Based Camp - The People's Front of Judea, Cultural Speciation, and Catholicism

00:00:00.000 Are you saying that you're saying that Catholicism is a Nepo baby?

00:00:04.500 Catholicism is a Nepo baby. It's a Nepo baby of the Roman empire. 1.00

00:00:07.540 I mean, we, so, I mean,

00:00:10.440 there's many reasons why Constantine may have chosen. I mean,

00:00:13.560 obviously they're the reason he gave,

00:00:14.900 but a lot of historians think that what was actually going on there is he

00:00:19.180 really liked the Catholic church as an alternate administrative unit that

00:00:24.380 already had centers set up throughout the Roman empire,

00:00:26.960 which allowed him to implement many reforms administration in a box.

00:00:32.460 Yeah. It was like an administration in a box that allowed him to compete with

00:00:36.420 the deep state. Would you like to know more?

00:00:39.700 Hello, Simone. How's it going?

00:00:42.200 Very good. Malcolm.

00:00:43.720 I thought today we might talk a little bit about your theories on cultural

00:00:47.560 speciation. In other words,

00:00:49.080 how cultures split off into new entirely separate cultures.

00:00:54.060 Yeah.

00:00:54.220 So this is really important for us to talk about because we talk about the

00:00:57.580 evolution of cultures a lot on this channel.

00:00:59.860 The idea that cultures can be thought of as an evolving software sitting on

00:01:04.060 top of our genetically prescribed sociological predilections,

00:01:08.760 which is our hardware.

00:01:10.500 And so what's really cool about cultural speciation events is one,

00:01:16.040 we can see them in real time all around us.

00:01:18.900 And two, by studying them and by looking at them,

00:01:22.540 we can get a better understanding of why people,

00:01:25.740 one, do something that appears very weird in the moment.

00:01:29.180 And, and two,

00:01:30.900 the long-term consequences of this action and why it's important to like the

00:01:36.020 development of human societies and why we might even be genetically coded to do

00:01:41.540 this action that can seem really weird because it leads to faster cultural

00:01:45.480 evolution.

00:01:45.940 Right. Right. So this is,

00:01:49.380 we're going to talk about what we call the Judean people's front problem.

00:01:53.560 And this is from the Monty Python movie,

00:01:55.840 the life of Brian, because it's a great example of this.

00:01:59.260 There's this little group of four people who are the Judean people's front. 0.68

00:02:03.960 And this was about like the anti-Roman Jewish groups that were really common in

00:02:08.380 Rome around the time of Jesus, because this was just a thing in Rome.

00:02:11.420 You want, actually, if you want to see more about this, you can watch this show,

00:02:14.960 Rome. That's what it's called, right? The, the serial.

00:02:17.740 Yeah. That was good.

00:02:18.800 Oh, it's so good. It's so good.

00:02:20.660 So I'll just do this get, because I'd like to put it here or, well, you know,

00:02:24.080 we'll have a link to it, but we'll get copyrighted straight when we do it.

00:02:26.520 But essentially there's, there's like a small group of people in the,

00:02:30.860 in the Colosseum. Another guy comes up to them.

00:02:33.600 He's trying to join their group. He's, oh,

00:02:35.500 I'd really like to join the Judean people's front. And they're like,

00:02:38.660 are you sure you want to join? And they're like,

00:02:42.200 you got to really hate the Romans to join us. And he's, oh yeah, 1.00

00:02:45.340 I really hate the Romans. And then they're like, 1.00

00:02:47.240 the only thing we hate more than the Romans is the people's front of Judea. 1.00

00:02:51.800 And then the guy goes, I thought we were the people's front of Judea.

00:02:54.260 And they go, no, we're the Judean people's front. And he goes, oh yeah,

00:02:56.500 I hate the people's front of Judea. Oh, and of course the popular front of Judea.

00:03:01.180 And he's like, who's the popular front? That guy over there.

00:03:03.540 And it's the one guy sitting alone.

00:03:04.940 And what you see there is what we call a cultural speciation event.

00:03:09.020 And the key aspect of a cultural speciation event is typically you see this

00:03:14.700 one more with younger dynamic cultures,

00:03:16.600 but you see it across all cultures where the highest amount of animosity and the

00:03:21.620 highest amount of thinking about how you are different from people is about the

00:03:26.300 groups that you are most similar to,

00:03:29.120 not the groups you are most different from.

00:03:32.840 So a great place that you can see this,

00:03:36.240 if you're familiar with the effective altruists or the rationalists or the less

00:03:38.860 wrong community is between those communities, you know,

00:03:42.060 the effective altruists. And then you've got teapot Twitter,

00:03:44.400 and then you've got, you know, the post rats, the post rationalists.

