Based Camp - Religion As It Relates to Genetics

00:00:00.000 So a great example of this that I'd always cite is when I talk to people and I'm like,

00:00:04.560 yeah, you know, what do you think of Cubans?

00:00:06.000 You talk to a Florida, you're like, what do you think of Cubans? 0.87

00:00:07.680 They go, oh, yeah, Cubans. 1.00

00:00:08.660 There's the typical Cuban sociological profile.

00:00:11.840 They're very conservative.

00:00:13.380 They're really good at business.

00:00:15.080 They're really educated.

00:00:17.060 And that's not the profile of Cubans more broadly.

00:00:20.820 That's the profile of the Cubans that were differentially sorted into trying to escape 0.81

00:00:26.720 a communist dictatorship and move to the United States.

00:00:29.500 You know, to an extent within any immigrant population, depending on how the wording worked,

00:00:35.920 you're often going to get a very specific sociological profile that may not be the dominant sociological

00:00:41.840 profile of the mainland population.

00:00:44.640 Would you like to know more?

00:00:46.000 So, Malcolm, you know how someone in our family once called me a vortex of failure?

00:00:54.000 Yes, somebody did.

00:00:55.240 They're like, Simone is a vortex of failure, Malcolm, and she is pulling you down.

00:00:59.500 Well, there are other types of vortexes that I think you find very interesting, and I've

00:01:04.520 failed to understand why they're so interesting.

00:01:08.000 So can you please explain your concept of evolutionary vortexes with this old vortex of failure?

00:01:15.200 Yes.

00:01:15.560 Well, so this is a very interesting thing for us.

00:01:17.180 So a lot of people know that we don't believe that there are persistent, meaningful genetic

00:01:22.220 differences between things that we in our society view as things like ethnic groups and stuff

00:01:27.540 like that.

00:01:28.240 Right.

00:01:29.240 And a lot of people see the concept of racism or race supremacy as being pretty freaking 0.98

00:01:33.900 dumb because, I don't know, given up evolutionary- 0.99

00:01:36.860 No, but why is it dumb? 1.00

00:01:37.600 It's dumb because small groups, family groups, religious groups, local environmental groups, 0.98

00:01:44.360 it's not because we don't believe that genetic differences don't exist between populations. 0.96

00:01:47.700 We just believe that they change way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way faster

00:01:53.500 than this like, you know, 100,000 year difference that defines ethnic groups.

00:01:59.660 So a great example of this is like San Francisco, right?

00:02:03.720 When you look at San Francisco, you had this environment where during the gold rush, you basically

00:02:09.420 had a siren call to people from a diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds that said,

00:02:16.260 that anybody who uniquely is drawn to high-risk, high-reward economic opportunities move to

00:02:24.240 this area, okay?

00:02:25.840 That's what the gold rush was.

00:02:27.400 When people would die for these opportunities, I mean, the Donner Party, et cetera, right?

00:02:32.500 And then is it a surprise that, you know, a century later, Silicon Valley starts there,

00:02:39.020 which was really driven because the venture capital industry started there, where you had

00:02:44.000 high-risk, high-reward opportunities explode as like a way to generate wealth and ruin people

00:02:52.380 all over again.

00:02:53.740 And this is what a vortex does.

00:02:55.580 Because there was the first event that caused a genetic predilection within that environment,

00:03:01.660 that then made it more likely that the second event would happen, which then further condensed

00:03:09.860 that genetic predilection by again sending out this signal all over the world for people

00:03:15.380 like that, right?

00:03:16.480 Yeah.

00:03:16.920 To the extent where you see things like really high rates of things like, because then what

00:03:21.880 was the other thing that was really being selected for by that cultural vortex?

00:03:25.120 It was high knowledge of like engineering and math.

00:03:28.560 And this is why you had such high rates of autism in Silicon Valley, some of the highest rates

00:03:32.200 in the world.

00:03:32.620 And that is wild, but you also see this on a cultural level.

00:03:36.780 So our cultures essentially co-evolve with us and they alter our brains so that if you 1.00

00:03:46.280 think of humans as like the biological firmware and cultures as this set of software that's

00:03:51.180 co-evolving on top of them, they co-evolve together synergistically.

00:03:56.120 So an example of this could be, we have a secular friend who's from the Quaker tradition

00:04:00.120 and she feels like she regularly hears voices talking to her to an extent, right?

00:04:04.560 Saying, okay.

00:04:05.120 Well, she, she essentially like, she talks with God. 0.70

00:04:07.720 Like she, she searches for the truth from within, right?

00:04:12.420 Yeah.

