Based Camp - September 27, 2024Why Are the Most Religious Mormons No Longer Having the Most Kids？ (This Changes Everything)
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Summary
In this episode, we re sharing exclusive data that no one else has ever seen before. It s based on a study done by a fan of ours, and it s a fascinating insight into why Mormons are having a hard time having kids.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, Simone! I am excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be having a very special episode where we are going to be giving you, Basecamp listeners, access to exclusive data that no one else has seen. And you know why? Because one of you put it together! Yes!
00:00:13.360
So, Nate, I was talking with this fan, and he is saying, anecdotally, as a Mormon, so obviously he has a lot of insight into what the Mormons are doing, the fertility rate among the Mormon community, he goes, it seems to me that the most religious of Mormons are having two big issues. One is they are going woke much faster than other Mormons, like the individuals within their communities seem to go woke at a higher rate than other communities.
00:00:40.040
He noted this mostly happens when they deconvert, but this is still a problem, because their kids will be going to the same schools, which can become a drain on the community overall.
00:00:47.980
And two is, they just seem to be being hit by fertility collapse much harder than just generically religious Mormons.
00:01:00.160
And I was like, that's a really interesting observation. Would you mind trying a study on that?
00:01:06.960
And he actually went on and did a study, and a big one. He got 310 people involved in this.
00:01:14.360
And so, he found out that his hypothesis was borne out in the data, and it gives us one of the keys for a new theory at solving fertility collapse that I have been building.
00:01:30.660
I'm quoting him right now in an email where he sent the data to me.
00:01:35.060
I took it upon myself to do a study on age, religiosity, and fertility among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
00:01:41.680
Everyone in the study has strong ties to the state of Utah and still maintains some relationship.
00:01:46.380
For some, it may be very complicated with Mormons as a cultural group.
00:01:50.160
This is based on a random sampling of 310 people I found on Facebook for the study.
00:01:54.440
They are divided into six groups. Groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, with one being least religious and six being most religious.
00:02:03.560
Findings were stark. Among those aged 65 plus, the correlation between religiosity and fertility was 0.45.
00:02:11.960
They had an average fertility of a whopping 4.53.
00:02:16.920
So, 65 and older for this, almost had a 4.5 average fertility rate. That's fantastic, Mormon.
00:02:22.920
But that's also what we would expect. Remember, Mormons used to have unusually high fertility rates.
00:02:27.140
For those aged 64 and younger, the fertility rates dropped dramatically.
00:02:32.800
Among those 35 to 64, the correlation between religiosity and fertility rate was 0.16.
00:02:39.120
So, note, it dropped to a rather low level. It dropped from 0.45 to 0.16 in this next generation.
00:02:46.960
And I'm going to, you know, I think what's really happening here and why this hasn't been picked up in data yet is I think that this is a new phenomenon where in some religious traditions, within the modern post-cell phone generation generation, fertility rates drop as religiosity enters extreme ranges.
00:03:07.960
But we'll talk more about the data here, going back to the quote.
00:03:12.540
What appears to be the case is that among the strongly religious, they started having kids less, but among those less religious, they still had cultural reasons to have kids.
00:03:22.720
So, 35 to 64 age cohort had a fertility rate of 2.92.
00:03:28.900
Among those aged 25 to 34, the correlation between religiosity and fertility was 0.32.
00:03:34.660
So, much stronger than the 35 to 64 group, but not as high as the 65 plus age group.
00:03:39.940
They currently have a fertility rate of 1.1, but I expect this group to eventually have 0.9 more children on average.
00:03:47.540
So, we'll round out to about two, barely below replacement rate.
00:03:57.780
No, they have a current fertility rate of 1.1, but he expects them to have an additional 0.9 kids as they age.
00:04:08.100
By the way, I don't cut out when you misunderstand something because other people have pointed out in the comments, they're like, if Simone has misunderstood something, more than half your audience is misunderstood.
00:04:15.940
Not everyone is as sleep-deprived as Simone, so that's maybe not, but yeah.
00:04:22.700
Well, then, honestly, you should be going to bed earlier and putting the kids to bed earlier because they're really tired when I wake them up, which to me implies that they're not going down early.
00:04:32.300
Simone, if you get them in the room alone earlier, they'll go to bed early.
00:04:42.520
With me being a bad, bad husband, just being too, like, you have to get more sleep, wife.
00:04:52.520
Previously, I thought these trends would only appear for those born post-1980, but the data clearly shows them emerging for those born post-1960.
00:05:04.480
I would say it may deal more with economic factors, but I'm not entirely sure.
00:05:10.040
Furthermore, I acknowledge the largest limitation to the study is mere subjectively rating people one to six, but I feel like it's not too different than doing the same thing with people on the Jewish spectrum by analyzing clothing, style, aesthetics, activities, language, et cetera.
00:05:24.220
I also acknowledge that my Facebook may be a slightly higher fertility sample than average, but I'm unsure about this.
00:05:32.580
For the 64-plus age group, the fertility rate for those most religious, six rating, their fertility rate was 5.4.
00:05:42.160
Most of the other religious groups hovered around four.
00:05:44.900
So boomers and the silent generation Mormons usually had around four-ish kids on average.
00:05:50.360
Obviously, some as high as seven in sizable numbers and somewhere as low as two in sizable numbers.
00:05:55.380
However, for the 35 to 64 age group, the most religious, the sixth rating, the fertility rate collapsed to 3.21.
00:06:03.000
But the group that was rated as four actually rose to 5.27 from 4.4 in the older cohort.
00:06:12.180
Remember, in the younger cohort, as time has gone on, the fertility rate of less religious Mormons has gone up, not down.
00:06:22.780
Okay, so Mormons who considered themselves slightly less religious than half of Mormons.
00:06:34.740
So these are people who consider themselves slightly more religious than the average Mormon, but are not at the five or six level.
00:06:40.880
So these are individuals who would have some Mormon friends, some non-Mormon friends, but would generally follow all of the rules and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:06:48.800
Their fertility rate has gone up as overall Mormon fertility rate has been collapsing.
00:06:55.360
Where it's been collapsing is in the ultra-religious cohort.