00:03:47.560 And broadly, these people have a lot of the same views on the world,

00:03:51.780 but they are really obsessed with how, Oh, well,

00:03:54.160 I'm not exactly a rationalist. I'm part of this group.

00:03:57.120 Like they're much more interested in these subdivisions of the groups.

00:03:59.900 And these are all the things that I think the rational gets wrong.

00:04:02.720 The rationalist gets wrong. And that's why I really hate them.

00:04:04.840 Or these are all the things I think effective altruists gets wrong.

00:04:07.180 In fact, I'd say it's almost like being a hipster.

00:04:09.540 The way you could tell somebody is like basically an effective altruist.

00:04:12.840 If they have a 30 minute rant about why they hate effective altruists and

00:04:16.440 they're not an effective altruist, because if you care enough to have that,

00:04:19.800 then okay. Yes.

00:04:20.460 You're culturally adjacent enough to the effective altruist that you're

00:04:23.200 basically an effective altruist. Yeah. So, but this is,

00:04:26.380 this is really important because you see this across groups.

00:04:29.240 And so what's happening here?

00:04:30.760 Like why would you have the highest amount of animosity for the people who are

00:04:34.880 most similar to you? So one,

00:04:37.180 I think that the lay person's assumption is going to be, well,

00:04:42.220 I guess you would interact with that group more, or, you know,

00:04:46.060 you'd think about them more, but if that's true,

00:04:48.040 then you should get to know them better and have less of a visceral hatred of

00:04:52.120 them often. So I think what's actually happening is two things.

00:04:57.020 One, you cannot have cultural speciation.

00:05:00.240 Now speciation is where a new species splits off unless you can have cultural 1.00

00:05:04.280 isolation. And so instinctively, and, and one,

00:05:08.220 faster cultural evolution would have helped a population group outcompete other

00:05:11.800 population groups because their cultures would become better over time faster.

00:05:15.620 So you might have an actually an instinctual thing within a human to when a

00:05:21.000 cultural group begins to split,

00:05:22.740 to begin to feel animosity for the people across that cultural divide to you,

00:05:28.140 because if you don't have that,

00:05:29.400 you're going to have people moving back and forth across this divide a lot,

00:05:32.700 which will prevent the groups from actually splitting.

00:05:36.180 And now that people can be in like these online environments where they can,

00:05:39.300 without really any cost,

00:05:40.980 just sit around and indolently masturbate an emotional instinct that they have,

00:05:45.000 you will get people who basically spend their entire day online,

00:05:48.640 hating on cultural groups that are very, very similar to them.

00:05:51.600 I think that's what basically the subreddit singer club can be thought of is,

00:05:55.160 is people who maybe have a slightly higher emotional output and addiction 0.69

00:05:59.700 pathway to this form of emotional masturbation.

00:06:02.200 And so they just spend all of their time doing it to the rationalist community 0.95

00:06:06.020 or the EA community or whatever.

00:06:07.920 So it's,

00:06:08.420 it's really fascinating to me.

00:06:11.200 Someone,

00:06:11.740 I'd love to hear your thoughts on cultural speciation and you know,

00:06:15.760 have you seen it?

00:06:16.440 Like where have you related to it?

00:06:19.160 Yeah.

00:06:19.680 I mean,

00:06:20.000 where I've seen it most,

00:06:21.420 I think is in fan communities,

00:06:23.820 you'll see all these different sub genres come out and people,

00:06:27.260 I,

00:06:27.480 I think it more comes from a dominance hierarchy fight than anything else.

00:06:32.780 I understand that there,

00:06:33.920 that isolation plays a key role,

00:06:35.280 but I think the reason why you do get cultural speciation is that in these

00:06:39.000 little subsets,

00:06:39.800 you get people fighting to be the best and fighting to be the best often

00:06:43.340 involves saying,

00:06:44.580 here's my interpretation of our values.

00:06:46.460 Here's my interpretation of what we should be doing or focusing on or what it

00:06:49.500 means to be the best in our group.

00:06:51.000 And then someone else decides or refigures out that they can reach the top of

00:06:56.280 the dominance hierarchy as well by saying,

00:06:58.800 Oh no,

00:06:59.080 no,

00:06:59.180 no.

00:06:59.300 The rules are different.

00:07:00.440 Here's actually how you signal that you're the best.

00:07:03.060 Here's actually the values that we should be optimizing around.

00:07:05.540 And that causes the split.

00:07:07.140 And then there's a ton of animosity of course,

00:07:08.960 because they both claim to be supporting the same thing.

