The Pursuit of Happiness: Myths and Realities

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the controversial views of antinatalists like David Benatar and explore why happiness and satisfaction might come from unexpected sources. They debate the role of genetics in happiness, arguing against the pursuit of hedonism and advocating for a life dedicated to meaningful pursuits like religion and family. The pair also cover the impact of relationships, gratitude, and religious practices on life satisfaction, supported by various studies. Join them as they contrast different religious groups' happiness levels, dissect the misconceptions around life satisfaction, and share insights into how to enhance overall well-being.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to have you here today.

Today, we are going to be talking about the one area, the people who want all humans dead. The antinatalists, David Benatar, that they are right. Which is David Benatar makes this argument. That, well, people can learn to, or come to, he uses like a boiling frog analogy here. Okay. Think that a genuinely terrible life is worth living.

Like, he's like these people who are like starving in Africa. Oh, and who say, but I

Simone Collins: still want to live.

Malcolm Collins: I still wish I was born. And he's like, This is proof that, like, you don't know if your life is any good. Because these people think their lives are good, and clearly, from my privileged perspective their lives are not good.

How dare you want to exist? You're incorrect. What he is missing, and what we will be going over Is these individuals subjective experience of both happiness and life satisfaction is likely higher than or [00:01:00] at least around the same as his own. I'd argue it's probably quite a bit higher than with some of the stats that we're going to go into.

They are experiencing a better life than David Benatar. And this is where we have to talk about hedonism. the way you choose to spend your time and Red Queening. So for people who don't know Red Queening, Red Queening is a scene from Alice in Wonderland where they say, you know, running as fast as I can, but every time they run faster, the Red Queen runs faster.

So it's, it's, if they're not moving at all. And the Red Queen is often used as an analogy was an evolution between predator and prey. Evolution. So the prey will develop some defense against the predator and the predator develops something that gives it an extra edge and then back and forth, back and forth, but it's the same with happiness in your life as you gain more things that give you like subjective experiences of happiness.

You very, very quickly normalized to those things. And as such pursuit of those things is an enormous. It's a waste of [00:02:00] time. Just a complete waste of time. Like, it's one of the reasons why I think a religious life is so much better, or finding something to dedicate yourself to is so much better, and it's one of the reasons why the urban monoculture is so toxic.

Simone Collins: In fact, I would argue that religious life is even a better, an austere religious life is better if you want to maximize hedonism. Because the best way to begin to enjoy things again is to go on a dopamine fast and most hard religions have those where you like have to give, give up dopaminergic, exactly.

And that's, it's after that 30, I think it's a 30 day period. I was listening, I think it was an Andrew. Huberman podcast interview with a woman who's wrote a book. You shouldn't

Malcolm Collins: fast to increase the amount of dopamine. The point being is, I'm just saying,

Simone Collins: look, we respect that people have different objective functions and some people's objective function is just to feel good.

And if you want to be able to feel good, you have to go on dopamine fast.

Malcolm Collins: The point I'm making is that if your objective function is to feel good, marginally, you might feel. 5 percent better than somebody whose life objective isn't to feel [00:03:00] good. And what we'll go over here is Actually,

Simone Collins: I would argue you're going to be a lot less happy.

Malcolm Collins: I'd actually, yeah, I'd actually argue that the, the, if you try everything you can, even dopamine fast, everything like that, from the data, which we'll go into, you will likely live a less fulfilled life. and a less happy life than your average religious person.

Simone Collins: Yeah. 100%. Yeah. You see a similar thing with mental health.

I think when you want to be mentally healthy. And it's like a big thing for you, you are way less mentally healthy because every time you feel sad or not perfect, you think it's a problem and then you're contextualizing it as a problem, makes it a problem and then makes it worse and then you're ruminating it.

And then suddenly you're actually really depressed or you actually have a serious anxiety issue.

Malcolm Collins: It's the same way that, yeah, you're right. People obsessed with mental health, like they end up having the worst mental health.

Simone Collins: And it's the same with happiness. If suddenly for, for a moment, you're like, I'm not happy.

Oh God, this is a big problem. Cause my whole thing is I need to be happy. What do I do to make myself happy? I think this happened a lot with your mother. We're [00:04:00] like happiness, it mattered to her. And then when she, it would be like a big deal to her when she wasn't happy. And she kept searching for it in all the wrong places.

And she had

Malcolm Collins: all the money she could want to do things. She'd go to five star restaurants every night. Oh, but she used to

Simone Collins: think like, if I just get this David Webb set. You know, that costs like 64, 000, then I'll be, I'll be happy. Then I'll be happy. Then she

Malcolm Collins: could never understand. She's like, why do you care so much about this wholesome lifestyle?

That you got really annoyed that I was like, wholesome maxing. And I was like, because wholesome maxing maximizes everything else down the pipeline as we'll go over. But I think that this is a really important, like this isn't like a side thing to know in your life. Someone was like, is this really worth a full episode to go into all the data on this?

Let's just feel like

Simone Collins: it's so obvious. And most of our audience probably understands

Malcolm Collins: this really well. I don't think it is. I think a lot of people still in the back of their head will say, if I do this thing that makes me happy, I will be better off. If I, you know, Oh, at least I need like certain amounts of happiness, at least I need.

And the reality is, is this [00:05:00] just not what the data says. Oh, happiness is a false God, period. Happiness is a false God. If I get the boat, if I get the, the whatever, like everything will be better. No, it probably won't be better. There's a few things that'll make a permanent impact. A good partner. Yes. Wife, husband kids and religion.