00:06:59.940
Doesn't that dovetail well with your argument around...
00:07:04.760
Deontological religious systems being the core failure?
00:07:12.080
When you're more surrounded by groups that are different from you, you feel inspired to have more of your own group out of a feeling of pride.
00:07:20.000
So we've noted here that the more immigrants the country has, typically the higher the native group's fertility rate becomes.
00:07:24.760
And the more animosity immigrant groups have with each other, or the more culturally distinct they are, the higher the fertility rate.
00:07:29.960
I think this is a big thing, sort of subsidizing Israel's fertility rate.
00:07:33.160
Well, and it's also, you could look at it as a cultural pride thing.
00:07:36.860
When you discover what it is that makes you special, it makes you proud to perpetuate that.
00:07:42.000
If you don't see what's special about what you have because you're surrounded by it, you have less of a motivation to try to do your part to continue it.
00:07:52.060
So to be in the five and six categories, specifically in the six category, it meant that almost all of your friend group was Mormon at that point.
00:07:59.720
So, and apparently this is the thing among devout Mormons, like super devout Mormons just don't have many friends who aren't devout Mormons as well.
00:08:08.380
And so it leads to this, you know, that would definitely, you're right there.
00:08:12.220
I actually think that this is partly down to deontological relationship with religion versus non-deontological relationship with a religion.
00:08:19.120
And in Mormonism, it's very easy to build a deontological relationship to a religion.
00:08:22.900
Yeah, to a fault. In fact, a lot of practicing Mormons that I've met focus only on the deontological element, not even really believing in the faith at all.
00:08:32.320
Just being like, I go through the motions because I like the community, but they don't do it for a reason, you know?
00:08:40.100
Yeah, well, and this creates downstream negative effects, but we'll get to this at the end of the lecture.
00:08:45.000
Not the lecture, episode? I don't know, whatever.
00:08:46.980
Everything of mine is a lecture. I'm sorry, people. I used to, I used to teach classes. So that's, that's why.
00:08:52.800
Well, you grew up on the great courses. Of course, you believe in lectures.
00:08:58.440
For people who don't know, there was this great company, Teach12, where now you can get a subscription and just listen to their lectures.
00:09:03.940
I thought it was referred to as the teaching company.
00:09:06.940
It's called the teaching company, but I'm just saying teach12.com is their URL.
00:09:10.900
They used to offer these absolutely amazing courses where they would find the best professors at like tons of different universities.
00:09:15.880
I've heard that the quality of their courses has gone downhill recently.
00:09:19.260
And I found the same thing when I've re-engaged.
00:09:21.900
I haven't been like as drawn in as I was by the old stuff.
00:09:26.680
So they still have, it's now known as Wondrium.
00:09:29.140
You can get an app and then you sort of buy a subscription to get access to their library of courses.
00:09:33.980
And so you don't have to buy courses individually, like you used to have to, to get big tapes of them.
00:09:39.380
The problem is that now there is more variation.
00:09:41.740
So for example, I love all of their courses by Dr. Robert Sapolsky,
00:09:44.700
but you know, you can also get a lot of stuff by him for free, or you can just read his books, but those are really great.
00:09:53.220
For people who have read the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion,
00:09:55.780
I mentioned that you should divide your life into stages.
00:09:58.560
Like that's the way my life was taught to me by my parents, like between X age and X age, this is your focus.
00:10:03.440
And I was taught up until a certain age, like my entire focus in life was to prepare myself,
00:10:08.860
like make myself the best tool possible for changing the world.
00:10:15.660
And I knew like in high school, I just wasn't getting a high enough quality education.
00:10:19.820
So I would spend all of my free time listening to lectures.
00:10:23.000
In my early jobs, when I had to do like boring sorts of just like lab work all day,
00:10:28.300
that wasn't cognitively engaging, I'd spend all day listening to lecture series.
00:10:31.540
So, you know, these lecture series are typically like 24, 48 hours long in total.
00:10:35.880
So it was an opportunity for me just to basically constantly be blasted with lectures
00:10:44.320
Well, it's something your family also always did on long car rides.
00:10:50.520
Your mom still every morning while doing her yoga would listen to the great courses.
00:10:54.900
Yeah, my family built it as a normalized thing that you should always have lectures on.
00:10:59.340
And I remember when I bought them as a young kid, they're really expensive.
00:11:05.200
I think it would cost in the nineties, like $130.
00:11:08.120
And that it would cost a hundred to $500, depending on the lecture.
00:11:12.040
I think these days, yeah, they almost charged what you would pay for an actual course at
00:11:17.660
a, not even a community college, more than that.
00:11:20.600
But you could get them really cheap if you bought them on cassette or not really cheap,
00:11:30.140
If anybody remembers those old cassette books, this was long after anyone was using cassettes.
00:11:34.120
And I just have a cassette player all the time.
00:11:38.300
Did a very good job of holding my place in the lecture.
00:11:41.080
And so I remember once I was jogging in gym class and one of the teachers pulled me aside
00:11:47.340
and they go, oh my God, was your family, because you're from Florida, right?
00:11:50.360
Were they one of the ones hit by the hurricane?
00:11:51.820
Like, is that why you always have all this cheap technology?
00:11:53.740
And I realized I could use this because I didn't like to change out of my dress shoes
00:12:00.380
before running because it was such a pain in the ass.
00:12:04.400
And then I didn't have to change out of my dress shoes anymore before running because-
00:12:17.980
So I want to note here, if you were like graphing this, the graph would pick.
00:12:47.960
Gink at four and then start going down when you get to five and six.
00:12:54.140
And that three actually has a higher fertility rate than five.
00:13:04.640
So you want to be in the three or four cohort, not in the five or six cohorts.
00:13:10.260
In terms of what I expect, and this is even among the very young kids, right?
00:13:13.660
So we're still seeing this effect in the young kids.
00:13:16.000
In terms of what I would expect these numbers to be eventually, these women are still having
00:13:24.720
He goes, sorry, one, 1.05, two, 1.31, three, 2.31, four, 2.91, five, 2.39, and six, 2.25.