00:07:12.640 Maybe it's a fandom,

00:07:13.720 maybe it's a religion,

00:07:14.740 maybe it's a political cause,

00:07:16.380 maybe it's rationalism or effective altruism,

00:07:18.600 but they have very different virtue signaling and value.

00:07:24.080 And how do we allocate our time prescriptions?

00:07:27.240 And so that causes a lot of resentment between the group,

00:07:30.000 but also a ton of confusion.

00:07:30.960 And I think the life of Brian's skit is funny because also people have a lot

00:07:34.980 of trouble keeping it straight in the beginning.

00:07:37.120 And it does take,

00:07:38.680 like you say,

00:07:39.520 that high level of cultural isolation to actually turn into a speciation

00:07:42.940 event.

00:07:43.720 So if you are,

00:07:44.580 for example,

00:07:45.420 all just knocking about Rome,

00:07:47.400 being political activists,

00:07:48.480 there's going to be a lot of confusion and you're not actually going to be,

00:07:51.840 become separate,

00:07:52.780 distinct cultures or groups.

00:07:54.780 But if it is possible for one of those groups to isolate spinoff,

00:07:57.740 geographically go to a different area or become so different that they

00:08:01.160 don't even bear like an easy resemblance,

00:08:04.380 then,

00:08:04.720 then you get the speciation.

00:08:05.680 Yeah.

00:08:06.860 So then the question is,

00:08:08.000 how do you protect a new movement against this?

00:08:11.260 Because young movements are really susceptible to this.

00:08:14.520 Okay.

00:08:14.780 But hold on.

00:08:15.620 So why I'm interested in why you would say that we want to protect

00:08:18.680 movements from that,

00:08:19.560 because I think you've also argued in the pragmatist guide to crafting

00:08:22.320 religion,

00:08:22.740 that some very long lasting religions slash cultures have used this like

00:08:29.680 sort of speciation.

00:08:31.300 I'll word this differently.

00:08:33.220 Okay.

00:08:33.760 Okay.

00:08:34.020 When I say,

00:08:34.900 how do we protect a culture against it?

00:08:37.060 It's a bit like saying,

00:08:38.140 how do we protect humanity from their own greed and selfishness?

00:08:41.120 And the answer is capitalism.

00:08:42.580 I believe that this instinct can be utilized to make a culture stronger.

00:08:47.340 However,

00:08:47.860 and you've talked about how that happens.

00:08:49.740 However,

00:08:50.060 it is an incredible threat to young groups,

00:08:54.440 especially young groups that have a lot of intelligent males in them,

00:08:59.140 because these males will,

00:09:01.720 for the reason you said,

00:09:02.800 constantly try to split the group so that they can be at the top of this new

00:09:06.060 hierarchy.

00:09:06.400 They formed.

00:09:06.980 One of the reasons why young males often choose these niche communities to

00:09:11.160 identify with is through this identification.

00:09:14.500 They can be at the top of their local hierarchy,

00:09:16.860 just because it's such a small hierarchy,

00:09:18.220 or,

00:09:18.920 or at least they're not far from the top of their local hierarchy.

00:09:21.340 And I think a lot of men just genetically are unwilling to engage with a

00:09:25.840 group where they are far from the top of the hierarchy,

00:09:28.260 especially young men.

00:09:29.680 And so I think that that drives a lot of this.

00:09:31.340 And I think it's also why you have this culture of,

00:09:34.540 you know,

00:09:34.800 we call them evanescent cultures.

00:09:36.420 These are cultures that are specifically evolved to target youth.

00:09:40.440 And then they disappear after you leave a youth stage where kids will join

00:09:45.080 this wide diversity of youth cultural groups like goths or something like

00:09:48.580 that,

00:09:48.840 which then quickly disappear.

00:09:50.520 And we can have another episode on evanescent cultural groups because

00:09:53.340 they're very interesting and they have broadly the same characteristics

00:09:56.300 across generations,

00:09:57.100 but they wear different faces and it's,

00:09:59.500 it's,

00:09:59.820 it's useful to know about if you're a young kid going into them.

00:10:02.360 So here's what I think we do.

00:10:03.720 And this is,

00:10:04.300 we actually largely delineate this in the pragmatist guide to crafting

00:10:08.280 religion,

00:10:08.720 but it is to say,

00:10:10.460 so first identify the threat.

00:10:11.980 The threat is,

00:10:13.260 is that the cultural group becomes so fragmented,

00:10:15.500 like I would say happened to the rationalist community that it's not able to

00:10:20.280 stay around as a cohesive community.

00:10:22.020 That's able to offer people like a support network.

00:10:24.460 So you get this exogenous reasons to join in,

00:10:27.380 which I think is really important for groups that are going to last

00:10:30.540 intergenerationally.