00:04:12.600 She talks, well, she's talking with, so, so auditory hallucinations are actually much more

00:04:17.200 common than people think about a quarter of the population experiences them at some point

00:04:20.120 in their lives.

00:04:20.920 But Quaker culture would massively reward an individual for having auditory hallucinations. 0.94

00:04:26.300 Whereas other cultural groups like the Calvinist cultural group, which lived alongside them

00:04:31.160 geographically, massively would punish auditory hallucinations.

00:04:35.280 So everyone from the Calvinist cultural group who experienced them would have gone to the

00:04:39.100 Quaker cultural group and people in the Quaker cultural group who didn't experience them

00:04:42.080 might think God wasn't talking to them or like they, they didn't get why people were doing

00:04:46.020 this in their cultural group and they would leave at a higher rate.

00:04:48.560 And so you're going to end up with more auditory hallucinations within people who come from

00:04:53.140 this Quaker cultural group.

00:04:55.480 Now this gets really interesting because what it means is that not all software packages,

00:05:03.220 not all cultures are going to fit well on all individuals, all biologies.

00:05:10.920 So one of the places where I've heard this, where it was really most meaningful to me is,

00:05:15.780 you know, I was talking with somebody who was like involved, I think was like the JN community

00:05:19.980 in the San Francisco area and they were talking about how high the suicide rate was among people

00:05:28.980 of a broadly European ethnic background who converted to JNism.

00:05:33.220 Yeah.

00:05:33.640 And I, and I suspect you'd likely see this more broadly.

00:05:36.120 If you look at Europeans who convert to not like the fake American form of Buddhism, but

00:05:42.760 like real Buddhism, I'd imagine you're going to see a pretty high suicide rate.

00:05:46.320 And I, I, this, it makes a lot of sense to me.

00:05:49.340 You, if a, a, a cultural group has co-evolved with a cultural software for thousands of years,

00:05:56.480 you can't just plug it on top of another cultural group and expect them to work together really

00:06:03.020 well.

00:06:03.400 And this is why when we say our goal is genuinely people are like, are you trying to recruit

00:06:08.160 people into your weird secular Calvinist thing?

00:06:10.580 I'm like, no, I do not think most people would really thrive in an environment where it is

00:06:17.980 constantly reinforced how sinful happiness, music, fun is right.

00:06:24.860 And again, this is something that people don't get.

00:06:26.840 So people can say, oh, then why do you do things that are sinful?

00:06:29.680 Why do you do things like, you know, drink alcohol, for example, right?

00:06:34.560 There's no efficaciousness behind that.

00:06:36.300 And, and the, the, the, the real key to sort of Calvinism as a, as a cultural understanding

00:06:41.920 is, is mankind is wretched.

00:06:44.860 You know, we are completely morally destitute and it's through recognizing that destitution,

00:06:52.480 we can begin to try to improve ourselves.

00:06:55.820 And so it is very important to be able to say, yes, I will still sin because I am man.

00:07:06.440 I am like, my soul is a maggot covered loaf of barely edible sailor bread.

00:07:13.100 But at the very least, what I shouldn't do is try to glorify my sin.

00:07:19.100 Try to act like my engagement with self-masturbatory behaviors, whether it is exercise for the point

00:07:27.940 of physical vanity or music or drinking or anything, pretend that that is a positive

00:07:35.160 trait instead of what it is, a moral failing.

00:07:38.160 Now, this cultural group is something that most people, I just don't think would like

00:07:44.120 really mentally thrive in engaging with, whereas you and me, we really mentally thrive when

00:07:50.320 engaging with this cultural group.

00:07:51.740 And this is also why I'm broadly against people who preach like stoicism more broadly.

00:07:56.500 I do not think stoicism works for the average person.

00:08:00.380 And I think that pretend cause causes people to spiral and become, you know, drug addicts

00:08:08.620 and barely function, right?

00:08:09.960 Like it's, it's not a good thing and that it's more important to look to your ancestral,

00:08:16.000 the way that your, your ancestral traditions work and try to reform them for a modern environment

00:08:20.640 to be strong for a modern environment without going into these cool sounding, like manly sounding

00:08:27.740 movements.

00:08:28.540 Right.

00:08:29.120 Well, because again, you're, you're like evolved mental landscape probably isn't designed to

00:08:34.820 thrive with non-native mindscapes.

00:08:39.580 Yeah.

00:08:40.500 Yeah.

00:08:40.980 Yeah.

00:08:41.100 Yeah.

00:08:41.480 And it's, it's why in the, the pro natalist movement, we are not about trying to convert

00:08:46.620 people to our way of thinking.

