Overcoming the Genetics of Happiness： The One Thing Antinatalism Got Right
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and I discuss the antinatalist, David Benatar's argument that a terrible life is better than a good one, and why he is missing the point. We talk about why Benatar is wrong and why we should focus on the things that make us happy.
Transcript
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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And as such, pursuit of those things is an enormous waste of time. Just complete waste of time.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You shouldn't fast to increase the amount of dopamine. The point being is-
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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.
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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.
00:03:02.280
Actually, I would argue you're going to be a lot less happy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It's the same way that, yeah, you're right. People obsess with mental health, like they end up having the worst mental health.
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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?
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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.
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And she had all the money she could want to do things. She'd go to five-star restaurants every night.
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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.
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And she could never understand. She's like, why do you care so much about this wholesome lifestyle that you would love?
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She got really annoyed that I was like, wholesome maxing. And I was like, because wholesome maxing
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maximizes everything else down the pipeline as we'll go over. But I think that this is a really
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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?
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I just feel like it's so obvious. And most of our audience probably understands this really well.
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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
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thing that makes me happy, I will be better off. If I, you know, oh, I would, at least I need like
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certain amounts of happiness. At least I need. And the reality is, is this is just not what the data
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.
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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
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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
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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
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preachers, do whatever you feel would give you fulfillment. Do whatever you feel would make you
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happy. Do whatever you want to be validated for, like be validated for whatever you want to believe
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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
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life a human is capable of living, even though our own like biology, like updates for like no arms,
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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
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estimated the heritability of subjective wellbeing at around 33%, indicating
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that about one third of the variance in individual life satisfaction can be attributed to genetic
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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,
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the number one thing that's going to influence that is genes more than literally anything else.
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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.
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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
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effects on genetic happiness across lifespan and brain structure. This is in nature of human behavior.
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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
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ancestral backgrounds and multiple brain structures. So this isn't just one ancestry, i.e. one
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ethnicity. This is across ethnicities you see this heritability. The happiness in behavioral genetics,
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
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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
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marker. In post, I'll try to look up in Nebula, what our happiness levels are. That's on the website.
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.
00:09:57.820
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.
00:10:37.240
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.
00:12:23.140
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
00:12:38.040
Wow. You're in the 80th percentile. That's a winning, that's a, like a,
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.
00:12:54.600
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.
00:13:02.720
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.
00:13:13.400
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,
00:13:27.360
No, I can see why you are. You are way lower neuroticism than I am.
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
00:15:43.920
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
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
00:16:30.560
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.
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.
00:18:20.720
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,
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?
00:20:19.440
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.
00:21:26.080
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
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
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
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
00:24:49.760
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,
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.
00:25:47.920
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
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.
00:27:13.200
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?
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
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
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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
00:38:04.500
Christian arguments against this. Give me the best, you know, so you can just keep going, keep going,
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
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
00:39:19.960
look into that. Like what? Yeah. If you're, if you're sad and you also happen to be Orthodox
00:39:28.380
So there's, there's that little one is that the Orthodox is like, something's going on there.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
00:44:08.820
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.
00:45:51.540
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
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