Exploring Cultural Norms and Genetic Influences on Behavior

Join us in this engaging discussion as we dive deep into the article 'Arctic Instincts' by David's Sun, focusing on how genetics and cultural psychology explain the unique adaptations of East Asians to their local environments. We explore the intriguing concepts of collectivism, population density, individualism, and high agency, and how these traits have evolved over millennia. The conversation also touches upon the environmental pressures faced by different populations, the controversial nature of studying cultural genetic differences, and practical implications for contemporary society. Whether you're interested in cultural psychology, genetic evolution, or just curious about human behavior, this episode offers a captivating exploration of the forces that shape who we are.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you today.

Today we are going to be Stu going over an article called Arctic Instincts by David's Sun, which covers how Asians adapted to their local climate, or some of Asians did. Okay.

Simone Collins: Most

Malcolm Collins: in terms of psychologically and in terms of other capacities, it's a spicy article. The guy who wrote it is Asian, so I don't know, I guess that can.

He gets a free pass. Well, you know, he was interested in studying, like, why are his people different from other people? Like because, and, and specifically in the context of why are they different from other people in ways that Native Americans are also different from other people because they're closely related genetic groups.

Yeah. Though of

Simone Collins: course, employee differences on its own is. Terribly dangerous. So I, I get the

Malcolm Collins: controversy. Any, the paper has this big part at the beginning, which I'm, I'm taking out where he's explaining that, you know, he's been in academia for a while and he's been working on this for a while and he hasn't been able to publish it 'cause he is afraid of losing his job.

But now we're in, you know, the new [00:01:00] era, blah, blah, blah. And so as in aporia obviously great paper. So let's, let's go for it.

Simone Collins: All right.

Malcolm Collins: My paper falls within the discipline of cultural psychology, which seeks to understand people's culture and personality by examining the socioecological factors that they experienced over the past 10,000 years.

Many interesting findings have already been made as recent literature review documents. Population density predicts collectivism, tightness, and future orientation, and frontier regions are characterized by individualism in high agency. So there just let's unpack every one of those. If, if historically over the past 10 years an area was really, he heavily populated.

Yeah. It is going to be more collectivistic and people who are are from that like genetic population are gonna be more collectivistic. Yeah. They would've of course, succeeded at a higher rate, was in a dense area. If there, so what regions would that be? Just, you know, off the top of your head, you're probably thinking India.

China. And then he is like, okay. And then you have the frontier regions, which are more associated [00:02:00] with individualism and high agency. What are the, like the biggest frontier area is obviously going to be the American West. Oh, I was thinking like

Simone Collins: Mongolia, but Sure. I mean, I think like Asian populations have seen a lot of both, which

Malcolm Collins: is interesting.

Simone Collins: But Go

Malcolm Collins: ahead. Yeah. Well. No, Mongolia wouldn't really be a, I mean, I can look at the way the paper looks at it, but if you're looking at selective pressures, the frontier regions that are opt-in frontier regions rather than frontier regions you're just born into, are gonna have a much higher genetic effect.

Because I. If you, if you talk about the American West, the reason why it's selected for individualism and agency at such a high level mm-hmm. Is first to immigrate to the United States. To begin with the population group, you have to have very high levels of you know, agency. It's a very big decision.

It's a very risky decision. And then these regions sorted for people who immigrated over and then likely in multiple waves over multiple generations kept moving. Further west like, okay, well we're in Boston now, but I don't like this. It's still [00:03:00] too civilization. Let's go. Hey, too many people. Let's go to the, the mountains of, of the Appalachians.

Okay? Okay. I like it here. Oh, no, too many people are coming. Let's go further. Let's go all the way to Texas. Let's go all the way out to, you know, so, it makes sense. And it also makes sense why that would give these regions some economic advantage over sort of global economies because agency, and there was one thing that you really pointed out to me recently, which is if you're talking about social status in the existing system like global system the, the one that we're entering into at least, it, it, it just seems to be a combination of IQ and agency.

Huh in being age agentic. And that, that's why it's so important because you can't influence your kids' IQ that much, but you can, I believe, influence their level of agency

Simone Collins: 100%. Though I'm sure there are genetic components there as well.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, well, this, this is documenting that there's genetic components and so what selects for them?

I don't know. Tightness and future orientation is interesting that that's what you get in terms of heavily dense areas. Yeah. I don't, what does tightness tightness mean in this context? [00:04:00] Yeah,

Simone Collins: tightness. Rigidity, maybe the, the closeness of social relations, how internet a society is

Malcolm Collins: All right. So, tightness refers to the degree to which a society has strict social norms. Oh, tolerance for deviation and behavior. Oh. In a tight culture there are strong social norms and literal tolerance for behavior that deviates from these norms. Rules tend to be clearly defined in strictly enforced.

The greater emphasis on conformity and social order punishment for violating norms is typically more severe. So these are in areas that are more populated. Makes sense that you would need stronger social cohesion in a place that's more populated. Yeah. And you have more diversity in a place that's less populated.

Future orientation refers to the extent of cultural emphasizes planning for the future rather than focusing on immediate outcomes. High future orientation involves delaying gratification, prioritizing long-term planning and investment, emphasizing saving rather than immediate consumption, and valuing preparation and prevention.

Interesting, interesting. So let's keep [00:05:00] going here. Oh, by the way, the paper that he was read for thing, if anyone wants to look it up, is a sociological genetic framework of culture, personality, their roots, trends, and interplay. And then he's saying frontier regions also have high pathogen prevalence predicts.