00:10:31.760 So the way that you do it is you encourage the competition and you flag the

00:10:37.860 competition as,

00:10:39.420 as sort of meaningful,

00:10:41.000 but in so far as people don't dissociate with the umbrella group.

00:10:46.380 So by that,

00:10:47.020 what I mean is you can say,

00:10:48.100 I am this culture within this,

00:10:50.220 this cultural umbrella,

00:10:51.460 and I'm this culture within this cultural umbrella.

00:10:53.620 And then what you do is you create clear metrics for the cultures to compete

00:10:57.780 with each other.

00:10:58.600 So,

00:10:59.120 you know,

00:10:59.800 within our family office structure,

00:11:01.960 essentially this is done.

00:11:03.100 And within the larger index framework,

00:11:04.860 this is done where you say,

00:11:07.920 okay,

00:11:08.220 you want to choose to be a different cultural group.

00:11:10.280 Well,

00:11:10.740 then if you out-compete,

00:11:11.820 then you get more voting power in the family office where out-competing is

00:11:15.420 defined as either converting lots of people to your faction,

00:11:19.620 having lots of kids and having those kids stay within the culture

00:11:24.000 intergenerationally and choose to have a lot of kids themselves.

00:11:26.680 So it's giving you concrete success metrics,

00:11:30.440 which through continuing to adhere to bind you to the central organization.

00:11:35.300 And what's really fascinating about these concrete success metrics is if

00:11:40.560 somebody says,

00:11:41.040 well,

00:11:41.060 I don't believe in that set of success metrics.

00:11:43.720 I don't want to compete along that set of success metrics.

00:11:46.220 Well,

00:11:46.420 then they don't matter anymore anyway,

00:11:48.380 because they won't exist in the future.

00:11:50.500 If they have chosen a culture that's either not optimized around

00:11:53.580 intergenerational cultural transfer,

00:11:55.580 fertility,

00:11:56.180 or conversion,

00:11:57.340 then they're not going to exist in the future.

00:11:59.000 So it doesn't matter that they have become dissident.

00:12:03.040 So then in other words,

00:12:05.180 if you wanted to advise EA effective altruism,

00:12:09.340 if it could be a cohesive community and it's not,

00:12:11.500 so it's not like there's some leader that could do this really,

00:12:14.080 but if you wanted to prevent EA from fracturing to a point of

00:12:18.800 dysfunction,

00:12:20.180 you would find some way to sort of centrally acknowledge the various

00:12:23.920 factions.

00:12:24.560 And then I would build them a governance model that would use a similar

00:12:28.400 triumvirate model to the index,

00:12:30.300 but a bit different.

00:12:31.240 So essentially you'd have three groups that would each elect a member.

00:12:35.720 And then those three members would have to unanimously vote on sort of like

00:12:39.120 a dictator of the organization.

00:12:40.860 And this would be the central effect of altruism fund that they would be

00:12:43.980 electing the dictator for.

00:12:45.060 The three groups voting patterns would be one group was based on how much an

00:12:48.980 individual donated to the central fund or,

00:12:52.020 and then a lesser voting amount for how much they personally like work

00:12:58.180 responsible for raising for the funds.

00:13:00.640 You might get like half a point for every dollar you raised and a full point

00:13:04.080 for every dollar you donated.

00:13:05.700 Right.

00:13:05.900 And so that would be the people who are functionally able to out-compete in

00:13:11.120 terms of fundraising.

00:13:12.160 They would be one voting block was in the organization.

00:13:15.180 Another block was in the organization could be the number of people that you

00:13:19.800 have converted to being effective altruists and dedicating themselves to

00:13:23.160 effective altruists.

00:13:24.220 So this could be everyone that you've got to donate at least a specific

00:13:28.420 amount.

00:13:28.780 So say $10,000,

00:13:29.920 you consider that somebody who has become an effective altruist.

00:13:32.260 And then you're looking lifestyle wise,

00:13:34.260 how many people are living this?

00:13:35.260 So this one is focused on conversion,

00:13:36.800 like human outreach.

00:13:37.920 And then the final voting block,

00:13:39.360 which I think is important within any government is made up of all of the

00:13:42.080 past dictators.

00:13:42.820 So it would be like a branch of our government that was made up of only past

00:13:46.440 presidents.

00:13:47.340 And I think that that organization,

00:13:49.100 the way it's structured would intrinsically grow in both the amount of money

00:13:52.920 it had and the way that people were socially politicking within it,

00:13:56.820 because you're creating an environment where the way people like cheat in the

00:14:00.600 social politics only helps the end goals of the organization.