Oh, no. We're the conservatives right all along. But we'll go into this. We'll go into this. We'll go into this.

Simone Collins: This is, I think, when you see, like, the average, when you look at those amalgam images of conservatives versus progressives. The conservatives look healthier and happier.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're, like, smiling.

Like, that's the core difference. And the progressives are like, ooh.

This is probably why since records started in the U. S. at least, conservatives have always been significantly happier than progressives.

Because it turns out that as the Urban Monoculture Preak is, Do whatever you feel would give you fulfillment. Do whatever you feel would make you happy. Do whatever you want to be validated for, like be validated for whatever you want to believe about yourself.

Of course, this leads to the worst [00:06:00] possible. It's almost like. The conceivable lowest possible happiness and subjective feeling of fulfillment you could have in a life attempting to maximize those things within a culture that affirms you for it. These people live literally the worst life a human is capable of living, even though our own like biology, like updates for like no arms, no legs, no, you know, et cetera.

So we'll go into all this. All right. All right. So I can start studies here before I go into studies. thoughts.

Simone Collins: Now let's go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: All right, we're going to go over one study here. Genes, economics, and happiness, a national longitudinal study of adolescent health. This study estimated the hereditability of subjective well being at around 33 percent, indicating that about one third of the variance in individual life satisfaction can be attributed to genetic influences.

So first of all, it's mostly genetic anyway. This is why it might make sense to to do gene editing of your Children or to do gene editing of humans. If you do care about happiness, that the number one thing that's going to influence that is jeans more than literally anything else. Keep it when we're talking about a third here, [00:07:00] we'll be looking at how little other things matter, like winning the lottery, even during the period in which you've won the lottery.

It does not bring happiness up by a third exploring the biological basis for happiness. World happiness report, a meta analysis of multiple studies, including 55, 000 individuals estimated that weighted average heritability being at around 36%, 95 percent confidence interval at 34 to 38%, while the weighted average heritability for Life satisfaction was at 32%, 95 percent confidence interval between 29 and 35 genetics, personality and well being a twin study of traits, facets and life satisfaction that was published in Nature, a very reputable journal.

This city found that the readability of life satisfaction at 0. 31 of which 65 percent was explained by personality related genetic. Influences. Consistent effects on genetic happiness across lifespan and brain structure. This is in nature and human behavior. This research demonstrated the genetic basis for general happiness levels appears to have a consistent effect [00:08:00] on happiness and well being measures throughout the lifespan across multiple ancestral backgrounds and multiple brain structures.

This isn't just one ancestry, i. e. one ethnicity. This is across ethnicities. You see this hereditability. The happiness in behavioral genetics, an update on hereditability and changeability journal of happiness. Recent metadata reported in a study indicate genetic influences account for 32 to 40 percent of the variation of overall happiness, subjective well being, and life satisfaction.

And then, a review and meta analysis of heritability studies and behavioral genetics analysis that focused on a sample size. Around 60, 000 individuals found the rated average for heritability being at around 36%. From 34% to 38%, this is wellbeing. Mm-hmm . While the weighted average of life satisfaction, 32%, 29 to 35%.

So like even if you're talking like within standard deviations you're still getting like at the bottom here, like around 30%. These studies consistently show that happiness related measures such as life satisfaction and subjective well being have a readable component, which [00:09:00] estimates generally range from around 30 to 40 percent.

So first and foremost, the number one thing that determines how satisfied you are with your life is your genetics. And this is why I support antinatalists having no kids. If you have this, this world perspective that is predominated by Pessimism and always seeing the worst in everything and looking at people in poor countries and being like, how can they be happier than me?

How can they be more satisfied than me? They must be delusional. You are wrong. It's not that they're delusional. It's just that the number one thing that affects your happiness is your genetics. And you appear to be low on that particular marker. In post, Nebula what our happiness levels are, if that's on, on the website.

Well, I'm talking if you wanted to try.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I mean, you could also, let's say you're pronatalist and really concerned about passing on depression. You can, because we did actually screen our children for depression, anxiety And they're unusually

Malcolm Collins: happy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they are. Well, [00:10:00] who knows about all, we didn't have a polygenic scores for all of them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sad one didn't have his polygenic scores done. All right. So look this up, Simone. And I will keep going here. Lottery winners and accident victims is happiness relative. So this study interview based study comparing three groups, lottery winners, paraplegics and a control group. So obviously lottery winning good, losing your arms and legs bad.

Lottery winners rated their happiness from four out of five immediately after winning, but returned to a baseline of 3. 5 out of 5 within a year. You lose all the money lottery to have a year. Paraplegics initially reported a happiness lower 2. 96 out of 5, but adapted over time and reached a 3 out of 5 similar to the control group.

No, no, they didn't go all the way back to control. Three is the control group. So 3. 5 isn't all the way down to the control group. They're mostly to the control group. The lottery winners. Conclusion. Most groups demonstrated hedonic adaptation, returning to near baseline happiness levels after significant positive or [00:11:00] negative life events.

All right, next one here. Subjective well being and adaptation to life events. A meta analysis. A study design longitudinal analysis of large data sets tracking individuals before and after major life events marriage divorce unemployment findings Marriage increased life satisfaction by about one point on a 10 point scale, but this effect diminished Completely within two years.

We'll see other things with marriage This is this is all marriages good marriages actually increase permanently, but we'll get to that in a second

Divorce caused an initial drop of 1. 5 points, but individuals returned to a year baseline within five years. So, you lose the benefit of marriage in one year, you lose the benefit of divorce, it takes five years.