Oh, sorry. And that then pathogen prevalence in a region over the past 10,000 years predicts collectivism rice farming and is associated with tightness and higher nepotism.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. You had higher nepotism in those regions. I suspect it's also highly pathogen prevalence would be highly tied to population as well, so it's probably also tied to the high population regions.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: The exact mechanisms by which . Sociological effects culture and personality are not always clear. They may be purely cultural. They may result from selective migration. They may be the product of natural selection acting on genes, or they may represent some mix. As in gene cultural co-evolution, however, humans did not parachute into their various homelands [00:06:00] precisely 10,000 years ago.

The 60,000 year migratory period that began when humans left Africa has been as sorely neglected in human psychology. Ancient Siberian extreme cold adaptation is already frequently invoked to explain East Asian genomics and physiology. I therefore examine whether it could explain their culture and personality, and I found that it could.

My paper documents that in terms of psychology, east Asians bear a striking resemblance to indigenous Inuit and Siberians. All three groups exhibit high emotional suppression, ingroup cohesion, una assertiveness, introversion, indirectness. Self-consciousness, self sensitivity, cautiousness, perseverance. And Vios spatial abilities, traits that would have enhanced their ancestor survival in the unforgiving environment of ice age Siberia.

These are not the things

Simone Collins: I would invest in in a post AI age. So this is making me nervous.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point. A lot of these just matter. Well, I mean, high [00:07:00] emotional suppression should be generally a useful thing if you're able to do it. Yeah, I would say in general its highly direction.

Yes. Yeah, that's the one

Simone Collins: thing for sure.

Malcolm Collins: But outside of that and, and keep in mind they would have lower agness due to the, the other things he was, he was mentioning. Mm-hmm. That's they, that is not great for a post to AI age, like cautiousness and, and una assertiveness slash introversion indirectness self-consciousness.

Mm-hmm. Again, and I also say, I mean, I think

Simone Collins: introversion doesn't help or hurt in an IH because I think extroversion actually is really for a pre IH you need. Autistic special interest. Lopsided geniuses in a post a IH, who are very highly age agentic and take a lot of initiative. Maybe a lot of that can be trained, like to your point, right?

This is also a population that on average is known for higher levels of intelligence, at least in some domains. So maybe they can leverage that, which is more, we would posit genetic and teach more agentic behavior and patterns.

Malcolm Collins: [00:08:00] Yeah, I, and I will say that these, these stereotypes that he's pulling up here fit my lived experience of interacting with various ethnic groups.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So I don't think that he's wrong to make these assertions, and again, he is Asian, making these assertions about Asians. I, I, I particularly note the, the Una assertiveness I've mentioned before. But I can think of very few Asians I know who like arguing for the sake of arguing. Which is rare in our social circles because most people in like conservative, intellectual social circles, like arguing for the sake of arguing.

Simone Collins: Brian Chow.

Malcolm Collins: Brian Chow does not like arguing for the sake of arguing. I've never,

Simone Collins: he loves debating, he loves bringing up subjects. He loves talking about controversial things. What's the difference between that and arguing? That's very

Malcolm Collins: different than like, okay, think of like a Jewish person would. Where they like, really want to persuade you of their perspective.

Like,

Simone Collins: oh, like winning for them matters. Whereas like Brian is just expressing the truth as he sees it. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Brian is expressing the truth and [00:09:00] he finds it odd that you don't see the truth. Oh yeah. Like,

Simone Collins: what are you missing? You sad idiot. Versus like, I've gotta convince Oh, that's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: He, I mean, not in a derogatory way, but definitely No,

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: But definitely the weight when he is, is has a difference of opinion, is very different than the way that Jews or, or Catholics when they debate, have differences of opinion when I, when I think about these groups.

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: And not that Asians can't be Catholics. I'm just, you know, thinking here the way that I like subdivide populations, because we argue as anyone who reads this podcast that this past like.

I'd say 500 years of someone's evolutionary history is way more important than the

Simone Collins: previous 20,000 years

Malcolm Collins: than the previous 20,000 years. Mm-hmm. Or 60,000 years.

Simone Collins: Right? Because, I mean, small bottlenecks and evolutionary pressures can make a huge difference. I mean, you could have, you know, huge, huge swaths of a population die off just to.

I mean, who knows how different the [00:10:00] European population is post plague, like who knows what other traits got wiped out with susceptibility to the plague. Yeah. And who knows what, what traits got suddenly skyrocketed because they correlated with. Whatever it was that made some people immune, so, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Well, and, and, and, and this is why when I'm looking at genetic groups, I typically do not look at ethnicities, but I look at religions because I think that they're more predictive of personality. And, and. That's just where, where I, I disagree with this, but I, I do agree with everything he's saying here.

So, and I think it works. And with Asian populations, they haven't been susceptible to multiple religious frameworks that genetically isolated them in the same way Europeans have. So there isn't a reason to anyway. My paper documents that in terms of psychology, oh no, I already read that. Okay. My paper also documents that Arctic environments necessitate these very traits in polar workers and expeditioners scouting.

The literature on personal psychology revealed that the relevant traits are so [00:11:00] consistently predictive of success in polar environments, that they have been refined into the personal selection criteria for many countries. Polar research programs. Here we see human selection, conveniently mirroring natural selection.

That's really fascinating. Wow. What are polar environments like? Basically all the threats that the typical hunter gatherers face are exacerbated in Arctic, where the average temperature is lethally cold, the visual landscape is blank and featureless. The ecology is devoid of vegetation and where the ground might suddenly collapse underneath you or drift away via ice flow.