00:13:35.520
The groups currently have a standard deviation of the following, one at 0.56, two at 0.69,
00:13:44.720
three at 1.04, four at 1.13, five at 1.38, and six at 1.19.
00:13:53.240
The implications of this as far are as follows.
00:13:56.300
For whatever reason, devout LDS born after 1960 started having far fewer children.
00:14:03.500
Lower religiosity Mormons born after 1988 will have fertility rates comparable to secular
00:14:10.840
Moderately religious Mormons born since 1960 have on average the most kids, four being the
00:14:17.060
highest rating, with three and five being virtually the same for younger Mormon women, but five
00:14:24.840
The theory is that those with, and no, he has a lot of beliefs about different, and I'm
00:14:30.920
not actually going into all of his emails, because I just don't have enough information, and there's
00:14:35.340
not enough data to say that his observed theories are correct, but he thinks it's mostly that
00:14:40.440
the difference in which religiosity group somebody falls into has a lot to do with what immigration
00:14:48.460
In the Mormon church, with different parts of England, and different motivators for, well,
00:14:54.020
in Germany and stuff like that, and different motivators for the immigration, leading to
00:14:58.860
them falling into different categories of sort of the Mormon faith.
00:15:02.700
But just have that in your mind while I'm reading this next part.
00:15:05.940
The theory is that those with Yankee-selected heritage cultural background among Utah Mormons
00:15:10.140
had collapsing fertility rates in the 1960-1990 period.
00:15:13.740
Among the other, high-income and highly-educated, they were able to maintain high fertility rates
00:15:18.860
for those born 1960-1980, but afterwards, this dropped precipitously.
00:15:23.760
Some of these, high-income slash education, still have higher fertility, and this explains
00:15:28.620
the higher standard deviation, 1.38 for this group.
00:15:31.300
The group that is doing the best right now is likely part of what one would call the trustee
00:15:36.060
slash clan-based family structure, which there are an abundant amount of in Utah.
00:15:40.580
Perhaps 10% of the total LDS population belongs to one.
00:15:44.400
This group leans more working class, is extremely Trump-coded, while the further away one is from
00:15:50.160
four, the less they are, and typically much more, quote-unquote, red state in their culture,
00:15:55.260
more culturally Western and vaguely Southern as opposed to WASPy.
00:16:00.100
And he showed me pictures of this group, and they do exist across the Mormon religiosity
00:16:04.580
spectrum, and we'll talk about this more in the next video.
00:16:07.840
Because what was really interesting for me is they didn't set off my pod person instinct,
00:16:12.860
and the other type of highly religious Mormon does set off my pod person instinct, and this
00:16:20.340
To me, when I looked at them, I was like, oh, they're culturally similar to me, or if not
00:16:24.580
culturally similar, like they come off as like normal people to me, and not like weird,
00:16:31.020
otherworldly, WASPy people, which was very interesting.
00:16:34.240
I don't think you've had enough pie, why don't you even have one more?
00:16:51.960
Tomorrow's episode is going to focus much more on the pod person instinct that some people
00:16:55.980
have that causes them to be sort of instinctually freaked out when people show a degree of
00:17:01.980
conformity to a central authority, and try to delineate exactly what signals elucidate
00:17:09.740
this, as well as the cultural impact that the pod person instinct has had.
00:17:14.920
But the type of Mormons that do not trigger this pod person instinct, culturally speaking,
00:17:20.380
often have a lot of similarities to each other.
00:17:22.280
Typically, these are the types of people who would wear a lot of camouflage or American
00:17:28.000
flags, be a bit more tan, you know, look a bit more like they drive a pickup truck,
00:17:34.980
And that is not all Mormons that fall into this category.
00:17:37.920
It's actually quite different from mainstream Mormon culture.
00:17:40.720
What this means long term is that Mormons genetically, based on reproductive fitness trends
00:17:45.520
among the Utah Mormons, are becoming more Danish and somewhat more borderland slash
00:17:52.120
So to fill in a bit of what he's saying here from other parts of his theory that I didn't
00:17:56.860
take time to fully read, and this is anecdotal evidence, not stuff that he picked up in the
00:18:01.120
data, but he suspects that the Anglo-Mormons, who predominantly came from some parts of England
00:18:07.260
and were some of the first of the Mormon settlers, fall much more into this deontological
00:18:12.300
religious extremist category of Mormon, and that later Scotch-Irish groups who moved
00:18:17.440
from the borderland regions into the Mormon territory, or from Denmark into Mormon territory,
00:18:24.180
that they focus much more on this clan-based moral structure, and that that has prevented
00:18:30.320
them from becoming as ideologically extreme, but also given them more pride in their family
00:18:39.180
I.e. they breed a lot, not because there's a set of rules telling them to breed a lot, but
00:18:43.840
because they have pride in their family and Mormon identity.
00:18:48.100
A great example of somebody like this in a different tradition is Peachy Keenan, who we
00:18:52.380
had on the show recently, and a lot of people in the comments were saying things like, oh,
00:18:57.460
you finally had a Catholic on the show, and they don't know their theology.
00:19:01.700
Specifically, we asked her a theological question, and she was like, I don't know that one.
00:19:05.680
And I think that this represents a perfect example of somebody who is motivated to breed and takes
00:19:14.100
great pride in her Catholic identity, but isn't particularly worried about deontological
00:19:23.180
And this mindset appears to be the mindset that is most successful in the current age.
00:19:28.340
We actually, after the episode, Simone was having a conversation with one of our Catholic
00:19:35.500
fans, who's another woman, who's a lot of kids, and she was saying the same thing, in
00:19:41.120
other words, in one of her answers to Simone, where there was some theological point that
00:19:45.620
came up, and she goes, I just don't really think about it much.
00:19:48.280
And I think that this mindset, while it may be denigrated by the theological nerds, which
00:19:55.460
are the type of people who watch this show, is actually the most robust mindset to resist
00:20:03.680
Gosh, on a second revision of this, now that I think about it, I've also noticed the same
00:20:07.180
thing from the Jews that watch our podcast that we talk to.