And it's a much bigger negative than the happiness benefit to marriage, 1. 5 to the 1, so 50 percent higher. Unemployment had a more lasting effect with a drop of negative one point that persisted for several years. Conclusion, positive events led to faster adaptation, while negative events like unemployment caused slower and incomplete adaptation.

Fascinating. But it does show that like, if you thrive for hedonism, you're just not winning [00:12:00] much. Did you get the results on Nebula?

Simone Collins: Yeah. So they do, yeah, there are polygenic scores for depression and a bunch of other things like anxiety. I'm in the 18th percentile, binge eating disorder, 54th percentile, ADHD, 63rd percentile, power disorder.. Okay, so there's a well being. And I'm in the 78th percentile for well being.

Malcolm Collins: So you're very high on well being.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so that's interesting. Characterized by, oh yeah, characterized by high life satisfaction, positive affect and absence of neuroticism as well as depressive symptoms. Okay, so well being is really the score to look at here. You're in 79th percentile on that? 78th percentile.

Wow. I wonder where you are. You're in the 80th

Malcolm Collins: percentile. That's a winning, that's a, like a, that's a good minus there. Yeah,

Simone Collins: let's see where you are on well being. I'm very curious.

You're in the 72nd percentile for depression. So your depression risk is much higher than mine.

Malcolm Collins: Good thing we're screening for it.

Simone Collins: But another score for your depression is 14th percentile. And that's the thing. Is there a different There are [00:13:00] different polygenic scores. No, this doesn't invalidate either score. I know, I know. There are just different things that may lead to Wait, what's this? Problematic alcohol use.

But you're in the 50th percentile. But your alcohol use is not problematic, so Okay, so go to well being.

Aha. Oh, you're just in the 46th percentile.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, interesting. I would think that I was happier. Yeah,

Simone Collins: you'd be the happier, go luckier person. But wait, these are just polygenic scores. Again, you know, you've got No, I

Malcolm Collins: can see why you are. You are way lower in neuroticism than I am. Ah. Which is important to well being.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm way higher in systematizing. And I have sensory issues. So, I don't know. It all comes down to luck. Alright, well, I'll

Malcolm Collins: keep going with studies here. Hedonic Adaptation Prevention Model. Study design. A three month long longitudinal study involving 481 participants who experienced positive life changes, e.

g. new relationships or promotions. Findings. Initial well being gains were around 1, 000. 0. 8 points on a seven point scale, but these gains eroded by approximately [00:14:00] 50 percent within just three months. Conclusion adaptation occurs through two mechanisms, declining positive emotions over time, increased aspirations for greater achievements, the happiness of millionaires.

So study design surveyed over 4, 000 millionaires about their happiness on a 10 point scale findings. Millionaires with net worth between 1 million and 2 million reported an average happiness score of six. Sorry, 7. 8 out of 10, while those with over 10 million scored slightly higher at 8. 0 out of 10. The increase in happiness was about plus 0.

25 points showing diminishing returns as wealth increases. Wealth contributes modestly to happiness at very high levels, but does not significantly alter overall well being. Hedonic adaptation to positive and negative experiences. Study design reviewed longitudinal studies tracking well being before and after major life changes.

A person moving to a better neighborhood might initially rate their life satisfaction as increasing from 6 10 to 8 10, [00:15:00] but this would typically revert back to 6 out of 10 within 6 months to 2 years. That's moving neighborhoods. I doubt that would be true of moving to the countryside like us. My life satisfaction definitely increased permanently after moving out of a city to live in nature.

Simone Collins: Agreed. I think that it's possible to have. Persistent acute negative shocks like you pointed out how winning the lottery and similar things like getting cancer or losing your legs that they can cause sort of short lived shocks, but I think that there are some environments and lifestyles that cause the regular reintroduction of negative shocks from which you need to recover, which can cause a sort of permanent sadness.

Does that make sense?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So here we'll look at some like a chart that was created by perplexity, which I love that it created a chart on this when I asked it off for all these studies. Yeah. You're all about

Simone Collins: Claude, but I'm still

Malcolm Collins: very hooked on perplexity. Claude's my favorite. I gotta say, although I use perplexity almost as much Claude's the [00:16:00] best for religious stuff, which I do a ton of, and you guys don't see because you don't know that I probably work as much on the tracks as on all other podcasts combined.

But yeah, you guys just see those and you're like, Hey, by the way, if you want a religion. Check out the track series. If you're like, Hey, atheism, I, all the religions seem kind of stupid. This one isn't stupid and it can make you genuinely happy with your life. And we are working to make it amazing, amazing, amazing.

It really

Simone Collins: actually is good. Like it's, it's. It's a little frustrating that, that Malcolm has this unique genius and like, religious thoughts. Theology.

Malcolm Collins: It's like the one thing where I was like gifted with genius. I'm like now going over one, which I think is the best one, which is going to be the next one, which is why the Jews.

And it is going to be the most offensive one, even more offensive than the last ones. But it is, oh my God, it's so good. It's so good. It's so good. Because it fixes so many theological problems for me. And it shows that it was all always recorded in the Bible which, which makes it very different than something like Mormonism, where they have to rely on all new texts, all [00:17:00] new, whatever.

It's just going back to the basics. Okay. So, What can positively increase happiness? Okay, so a study analyzing European data of 1 million respondents So very big found that children increase happiness when financial difficulties were controlled for And that's the important thing if you look for studies that don't control for financial difficulties You're not gonna get a true view of how much children matter and they'll all be like, oh children neutral or not positive Although it did find that children under the age of 10 brought more joy than teenagers.