Mistakes are very severely punished by the environment. Meanwhile, poor vi geospatial ability, lack of group cohesion or reckless emotional behavior can be instantly fatal for the group. You know, it's interesting that he notes the reckless emotional behavior because in Arctic communities there was this form of madness where people would like, and, and this was an Inuit community specifically.

So like these ethnic groups where people would like freak out and like start murdering people or like, what? Screaming or like, [00:12:00] really,

Simone Collins: where did you hear about? Never heard of this before. This is crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's a, it's a study. Is it like an

Simone Collins: like cabin fever essentially?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's a culture bound, cabin fever, unique to these regions.

I collected in an episode I, I was going to do on cultural bound illnesses. Did it happen

Simone Collins: like during the darkest parts of the winter when people are really, really No. What's

Malcolm Collins: interesting about it is we're not sure if it's a real behavior or it was something that was being caused by the researchers in some way.

Simone Collins: Oh wow. Like a, right, like fan death and, and penis stealing where people, it was like a shared delusion that because people said it was real, it became real. Yeah. The,

Malcolm Collins: the, the researchers somehow made it real for short periods of time where data was being collected.

Simone Collins: I see. Okay. Wow, that's wild. I.

Terrifying

Malcolm Collins: frequent blizzards and Lisa windstorms necessitate prolonged group confinement traditionally in igloo tents. Now in small polar stations, indoor adaptive changes include staying emotionally stable, controlling aggressive impulses, and [00:13:00] being able to complete. Complex tasks in extremely adverse conditions.

Hmm. As evacuation is not possible during deep winter. Yeah. And social expulsion into the outdoors is fatal. A recent news story about a South African scientist trapped in Antarctica was a violent team member illustrates the importance of adaptive traits that listed earlier.

Simone Collins: Gosh, that's nightmare scenario.

I was just thinking about this documentary that I watched on giving birth in these environments, which, oh

Malcolm Collins: my

Simone Collins: gosh, no. But that. Think about it. Think

Malcolm Collins: about like the argument trait I was just noticing before. Right? Right. Not getting into heated arguments with people is going to be Yeah. Be very avoidant with arguments.

Let's, let's go. It's gonna be very important if you are in an environment like this where being expelled gets you killed. Same with being you know, not aggressive or, or not overly pushy about your opinions or perspectives. Which I hadn't considered, but he's absolutely right. That would've had a really strong genetic effect.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyone who at any point during the winter pissed off anyone enough that they [00:14:00] needed to be in two separate rooms was removed from the gene pool. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because it was just that deadly in those close quarters with nowhere to run or hide, I guess, in a temperate climate, even if your entire tribe kicked you out, you could theoretically survive foraging and hunting and fishing.

Yeah. Not here.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Those traits which are shared by East Asians and the Inuit and polar workers of all ethnicities appear to be critical for staying alive and accomplishing tasks in the harsh Arctic environments. This provided the basis for a parsimonious arctic theory of East Asian psychology, which po psychological adaptations to ice age Siberia predate and likely influence later ideologies like Confucianism.

And so here he has like a little chart where he shows how this works and he is like, o, OA, I don't know what that's Oh, out of Africa. Mm-hmm. And then you have the Arabian standstill, so the Southern root, tropical South Asia and subtropical East Asia, and then temperate mixed range [00:15:00] Eurasia, pre LGM, mammoth step.

And then you have this period here where they antagonized by Inuit replicated in modern polar person, sorry, not antagonized. Analogized by Inuit and replicated in modern polar personnel, intensified Harmon and cohesion, emotional suppression, perseverance, blah blah, blah. Hmm. Multi cropp rice farming and agricultural Japanese natural disasters.

Further intensifies collectivism Xi Zsu, Joe's Dynasties values, Confucianism. You get har harmony, cohesion, emotional suppression, perseverance. And then you have a Taoism, Shintoism, Reganism, Korean schism, holism, animism, harmony, balance values. Interesting. Any, anything you wanna say before I go further?

Simone Collins: No, I wanna hear more.

Malcolm Collins: Tism theory has already yielded some successful predictions, such as the observation that East Asian polar explorers have had an easier time and are more [00:16:00] psychologically stable than their North American counterparts. Oh, really? Like

Simone Collins: someone systematically measured this and how do you even measure it?

Like number of discoveries progress made before they die. And

Malcolm Collins: it was a study called psychological adjustment during three Japanese Antarctic research expeditions.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: That's really interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean you only hear the documentaries about English guys for the most part, but I guess that's 'cause we're,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, they say the psychological profile of the subjects was relatively stable and comparable to the standard means of Western.

So the results showed the shepherds were generally high in stress resistance. I dunno pretty

Simone Collins: much anyone who opts into that, I feel like the selective pressures of just being an Arctic researcher going to select for people who are very rugged and patient.

Malcolm Collins: Was saying that they were relatively more so than the Westerners who did the same thing.

Yeah. Anyway they east a another successful predictor prediction is that in Singapore, east Asians have significantly lower rates of claustrophobia than south and Southeast [00:17:00] Asians with accounting for national culture and farming ancestry.

Simone Collins: That's so interesting. So this whole shoving people onto the.

Peak commute hour subway in Japan thing. I mean, they were designed for it. It was meant to happen.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's a funny, it's a of an interesting point that you make. Actually, oh, hold on. Side theory. Side theory here. Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It goes urbanization because of these traits happened at a much higher rate in these cultures.

