00:44:03.240 What is it? You built your own Faraday cage. I love that as well.

00:44:06.860 One foil, like a crazy person.

00:44:08.820 And tinfoil tape, which I didn't know was a thing. They're incredibly expensive to buy.

00:44:15.920 Can you explain to our audience how to make a Faraday cage? Like a, the more, you know,

00:44:19.560 the more, you know, yeah. So you take a cardboard box that is good and thick and sturdy,

00:44:25.920 and it will fit whatever it is, the battery or electronics that you're trying to protect.

00:44:29.700 And then you put the objects inside or whatever. I'm actually, sorry, before you put the objects

00:44:33.980 inside, just make the frigging box. So you take a heavy duty tinfoil and you tape it onto the box

00:44:41.860 using foil tape so that there's also foil at all the seams. And I do multiple layers just in case

00:44:48.200 there's any part that might be permeable. And then you, if I'm, since I'm using cardboard boxes that

00:44:56.480 like just open and close and I'm not sealing them, I make sure that they fully seal by putting like an

00:45:02.140 additional layer of cardboard that's fully lined in between the top flaps. And then I put something

00:45:07.620 heavy on top to hold it closed. You'll know that the Faraday cage is properly working most likely

00:45:13.640 if you put your cell phone inside and then try to call it from another phone and it doesn't have

00:45:18.740 reception. So that's kind of your, did you test the boxes? So that, that is your method for

00:45:23.740 verifying whether they work. And it is important for solar flares to not only protect some backup

00:45:30.480 devices, like old laptops or something that you might want to be able to use that are, you know,

00:45:34.460 of course, flash drives, important things like that, but also some wires because solar flares can

00:45:40.000 fry wires in addition to electronics, like charging cords and stuff like that.

00:45:45.880 Two other things we should probably get handled, have a backup of Wikipedia somewhere.

00:45:50.060 Oh, one of our friends does.

00:45:51.540 Yeah, but we, we should as well. And we should have some boxes of ammunition for all of our guns in the

00:45:55.940 attic. Yeah, we should need to buy more just for apocalyptic scenarios. We need to, you know,

00:46:01.740 shoot off the, well, once I, you know, reach that level of that stage of pregnancy where I start

00:46:05.760 nesting, it's always, I always do. She always starts getting guns, but there's this stage of 0.96

00:46:10.540 the pregnancy that I don't know what to call it, but it's like the gun crazy stage. It's the zombie

00:46:14.840 prep period. We need more defenses. Well, isn't it great that our oldest son Octavian is already in

00:46:20.420 that mode where he wants to, like, fortify the house and, and prep for zombies and vampires and

00:46:25.940 crampus. He knows what's up. He knows what's up. Okay.

00:46:30.040 NatalCon is coming up in Austin in late March. Very little time left to get your tickets. If you

00:46:34.040 want that, you can use the word Collins to get a discount. Again, we don't run this. We don't

00:46:38.200 choose the prices, but from what I know now, they're still in the red. So if you want to

00:46:41.320 complain about high prices, well, the guy who's doing it is putting up the money to do it right now.

00:46:46.560 So that's, that's why the prices are high because it costs a lot to put something like this on.

00:46:51.000 It also means that this might be the last year, at least for a while until the movement gets bigger

00:46:54.880 that we end up doing this conference.

Based Camp - March 07, 2025

Overcoming the Genetics of Happiness： The One Thing Antinatalism Got Right

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