I don't know if that's particularly surprising to a lot of people. But that's, I,

Simone Collins: I think I've

Malcolm Collins: actually seen information that runs

Simone Collins: contrary to that. That actually parental satisfaction, especially female parental satisfaction is lowest when, especially when you have toddlers. I get that like maybe 10 are really, really great.

But I think that especially for, yeah, there are multiple, there's so many studies on this, but the ones that I've seen show that especially women are [00:18:00] temporarily less happy when they have toddlers.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, that's because it's your duty to take care of them and deal with the pee. It's their duty.

Simone Collins: It's the poop.

It's the pee. It's the vomit. It's the, it's the gross.

Malcolm Collins: It's the, it's the Simone, I really appreciate that you make all these sacrifices for our family. And I think appreciation really increases one's life satisfaction as well. I agree with you. Yes. The Harvard study of adult development spanning nearly 80 years found that close relationships are the strongest predictor of long term happiness.

People with satisfying relationships at age 50 were healthier and happier at age 80. Now note here, it basically means marriages. And this is the Harvard way of saying marriages. Cause I decided to look, I was like, Oh, what do they mean? Like friends? No, it's how good their marriage is. Marital satisfaction significantly reduced emotional pain in older adults, even physical pain where people with good marriages did not report feeling worse on dates with physical pain.

When they enter old age, which is really interesting.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: It also showed Researchers felt that women who felt securely attached to their partners were less [00:19:00] depressed and more happy in their relationships two and a half years later, and also had better memory function than those with marital conflict.

All right. The like core things you need to be maxing for in life is a religion that you can actually believe in, get behind. Okay. Good partner and lots of kids. Just saying, just saying. Anyway, let's keep going here. Remember that one study that came out where people were like, Oh, but it shows that women actually aren't happy when they're married, when their husband isn't around.

When their husband is absent.

Simone Collins: Yeah. As in like, like literally MIA, like we don't know where he is.

Malcolm Collins: The other thing that really improves happiness is gratitude. There have been studies that show this. It's been associated with a 19 percent increase. So one of the biggest things other than genetics to life satisfaction is the amount of gratitude that you show.

And that's likely coded for in your genes though. But what I would say [00:20:00] is if you want to have a good marriage and a good relationship, Is build a habit of regularly showing gratitude to your partner and regularly sharing gratitude with the life that you have together gratitude should be the start of 50.

I think Me showing you gratitude. What percent of our conversations would you say start with that

Simone Collins: 85? You're so kind. You're so grateful and gracious. And the one thing that the Gottman's and the Gottman Institute, I think really have right is that a core fundamental relationship stability factor is the percentage of interactions with your partner that are positive versus negative.

Like the overwhelming percentage needs to be positive and gratitude's like a leading indicator here.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and so I basically just run around telling my wife how much I love her, which is you actually

Simone Collins: do though I there was this old Sabrina the Teenage Witch Episode where I think she had a a closet of compliments or maybe it was a recurring theme in the show I'm [00:21:00] talking about like the one with the animatronic Salem.

It was I'm so old. But you remind me of the closet of compliments

Speaker 4: We love you! You're beautiful! You're gorgeous! You're beautiful! So empty. But it works! You guys are beautiful! You're gorgeous! You're beautiful!

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: it

Simone Collins: is no,

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't matter. I have to learn how to compliment her better too. I can't just do generic compliments anymore. No, no, no. I need to compliment something specific. She's done recently that has improved my life and she's made it very clear.

She does that. I'm a

Simone Collins: compliment snob. You can't compliment someone's fundamental underlying. Principles, you have to, you can't compliment the noun, you have to compliment the adverb or the verb, something they do, your action, the The way you did something.

Malcolm Collins: And then somebody's like, Oh, but does she compliment you all the time?

Does she burden show you gratitude all the time? And I'm like, well, [00:22:00] she does take care of the infants and make me dinner every day. She didn't used to, by the way, dinner used to be my thing. Cause I'm like, I'm into like chefing and stuff like that. But I recently like sat down and was like, these are all my favorite recipes.

She's got an amazing at.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you were like, I wish that I could have Szechuan chicken. I wish that I could have like, And these are dishes

Malcolm Collins: I didn't know how to cook. Like these are like more advanced dishes. But thanks

Simone Collins: again to AI, you can do anything. And apparently I can make Chinese restaurant grade meals.

Well, that and that magical Asian food supply store that only restaurant suppliers shop at.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But hold on, hold on before we talk more about what we're eating tonight, because that's always the end of the episode, right? And I hope that I make other people, you know, do reflect on how awesome your life is If it is, if not, you know, go you know, take care of things, but if your life is great or keep working, work to make it great, you know, make it better,

Simone Collins: be the red up pointed arrow of home math.

Like do that.

Malcolm Collins: I'd say as our [00:23:00] religion says, right, the techno puritan faces, you have a duty to be happy and happiness is a choice. And that's what the data says too. Happiness. Yeah. It, it is. It is in part a choice,

What we mean by this is a part of your happiness you have control over is a choice. , obviously, a part of your level of happiness, as we've been discussing here, is just your biology, just your set point. But then, outside of that, the variable that you do have control over is mostly a choice,

E. g., you get to choose how you feel about the things that happen to you in your environment. , whether you see what other people might contextualize as a negative event as an exciting challenge, or a positive event as a negative.

but we'll talk about religion now. Okay, let's go to religion. Let's, let's contrast the religion.

Actually, I

Simone Collins: will say that I think both of you and I have been in these positions of, of experiencing, I guess what you could call as like acute situational depression. Yeah. Sometimes you just really need to get out of your situation and if you feel no hope of the future, you can't remember what it feels like to be happy.