00:14:03.600 Now,

00:14:04.380 of course,

00:14:04.780 the problem with all of this is,

00:14:06.480 is nothing in that structure rewards actual effective giving.

00:14:10.360 Why didn't I choose to reward that?

00:14:12.280 It's because I think that effective giving can always be manipulated,

00:14:17.600 what that means.

00:14:18.900 And it can be used to allow groups to cheese the organization.

00:14:23.040 And so what you should always focus on,

00:14:25.780 if they cheese it,

00:14:26.680 you win at the end of the day,

00:14:27.740 is things that cause the organization to centralize and grow when cheesed.

00:14:33.620 But I also would love for you to touch on the way,

00:14:36.440 for example,

00:14:36.920 the Catholic church has spun off essentially skunk work subcultures. 0.72

00:14:41.360 Church is really unique and really interesting.

00:14:44.220 It is the,

00:14:45.620 the oldest,

00:14:46.980 I would argue,

00:14:48.160 continuing successful cultural group that I am aware of.

00:14:51.660 It would have been like genuinely successful.

00:14:53.960 So a lot of people wouldn't think like Jews are like an older cultural group,

00:14:56.920 but the truth is,

00:14:57.400 is Jews have undergone so many cultural re-envisions over the time period,

00:15:01.900 the Catholic church has been around that.

00:15:03.660 I don't know if I would call them a continuous cultural group.

00:15:06.440 It's more that they are a,

00:15:08.660 a quickly evolving cultural group,

00:15:10.800 but they are not continuous in the same way the Catholics have been.

00:15:13.940 Typically an organization like the Catholic church would collapse due to internal

00:15:18.240 cancers.

00:15:18.820 By that,

00:15:19.500 what I mean is if you look at our model of governance and stuff like that,

00:15:22.700 the longer a governance structure has been around or the larger a bureaucracy

00:15:26.680 is,

00:15:27.580 the more it is susceptible to internal cancers in which a small population

00:15:32.540 within an organization begin to self-replicate and just say,

00:15:35.960 give me more money,

00:15:36.560 give me more money,

00:15:37.140 give me more money.

00:15:37.780 I'm actually really important.

00:15:38.980 An example of this could be like ESG orgs within a company or something like

00:15:42.480 that,

00:15:42.700 right?

00:15:43.020 They,

00:15:43.300 they like a cancer,

00:15:44.400 they redirect blood flow to themselves and they just get bigger,

00:15:46.560 bigger like that until an organization basically dies.

00:15:48.820 Like this lumbering,

00:15:50.140 wheezing beast.

00:15:51.440 And,

00:15:51.540 and that can happen either due to how long it's been around as anyone,

00:15:54.680 you know,

00:15:54.900 who knows biology knows the longer lived an entity is the more prone it is to

00:15:58.360 cancer.

00:15:58.960 And,

00:15:59.460 and so,

00:16:00.180 you know,

00:16:00.360 in like whales and elephants,

00:16:01.740 you have really specific cancer preventing things,

00:16:03.980 but also the,

00:16:04.580 the bigger an animal is the more prone it is to cancer.

00:16:07.200 Again,

00:16:07.400 whales and elephants there,

00:16:08.300 but in turtles,

00:16:08.980 you have special cancer protecting mechanisms that are like really juiced up

00:16:13.560 because of their long lifespan.

00:16:15.380 Well,

00:16:15.540 no,

00:16:15.700 I mean,

00:16:15.960 this is just a thing,

00:16:16.760 right?

00:16:17.160 So the Catholic church has one of those as well.

00:16:19.160 It has a really powerful one of those,

00:16:21.140 but it also has a really powerful.

00:16:24.500 And this isn't there to say that it hasn't become cancer riddled in the past,

00:16:28.000 but then the,

00:16:28.980 the protestants split out of it.

00:16:30.300 And it had a competitor again,

00:16:31.380 and it had to get good again.

00:16:32.760 It couldn't just rely on its size to perpetuate it into the future.

00:16:36.440 But then the,

00:16:37.540 the,

00:16:38.200 the other big problem that Catholics have that all religions have is typically the 1.00

00:16:43.260 younger a religion is,

00:16:44.880 the harder it is.

00:16:46.140 And the older is the softer it is.

00:16:49.260 So by the,

00:16:50.200 by this,

00:16:50.620 what we mean when we talk about a soul soft religion,

00:16:52.740 it's a religion that has thrown away most of the things that other its members 1.00

00:16:57.360 from the general population.

00:16:58.760 And it's thrown away most of the things that make it hard to practice.

00:17:02.620 Ah,

00:17:03.040 you know,

00:17:03.540 that's a hard thing.

00:17:04.300 Let's not do that anymore.