00:20:10.500
While we talk to a lot of, like, Orthodox Jews that watch this podcast, the ones that are
00:20:16.820
theologically most competent and most interested in the theological questions, almost all are unmarried
00:20:24.400
or have no kids, whereas the ones that are more focused on Jewish identity and pride in
00:20:35.160
And I think this helps elucidate one of the purposes behind sort of the Techno Puritan project
00:20:40.860
that we've been working on, which is to say it's very important from a intergenerational
00:20:46.440
fertility perspective, to identify what it means to be part of your culture, what your
00:20:57.200
And so even if you don't feel like you may have a history or one of the existing cultures
00:21:03.240
that you want to glom onto, you can build your own.
00:21:06.480
Just make sure it's distinct and communicated to your children.
00:21:10.500
And something that you take pride in and something that they might be able to choose to take pride
00:21:15.280
I believe that Mormons age 65 plus were much more dysgenic and are selected than those under
00:21:24.480
So first, what does K-selected versus R-selected mean?
00:21:27.720
R-selected species are typically species that specialize in having tons of offspring but don't
00:21:35.340
Think of, like, the hundreds of turtles going down from the beach and some of them getting
00:21:39.920
eaten by, like, crabs and seagulls that we talked about in the Peachy Kenan episode.
00:21:44.540
But K-selected species is one that invests a huge amount of parental time in just one
00:21:51.140
particular offspring or, well, never one particular offspring.
00:21:57.400
The problem here being is that within a species, you don't get a bifurcation of K-selected or R-selected
00:22:11.060
And it doesn't really make sense to think of humans as either K-selected or R-selected
00:22:17.020
strategies because generally the humans who have tons of kids or the cultural groups that
00:22:23.240
have tons of kids also put more effort into raising those kids than the humans who have
00:22:29.760
In addition to that, and there's been a lot of studies done on this, the amount of effort
00:22:34.440
you put into raising every individual kid doesn't lower the amount of effort you have for other
00:22:41.140
So if you look at, like, a graph of families based on how many children they have and the
00:22:46.060
success likelihood in adulthood of those children, it's just not a huge correlation.
00:22:51.400
You're not really hurting your other children's potential outcome by having more children.
00:22:57.380
Also, one thing you may note in this graph is that children with one sibling actually do
00:23:03.660
better than children with no siblings, and children with two siblings do even better than
00:23:10.140
So the idea that, oh, I just have one kid and I'm going to focus tons of resources into
00:23:14.480
raising that one kid, and then they'll be better off than if they had a sibling or two
00:23:22.740
Your first kid is helped by the first other kid you have, then those two kids are helped
00:23:29.660
by the next kid you have, and after that, any degree which they could be hurt is just really
00:23:38.460
So for example, if you're raising four kids, on average, those kids are going to have better
00:23:44.360
outcomes than somebody who is raising just one kid.
00:23:47.060
And finally, I'd note is that the few groups in history, the backwoods culture that we'll
00:23:54.200
talk about more tomorrow and we talked about in yesterday's lecture, could be thought of
00:24:00.640
as like plausibly are selected in the way that they structure their clans, in that they offer
00:24:06.620
almost no parental resources, which is one of the things we're going to talk about tomorrow.
00:24:10.360
They're really just like, okay, have a ton of kids, and you kids work together to figure
00:24:14.880
it out, but I'm not going to help you in any way, and therefore a lot of them died, or
00:24:19.620
didn't end up securing spouses and having kids of their own.
00:24:22.640
And people can be like, well, that's a horrible way to do it, but if you don't do things that
00:24:26.260
way, if you lean too far on case selectivity, then you don't get any intergenerational improvement
00:24:31.100
because you don't have the fitter of the offspring being the ones who end up continuing the line,
00:24:37.720
or the fitter variants of the culture being the ones that continue the line, with the assumption
00:24:42.480
that every offspring is going to alter the culture to some extent. You basically are artificially
00:24:47.500
propping up whichever random ones you do happen to have through the immense attention that you're
00:24:53.800
focusing on them, and money you're pouring into their education, etc, etc, etc, which intergenerationally
00:24:59.920
is going to have really negative effects for that culture. A culture that is not okay with its
00:25:05.260
less fit offspring failing is a culture that is going to eventually die. However, ignoring all this
00:25:13.380
KR stuff, if we're thinking about this type of Mormon that I was talking about earlier, that does seem
00:25:20.460
to be pretty high fertility in our current environment, and doesn't set off my pod person detector.