00:08:48.080 Cause I don't think our way of thinking is compatible with most human biologies, but this

00:08:52.800 leads to another really interesting thing, which is when a cultural software group is really,

00:08:58.320 really, really, really, really, really good against defending against a specific type.

00:09:04.420 Of mindset or sociological profile, it can lead to that sociological profile existing within

00:09:13.060 populations under that cultural group at much higher rates than they do in other populations.

00:09:19.900 So let me explain this in different words.

00:09:23.140 If a culture is really good against defending against a specific type of thing or preventing

00:09:29.920 that thing for leading the individual to spiral out of control or not breed, for some reason,

00:09:35.640 you will see that thing at higher rates within that cultural group.

00:09:40.540 So if you're talking about Calvinists, traditionally, one thing that's always known about Calvinists

00:09:45.280 is they're like unusually happy.

00:09:47.640 They have like really high happiness set points and unusually energetic to the extent where like

00:09:54.300 some of the quotes, if you look at Albion Seed, you know, that the Calvinists invented the rocking chair

00:09:58.900 just so that they would never have to stop moving or that people would mark when they go to these territories

00:10:04.760 that people would run everywhere they were going.

00:10:07.480 And this is something I actually did in high school.

00:10:08.940 I remember wondering why anyone ever walked when they were alone,

00:10:12.780 when you could always run up to a place and get it done faster and more efficiently.

00:10:16.880 And a normal cultural group is actually likely going to select against like this level of happiness

00:10:24.280 because people who like are overly happy may just be content with their lives or may not breed

00:10:31.220 or may spiral out of control in some way.

00:10:34.140 This is also probably why Calvinist groups drink as much as they do.

00:10:37.680 So that's another thing.

00:10:38.540 One of the, so where I'm from in Texas, there's a saying, which is that, what is it?

00:10:43.840 Jews deny the divinity of Jesus. 1.00

00:10:48.260 Protestants deny the Pope and Baptists deny knowing each other at the liquor store.

00:10:53.680 And when they say Baptist here, they're talking about primitive Baptist, which is the type of Baptist, 0.91

00:10:58.400 which is most common where I'm from, which is a Calvinist group.

00:11:01.080 And it's because they had this cultural software that was like good at preventing people from drinking to an extent.

00:11:08.180 But, but when people began to like, when it began to soften, when the rule stopped,

00:11:12.980 people who had this intrinsic drive to drink at this high a level in most other cultural groups

00:11:20.680 were just removed from the gene pool because they drank themselves to death.

00:11:23.940 Whereas in this cultural group, there was enough of a protectant pressure on that that didn't happen.

00:11:29.340 And so you get really high rates of alcoholism was in Calvinist populations. 0.95

00:11:34.280 You also get stupidly high rates of happiness. 1.00

00:11:36.860 You also get stupid. 1.00

00:11:37.880 So the things that a culture tells you not to do, you will begin to see as a vice was in that culture, 1.00

00:11:43.820 as the cultural waterline recedes.

00:11:45.800 So let's talk about a few of these because they're really interesting to me.

00:11:48.780 Okay.

00:11:50.420 So probably the, the, the biggest one that we've mentioned before,

00:11:53.820 but I just can't mention enough because it's so glaringly obvious to anyone who could see it,

00:11:57.500 is Catholicism as a cultural group is really, really good at guarding against familial nepotism.

00:12:04.500 By that, what I mean is because the Catholic group is one, a hierarchical cultural group, 0.54

00:12:12.020 you know, I, you have this priest caste, right?

00:12:14.200 Which, which is this almost like governing body.

00:12:16.680 And because priests aren't allowed to have wives, what that did is it created,

00:12:21.180 you could say like an ethically sourced eunuch.

00:12:23.500 We often call them, right?

00:12:24.460 And we do mention in a lot of videos, actually, this is why,

00:12:27.540 this is how the Catholic cultural group handled a same-sex attraction and,

00:12:32.160 and why it's so common.

00:12:33.480 And you can look up the Wikipedia article on this.

00:12:35.540 There's a lot of studies on this,

00:12:37.020 why a lot of people in the Catholic clergy are actually just same-sex attracted people

00:12:42.040 who are born in the Catholic culture.

00:12:43.120 And it, it sourced them into these positions of power,

00:12:46.600 but also you get heterosexual people who don't choose to have a partner

00:12:50.100 and end up within this hierarchy.

00:12:52.180 Well, within both of those groups,

00:12:54.060 you're creating an environment in which these people don't have kids.

00:12:56.940 So you don't have intergenerational nepotism, right?

00:13:00.940 Right.

00:13:01.480 And historically was in many of these, these Catholic cultural groups,

00:13:05.220 a lot of stuff was run by the church.