00:17:05.500 So,

00:17:05.920 you know,

00:17:06.120 when somebody says like,

00:17:06.780 I'm a spiritual Christian,

00:17:07.780 they've,

00:17:08.180 they've reached such a soft iteration of Christianity that they are no longer

00:17:14.240 even recognizable as a Christian anymore.

00:17:16.120 It's a specific Christian denomination.

00:17:18.320 They've,

00:17:18.440 they've,

00:17:18.740 they've lost that part of their identity.

00:17:21.280 When you look at the groups that most differentiate themselves,

00:17:23.880 they're usually pretty young.

00:17:25.060 So you're looking at like Mormons are a pretty young cultural group.

00:17:27.940 Hasidic Jews are a pretty young cultural group.

00:17:30.840 Amish are one of the older hard cultural groups I can think of,

00:17:35.020 but still fairly young.

00:17:36.940 So Scientology would be a very young cultural group,

00:17:39.480 but also a very hard cultural group.

00:17:41.140 Yeah.

00:17:41.320 So back to the Catholic church.

00:17:42.700 I mean,

00:17:42.960 how did the Catholic church stay hard ish and not get soft?

00:17:47.540 Right.

00:17:47.820 That's an interesting question.

00:17:48.700 So what they essentially did is they spun out new young cultural groups,

00:17:55.580 like sort of skunk work facilities.

00:17:57.940 And that's what the orders are like the Franciscans,

00:18:00.760 et cetera.

00:18:01.200 And if you study the Catholic church,

00:18:03.660 you will notice a pattern with these orders is they first start.

00:18:07.360 And they're like all,

00:18:08.900 all of the dissonant ultra extreme intellectuals who want to go really hard

00:18:13.200 within the Catholic church.

00:18:14.200 They'll join the order.

00:18:15.120 And then the order grows.

00:18:16.680 It grows in power within the church.

00:18:18.200 It grows in size within the church.

00:18:19.920 And it eventually becomes incredibly wealthy,

00:18:22.140 incredibly opulent.

00:18:23.180 And then it dies out.

00:18:24.380 And then a new orders form.

00:18:26.140 But what's really cool is through encouraging this process,

00:18:29.580 the Catholic church is able to essentially take a syringe,

00:18:33.960 remove people from these,

00:18:35.960 these little cultured groups of,

00:18:38.180 of hard culture and re-inject them into the center of the organization.

00:18:41.120 And by this,

00:18:42.580 I mean the Vatican and stay much younger as an organization,

00:18:47.160 almost like they're sort of taking stem cell colonies and re-injecting them to

00:18:50.680 stay young,

00:18:51.380 much longer than you could otherwise stay young as an organization.

00:18:55.500 But in other words,

00:18:56.240 you're saying the Catholic church is basically leveraging dynamics of

00:18:59.600 speciation,

00:19:00.520 but in a way that gives it control.

00:19:02.820 So while the triumvirate model that you proposed for a modern young group,

00:19:08.440 that would maybe be a little bit concerned about factioning into separate

00:19:14.040 competing pieces,

00:19:15.320 they could also theoretically do with the Catholic church.

00:19:17.960 The reason I don't suggest the Catholic model is the Catholic model is a

00:19:22.480 model that like naturally evolved in a large organization that largely became

00:19:27.520 large because the Roman empire sort of borrowed it to help its administration

00:19:31.420 of a region that had already been conquered.

00:19:34.760 And,

00:19:34.880 and let's be honest,

00:19:36.060 it did not do a great job.

00:19:37.540 The Catholic church became essentially the administrative capacity for the Roman

00:19:42.200 empire.

00:19:42.760 It began to collapse almost immediately.

00:19:44.920 So it's something that,

00:19:46.540 that one did not work in its initial iteration very well to it's,

00:19:52.560 it's managed to stay alive.

00:19:54.060 It's managed to do okay,

00:19:55.740 but it has never been like exceptional.

00:19:58.880 A Catholic majority country has never been, 0.94

00:20:02.100 I would consider super,

00:20:03.880 super awesome in terms of like technological advancement or anything like that.

00:20:07.540 It does better than it should given how hierarchical it is,

00:20:12.940 given how long lived it is.

00:20:14.300 It is genuinely miraculous and really impressive.

00:20:18.060 And it may be the iteration of humanity that ends up surviving because of this

00:20:22.120 older advanced system it's using allows it to,

00:20:25.860 to live into the future,

00:20:26.940 but it's certainly not an ideal system.

00:20:29.260 And it requires that it be set up in an already giant organization.

00:20:35.340 So it's a model that I might suggest if I'm tomorrow with dictator of the U S and I needed

00:20:40.200 to find a way to keep American culture stable and surviving into the future.