Oh, like they

Simone Collins: just didn't viscerally feel uncomfortable with it. So they weren't, they didn't need to spread out as much 'cause they weren't, they didn't

Malcolm Collins: need to spread out, which allowed for these ultra dense cities. Because I was just thinking like, I think most Westerners, if they were like in one of those trains where like everybody's like crowded and shoved onto Yeah.

One of those

Simone Collins: micro apartments. You've seen them in Tokyo? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: in Beijing. Well, I'm just thinking the trains themselves, most Westerners would just be like, I need to get outta here. Like, I can't. Who is this? And, and when I think about the regions of the world [00:18:00] where you see these ultra dense trains, like you see this in India, you know those pictures you see of India where it's like people like hanging off.

Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They are from areas that had really high population density, historically speaking. Mm-hmm. And potentially went through an Arctic period in their, in their migratory patterns. I dunno if Indians did, did they?

Simone Collins: No, not at all. So what's up? That must, I mean, just must be a totally separate evolutionary pressures, but Yeah, I wonder what drove population density in India where it's not necessarily, then I.

That must have, right? I mean there's, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, Indian populations have been really heavily influenced by the caste system. Mm-hmm. They are due to the caste system as genetically different from each other as people from like Denmark are from people from Greece. And for, for, to be clear like this, that's really big genetic difference.

Yeah. Like even at like the sociological level for people who have done much traveling in those two countries the, the Greek [00:19:00] have a a, a quite different, like if you think of them as broadly European, they have a quite different perspective than you think, like you get to Northern Europeans. Yeah.

And, and so I think within India, a lot of it has been you know, psychological differences. That are the result of the environment have been partially hidden by psychological differences that were driven by cast systems. Hmm. And in, in the, in, in the United States, the problem that you have when you're building stereotypes around Indians is that you are predominantly going to be interacting with province.

Or, or just like way more than you would if you were in India. I.

Really heavily affects the way that they act. Yeah. Anyway, I plan to test novel predictions in future studies by comparing Mongolians to Casa burgers and Somalis, thereby controlling for Holocene pastoralism, and by comparing desert, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans to malaise Indians and Northern Italians.[00:20:00]

Must expand their scope of inquiry beyond just the hall all the way back to 70,000 years ago when humans left Africa. Okay. Approach the total evolutionary ecologies, TEE model. The idea being that to understand a local population, one must examine all the environments selected pressures, their face.

Instead of arbitrarily limiting oneself to the Holocene, it seems obvious in hindsight, but prior research advances in arche genetics and paleo ecology, the pre holocene period was mostly hand waved away by psychologists due to lack of data method. So it's really interesting to be the way doing this is he is looking for different populations that experienced, one historic ecology, but not another. So he's like, okay, what, what populations experienced the same, you know, pre Holocene environment and a different post Holstein environment, and see if [00:21:00] they have any traits that are similar across them. And can we sort of look at like what specifically these post Holocene environments are adding and what the Preh environments are adding?

Obviously his TEE model works very different from our model. Our model is that the, the vast majority, I'm gonna say like 80% of psychological effects from evolution occur within the past thousand years. And I would await them to the past 500 years. I'm with you on that. And it's, it's just because when you have migration now this, this, again, is uniquely true when I, I, I should say that my theory is.

Really focused on the United States because that's where I live. And that's where migration was going to play a really big role in genetic sorting. So if, I'm gonna give you an example of what I mean by this. If you look at Silicon Valley Silicon Valley genetically and culturally seems to have produced a.

Hugely disproportionate amount of global innovation over the past 50 years. I don't think anyone like, like [00:22:00] nothing even comes close. And so, the question is, okay, well what were the recent evolutionary pressures for, for migration or disproportionate migration to the Silicon Valley region?

Historically well, which you had was first. First you could say, well, what led to Silicon Valley? Well, it was, it was really high. Risk-taking behavior for, for high risk, high reward, potential payoffs. The Silicon Valley area was historically settled during the, the goldmine rush. The what were they called?

The 49 ERs. And, you can, that was a complete population that was just like, we're gonna go to this region based on high risk, high reward potential outcomes. And that that's what drew the seed population there, which made the population one both more high risk, high reward, but in line was also expeditionary forces.

And what's the word I'm looking for here? Regions of high, frontier regions, like basically an ultra frontier region, which also meant that they were more okay with cultural diversity and had less [00:23:00] cultural tightness. And you can see this within the culture of that region, you know, the hippie movement, et cetera.

It's not just like the modern iterations of like proto woke culture or proto like cults forming there all the time. This is where Simone's ancestors migrated to, by the way. So you can see, the, your ancestors who would've migrated to that region would've had much more of these high risk, high war traits than people in other, the regions where they already were, and they were already in frontier regions when they made this migration near

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Chicago, the Great Plains, et cetera.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Any, any thoughts before I go further?

Simone Collins: I mean, it'd also point out like when, when you're looking at people. Who migrated to America before 1850, you're already getting people who are extremely risk taking. I mean, just getting on one of those boats to cross the Atlantic.

It's huge.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. One of the things I point out is a lot of people don't realize even when things were like horrifyingly [00:24:00] bad, my point is that was the Irish. Mm-hmm. And they had the coffin ships. They're like, I'm not getting on that boat. US and like half the people would be dead. Well, yeah, you chance it with this starvation here.