00:13:06.980 So they never really needed to guard against what is called amoral familial nepotism.

00:13:13.860 Now, if you look today around the world,

00:13:17.500 pretty much everywhere in the world where a Catholic group is dominant,

00:13:21.940 you know, whether you're talking about Italy or most countries in South America or,

00:13:25.840 you know, et cetera,

00:13:26.580 you have extremely high rates of amoral familial nepotism.

00:13:30.900 And by that, what I mean is individuals promoting members of their own family

00:13:36.620 over more competent individuals who aren't in their family.

00:13:41.020 And so if you're not from a group who understands amoral familial nepotism,

00:13:45.240 that can seem really unethical to you to promote your brother,

00:13:48.620 just because they're your brother, instead of because they're competent.

00:13:52.580 Whereas to a cultural group that doesn't have protections against amoral familial nepotism,

00:13:58.320 cultural protections, they're going to be like,

00:14:00.500 it would almost be immoral to not promote your brother.

00:14:03.200 Because like, he's family.

00:14:05.100 Of course, you're going to promote.

00:14:06.180 Of course, you're going to hire family first. 0.55

00:14:08.060 Of course, you're going to promote family first.

00:14:09.780 What are you thinking?

00:14:10.580 And this is something that their culture had gotten so good at protecting against

00:14:17.940 that the secular cultures that sort of evolved underneath it,

00:14:21.900 as well as sociological profiles that evolved underneath it,

00:14:25.900 became a really, really susceptible to this.

00:14:28.940 I think from the perspective of other cultures, it would be a vice, 1.00

00:14:31.760 but from their culture, it's not, you know.

00:14:33.500 In Jewish culture, a great example is it's a sophicism or sophistry and mysticism. 0.99

00:14:39.120 So we've said that Kabbalism, for Jewish mysticism,

00:14:45.620 is sort of like a fly trap for people with a sociological profile

00:14:50.620 that is susceptible to mystical thinking, or who's really good at mystical thinking.

00:14:55.820 So if you watch our video on how garden gnomes are destroying academia,

00:14:59.660 we talk about this, how some individuals can have a really, really high level

00:15:03.900 of verbal intelligence, but a really low level of general intelligence

00:15:09.620 or other types of intelligence.

00:15:11.160 And these individuals can be incredibly dangerous to any group that they're in

00:15:15.980 because people will, you know, when somebody is like really good at engineering,

00:15:19.660 but not good at anything else, nobody thinks they're like good at other things.

00:15:23.080 But if somebody is really good at sophistry, but not good at anything else,

00:15:26.120 it's very easy to misjudge that and believe that they are broadly competent

00:15:32.580 and begin to take advice from them and then begin to fail as a cultural group.

00:15:38.580 But the Jewish cultural group, it has this really great defense mechanism

00:15:42.600 against these individuals, which is Kabbalah,

00:15:45.100 which is sort of like a fly trap for these people.

00:15:47.260 They get engaged in it and they go really deep in it,

00:15:49.860 but in a way that can't be that damaging to the broader society or cultural group.

00:15:55.800 What it means, and if you look at studies on this, this is a great thing.

00:15:59.340 We might do a video on this because we write a lot on it

00:16:01.400 in the pragmatist guy to crafting religion,

00:16:03.320 is that this belief that Jewish groups are like much higher IQ than other groups,

00:16:07.820 but that's actually not true.

00:16:09.040 If you look at any of the research,

00:16:10.120 they just have much higher verbal intelligence than other groups.

00:16:13.480 And that's why you have this.

00:16:15.340 Whereas other groups would select against that.

00:16:17.080 So you always have some sort of parody of verbal intelligence

00:16:20.060 and other types of intelligences.

00:16:24.260 So my question to you is, I mean,

00:16:27.540 you're able to look at how a culture essentially creates a certain type of person.

00:16:32.880 What could people who are crafting culture,

00:16:35.560 what could cultural entrepreneurs be working into their cultures,

00:16:40.260 their cultural technologies and amenities

00:16:42.860 that would create people who have, I guess,

00:16:47.880 specific advantages in more what we're interested in, right?

00:16:51.680 Which is building the future, you know,

00:16:53.880 being the people to build the infrastructure,

00:16:55.980 the technology and the governing societies of the future.

00:17:00.440 Yeah.

00:17:00.620 So there's two broad answers to this question, right?

00:17:03.840 One is let's assume genetic technologies didn't exist.

00:17:06.500 And the most important takeaway of genetic technologies don't exist

00:17:10.720 is the thing that your culture is best at protecting against 0.65

00:17:15.720 is going to be the thing that was in the biology of people under your culture

00:17:20.840 sort of spirals out of control as a predilection.