00:20:43.940 I'd be like,

00:20:44.580 okay,

00:20:44.780 let's build Americana cultural nodes and begin it.

00:20:47.720 But if I'm talking about a culture that's growing from scratch,

00:20:50.480 no,

00:20:51.160 I do not think it's a very strong strategy.

00:20:54.320 Hmm.

00:20:54.860 Okay.

00:20:55.180 I mean,

00:20:55.300 you can understand why,

00:20:56.480 right?

00:20:56.780 If you're starting with just like a collection of families,

00:20:58.820 like the index,

00:20:59.520 like our cultural group,

00:21:00.560 you,

00:21:01.220 you can't spin out these like skunk works facilities.

00:21:04.100 You just don't have the resources to,

00:21:06.020 and you don't have the population to.

00:21:08.300 Yeah.

00:21:09.160 Yeah.

00:21:09.660 No,

00:21:09.920 that checks out.

00:21:10.660 So it's just something that you need a little bit more,

00:21:12.880 more age to do.

00:21:15.620 Yeah.

00:21:16.440 And I,

00:21:16.980 and again,

00:21:17.620 we,

00:21:17.980 we are remarking on that the Catholic church is still around and broadly

00:21:23.540 competent,

00:21:24.120 but I wouldn't say that it's ever been an exceptional.

00:21:29.620 It's never been.

00:21:31.900 Yeah.

00:21:32.740 It's never been in an exceptional majority religious.

00:21:37.400 group.

00:21:39.160 Catholicism has an interesting feature that I don't think I've seen in

00:21:42.080 any other cultural group,

00:21:43.580 which is that when Catholics are a minority population in a country or

00:21:48.700 geographic environment,

00:21:49.700 they tend to really out-compete other groups,

00:21:53.460 especially within bureaucracies.

00:21:55.560 So,

00:21:56.240 you know,

00:21:56.580 you can see this in the United States with Catholics making up the 1.00

00:21:59.500 majority of the Supreme court.

00:22:00.800 You can see this in the United States with Catholics being the dominant 0.91

00:22:05.180 intellectual voices in the conservative movement,

00:22:07.160 other than people of the Jewish cultural group,

00:22:08.540 which are the other really dominant conservative intellectual voice.

00:22:12.340 But when Catholics make up the majority of a country,

00:22:16.600 that country overall typically underperforms both intellectually and

00:22:22.460 economically.

00:22:23.660 It doesn't perform terribly.

00:22:25.380 It just performs very mid,

00:22:27.700 I guess I would say.

00:22:29.880 And this is also true if you look at the world stage.

00:22:32.400 So,

00:22:32.900 you know,

00:22:33.460 a disproportionate number of world leading intellectuals come out of the

00:22:37.200 Catholic cultural tradition.

00:22:38.580 However,

00:22:39.140 very few of them are coming from Catholic majority countries.

00:22:42.280 Then maybe Ireland.

00:22:43.660 Ireland might be the exception here.

00:22:46.260 If anyone has any ideas on what might be causing this,

00:22:48.880 I'd love to hear because I think it's a very interesting phenomenon.

00:22:51.360 I'm sure some people are going to try to argue that this is due to ethnic

00:22:54.860 reasons.

00:22:55.900 However,

00:22:56.400 that argument seems very uncompelling to me when I look at,

00:22:59.020 okay,

00:22:59.140 you've got Spain,

00:23:00.640 Portugal,

00:23:02.000 Italy.

00:23:03.080 You know,

00:23:03.520 these are,

00:23:04.720 even,

00:23:05.120 even if you do take a racist perspective,

00:23:06.740 these are majority white countries.

00:23:08.560 And,

00:23:09.060 and then you've got the Roman empire,

00:23:10.640 right?

00:23:10.880 Which,

00:23:11.240 you know,

00:23:11.680 did not fare very well under Catholic leadership.

00:23:14.080 Are we now arguing that the Roman empire was not a majority white empire?

00:23:22.960 And so that's why I'm just sort of discounting the ethnic explanations for this out of hand.

00:23:29.820 If I had to guess what it really is,

00:23:32.260 it's probably that a strict hierarchically run organization is going to do very well when

00:23:38.480 it's below a certain population threshold in the same way that like any bureaucracy typically

00:23:44.160 performs better when it's really small,

00:23:45.880 but perform very poorly as it gets larger and larger and larger.

00:23:50.360 Sort of like,

00:23:51.280 you know,

00:23:51.560 maybe like Google as a startup versus Google as a giant company.