A lot of people would die on the boats. Yes, they did. Yes. And so even coming over was like, months was dead bodies. But I think they threw them

Simone Collins: overboard,

Malcolm Collins: but

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: a lot of people, even when their tickets were paid for, the reason why a lot of Irish who stayed in Ireland, stayed in Ireland was not that they didn't have the money to leave during the famine.

It was that they just refused to leave. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of the, the landlords in Ireland offered to pay for them to leave. And they said, no, I, I won't. And know as to why the landlords, evil landlords offered to pay for them to leave is because they kept forming gangs when the landlords couldn't pay them, the people on his property and, and killing the landlords.

And so the landlords wanted to lower the number of people. Yeah. They didn't want

Simone Collins: that social unrest. No one wants starving. People with no work on their, that's, that is scary. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when the people

Malcolm Collins: are expecting you to pay them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's, [00:25:00] no, you're gonna do a lot to get them out. And yet and I don't blame these people, but I just, I wanna, I wanna highlight the fact that when you look at people.

Who migrated to the West after 1850. You already have some very intense risk takers, and then you just, they're like people now who are clearly addicted to risk and who just can't stand being around other people. So you've got this hyper, hyper selective. Series of events, and I think you see this around the world with a lot of different populations.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Actually, you know, speaking of like the Irish immigration wave, and we did our video, the great replacement has already happened on the various Catholic immigration waves, the Irish and the Italian immigration wave, and point out that this was just not a large population in the United States breathe these waves.

Mm-hmm. At the time of the revolution, they only made up 1.5% of the population Catholics, and even in the Catholic state, Maryland, they're on the, oh. But the, the, I think an interesting point here, I've, I've gone over this with you before, but an interesting point here is I actually think culturally [00:26:00] speaking, the pressures that led to the Irish and Italian immigration wave I.

Cause the American descendants of these two groups to be, I would argue the most culturally distinct American group more distinct than the Hispanic American immigrants. Which are actually, I'd say closer in personality and, and proclivities to the OG Americans largely because they are immigrating from company countries where the immigrant waves to those countries mirror the immigrant waves to the United States.

You know, immigrating to America versus immigrating to Mexico historically versus immigrating to, you know, one of the South American colonies. Historically, not that different from immigrating to the United States. You had to be like really risk-taking. Whereas the Irish and the Italian immigration waves they were basically forced out of their country by extreme extreme poverty.

Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. It was more of a, a refugee situation and not it. It was reactive, not [00:27:00] proactive.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yes, they were, they were, they were refugees more than voluntary immigrants.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so they maintained a lot more of their historic culture.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and, and that's why, and I'm looking

Simone Collins: at the why, looking at the why behind selective pressures is important because just migrating, just going through a certain environment.

Doesn't explain all of it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And that's why I, they disproportionately hold positions within bureaucratic organizations in the United States. We pointed this out before the, the, the Irish and Italian descendants disproportionately, if you're looking at like lawyers, judges the Supreme Court if you're looking at the, the, you know, government agencies, police forces historically they were famously like overly Irish or overly Italian. Hmm. Which is really interesting. And you know, I, I'm, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, like I'm not saying them being different from other American populations. It's just interesting to me the reactive freakout Americans have to the Hispanic immigration waves which like the Irish and [00:28:00] Italian are Catholic waves, but they're not, they're, they're chosen immigrant populations.

They're not like refugee populations anyway, to continue. Evolutionary psychology traditionally had all the limitations of historical science. There was no time machine one could use to go back to the oc see, in Africa, to observe the long process of natural and sexual selection for universal human cognitive mechanisms.

There was also no way to get a control group and an experimental group as the process of universal human evolution takes far too long. Although Janet Song's Lab is doing some interesting work on genetic brain evolution, these limitations apply far less. To the TEE model. That is when investigating psychological traits that represent local adaptations to environments.

Humans have inhabited since we left Africa. Ironically then, the most taboo area of cultural psychology is the most empirically robust. Take my analysis of personal psychology, psychology data. Here we do have the luxury of control groups and experimental groups, [00:29:00] civilians, pre winter personnel versus polar veterans per.

Post winter personnel. This allows us to track psychological changes throughout a winter over a polar trek, and then use the resulting success and failures to learn about the processes of natural selection in the past. Although some expeditioners actually die or get severely injured, most failures revolt.

In evacuation or being rated low by peers and supervisor. Hmm. Polar psychologists have also conducted extensive psychological testing of personnel, and by using the traits to predict success and failures, they have identified successful selection criteria for polar candidates. This has greatly enhanced our understanding of the kinds of personalities they polar environment select for.

So interesting. 'cause a lot of times the, you know, this is just like, just so stuff. This is just theorizing, this is how it's thought of as the outside. And now that we're reopening this area of potential investigation, I think we can learn really interesting things about ourselves. The interesting thing is, I.

Is, I think that when a lot of people hear about people doing work on, like why do certain groups have [00:30:00] certain traits? What they think is that the primary motivation to do this is going to be to learn about outgroups IE and, and to categorize outgroups in ways that are potentially deleterious. IE to say like white people doing like race science on like black people when in reality.

The, the most curiosity and most benefit from this is gonna come from the groups themselves. You know, this guy is Asian and he wants to understand like, why am I like this? Why are Asians like this disproportionately speaking? That would be interesting for me to understand because in understanding that I understand myself better.

If you look at the types of research that we do obsessively here, we focus much more on. Our cultural group, the, the Greater Appalachian cultural group that, that we both come from than other cultural groups, like hugely disproportionately, we talk and research and investigate our own culture because it is more interesting to us than other cultures.