You can't ever imagine a future in which you are happy. You can move, start

Malcolm Collins: over, like

Simone Collins: get the hell out of there. Like whatever you can [00:24:00] do. you may be suffering from acute situational depression and just like completely change your context. If you can

Malcolm Collins: change it, you're right. It's changing context.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Like that for all my childhood bouts of depression where I was like, you know, keen to end it and everything. That was it. I just like, I changed schools. I changed where I live. Done. It was like, over. It was as if nothing happened. I don't like how wholesome

Malcolm Collins: this episode is. I would like to point out that some people are born with low genetic happiness, and they need to be

Simone Collins: okay, fine. Well, they are, because they're mostly antinatalists, and that's fine.

Malcolm Collins: They're doing their part, Malcolm. Like, none of this requires, like, active external intervention. People who hate their lives continue. And I wouldn't be surprised if human happiness has increased on average over time at the genetic level, especially since personal choices ended up increasing the number of kids you had.

Simone Collins: Maybe

Malcolm Collins: probably like less 300 years, 400 years. I mean, people in the past, we have been much more sad than people today. Which would be very interesting. I'd actually be very interested in looking at the wellbeing [00:25:00] gene. I don't think so. Because I

Simone Collins: think. Sadness is correlated with a lack of dopamine and you need dopamine to get up and do anything at all.

So I think that there's just, there's too much that there's too high correlation of depression and mortality. In general that yeah, and your immune system is more compromised when you're depressed. No, I don't think so

Malcolm Collins: Well, let's go into religious differences because this is the spiciest part named it for last happiness differences world value study

So this study showed that protestants reported the highest average happiness 3. 21 out of four buddhist next 3. 17 out of four roman catholics next 3. 13 out of four an orthodox christian reported the lowest at a 2. 72 out of

Simone Collins: 4. What, so Greek Orthodox we're talking?

Malcolm Collins: Well not Greek Orthodox, all the Orthodox.

There's Russian Orthodox, there's Greek Orthodox, there's, there's a bunch of different Orthodox. There's Romanian, I don't know. All the Orthodox grouped together, generally one faith with different patriarchs. It doesn't really matter. The point being is they generally believe the [00:26:00] same thing. Orthodox And we'll be seeing this over and over again, are like really unhappy.

Like, if you're choosing a faith and you would all care about your subjective well being, do not choose Orthodox. What is going on there? I think it might be a genetic thing. When I think of Orthodox countries like Russia or Eastern Europe, I think of like genetically sad people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Russians are famous for this! Like, their famous, like, writings are about, like, being a cockroach, or, like, hating life, or, like, I talked about this in other episodes, like, we even know, like, Is it not surprising to me that they'd have lower happiness rates?

Speaker 2: Dear Sweet Mother of God, We're in Eastern Europe. Do you know if there's a train coming anytime soon? Oh yes, very soon. They are building it now.

Speaker 3: It's good you came in summer. In winter, it can get [00:27:00] very depressing.

Malcolm Collins: Or it could be something to do with the faith.

But keep in mind, like, okay, the difference between Protestants and Catholics, right? 3. 21, 3. 13. It's sort of about the thing. Orthodox, 2. 72!

Simone Collins: Yeah, something's wrong there. It's not, yeah, okay.

Malcolm Collins: Pew research study. This is in 2019 in the U. S. 36 percent of actively religious people describe themselves as quote unquote, very happy compared to 25 percent of inactive religious or unaffiliated individuals.

So you're significantly less likely to be happy. If you are unaffiliated similar gaps were found in Japan, Australia and Germany and different studies.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Now, what's really interesting is remember I was talking about the, the, the happiness study here the world value survey. Well, so you might be like, Whoa, Protestants are happier than Catholics.

What about life satisfaction?

Simone Collins: Ooh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: In here on a scale of [00:28:00] 10 Catholics at 7. 12 out of 10. We're at Protestant 7. 07. No, again, it's not that different. It's very similar to the other one. So you're going to be slightly happier if you're a Protestant is slightly lower life satisfaction if you're a Protestant.

Simone Collins: I feel like the absolution of, of sin through confession. May help with this.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe. I mean, it's a very sort of, I think it was Protestants. There's more questions about are you doing it? Right? Yeah, there's the

Simone Collins: self doubt. You can't be satisfied when the classic Protestant thing is like I should be doing better.

Like I'm not, I'm not doing well enough. And then I think with Catholicism, it's more like I went to confession. I went to church. I'm doing the thing. Okay, we're good. Well,

Malcolm Collins: figuring out what's true is also a personal responsibility with Protestantism, which is stressful because you have to constantly

Simone Collins: create cognitive dissonance that creates doubt that creates a lack of satisfaction.

Yeah, where it's like, if you just I'm doing what the church says, they're, they're the ones who've been paid to think and I think

Malcolm Collins: because I think that also leads to the higher levels of [00:29:00] happiness is knowing that you. personally are responsible, this level of personal responsibility for determining what's true likely leads to higher levels of happiness because when you're doing something that's in line with your face, you genuinely are like, but I'm like a thousand percent sure about this instead of I'm a thousand percent sure about this because the authority told me but Orthodox Christians here.

Okay, remember, Protestants Catholics, 7. 12, Protestants, 7.

Simone Collins: 07,

Malcolm Collins: Orthodox, 5. 43 out of 10! Like, the gap is huge! What's going on here?