00:23:54.520 And this comes to our theories of governance,

00:23:56.600 which we often talk about,

00:23:57.940 which is hierarchically run,

00:24:00.660 really strict governance models are often best,

00:24:02.940 but only at the extreme micro scale.

00:24:04.860 Once they get larger,

00:24:07.040 their efficiency begins to dwindle incredibly quickly.

00:24:10.420 And it's never been a really good at outcompeting,

00:24:13.660 except in South America.

00:24:14.760 Are you saying that you're saying that Catholicism is a Nepo baby?

00:24:19.340 Catholicism is a Nepo baby. 1.00

00:24:20.640 It's a Nepo baby of the Roman empire. 1.00

00:24:22.760 I mean,

00:24:23.260 we,

00:24:23.820 so,

00:24:24.900 I mean,

00:24:25.380 there's many reasons why Constantine may have chosen.

00:24:28.280 I mean,

00:24:28.440 obviously they're the reason he gave,

00:24:30.140 but a lot of historians think that what was actually going on there is he really

00:24:34.420 liked the Catholic church as an alternate administrative unit.

00:24:38.900 They already had centers set up throughout the Roman empire,

00:24:41.820 which allowed him to implement many reforms.

00:24:45.740 Administration in a box.

00:24:47.640 Yeah.

00:24:47.880 It was like an administration in a box that allowed him to compete with the

00:24:51.440 deep state.

00:24:52.220 So think of it like this,

00:24:53.460 right?

00:24:53.680 Imagine you wanted to replace the American deep state,

00:24:57.500 but you don't have communication lines like we do now.

00:24:59.920 You don't have the internet like you do now.

00:25:01.560 How would you conceivably do that?

00:25:04.380 If,

00:25:04.520 if,

00:25:04.800 if the old state sort of is antagonistic to you and you want to do deep

00:25:09.000 reforms where you've got to find an alternate governance system that

00:25:12.280 somehow already set up throughout your empire,

00:25:14.340 the church,

00:25:15.520 he was like great borrowing that it was a really actually very clever move,

00:25:19.700 but you know,

00:25:20.840 as we can see long-term,

00:25:22.100 it didn't work out.

00:25:23.440 Although maybe it did work out.

00:25:24.660 It worked out for the Catholic church because the Catholic churches is still 0.98

00:25:28.080 around,

00:25:28.700 but you know,

00:25:29.300 they,

00:25:29.700 they did get stomped by a number of,

00:25:33.380 they got stomped by the growing Islamic empire, 1.00

00:25:35.560 which,

00:25:36.240 you know,

00:25:36.480 and it's height did,

00:25:38.140 did better than the Catholic empire in his height in terms of scientific 0.80

00:25:42.080 advancement,

00:25:42.740 in terms of this,

00:25:44.800 the size of the administrative empire they were running,

00:25:46.820 but they also collapsed much faster.

00:25:49.080 I mean,

00:25:49.300 again,

00:25:49.520 this is what I'm saying.

00:25:50.280 The true genius of the Catholic church is its resistance to collapse.

00:25:53.820 Hmm.

00:25:58.020 Interesting.

00:26:00.320 Well,

00:26:00.920 I enjoyed this conversation.

00:26:02.460 I don't know.

00:26:04.440 I don't know how practical it will be for groups to prevent themselves from

00:26:12.260 splitting once they're already big and complex.

00:26:14.460 But what I can say is if you find yourself part of a split,

00:26:18.160 just make sure that your new split has a strong governing model that

00:26:23.620 prepares for this dynamic,

00:26:25.340 because it is likely inevitable.

00:26:27.720 So long as there are dominance fights within it.

00:26:32.660 So yeah.

00:26:34.680 Yeah.

00:26:35.060 Anything you'd add?

00:26:35.960 Well,

00:26:36.380 I don't know.

00:26:36.860 I mean,

00:26:36.980 I also add that the,

00:26:38.320 the,

00:26:39.220 a culture is a fad. 0.67

00:26:40.840 If you're not intending to raise your kids within it,

00:26:43.760 if the culture is about how you make friends,

00:26:46.100 it's a bad,

00:26:47.060 you know,

00:26:47.360 it's,

00:26:47.800 it will not exist intergenerationally.

00:26:49.820 Almost no culture that was dedicated to that has existed intergenerationally.

00:26:55.280 Yeah.

00:26:55.920 Fair.

00:26:56.820 Cool.

00:26:57.260 I love you,

00:26:57.820 Simone.

00:26:58.140 I have had so much fun talking to you.

00:27:01.240 I love you too,

00:27:02.240 Malcolm.

00:27:02.740 Looking forward to our next conversation already.

Based Camp - September 13, 2023

The People's Front of Judea, Cultural Speciation, and Catholicism

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