Well, yeah, and

Simone Collins: what are we supposed to do about other people's cultures? Groups that we don't have any say in, are not part of, can't [00:31:00] contribute to.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they can be interesting to understand American trends, you know, and, and trends in American politics and the electorate and everything. Yeah. And you

Simone Collins: can learn about pitfalls to try to avoid or replicate.

Yeah. But I mean, I'm, for the most part,

Malcolm Collins: I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that I. Understanding distinctions, and we've talked about this in other podcasts distinctions, like the, the, when you think about the American Republican or southerner or, or rural person, right. The two large groups, or three large groups hit this, the, the Greater Appalachian Cultural group, the Far West Cultural, or the, the Western Frontier Cultural Group and the, the Cavalier Cultural Group.

Mm-hmm. And many people confuse the Cavalier Cultural Group with the. The Appalachian cultural group as a single culture when they are like radically different from each other in almost every single metric. And I would say this as having a family where I come from, the faction of the family that married into other greater [00:32:00] Appalachian cultural group people.

And then other people in my family married into the cavalier. The Cavalier Cultural Group and the cultural expectations of these groups are radically different. The Cavalier Cultural Group is very obsessed with manners being gentlemanly proper form doing aristocratic looking things like they spend a lot of money on Aris, like, country club, country clubs, boats, boats, you know, the, the, although the faction that you're thinking of, the boats faction they, they married into cats. They're super

Simone Collins: waspy. I don't know. I, I, I, I think they're more. Boston Province and anything else, they're not exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: but

Malcolm Collins: the, they're not either the the, but, but just like when I look at my family, the the, the, the biggest cultural friction is between the cavalier aristocratic deep south culture and genetic selection events.

And the backwoods you know, like, f you to authority. Like, I don't care what anyone has to say, like, I'm gonna live my [00:33:00] way. Cultural group. And I would say that this is like an active or hot conflict. It's just like a, in terms of preferences, they find the way that we act to be very strange and sometimes even inscrutable.

Especially given that we have all of the you knowlet. We need to be accepted by aristocratic society. You know, I've got a Stanford MBA, you've got a Cambridge graduate degree. Like, why are we going out there saying stuff? And, and, and talking in a way, and, you know, calling people retards. If, if that's, you know, one, it's, it's, it's, it's not a proper thing to do.

No. But I, I, I will say I do appreciate, and you should see our video on why, why people have manners. I do appreciate, I wanna say I did take from their group was manners in interacting with women. I was like you know, this is actually a thing of value that I should make a point of, of, of learning and remembering.

Simone Collins: You mean in that I, I don't remember this episode. It gives our, it would give our sons a competitive advantage in the dating world because it totally would.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, it's a competitive advantage in the dating [00:34:00] world. People actually do appreciate and notice good manners, especially 100%. Well, they show

Simone Collins: inhibitory control and self-discipline.

Yeah. They show that you are capable of delaying in the moment, gratification and or. A desire for laziness or energy conservation in favor of making other people comfortable. Because in the end, etiquette is about making for smooth social transactions and making other people comfortable,

Malcolm Collins: but doing it in a way that also other you, I think is really important.

I think a lot of people drop manners when manners start to other them. It's something that, that I, you know, was, was, was. Talk to me as a kid by this cultural group is no, that's when it's most important to have manners. Although, I mean, I don't follow manners as strictly as they do. For example they will, when a woman gets up to like use the restroom or leaves the table, they'll stand up.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that that's just a little too much for, for, for me. I, I've never really, you can't handle

Simone Collins: it.

Malcolm Collins: Got into it.

Simone Collins: Malcolm, you can't even use silverware at a restaurant. I think. And that's an [00:35:00] interesting thing is that you were essentially trained in. In boarding school to not show manners because I don't know that lowered your status in middle school.

So now you literally, instead of using a knife, use your fricking forefinger to move food around on a plate at fancy restaurants.

Malcolm Collins: Do I do, I destroy you?

But I will, I will strive to have better manners. Are you gonna teach our kids banners? The, all the Yes, of course I am. So,

Simone Collins: Hey, look, are both our sons are already like. Where am I gonna find a wife? I want a wife. Part of it's because they really want rings, like they're very inquisitive, little covetous dragons and they want rings.

And we're like, well you, you get a ring when you get married. And they're like, how do I get married? Well, you have to find a wife. Well, where do I find a wife? I'll never find a, you're also

Malcolm Collins: really obsessed with having kids, not because of our prenatal list Talk. And I realize that this likely affects how many kids people have severely.

Hmm. But because they are [00:36:00] in a family where Simone's like always pregnant or has a baby. Yeah. And they see you focusing on the baby and then their caregivers who they stay with during the day are also were recently pregnant and had a baby.

Simone Collins: I think it's also just kind of a cool superpower that like, oh, women can 3D print humans and therefore Octavian says that women are are better 'cause they can 'cause I only like

Malcolm Collins: women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I only like women. Because I'm the king of all women. He told me one day, what did he say? I'm the king of all women. He just said, oh yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I was there when he said that. That was funny. He goes, I, he was talking about a woman that he, he thought was attractive, humorously his teacher, you know, the way young kids are.

He is like, oh is that Mrs. Whatever? I don't know. And I, and I was like and then he, and then he looks for a bit and he answers himself. He goes, no, she doesn't have beautiful enough hair. And then he is, he's continuing to think for his, he goes, Mrs. Whatever has very long and beautiful hair. And then he stops and he thinks for bit.