Simone Collins: You guys, you guys, are you okay? Do you want to talk? Do you want to

Malcolm Collins: come over here? I'm enjoying the techno puritans. How happy am I out of 10? out of 10. Keena, you're an

Simone Collins: 11 out of 10!

11 out of 10! I'm the highest!

Malcolm Collins: Where are you actually? Okay, 10 out of 10. Right now, life satisfaction and happiness. Where are you right now?

Simone Collins: [00:30:00] 8

Malcolm Collins: 10 for which one?

Simone Collins: Both.

Malcolm Collins: Both?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: What about you?

I'd say life satisfaction, like a 9. It would be very hard for me to have a Look, I'm Basically, I'm definitely going to go down as, given the increasing value of, like, falling fertility rates, like, obviously this is going to be a big issue. Obviously, I've carved myself out as one of the leading thinkers on this issue.

Therefore, even if I'm not today known as, like, one of the leading intellectuals of our time, post facto, I'll definitely be known as one of the leading intellectuals of our time. Which means that I've basically already secured my position as a leading intellectual in world history, if humanity survives.

Like, could my, I've got a wife who loves me and who, like, is, is, when I, not loves me in like a gay way, but like, and I don't mean that in a bad, when I say in a gay way, you can love someone in a gay way. And it's like sweet and [00:31:00] meaningful. I don't mean that in like a holistically negative. What I mean is in a, in a, like, I know that you're genuinely there for me and the kids constantly.

That is huge, you know, I've got you're pregnant with number five in terms of kids. I've been genetically successful. I Financially I've done okay Like even if we don't have jobs right now and our money is slowly disappearing and we need to figure out what we're gonna do Next hopefully the game does well In the school monetize it which we're working on.

But We'll, we'll get there. Hopefully. Right. I'm not like hurting financially. So like how, what could I want that I don't have right now? A second wife. I'd be happier. What more kids you're doing one a year. What like, what, what genuinely could I want that I don't have a position in the administration?

Maybe I'd be better off, but I do love what I'm doing here.

And it just became public. I couldn't tell you guys this before, but my brother has a position at doge. , and so the [00:32:00] family's already working on the important stuff.

I'd also note here that the audience would probably be surprised the number of connections or things that I am tied to that I cannot tell you about, because people are like, wait until the press finds out, then you can talk about it. , and , for a lot of this stuff, we've just done a good job of keeping the press from ever finding out, but my brother working at Doge, that was something that obviously, eventually, somebody was gonna piece together.

More followers. Yeah. I'd love more followers. Yeah. I'd love more watchers. Yeah. The show is small right now, but it. On average is getting bigger over time. It has dropped significantly since the last election cycle, but I have faith that we're producing good content that helps people.

Simone Collins: So really happy that you, you are satisfied nine here. That makes me. Incredibly happy. I just want to be happy.

Malcolm Collins: Happiness. Okay. You tank literally all the emails I don't like that cause emotional pain, all of the life work taxes, everything like that, that cause emotional pain. I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want, basically every [00:33:00] day.

I spend most of it on intellectual labor, i. e. writing things, religious study, not like playing video games, although I get like. Two hours to do that every day as well or play like chat bots. I get to Yeah, so with all of that, And I get a gourmet meal every day, which you started doing like Two months ago or something like learning how to make and it's better than any restaurant I've ever been to because of my mom, you know I've been to all the best restaurants all the best restaurants in like manhattan all the best like, you know Like best best like i'm talking like Like actual best like thousand dollar entree type restaurants.

Not, not that they actually are like back, back when we went in the best restaurants in New York, we're typically around like 300, 400 for, for like a meal. What's

Simone Collins: disturbing to me though, is I anchored to entree prices. Like that was the most restaurant going I ever did when there was like a

Malcolm Collins: thousand dollars.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But yeah, like, but basically when now, when we go to like a Chipotle, the price there is the price of an entree, like La Gran Wee. In Manhattan.

Malcolm Collins: So anyway I have had [00:34:00] what is supposed to be, you know, I've gone to Michelin star restaurants. Your food is better. Oh. Dramatically better. Thank you. It means a lot to me.

you are making it for me and you have to your tastes. Exactly. Yeah. Most

Simone Collins: people wouldn't like it, but it's customized for your tastes. I disagree. Your

Malcolm Collins: steak is some of the best steak I Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I've, I've, I've figured out steak. But anyway, enough me gushing over my wife. This is what we mean like Exactly!

Simone Collins: Positive compliments. You are so I'm probably like 9.

Malcolm Collins: 9 on hedonism

Simone Collins: as well. What makes me sad though is someone said that the the concept of love language is basically completely invalidated. That basically all people of all love languages. But one, I very much disagree because Some link love languages are like actively assault.

No, I

Malcolm Collins: really if you, if you did what I did, which was just give me like gratitude all the time, but didn't like handle my meals and handle the kids and handle the things that caused me pain. I would, I would be, this is nothing to me.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Service is my love language and [00:35:00] language is your love language.

And other people like touches it. If someone use touches their love language on me, I'd be like, you are assaulting me. You need to leave. Like I need to. Be very far away

from you. Do not.

I can't even touch her when she eats. She has to remind me. Like I can't be touched when I'm eating. It's too much. It's, it's a sensory overload thing.

I can't, I can only take like, I can't even eat at family meals anymore because there's. With all the kids, there's too much noise, and so I can't eat food because it's too many, too many things going in.

Malcolm Collins: You are amazing. Hold on. Hold on. Almost done. Almost done. Almost done. Let's go. Let's

Simone Collins: go. I'm sorry.

Malcolm Collins: We've got the Global Flourishing Study.