00:25:25.600
Like a Mormon who codes this way to me? Kevin Dolan is a Mormon who codes this way to me,
00:25:30.000
you know, one of our Mormon friends. Where to me, he feels much more, like, Western than Mormon, like,
00:25:37.040
waspy. I guess I would say, like, the primary thing I would look for here is how sort of, like,
00:25:41.960
preening do they come off as? In his letters to me, he used the term trustee to describe this clan-based
00:25:48.620
section of Mormon culture, and one of the really interesting things he pointed out about the trustee
00:25:53.160
section of Mormon culture was that, unlike the rest of Mormon culture, they're much more outdoorsy,
00:25:59.100
more focused on fishing and hiking and skiing and stuff like that, and he noted how actually
00:26:06.280
unusual stuff like skiing and outdoorsy stuff is for people on the zoomy side of Mormon culture,
00:26:13.620
given how much of a paradise Utah is for these sorts of activities. He says that this difference,
00:26:21.040
and we'll go into it more in the next episode, is something called being a zoomy, I believe,
00:26:26.660
a zoomy, a zoomy, which is a term that Mormons would know, but I wouldn't know, and I was reading,
00:26:33.300
here's a quote about what zoobies are, you can tell a zoomy by appearance only, although there are a
00:26:38.280
certain stereotyped look, preppy sweater boys and plastic girls are often associated with zoomyhood,
00:26:45.340
but yeah. Continuing off of other trends and assumptions, this gene pool is now deselecting
00:26:51.800
those with 110 IQs, but has become increasingly technophilic with some small reactionary groups,
00:26:58.320
often six in religiosity, being technophobic. This means that future Mormons, often coming from
00:27:03.660
trustee slash clan families in the three to four range, will be of IQ 90 types, but they may be
00:27:08.760
higher educated types that if they do reproduce, some will be group five and two, will have a higher
00:27:15.420
amount of the IQ 130 types. I foresee similar conditions to exist for the next 30 to 40 years,
00:27:22.440
and that group five's fertility will stabilize around 2.3. Right now I've noticed influencers
00:27:27.600
are still having lots of kids, like at least four, so there may be a real possibility of future
00:27:33.060
genes in Utah will select even more for increased sociability, extroversion, performance skills,
00:27:39.500
verbal IQ over spatial IQ, hand-eye coordination, and other related traits,
00:27:43.840
and conventionally attractive looks that would support this. Bottom line, until the world
00:27:48.680
radically revolutionized, those groups three and four will continue to have kids out of cultural
00:27:54.440
pride. Honestly, there's almost as much local pride here as Texas, and a big part of that is having
00:28:00.640
large families, and will be the most fertile group until there is either one, radical changes in the
00:28:06.660
outside global cultural environment, or two, radical changes in the LDS church demanding higher
00:28:11.360
fertility. I don't see either one of these happening mid-century. Now this is really interesting,
00:28:15.100
and he makes a really strong point here. Cultural pride in the current landscape, like the current
00:28:21.220
social technological landscape, is a better motivator of high fertility than deontological religious
00:28:27.420
rules. And what we are seeing is the Mormons in this ultra high religiosity category, they are likely
00:28:36.960
motivated more by what the church is telling them to do, and the church rules, and this does not appear
00:28:42.360
to be good enough to overcome fertility collapse and the drivers of fertility collapse. However, the Mormons
00:28:47.580
in this, I'm an average Mormon, or I'm a bit more Mormon than the average Mormon, this group is primarily
00:28:54.700
motivated by cultural pride. Yeah. And their cultural pride motivation is what is actually able to drive high
00:29:03.820
fertility. And in fact, in the age of social media leads to an increase rather than a decrease in this
00:29:12.320
cultural group's fertility. Yeah. And that checks out with what I see in social media. The Mormons who are
00:29:20.360
very active aren't the most devout Mormons by any stretch of the imagination. They kind of cheat or skirt on the
00:29:29.220
rules a ton. But they clearly are generating pride, and they themselves have a lot of pride in their church
00:29:36.840
and religion. So that is really interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, the gatekeepers are doing nothing but hurting
00:29:42.160
their church, basically. The ones who are like, we're not a true Mormon, unless, unless, unless, unless. Where, you know,
00:29:48.700
I think that what we're seeing here is that those deontological Mormons, those preacher boy type Mormons,
00:29:55.880
need to look to this other group to learn from them. And I think that this is something that, you
00:30:01.420
know, we can also see in the United States, where you see things like the collapsing fertility rate of
00:30:07.480
the Orthodox Christians and the Catholic Christians, who I think traditionally saw themselves as more of
00:30:12.740
this preacher boy type character, when they're, when they're altered about, then the more vulgar,
00:30:18.140
you know, Protestant or Appalachian groups. But it's because these groups just have more pride in who they
00:30:24.820
are. And they're not motivating fertility with a set of rules. But it's because they like existing,
00:30:30.300
and they like people like them existing. So let's, let's keep that going, right? You know,
00:30:34.860
so in here, I know, one final point for those born after 1960, among this population group,
00:30:40.520
I theorize that those who are in groups one and six have damaging slash complicated slash negative
00:30:46.060
relationships with sexuality, especially forms of sexuality that are pronatal. And those who in groups
00:30:51.160
three and four are the opposite was twos and fives being in between. And, and I note here,
00:30:57.100
yeah, I definitely see this is there's this new, like a group of Mormons who are becoming more
00:31:01.520
sexually comfortable. And we'll do an episode on the Mormon swinger phenomenon. Um, because apparently
00:31:05.980
like swinger culture has gotten really big among Mormons because they get married.
00:31:12.840
I've heard, no, no, no, no, no. I've heard from other Mormons online. They're like, oh yeah,
00:31:17.000
like you go to ex-friend's house and you'll see signs that it's been happening. Like,
00:31:21.340
but it's a really weird sort of swinger culture because they believe the only way to do it without
00:31:26.420
cheating is to watch them sleeping with somebody. Like if the husband or wife is in the room watching
00:31:31.080
you sleep. Well, my understanding is that the, the swinging is anything but actual PIV intercourse.
00:31:39.100
Yeah. I think it's usually like oral and hand job. Yeah. So it's, I think also that the,
00:31:45.220
the Mormon religion is, is kind of that's, it's, it's one of those loopholes where like,
00:31:50.660
if you're not going to be super persnickety about things, the whole, you know, sex before marriage
00:31:56.880
thing, you know, it doesn't count if it's oral, that's not sex. And so that's pretty pervasive,
00:32:03.500
et cetera, you know, things, things like that. So I could see that is not counting as sex outside
00:32:07.880
of marriage because it's not technically sex, but anyway.
00:32:12.300
Well, and I know there's some Mormons here being like, Oh no, those Mormons are the worst. And I'm
00:32:18.060
like, those Mormons represent the hope for your religion. And that's, that's, what's really
00:32:22.160
surprising me about this message that normally you think it's, and we've even kind of shared this
00:32:27.160
message that it's the religious extremists that are going to, you know, carry forward their religious
00:32:33.460
legacies and their people. And they're going to inherit the future of those groups. And yet here,
00:32:38.360
it's essentially the moderates that represent the future of the LDS church, which is the last thing
00:32:44.100
I was going to expect you to say, but it makes so much sense. And I should have thought, well, of
00:32:48.800
Yeah. Now I've been doing more research and it appears that the level of trustee slash clanness
00:32:54.260
may correlate more strongly than even the religious group rating. What I've realized is that for
00:32:58.500
whatever reason, trustee slash clan Mormon families concentrate on level four, one to six religiosity
00:33:04.360
group. Now here we need to take a stop because remember I said at the end of yesterday's episode,
00:33:09.980
for anyone who hasn't watched that, you might want to watch it in preparation for tomorrow's episode,
00:33:14.180
because these three episodes are sort of all building to the conclusion that while I think
00:33:20.960
that these things matter, like the pure vitalism of a group matters, which can be matters in terms
00:33:25.640
of murder rates. That's what we talked about yesterday or going for a clan based structure versus
00:33:30.940
a deontological structure, like a group pride versus following a set of rules matters in terms
00:33:37.580
of fertility rate. I actually think the key to all of this is his second observation, which he goes
00:33:44.780
into a lot more data about, but unfortunately it comes from a lot of personal observations of family
00:33:49.560
members and stuff like that. So I can't go too deep into all of that, but that within the Mormon
00:33:55.120
culture, the people who have clan based moral frameworks appear to be able to maintain really
00:34:03.800
high fertility rates. And the people who don't have clan based moral frameworks, the people have
00:34:08.800
communalist based moral frameworks have, are the ones whose moral or whose fertility is collapsing.