00:17:24.180 So, you know,

00:17:25.020 if Calvinist culture is uniquely good at protecting against hedonism,

00:17:27.940 then extremely high rates of happiness are going to appear

00:17:31.340 biologically within that cultural group.

00:17:33.520 They're extremely high energy and giddiness rates, right?

00:17:37.160 And so be aware of that because sometimes people can be like,

00:17:40.040 this is a problem.

00:17:40.980 We want to do a very good job of building a culture

00:17:43.100 that protects against amoral familialism.

00:17:45.400 And then through protecting against that,

00:17:47.920 you end up with really high rates of amoral familialism,

00:17:51.920 just, I guess, naturally form underneath that culture.

00:17:55.340 However, I think that this trend is not relevant into the future.

00:17:59.920 Okay.

00:18:01.120 And here's what I mean.

00:18:02.520 In the future,

00:18:03.320 because we can begin to intentionally through polygenic screening,

00:18:07.700 select individuals for specific sociological profiles, right?

00:18:11.920 And traits.

00:18:12.880 The cultural groups that engage with this technology,

00:18:15.680 I hate to be the one to say it,

00:18:16.700 but they're the only ones who are going to matter in the future.

00:18:18.740 Because if you just run the math,

00:18:21.220 a family or cultural group that engages within this within 75 years,

00:18:24.660 because it looks within 75 years,

00:18:25.860 the general population is probably going to decrease in IQ

00:18:27.840 by about one standard deviation.

00:18:29.520 If you engage with this technology,

00:18:31.640 you're probably going to increase in IQ by 2.5 standard deviations.

00:18:35.120 So you're just going to be like astronomically higher IQ and other things that you're...

00:18:40.940 Yeah, but also like probably healthier and happier.

00:18:43.560 Yeah.

00:18:43.740 Also healthier, lower rates of cancer, lower rates of all sorts of stuff.

00:18:46.500 And then when you begin to get to human CRISPR,

00:18:48.600 you get into a whole other thing where like you can move really quickly.

00:18:52.620 But then, so within the cultural groups that are making these selections,

00:18:57.340 you're just going to see really high rates of things.

00:18:59.140 So like a cultural group that says,

00:19:00.640 I value happiness, I am going to select for happiness.

00:19:03.080 Or I value creativity, I am going to select for creativity.

00:19:06.700 Much more so than cultural practices affected the human genome in the past.

00:19:11.120 Because cultural choices and values and status signals are going to impact the human genome.

00:19:19.580 And so cultural groups that really care about things like generic attractiveness,

00:19:23.840 you know, like height and stuff like that.

00:19:25.280 I mean, they might get huge in the near future, right?

00:19:27.880 But they're likely going to be less and less economically relevant.

00:19:32.860 Yeah.

00:19:34.200 It's going to be an interesting future then.

00:19:36.600 Well, I want to know why you thought this wasn't an interesting topic.

00:19:39.760 Because you're like, Malcolm, this seems like a really boring topic.

00:19:42.400 I guess maybe because we talk about it so much to me, it's obvious.

00:19:45.500 It's, well, duh.

00:19:46.520 If you create through your culture, your own set of evolutionary bottlenecks,

00:19:50.660 of course, you're going to shape who you create.

00:19:52.960 Huh.

00:19:53.720 You know, if we all live in a desert environment,

00:19:55.760 maybe we're going to deal better with heat and, you know, hydration.

00:19:58.660 We're going to turn into camels.

00:19:59.940 I don't know.

00:20:00.420 It just seems, well, thanks.

00:20:02.100 You know, I'm glad.

00:20:03.000 And by the way, what she's saying is something you see.

00:20:05.620 So like people who live in really high, like mountain environments,

00:20:08.300 they become more barrel chested.

00:20:10.240 They develop more.

00:20:11.320 Yeah.

00:20:11.640 They tend to be smaller and have larger, longer capacity.

00:20:14.600 Yeah.

00:20:14.820 All species respond to evolutionary pressures.

00:20:18.100 Of course, if you create a culture that has evolutionary pressures,

00:20:21.200 humans will respond.

00:20:22.080 It's just, okay, well, thank you for letting me know

00:20:24.060 that studies show that when you drop something,

00:20:26.260 it falls to the ground.

00:20:27.400 Okay.

00:20:27.580 You understand no one else is talking about this, right?

00:20:30.620 You've got.

00:20:30.920 Yeah, but that's because I think people,

00:20:32.500 and this is, this is something that's interesting,

00:20:34.640 which is that culture is a highly underrated tool.