. People who consider religion important in their daily life scored 0. 23 points higher on flourishing. Those attending religious services weekly scored 0. 41 points higher. Recent U. S. surveys 2018 and 2022, nearly one in three frequent religious service attenders reported being very happy compared to one in five non attenders.

That's huge. [00:36:00] One in three for religious attenders, one in five for, 15 percent of frequent attenders reported being not too happy compared to 23 percent of non attenders. These studies consistently show that religious individuals,

Especially those actively practicing their faith reported higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction compared to non religious or less religious individuals. The differences range from about 0. 2 to 0. 5 points on various scales, with some variation across religious groups and cultural contexts.

BAM!

Simone Collins: There you go. Religion, good. Kids, good. This is why you should lean into technocurriculism in

Malcolm Collins: the next tract. Oh my God, it's going to, for those of you who doubt, for those of you who are like, Oh, why would you go with the Christian tree rather than the Jewish tree of the Judeo Christian branch? It's going to answer those questions.

And I think, Yeah, actually

Simone Collins: quite thoroughly. I'm, I'm not, Yeah. Like I did an episode on

Malcolm Collins: it and it ended up lasting the full recording for two episodes that we had planned on doing. And it was only half the track and she got so mad at me. She's like, welcome. We need to do a [00:37:00] backlog.

Simone Collins: Like, and then I went to bed an hour late that day because everything moved everything back.

It's just like. I'm really tired. I'm so exhausted. It's the first trimester. It's like, this is the hardest period to get through energy wise. And I'm just like, I do not.

Malcolm, I didn't have the spoons for it. Oh, you're spooning! You're spooning! I spent all of my spoons! You

Malcolm Collins: used them all on religion! But it was like way better thought through than I bet you thought and the evidence aligned way more behind the scenes

Simone Collins: when Malcolm Develops religious doctrine one.

He uses Claude to like question him and do all these things, but then he uses the Google podcast creator To have the podcasters comment on his writings so that he can get sort of additional perspectives or thoughts on it or hear it in a different remix so that he then comes up with new ideas and new arguments and keeps going and like it goes

Malcolm Collins: on forever.

No, because I constantly like, take whatever I've written. I put it into the [00:38:00] cloud and I'm like, give me the best Jewish arguments against this. Give me the best like Orthodox Christian arguments against this. Give me the best, you know, so you can just keep going, keep going and then be like, okay, here's the counters.

And I, and I keep doing that until it can't come up with counters anymore.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Sorry, I should clarify here. Can't give me coherent or compelling counters. Obviously, an AI will always give something.

Malcolm Collins: Which is maybe a little obsessive, but look, if I'm challenging like a major theological doctrine, I need to

Simone Collins: Be careful. Be thorough. I get it. God. Okay, back on topic. What is the, what is the sort of takeaway here that you want people to have?

Everyone should follow my religion. No. Join Technopuritanism. Technopuritan. com I'm joking. I'm joking. If you go

Malcolm Collins: to Technopuritan. com, you know. Technopuritan. com Approved by the NRS. As a real religion. What I like about it is that it doesn't like bring in new ideas. It goes back to the original text and tries to follow what it actually says.

And shows that what it actually was a materialist monist religion, which most [00:39:00] people would call an atheistic religion or a secular religion, which is really fascinating to me. I didn't expect it would align with that and that seems insanely supernatural to me that it would. But anyway, so we go back to that stuff.

If you are you know, but if, if, if not stick with your existing religion, you know, go to your faith. Unless it's orthodox, like maybe you guys need to like look into that. Like, yeah, if you're, if you're

Simone Collins: sad and you also happen to be orthodox, Christian, maybe try something different.

Malcolm Collins: So there's, there's that little one is that the orthodox is like, something's going on there.

I might want to dig into like, why are orthodox? I, we should have an orthodox like expert. I was talking to one recently who's a fan of the show to be like, why are you people so unhappy? You people. You people. No, actually, another interesting thing about Orthodox, and maybe this aligns with why they're so unhappy, is if you look at fans of our shows, so we, we, we, we have a lot of overlap with other religious shows like Paul Vanderclay and stuff like that or Meaning Crisis stuff.

He always [00:40:00] talks about the ortho bros, which is like apparently a big part of his audience is, is Orthodox individuals. True. True. We, other than this one fan I met at like a religious event who's an Orthodox, like, clergy member Like, like, apparently high clergy member, because he's got like a gold cross, which is apparently a big thing in Orthodoxy.

You

Simone Collins: start with like a normal

Malcolm Collins: cross, and when you get bigger, you get a gold cross. But we've never had an Orthodox fan reach out once. We the biggest fan base we have and people are like, who's your biggest like fan base in terms of like any individual fan base? I say over 50 percent of the fans we communicate with are Haredi Jews.

Like you'd agree with that. Over 50 percent of the fans we communicate with are Haredi Jews. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: feel like and that's an indication that this is the population that is most engaged with religious. Doctrine, but not only internal in terms of like cross disciplinary attempt to truly get deep on religion

Malcolm Collins: and we are an actively and I, we are an actively if there was a word for like being racist against [00:41:00] Catholics, we are like an actively anti Catholic show, but I think Catholics don't really pick up on it because

Simone Collins: Catholics are just dealing with all their own Catholic stuff.

Malcolm Collins: They don't give a f**k. They don't look

Simone Collins: to others opinions. They don't care.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter. They don't care

Simone Collins: at all.

Malcolm Collins: So we have a like, we have a bigger Catholic audience than Protestant audience. Yeah,

Simone Collins: you mean Orthodox Jewish audience? No, no, we have

Malcolm Collins: the biggest percentage of our audience is Orthodox Jew.