He goes, I'm the king of all women. That was, [00:37:00] that was what he said. Right? Like that was the chain of Yeah. I so wish I could have gotten it on video. It was so hilarious. I the king of all women.

Simone Collins: Once he has manners, he will be, we'll see.

Malcolm Collins: But I, but I also love the way that I could so see one of these like, you know, groups that tries to like target kids for transition in school.

'cause you know, he is autistic and everybody's saying, targeting him and he is like, okay, so I'm gonna be able to have babies, right? Like, that's the point of being a woman. I'm gonna so trigger someone who's gonna be like, well no. I mean, there's other reasons to have kid be a woman other than have kids.

He's gonna be like. No, there isn't. No, there's, there is not one. He's like, he's like, if I become a woman because he knows he needs to get a woman to make kids. Mm-hmm. That's like, which is very

Simone Collins: important to him. Yeah. He wants to, he's

Malcolm Collins: thinking right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, he'll, he'll be a ladies man though.

He, he looks like the type of kid who's gonna grow up to be very attractive. Well, already all

Simone Collins: of his friends in class are girls who really like him, so Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that's what they told us on the, the school of call. Yeah. But I don't think, you know, [00:38:00] how a guy's gonna do his girls until a girls start going through puberty, because girls go through puberty before ties too.

Mm-hmm. And so then you can be like, okay, is he still. Interacting in this, this, he's very, like, obsessed with like, being the good guy and like keeping order. So I can see that looking good to, to some females. We'll see. I have a question for you. Growing up, did you ever notice cultural differences between, because you had a very, like, you know, ethnically immigration, di diverse group of friends mm-hmm.

Living in the Bay Area in the Asian friends you had versus the other friends?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Did I notice cultural differences? Not really. It's it's more that I noticed there were some friends maybe who were either less. Integrated than others or just from weirder or I, I don't know how to say it. More, more strict families than others.

So there was one girl in my middle school [00:39:00] or high school class who was just like, yeah, my mom tells me she doesn't love me. Like just actively, like, not even Tiger Momming, just being like, yeah, I don't love you. And that was really hard for me to understand. There was another. A Korean girl who is very, very clingy and very, very Christian and extremely docile.

So like that came across as sort of weird and different. But then a bunch of my other Chinese and Vietnamese friends were just super normal and fun and like a little quirky maybe, but like I was a little quirky too. And my other. European descent friends were also quirky. So it's, it's weird that there wasn't, you know, like, yeah, my Asian friends on average are like this, or like my Korean versus Chinese versus Filipino versus Vietnamese friends are like this and this and this and this.

There really wasn't much of that. Yeah, and there were very different degrees of parental involvement between families. But definitely you, you [00:40:00] know how in in childhood cartoons, like parents just aren't there and a lot of them's just like what parents, they're just never there. Like there's, there are scenes at the kid's home and just there's nothing, there's no parent.

That was kind of how it was with my Asian friends. I. I barely if ever met their parents, which was really weird because I spent a lot of time with them and sometimes even went to their house. Yeah. Whereas with my western descent, friends, parents were just there all the time. Like a mean girls, like a mother who's just like, oh, how are you doing?

Hey, hey, hey. How are my best girlfriend? Hey, this is George. This is Kaylee. Hello, sweetheart. Hi. Welcome to our homes.

I just want you to know if you need anything. Don't be shy, okay? There are no rules in this house. . Hey you guys. Happy Hour is from four to six.

Um, is there alcohol in this? [00:41:00] Oh god, honey, no. What kind of mother do you think I am? Why do you want A little bit? 'cause if you're gonna drink, I'd rather you do it in the house. No, thank you. So you guys. What is the 4 1 1? What has everybody you've been up to? What is the hot gossip?

Simone Collins: Like,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, when you talk about cultural differences that are gonna lead to differences in adulthood, like this is obviously gonna have a big effect

Simone Collins: parental.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, the the and the ways that parents have involvement. Is it you know, about sitting down with a kid during time that's just parent kid time, or are they bringing the kid along with them during their regular daily routine?

Mm-hmm. These are two if you look historically at the different American styles of parenting mm-hmm. The, the backwoods Greater Appalachian region, the way that parental involvement worked is the kids would follow the parent around. Whereas if you go to the Puritan or Quaker regions it was more that the parent would set aside like unique time to interact with the kid.

Hmm. Which is a very different way of [00:42:00] interacting with, with people depending on the region.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think this is my dedicated kid time.

Malcolm Collins: Was that the way it worked with your parents or were they more like, just follow me around on when I'm doing business and work and they

Simone Collins: referred to it as parallel play and I loved it, which is just, we all kind of ignored each other and did our own thing, but in close proximity.

So yeah, it would be that Appalachian model of like, I'm going to do my work or do my thing.

Malcolm Collins: They also brought you on lots of business trips as I remember.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I loved that.

Malcolm Collins: That was great.

Simone Collins: Yeah, which I guess is very much that Appalachian model.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, just, and they, and then they just let you do whatever when you were in these countries?

Just, yeah, we

Simone Collins: just, I would wander the streets of Tokyo, but then it, sometimes I would come along to business dinners and, you know, see drunken salary men sing karaoke and I.

Malcolm Collins: But I think in, you know, we've really hurt society when progressives like tried to prevent us from looking at these differences, uhhuh.

So I think there's just so much we can learn both about ourselves and about how other people have different perspectives in us and what might be driving those perspectives by [00:43:00] looking at things like child rearing. Yeah. That would actually be a great episode for me to research is a child rearing episode.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Of like cultural differences in child rearing. Yeah. Because the, again, like the, at least. The averages are cultural norms of, we'll say, Chinese investment in children. It's, it's kind of heartbreakingly high, but in this kind of remote way like that. Allegedly, 60% of disposable income goes to rearing kids once a Chinese couple has kids.