00:34:13.680
And it makes perfect sense that the communalists would cluster at the edge of the, the fives and
00:34:19.680
sixes in terms of being the most Mormons and the clanners would concentrate in the threes and fours.
00:34:26.800
So to understand what I mean by the difference between a clan based moral system and a, a, a
00:34:31.520
communalist based moral system, and we're contrasting these with individualist based moral systems
00:34:35.680
because people often make a mistake. They're like, you're either an individualist or you're a
00:34:38.960
communalist. It's like, no, there's actually three moral systems, clan based individualist and
00:34:43.520
communalist. So if I ask a clan based moral system in the person, like what, who are you? Right.
00:34:52.320
Their first thought is I am a member of my clan. So if I was going to explain this and we'll go into
00:34:57.240
this a lot more tomorrow, uh, somebody said, Hey Malcolm, you know, like when I was growing up,
00:35:02.820
how were morals taught to me? I was never taught things in terms of like moral absolutism. Like this
00:35:07.580
is a good or a bad thing to do. It was, you are a Collins and this is what is expected of Collinses.
00:35:14.380
Collinses have, and it was, it was taught to me as if Collinses have a stricter and higher moral
00:35:19.920
standard expected of them than the general population. And that the general population is
00:35:23.840
just basically degenerates and you shouldn't expect anything of them. Generally, if somebody is in one of
00:35:30.680
these clan based moral systems, the fear is falling into the communalist based moral system.
00:35:36.740
So to explain what I mean by that, you know, growing up, I was taught, well, you're a Collins
00:35:40.700
and these are the things expected of Collinses. And I would, you know, see all of my wider family
00:35:45.340
achieving these things. And my fear was if I didn't achieve those things, well, then I'm not a Collins
00:35:51.920
anymore. I'm just a, you know, if I was a Mormon, I'm just a regular Mormon now. Now there are two ways
00:35:57.400
that you can, if you're a Mormon, teach moral systems to people, right? You could be the communalist
00:36:03.660
and say, you are a Mormon and this is what Mormons do, okay? Or you could say, you are a Collins
00:36:14.220
who happens to be a Mormon, like the Collinses are a type of Mormon, and this is what Collinses do.
00:36:20.660
So why would this, this clan based thing lead to a more centralized position on the religiosity scale?
00:36:27.120
It's because if you primarily identify with Mormonism instead of your family tradition,
00:36:31.720
then you're just going to follow everything the church says. Everything the church says is what
00:36:35.780
you follow. So you're going to fall at the extreme end of the religious spectrum. But if you are first
00:36:41.580
a Collins, well, we're Collinses break Mormon rules or where you're allowed to break moral rules
00:36:46.660
and where you should have stricter rules. And so that makes perfect sense. You know, for example,
00:36:51.880
if you look at a lot of these clan based Mormons, they'll, they'll be a little looser on like how
00:36:57.560
they wear their undergarments and stuff like that, where they'll hike it up a bit more. And it's
00:37:03.180
like, okay, well, that's technically not being ultra religious, but if your cousins are doing it and
00:37:09.300
they're still considered home for family, and I should note one thing about clan based systems that
00:37:13.800
people who didn't grow up in this point, I know is they're really quick to throw someone out.
00:37:18.820
So when I look at like my wider cousin group, and I'm like, I always compare myself to family,
00:37:24.060
that's where I'm judging myself. Like, am I doing a good job in life? How should I be approaching,
00:37:29.380
you know, what success is defined? What basic ethical constraints am I dealing with? When one of them
00:37:37.200
doesn't perform up to family standards, I just sort of stop using them as one of the measures of
00:37:43.280
comparison that I have access to. And I suspect that's the way these Mormon clans work as well,
00:37:50.080
which is what prevents them from dropping off as quickly. If somebody leaves the church or stops
00:37:54.800
following tons of rules, and clearly no longer acting according with the clans like moral system,
00:38:00.860
you stop using them as somebody to judge yourself off of.
00:38:03.940
And so they don't end up pulling you down. And in tomorrow's video, we're going to get really into
00:38:12.780
why clan based systems are so super, super resistant to fertility collapse, and why communalist
00:38:19.320
systems like Romans, you can immediately see why communalist systems are so susceptible to fertility
00:38:23.980
collapse, because you are always going to be affected by outside culture if you are a communalist.
00:38:29.800
Yeah, well, and so if your outside culture becomes infected or toxic, you're more likely. So
00:38:37.340
essentially, there's there's less there's less quarantining. So if there is a cultural infection
00:38:42.020
that is sterilizing, you will not be protected from it. Whereas if you're if you're in a clan based
00:38:47.240
culture, you may survive it because you're isolated sufficiently. Yeah, I think that there's a
00:38:54.560
secondary thing here, which is genetic. And this is again, as many people know, I think people make the
00:38:59.360
mistake of assuming that human psychological profiles, human psychological profiles are
00:39:04.360
clearly genetically correlated. Like we've seen this in the data over and over again, it's like 60%.
00:39:08.580
But people make the mistake of assuming that genetically correlated means falling into ethnic
00:39:13.040
buckets, instead of falling into very recent selection events, i.e. immigration waves, stuff like
00:39:19.120
that, which is actually where a lot more of the concentration happens. So to word this a different
00:39:25.240
way, I think I remember from my old psychology classes, it was around a quarter of people
00:39:30.300
experienced some form of auditory hallucination. Now Mormons regularly will ask God what they should
00:39:37.660
do in specific circumstances. So speaking to God is a regular thing that most Mormons do.