00:20:39.780 I mean, I would say that China understands this

00:20:42.120 and the fact that it's like trying to outlaw certain cultures.

00:20:45.940 Like just this morning,

00:20:46.880 I was watching one YouTube commentator discuss

00:20:49.160 how China has tried to outlaw like hyper feminine males.

00:20:53.520 And it's trying to, you know,

00:20:54.800 create this like new standard for masculinity,

00:20:58.500 which is a more macho kind of male

00:21:01.640 and also a male who shows a huge amount of devotion to his nation, right?

00:21:05.620 So, so China does understand this.

00:21:08.040 It's like a virgin man trying to unhook a broad 1.00

00:21:10.740 type of cultural engagement.

00:21:13.000 Well, so, well, but yeah,

00:21:13.920 China may not be getting it tactically right, 0.93

00:21:15.740 but at least I respect that China is one of the very few nations 0.98

00:21:20.240 that appears to understand the importance and impact.

00:21:23.420 Like Georgia also understands that,

00:21:25.640 but I think that's more just a product of it being a more religious nation.

00:21:30.500 So I do think that that's important.

00:21:32.920 Offering to be people's, what was it?

00:21:35.880 The patriarch of the church, yeah.

00:21:37.480 Offering to either baptize or become the godfather

00:21:40.000 of anyone who was, yeah, born to the church.

00:21:42.860 Yeah.

00:21:43.400 Simone, I guess what I,

00:21:45.420 the reason why I think this is interesting

00:21:47.160 or might be interesting to people

00:21:48.480 is if you look at the two groups in the world today,

00:21:51.660 there's one group,

00:21:52.660 which is like this progressive monoculture,

00:21:54.900 which is like,

00:21:55.440 there is no difference in human populations.

00:21:57.780 Um, and then there's this other group,

00:22:00.640 which is like this scientific racism community,

00:22:03.500 which is like all the difference that matters is,

00:22:07.040 is like black versus white versus native American versus Hispanic.

00:22:11.260 And, and because everyone's so ideological motivated,

00:22:14.660 they can't see the, to me,

00:22:16.540 which is the groups that matter are your cultural groups

00:22:20.580 and your recent family decisions.

00:22:22.420 Like families that, you know, live in Texas,

00:22:26.360 usually regardless of their, their ethnic background,

00:22:29.040 you know, they are people who migrated to the U S once

00:22:31.480 and then felt the need to migrate again,

00:22:33.620 at least once,

00:22:34.840 which is why they're so outgoing and okay,

00:22:37.960 let's move, let's do something new.

00:22:40.180 Let's, you know,

00:22:41.120 they, they represent a multiple migration mindset,

00:22:45.700 which you may not see in other environments.

00:22:48.120 So, so even little things like that can really impact a person.

00:22:52.640 Yeah. No, I mean, I, and I would also argue even now,

00:22:55.660 Texas selects for pretty practical and, um,

00:23:00.500 resourceful people because people don't usually move to Texas

00:23:03.040 because they're like, Oh yeah, this is my easy way out.

00:23:05.360 Right. They move there because there are job opportunities

00:23:07.260 and because cost of living is low.

00:23:08.980 Yeah. Well, this is something we saw in Dallas, right.

00:23:11.280 Versus living in like Miami or San Francisco,

00:23:14.040 San Francisco, you might move to San Francisco

00:23:16.540 because you wanted to be part of the next big thing.

00:23:18.860 You know, you might move to Miami

00:23:20.400 because it augmented your personal status.

00:23:22.500 If you moved to Dallas,

00:23:23.700 it was because of job opportunities and cost of living,

00:23:26.600 which is selecting for a very specific sociological profile.

00:23:30.520 Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it is interesting.

00:23:32.800 This is interesting insofar as people are not really aware

00:23:38.860 of how powerful culture is as a long-term mechanism

00:23:44.520 of power and influence. However, it's just so freaking obvious

00:23:48.480 that at least internally, I'm just like,

00:23:50.880 do we have to?

00:23:55.280 No. Well, so, I mean, I think if genetic technology

00:23:58.300 wasn't beginning to bubble up now, which it is,

00:24:00.480 which sort of changes everything about how, how this, this works.

00:24:03.760 If you said no genetic technology at all,

00:24:06.360 you would begin to see really big,

00:24:08.960 much bigger than any potential little ethnic differences

00:24:12.500 between population groups,

00:24:14.260 differences in people living in different cities

00:24:16.380 in just the next, you know, 100 years or so.

00:24:19.220 Because airplanes make it so easy to relocate

00:24:23.780 that you are getting it around the world today.