Then we have a huge chunk that's Catholic, very big chunk that's Catholic. Then we have a probably equal chunk to the Catholics of Mormons. And then we have a decent chunk of Protestants. And then we have a lot of like atheist type people that are like looking for religion again, but no Orthodox.

It's very interesting. And so it might be whatever makes our show different than Paul Vander Klee show is what makes Orthodox people less happy. I don't know. I'm going to just assume it's genetic and nothing else.

Simone Collins: I think that if I had to guess Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that would be it. Mean, also they have terrible [00:42:00] fertility rates.

One person said it was just because of like, mutations caused by the Chernobyl disaster, which could be, I mean, it did really hit the orthodox parts of the map more than other parts.

Simone Collins: Really? And the, the radius was

Malcolm Collins: that high? No, the radius was enormous.

Okay.

It covered like a huge area like the, the big clouds from it that caused permanent genetic effects.

Oh. I'd say like maybe like 50 percent of the world's orthodox population.

Simone Collins: I consume so much pro nuclear propaganda that Like, my impression was like, Oh, Chernobyl wasn't that big of a deal. Chernobyl wasn't

Malcolm Collins: that big of a deal.

Simone Collins: It actually was, okay. I need to broaden my my perspective a little.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, well, well, I love to see the happiness ratings of average members of our show.

You guys can sound off in the comments. Life satisfaction, daily happiness. But again, like, my daily happiness and life satisfaction, if it's hurt, the reason it's not 10, the reason it's 9. 9, is because it's so high that I'm convinced I must be in a simulation.[00:43:00]

Anyway, dinner tonight, we're doing hash browns. You, you learn how to make hash browns. Yeah, I need to, I need

Simone Collins: to start the, the scratch hash browns. So I'm going to run and boil

Malcolm Collins: down the I think the main reason why day two curry is so much better than day one is because it's been

Simone Collins: simmered down. So I'm going to simmer it down for a long time.

And

Malcolm Collins: have you been using coconut milk in the curry?

Simone Collins: No, no, I'm not adding coconut

Malcolm Collins: milk

Simone Collins: to it. That just waters it down more. If you want a coconut curry, we can do a Thai coconut curry, but then we do a Thai coconut curry. Next curry will be coconut curry. Good. All right. I love you

Malcolm Collins: so much.

Here, I'll just plug it in.

Simone Collins: Well, you still have, in the Faraday box, I made for you a giant

charger thing.

I, I,

Malcolm Collins: so Simone has giant batteries throughout our houses in Faraday cages.

Simone Collins: You know, just in case. It's, it would, it would be so annoying if you have all these backup batteries, you know, that can power appliances like refrigerators and other things. And then, and then the solar flares hit, [00:44:00] and they don't work!

Malcolm Collins: You'd be so mad! You built your own Faraday cage, I love that as well. With tinfoil, like a crazy person.

Simone Collins: And tinfoil tape, which I didn't know was a thing. They're incredibly expensive to buy. Can you explain to our audience how to make a Faraday cage? Like a, the more you know. The more you know. Yeah. You take a cardboard box that is good and thick and sturdy and it will fit whatever it is, the battery or electronics that you're trying to protect.

And then you put the objects inside or whatever. I'm actually, sorry, before you put the objects inside, just make the freaking box. So you take a heavy duty tin foil and you tape it onto the box using foil tape so that there's also foil at all the seams. And I do multiple layers just in case there's any part that might be.

Permeable. And then you if I'm, since I'm using cardboard boxes that like just open and close and I'm not sealing them, I make sure that [00:45:00] they fully seal by putting like an additional layer of cardboard that's fully lined in between the top flaps. And then I put something heavy on top to hold it closed.

You'll know that the Faraday cage is properly working most likely if you put your cell phone inside and then try to call it from another phone and it doesn't have reception. So that's kind of your, did you test the boxes? So that, that is your method for verifying whether they work. And. It is important for solar flares to not only protect some backup devices like old laptops or something that you might want to be able to use that are, you know, of course, flash drives, important things like that.

But also some wires because solar flares can fry wires in addition to electronics, like charging cords and stuff like that. Two other

Malcolm Collins: things we should probably get handled have a backup of Wikipedia somewhere. Oh, one of our friends does. Yeah, but we, we should as well. And we should have some boxes of ammunition for all of our guns in the attic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we should need to buy more

Malcolm Collins: just for [00:46:00] apocalyptic scenarios. We need to, you know, shoot off the

Simone Collins: well, once I, you know, reach that level of that stage of pregnancy where I start nesting, it's always, I, you

Malcolm Collins: always do. She always starts getting guns when there's this stage of the pregnancy that I don't know what to call it, but it's like the gun crazy stage.

It's the zombie

Simone Collins: prep period,

Malcolm Collins: more defenses.

Simone Collins: Well, isn't it great that our oldest son Octavian is already in that mode where he wants to like fortify the house and, and prep for zombies and vampires and Krampus.

Malcolm Collins: He knows what's up. He knows what's up. Okay.

NatalCon is coming up in Austin in late March. Very little time left to get your tickets. If you want that, you can use the word Collins to get a discount. Again, we don't run this. We don't choose the prices, but from what I know now, they're still in the red. So if you want to complain about high prices, well, , the guy who's doing it is putting up the money to do it right now.

, so that's, that's why the prices are high, because it costs a lot to put something like this on.

It also means that this might be the last year, at least for a while, until the movement gets , bigger, that we end up doing this conference.