00:39:43.720
Now, if I am living by a Mormon community, whether I am, you know, black or Hispanic or anything like
00:39:49.860
that, and I happen to be subject to auditory hallucinations, and a Mormon says, well, if you're
00:39:56.200
not sure what religion you should be, why don't you just ask God? I am going to be dramatically more
00:40:00.900
likely to convert to Mormonism if I have this genetic script for auditory hallucinations, which
00:40:05.860
means that this can concentrate super, super fast in a population like Mormons or Quakers when other
00:40:12.520
populations may not have it much at all. And if I am a Mormon who doesn't experience these auditory
00:40:18.140
hallucinations, and I keep trying to talk to God and he never responds, I might be much more likely
00:40:22.580
to deconvert. And that's how you can get these genetic clusters occurring really, really quickly.
00:40:28.760
But then this also would happen with something like a communalist mindset or a clan-based mindset.
00:40:32.680
If a specific group of Mormons really leans into communalist-based ways of thinking, they are going
00:40:38.900
to disproportionately convert people, whatever their ethnic or cultural background, that lean more
00:40:44.200
communalist around them. However, having a genetic propensity for communalism can cause a really
00:40:49.960
negative side effect, which we talked about earlier, which is once you deconvert, well, now what's your
00:40:55.520
new communalist source of information? It's the urban monoculture. And that's why this would explain
00:41:01.200
why the most extremely religious Mormons, when they deconvert, become the most extremely woke
00:41:06.180
individuals. Whereas clan-based people, when they deconvert, they're still moderated by their clan.
00:41:12.640
They might have deconverted, but they're still a Collins. You know, they're still looking to the
00:41:16.700
clan for a sort of core moral centering. Finally, I note here is that I suspect that people with a
00:41:24.360
genetic predilection towards a communalist moral framework, even if they are like Mormon-Mormon,
00:41:30.400
i.e. they want to be as Mormon as possible, they are going to be subconsciously influenced by the
00:41:38.180
urban monoculture, given how much it dominates our society, much more than somebody who has been
00:41:44.000
genetically selected intergenerationally for a clan-based moral framework. And so I think if you
00:41:50.200
have been for a few generations in a communalist culture versus a clan-based culture, the genetic
00:41:57.980
correlates that you're going to be selecting for are going to be the ones that look to society
00:42:04.780
around you to try to determine the social norms that you're setting for yourself. And these people
00:42:09.740
who used to only be surrounded by Mormons, now in terms of the images that they're seeing and the
00:42:15.100
media they're seeing, are just going to see more non-Mormons and be comfortable correlating themselves
00:42:22.140
with those individuals. Also, they were motivating their moral behavior through what they saw in,
00:42:29.660
what's the word I'm looking for here? Like deontological rule sets.
00:42:34.780
And those deontological rule sets, they are no longer at play right now. And so,
00:42:43.980
well, when I say they're no longer at play, they're no longer strong enough to overcome the urban
00:42:48.780
Well, they're no longer protective. I think what you're saying is they're no longer protective.
00:42:52.940
And there were environments in which they were, probably. And if they are not adapted
00:42:58.300
in the face of new technology and globalization and other elements that render old rules ineffective,
00:43:07.820
And clan-based moral systems are primarily motivated by pride.
00:43:11.100
Yeah. Well, and I would say they're more adaptable in the end, because most clan-based systems,
00:43:16.780
which I imagine you will discuss more later, are, they reward the successful family members who then
00:43:22.940
dictate the future of the clan's culture. Meaning that people can adapt and those who do adapt to
00:43:29.020
changes and to technological progress are going to help the culture iterate. Right?
00:43:36.780
Yeah, they adapt much faster. And think about it. Like, within a clan-based moral system,
00:43:41.820
and he was noting this in other emails to me, that they've gone way more technophilic
00:43:46.620
than the deontological communalist Mormons who are at the extremist end of their religion.
00:43:51.660
These individuals have not become all coders and everything like that, whereas the clan-based people
00:43:57.020
have. And I think it's because they genuinely are motivated by wanting to be better than other
00:44:05.020
people, like have their clan be better than other clans and other people and stuff like that, and
00:44:10.220
pride in their individual clans. So if they see a societal arbitrage opportunity, like engaging with
00:44:16.380
technology, they're going to do it. Whereas the other community is just not going to do it as quickly.
00:44:21.420
They're like, well, is this what our people have always done? You know, whereas a clan-based
00:44:26.380
person will be like, well, my cousin, who I know is a devout Mormon, is currently working in crypto.
00:44:31.820
Therefore, it's okay to work in crypto. My cousin, who's a devout Mormon, is currently working in AI
00:44:37.100
tech, so I can go work in AI tech. Like, now that's on the table because everyone in our family is
00:44:42.300
talking about him with a lot of respect. With the deontological group, you're not going to get that
00:44:47.180
adaptation as quickly. I wanted to add a comment from our Discord where somebody made a really good
00:44:53.020
point in one of them, Yissier, who said, clan structures correlating with high fertility is a good
00:44:58.300
point. Of the countries outside of Africa, the ones with the highest fertility today have the
00:45:02.300
strongest clan structures, whether Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, or the Central Asian Stan countries.
00:45:08.140
The countries in Africa with the highest fertility are also those with the strongest clan structures,
00:45:12.700
like Somalia, for example. It would also explain why Muslim countries with weaker or no clan structures
00:45:17.580
like Iran have lower fertility. That being said, I think the strength of clan structure is heavily
00:45:22.780
tied to urbanization, and the more urbanized a country gets, the weaker the clan grows.
00:45:27.660
Most of the previously mentioned countries with strong clans are still very rural and poor. As they
00:45:32.380
get richer and more urban, the clan structures might weaken. In East Asia, there used to be
00:45:37.260
a stronger clan structure with every family having a shrine dedicated to their ancestors,
00:45:42.380
but they went into significant decline about a century ago with modernization slash industrialization.