Also, in all the manga that I'd read, you know about kids maybe being stressed out at school or studying, it wasn't like the parents were like sitting there next to them. It was they would come home from school and go upstairs to their room and study by themselves and then come down to eat dinner as a family.

Sure. But. There wasn't a whole lot of side by side parent time spent. It was, that was relegated mostly to meals, which is interesting because in that way the parents are breaking their backs, raising their kids, but not really getting to enjoy them, which might [00:44:00] have a very antenatal effect. Like, what's the point?

This isn't even fun. I'm all, I'm spending all my time to basically contribute to an investment asset that. I'm not even en enjoying, especially in a, in a, in societies where less and less so you're depending on your children for retirement, what would the point be at all? You don't hang out with your kids.

You don't really like them. You're really stressed out about their achievement. You spend a ton of money on them. Yeah, that's, I'm not signing up for that. That sounds terrible. Not doing that.

Malcolm Collins: That is really interesting. It reminds me of you know what? They were, they were talking about how in, in one article I was reading how cultures you typically either go to live with like the mother's family or the father's family.

Depending on what culture you're talking about. Oh, you

Simone Collins: mean like if the both the married couple collectively will go live with them? Yeah. Okay. And,

Malcolm Collins: A cultural trait that you see in a, when you go to live with the mother's family is typically women are a [00:45:00] lot more agentic in these cultures and have much higher status.

And that the rural British culture, which informed a lot of American culture was one of these. And that's why in a lot of old timey stuff people talk about the, the, the, you know, the old battleax mother-in-law is such a frequent trope because these mother were literally living alongside the young couple.

Like they were going to live in the, the, the mother's, the girl's, parents' house. Oh. And so the, the mother-in-law would exert a lot of influence that could really chafe on you know, the, the, the young couple. Mm-hmm. And, and that makes perfect sense. But, you know, you'd also get this, this, this trope of, oh, you know, they, they have so much.

Cultural power and pressure. Yeah. Yeah. I love you Eson. I love you too. What am I having for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: So we could do more Curry? But we've been doing a lot of that lately. I know. I need to make something new for you. But you don't like Dan Dan [00:46:00] noodles anymore and you don't like. Si want chicken anymore.

And I used to like pot stickers, which I can make for you. What kind of tickles your fancies these days? What's used to like, even just random grilled cheese nights, you'd be like, yeah, let's do grilled cheese, but that's too, too basic for you. What do I do?

Malcolm Collins: Or something? Or, or chicken or we could do, I mean, why don't you like look at some of the sauces that we haven't been using.

Mm-hmm. And then ask an AI what can be made from them.

Simone Collins: Okay. Do you know which sauce made your tummy hurt?

Malcolm Collins: No, we don't know

Simone Collins: yet. So that's, but

Malcolm Collins: we can look at the ones that we're not using now. So what I would do is I would look in the fridge and be like, okay, like I know we got some Thai red chili sauce or something that we haven't really used on anything.

Simone Collins: Oh, we have a lot of gochujang sauce. So,

Malcolm Collins: Well, you could do something with Gochujang that is not Gochujang chicken. I mean, I would just put Gochujang in other dishes. I don't [00:47:00] think that like, oh, what's that dish you did where you made the, the fiery chicken? I like that one. It was like a dryer chicken dish

Simone Collins: I think you're thinking of, of Gochujang chicken.

That's first breaded in,

Malcolm Collins: no, not breaded chicken. It was like a dryer chicken dish. Noted. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Pretty much all of the ones are, are first dipped in corn starch and then fried

Malcolm Collins: Well, why don't you try to just make, make up your own dish?

Simone Collins: Because with a limited amount of time I've gotten to prepare dinner, I, I can't do that except for on a weekend maybe.

Okay. Then just give me,

Malcolm Collins: You know, dumplings. Okay. I don't care.

Simone Collins: Okay. We can, we can plan something better tomorrow if I, if I make more. I just need preparation time. I need to have the ingredients necessary. Well, I mean, you're gonna

Malcolm Collins: get like an hour of preparation time today.

Simone Collins: No, because we're gonna, well, maybe we'll see.

We'll see.

Malcolm Collins: All right. I'll hop on the other call. Love you.

Simone Collins: Forward to

Malcolm Collins: it. [00:48:00]

Simone Collins: Ending recording.

Malcolm Collins: I was in the middle of watching that amazing link you sent mm-hmm. About Hitachi having to explain, we had a Italian, Italian journalist team staying at our house this last weekend, and I had to spend a long time explaining to them why, why oh, not, what's his name, the, the Prime Minister. What is it?

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

That's who it was.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, so I had explained to em Shinzo Abe, how he saved Trump. And, and, and they're like, do people like actually believe this happened? And I was like, well. I mean, they emotionally believe it happened, and that's what matters. Great way of putting it.

Simone Collins: Great. Perfect.

I did. I did it. I climbed up. Be careful. I mean to cry. Well, toasty. That is way too close to the ditch. Way too close. Well, I wanna climb. I need to get that rock I made to get that. So you gotta get more rocks. Testy. More rocks, but okay. Mommy, [00:49:00] I'm doing it, but I mean to cry. But I mean, toasty. Come back over here and I'll hold you up.

Okay. And I'll get you to Titan 10.

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