00:24:27.200 And I think this is often happening in countries.

00:24:30.360 Incredibly powerful assortative sorting

00:24:33.080 of people based on their sociological profiles

00:24:36.080 into specific cities and geographic regions,

00:24:39.460 which I think is why, you know, today,

00:24:41.840 if you look at the progressive regions

00:24:43.740 becoming more progressive

00:24:44.620 and the conservative regions becoming more conservative,

00:24:46.940 you know, there's been great, like, twin studies on this.

00:24:49.400 The way you vote is what?

00:24:50.500 I think around 80% genetic?

00:24:52.440 No, 60%. It was 60%. 0.62

00:24:53.860 Yeah, it's not that high, but it is highly heritable.

00:24:56.080 Yeah, it is highly.

00:24:57.000 So you're beginning to actually get this sort of concentrated

00:25:00.320 where if you are a conservative-leaning person

00:25:02.200 like yourself living in San Francisco, you leave.

00:25:04.860 And you go move to, like, rural Pennsylvania,

00:25:07.180 which is where we live now, right?

00:25:08.500 So I think that you are seeing an incredibly high level

00:25:12.880 of, like, assortative sorting.

00:25:15.660 Yeah. And, you know, that's interesting.

00:25:18.900 It's interesting that in 200 years,

00:25:21.080 you will have, like, the Detroit or Dallas or Miami

00:25:23.260 or San Francisco, like, genetic sociological profile.

00:25:26.000 And this is something that people, I mean,

00:25:28.880 unless they're just, like, religiously oblivious to it,

00:25:34.120 like the progressives are now,

00:25:35.560 will be really obvious to everyone.

00:25:38.040 Yeah, but somewhat depressingly,

00:25:39.140 I guess the other reason is, one, it's super obvious.

00:25:41.740 Two, pretty much no one is acting on it.

00:25:45.200 And three, like, you know,

00:25:49.580 no one is going to do anything about it

00:25:51.480 or they'll flub it like China's flubbing it 0.94

00:25:53.960 or China appears to be flubbing it, at least.

00:25:56.080 So, you know, if it's that kind of thing,

00:25:58.540 will it matter, you know,

00:26:00.020 because no one's going to pull it off?

00:26:02.200 Like, I don't know.

00:26:02.760 Well, it matters in terms of how you look at it.

00:26:04.080 So a great example of this that I'd always cite

00:26:06.360 is when I talk to people and I'm like,

00:26:08.580 yeah, you know, what do you think of Cubans?

00:26:10.020 You talk to a Florida, you're like,

00:26:10.960 what do you think of Cubans?

00:26:11.700 They go, oh, you know, Cubans. 1.00

00:26:12.740 They're all, you know,

00:26:13.700 there's the typical Cuban sociological profile.

00:26:17.220 They're very conservative.

00:26:18.780 They're really good at business.

00:26:20.520 They're really educated.

00:26:21.700 And it's not the profile of Cubans more broadly.

00:26:26.340 That's the profile of the Cubans

00:26:28.380 that were differentially sorted

00:26:30.280 into trying to escape a communist dictatorship

00:26:33.260 and move to the United States.

00:26:35.300 And to some extent,

00:26:35.980 this is what you see with the Taiwanese sociological,

00:26:38.800 like, why is Taiwan able to have

00:26:41.600 all these advanced semiconductor plants

00:26:43.380 that nowhere else in the world

00:26:44.740 seems to be able to run at a large scale?

00:26:48.120 Taiwan is like China's Cuba, period, 0.93

00:26:50.580 where it's a little different

00:26:52.300 because it was actually founded

00:26:53.740 by a dictatorial regime.

00:26:55.040 But that dictatorial regime,

00:26:56.500 when they were fleeing the Chinese mainland,

00:26:58.780 they did something really weirdly foresightful,

00:27:02.400 which is they tried to take all of the high trained,

00:27:05.780 like high intelligence people with them

00:27:08.840 as part of their exodus.

00:27:10.160 Well, so it's like, well, Cuban immigrants then, 0.90

00:27:15.260 you know, but not...

00:27:16.380 Yeah, it's like Cuban immigrants. 1.00

00:27:17.580 Like Taiwan is Cuban Floridians are Cuban people 0.53

00:27:21.960 as Taiwanese are to Chinese people.

00:27:24.540 Yeah, yeah.

00:27:26.000 But it is really...

00:27:27.840 Or what's also interesting is American Chinese immigrants

00:27:30.720 are to Chinese people, you know,

00:27:32.660 to an extent within any immigrant population,

00:27:35.300 depending on how the wording worked,

00:27:37.900 you're often going to get

00:27:39.340 a very specific sociological profile

00:27:41.700 that may not be the dominant sociological profile

00:27:44.760 of the mainland population.