00:45:47.420
Also, there are different types of clan systems, one where people mostly marry outside of their clan,
00:45:52.460
and one where people mostly marry inside of their clan. The traditional East Asian model,
00:45:56.140
which includes Mongols, would be to marry outside your clan. This is also how it was done in
00:46:01.100
Scotland. Not sure if it would be the same in Appalachia, but I'd assume since they're descended
00:46:05.660
from the Scotch-Irish. And yes, it was true. It's outside your family marriage tradition. In most clans
00:46:11.660
in the Muslim world, on the other hand, it is more common to marry within your clan. Not sure if one
00:46:16.380
would correlate more with high fertility than the other. It seems that marrying within your own clan does,
00:46:21.420
but this could just be because the cultures that do this are poorer and more rural.
00:46:26.860
Here, I wanted to note my response to this. My disagreement would be that East Asia was really
00:46:31.740
a clan-based moral system. It has always been fairly communalist, with the cultural norms coming
00:46:37.340
not from the family, but from the central courts. Yes, superficially you worshipped your family,
00:46:42.380
but you cared what Outsider thought an awful lot.
00:46:47.740
What do you think, Octavian? What do you want in who you make a mommy for your kids?
00:46:57.100
You want Indy? You want to marry Indy? That's your sister.
00:47:06.220
Obviously, we've never sat down with Octavian yet and explained that you don't marry your siblings,
00:47:11.340
but I actually think this answer shows a very instinctual sort of clan identity that he,
00:47:16.540
when he was trying to choose who is the best woman I know of around my age, he's not choosing
00:47:22.940
like a fictional character from one of the shows he watches, but he's like, oh, my sister, that's
00:47:27.580
the best a woman can be. And so I thought it was a very sweet answer, but one that also sort of
00:47:31.980
illustrates that there might be a genetic component to this, because obviously we didn't teach him
00:47:36.140
that. That would be a very bad thing if we had taught him that. Octavian, Octavian, can you tell
00:47:41.740
our listeners that we should, they should like and subscribe? Then do it.
00:48:02.140
Do you think the audience likes to look at you spin? You got to say things.
00:48:05.180
You're not saying like and subscribe. You're not saying like and subscribe.
00:48:19.820
I'll leave him with you while I go get the other kids. Thanks.
00:48:32.620
I have a favor. Can you tell us to get the crowd for me?
00:48:36.700
Okay, we'll do. Here. Anyway, I absolutely love you, Simone. You are amazing. We got these
00:48:42.140
two episodes done pretty quickly, so we can start on the next one if you want, or we can do dinner early.
00:48:51.420
Let's do dinner early and put the kids. You're actually going to put them to bed early. You're
00:48:54.540
not going to be in bed. Well, yeah, if I have an easier and earlier start time and they're eating
00:48:58.060
when they get home instead of, you know, after I'm done prepping.
00:49:02.860
By the way, one thing I'd love it if you could begin taking out for me is sawing some of those kebabs.
00:49:08.940
Yeah, we actually, I'll walk you through what we have in the deep freezer because I found
00:49:21.260
You've got to enjoy. They're high quality. They're what an esteemed guest had accidentally
00:49:26.620
left behind and said was all ours because he wasn't going to come back and get them, so.
00:49:36.700
The audience is going to want to know. We're recording right now.
00:49:40.540
Well, I think some of it's Amish chicken because, you know, that's what you get in
00:49:44.300
restaurants. I think some of it might be some sausage and I think there are two salmon patties,
00:49:49.100
if memory serves, but I actually didn't look that closely because it hurts my hands to hold
00:49:54.220
them when they're out of the bottom of the freezer like that.
00:49:56.780
Okay, well, let's hear it with kebabs, okay? Those things don't sound that appealing to me.
00:50:00.700
You know, I don't really like chicken or salmon.
00:50:03.820
And for tonight, I guess we're doing pasta again, right?
00:50:07.020
We don't have to. You can, you can do, I think the kebabs are probably ready to go out of the...
00:50:16.140
I'd love to do a kebab with like mixed vegetables or potatoes. Let's do the potatoes and kebabs.
00:50:22.220
There's only a tiny bit of potatoes left. So how about sautéed vegetables and potatoes and kebabs?
00:50:27.980
Or do you want your street corn, your Mexican street corn?
00:50:31.260
Oh, Mexican street corn, vegetables and kebabs.
00:50:39.740
Well, no, take out the mixed vegetables. Just do the potatoes and the corn to finish off the potatoes.
00:50:47.100
You get a veggie, you get a carb, and you get a protein. Veggies, potato, and kebabs. Let's kill
00:50:53.100
the potatoes to get something done in the fridge. Okay, I love you. Ow, I love you. I love you. I'm
00:50:58.380
sorry I'd be annoying. You're never annoying. You're perfect. You're perfect. Ow, okay.
00:51:03.580
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:51:07.740
I can't, why can't I move you? You're not moving. There, oh, thank you. Oh, gosh. Hold on.
00:51:14.300
I saw a really funny Babel on Bee article. Okay.
00:51:18.780
Rashid Tlaib uninjured after her pager mysteriously explodes.
00:51:25.260
Oh, no. That was, I, I, I, like, do we, do we need to do an episode on that event? Because that
00:51:31.500
was so cool that they pulled that off. Incredible spy movie stuff. I, I feel like maybe we need more
00:51:37.420
information first, but what an incredible feat of intelligence. I might, after, like, all the
00:51:41.980
information that's come out, do one of these things where I try to create, like, the most
00:51:44.700
comprehensive source on a particular subject on the internet. That would be great, because I,
00:51:47.740
I want to watch that. I want to know everything about this. Because that was, wow, I cannot believe
00:51:54.300
to pull that off. All right. Yeah. Let me get started. I guess, wait, you would have to own
00:51:59.420
the largest pager manufacturer in the Middle East, like, or several, theoretically?
00:52:06.460
Um, no. So it appears, I, I don't want to explain it because I actually read into this in detail
00:52:12.940
already. Okay. Yeah, no spoilers. The idea of how it was pulled off.