00:27:47.940 Yeah.

00:27:49.140 Yeah.

00:27:50.140 Well, I mean, maybe this video will make a difference.

00:27:53.540 Maybe this video will make people

00:27:55.060 actually do something with cultural technology,

00:27:57.560 I think more intentionally.

00:27:59.800 Humans are not great at like

00:28:01.580 thinking in terms of generations.

00:28:03.520 It's more like right now, what do I get?

00:28:06.260 But we'll see, Malcolm.

00:28:07.480 Let's see if this vortex of failure continues to fail.

00:28:11.560 You are not a vortex.

00:28:13.040 You are a vortex of success

00:28:14.840 pulling me to higher highs.

00:28:17.000 Oh, no, let's look more meta.

00:28:18.380 I think that success lies at the summit

00:28:21.500 of a mountain of failures.

00:28:22.820 And the only way you will ever achieve success

00:28:25.040 is by marrying a vortex of failures

00:28:27.220 who builds that mountain

00:28:28.380 because that's what we're saying at the top.

00:28:29.900 Yes, you make life so hard for me.

00:28:32.260 Yeah, so the secret was they were right.

00:28:35.360 But that's why.

00:28:37.040 Here's one question before we leave.

00:28:38.620 Are there any cultural groups that I missed

00:28:40.320 that you feel have had a big impact

00:28:41.900 on individuals living under them?

00:28:45.420 I mean, yeah, like every culture

00:28:47.340 has had a big impact on individuals living under them.

00:28:50.000 And I think what's interesting,

00:28:51.220 what you haven't discussed a lot,

00:28:52.260 but this is really more for another conversation,

00:28:54.040 is how emergent properties

00:28:57.620 or changing environments or technologies

00:28:59.900 have caused these to crash and burn sometimes and not.

00:29:03.540 Like the cultural evolutionary pressures

00:29:06.080 that may exist in one time series,

00:29:09.340 one climate, one technological environment

00:29:11.900 will totally fail in another.

00:29:14.500 And so I think a lot of good cultural entrepreneurship

00:29:16.960 and crafting has to involve anticipation

00:29:19.220 of what we're going to be facing in the future.

00:29:22.400 So a great example of what she's talking about here

00:29:24.500 are Mormons.

00:29:25.260 Mormons used to be a really successful cultural,

00:29:27.460 group, and now their fertility rates

00:29:28.980 just absolutely below replacement rate.

00:29:31.460 And I think well below replacement rate

00:29:32.700 at this point.

00:29:33.600 So they fared very poorly

00:29:36.140 in the age of cell phone dominance.

00:29:39.280 Yeah.

00:29:39.520 And so I think anyone doing good culture crafting now

00:29:42.520 has to think a lot about the effect of AI

00:29:45.280 on economies, on people, on mental health.

00:29:48.300 And if you're not factoring that in,

00:29:50.500 it really doesn't matter what pressures you create

00:29:52.820 because if they don't factor that in,

00:29:54.220 they're not factoring in what reality is going to be.

00:29:56.440 But anyway, this is fun.

00:29:58.220 I admire your first date, Simone,

00:29:59.900 and I'm so glad to have married

00:30:01.380 a gender-bent version of myself.

00:30:03.900 And this is something that people often miss about us.

00:30:05.840 They're like, you guys seem to think exactly the same,

00:30:07.900 and you look exactly the same.

00:30:09.700 And it's just almost like a racist thing to say.

00:30:12.480 It's like they're seeing somebody

00:30:13.960 of a rarer cultural group

00:30:15.460 that they haven't seen much.

00:30:16.720 I don't know.

00:30:17.620 For the first time,

00:30:18.620 they're meeting two like really Jewish people.

00:30:20.820 And they're like, you guys look like weirdly similar.

00:30:24.320 Are you brother and sister?

00:30:26.300 Yeah, are you brother and sisters?

00:30:28.160 No, we're just from the same ethno-cultural group.

00:30:31.440 Not a common one these days.

00:30:34.860 Anyway, I love you, Simone.

00:30:37.300 I love you too, Malcolm.

00:30:38.560 Thank you.

00:30:47.740 Thank you.

00:30:49.180 Thank you.

00:30:50.100 Thank you.

00:30:50.840 Thank you.

00:30:53.460 Thank you.

00:30:54.220 Thank you.

00:30:54.940 Thank you.

00:30:55.880 Thank you.

Based Camp - September 01, 2023

Religion As It Relates to Genetics

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript