Religion As It Relates to Genetics

Malcolm explains his concept of "evolutionary vortexes" - how cultures create bottlenecks selecting for certain sociological profiles over generations. He analyzes examples like Calvinists' happiness, Jewish mysticism, and Catholic anti-nepotism norms. Simone questions why this isn't more obvious. They discuss how technology will let intentional cultural selection rapidly shape future minds.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] So a great example of this that I'd always say, is when I talk to people and I'm like, yeah, you know, what do you think of Cubans? You talk to a Florida, you're like, what do you think of Cuban? They go, yeah, Cubans. There's the typical Cuban sociological profile.

Malcolm: They're very conservative. They're really good at business. They're really educated. And it's that's not the profile of Cubans more broadly. That's the profile of the Cubans that were differentially sorted into trying to escape a communist dictatorship and move to the United States You know, to an extent within any immigrant population depending on how the, the sorting worked, you're often going to get a very specific sociological profile that may not be the dominant sociological profile of the mainland population.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: So Malcolm, you know, how. Someone in our family once called me a vortex of failure.

Malcolm: Yes, somebody did! They're like, Simone is a vortex of failure, Malcolm, and she is pulling you down. [00:01:00] Well,

Simone: there are other types of vortexes that I think you find very interesting, and I have failed to understand why they're so interesting.

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

Malcolm: Yes, well, so this is a very interesting thing for us. So a lot of people know that we don't believe that there are persistent, meaningful genetic differences between things that we, in our society, view as things like ethnic groups and stuff like that.

Malcolm: And a lot of people view

Simone: that The concept of racism or race supremacy as being, like, pretty frickin dumb, because, like I don't know given

Malcolm: the evolutionary... Why is it dumb? It's dumb because small groups, family groups, religious groups local environmental groups, it's not because we don't believe that genetic differences don't exist between populations.

Malcolm: We just believe that they change way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way faster than this, like... You know, 100, 000 year difference that defines ethnic groups. Exactly. [00:02:00] So a great example of this is like San Francisco, right? When you look at San Francisco, you had this environment where during the gold rush, you basically had a siren call to people from a diversity of , ethnic and cultural backgrounds that said, anybody who uniquely is drawn to high risk High reward, economic opportunities move to this area.

Malcolm: Okay. That's what the gold rush was. And people would die for these opportunities. I mean, the Donner party, et cetera. Right. And then is it a surprise that, you know, a century later, Silicon Valley starts there, which, which was really driven because the venture capital industry started there where you had.

Malcolm: High risk, high reward opportunities explode as like a way to generate wealth and ruin people all over again. And this is what a vortex does. Because there was the first event that caused a genetic [00:03:00] predilection within that environment, that then made it more likely that the second event would happen, which then further...

Malcolm: condensed that genetic predilection by again, sending out this, this signal all over the world for people like that. Right. Yeah. To the extent where you see things like really high rates of things like, because then what was the other thing that was really being selected for by that cultural vortex, it was.

Malcolm: High knowledge of like engineering and math. And this is why you had such high rates of autism in Silicon Valley, some of the highest rates in the world. And that is wild, but you also see this on a cultural level.

Malcolm: So our cultures essentially co evolve. with us. And they alter our brains so that if you think of humans as like the biological firmware and cultures as this set of software that's co evolving on top of them, they co evolve together synergistically. So an example of this could be our we have a secular friend who's from the Quaker [00:04:00] tradition.

Malcolm: And she feels like she regularly hears voices talking to her to an extent, right? Saying, okay, well, she,

Simone: she essentially like she talks with God. Like she, she searches for the truth from within. Right.

Malcolm: She talks, well, she's talking was so, so auditory hallucinations are actually much more common than people think about a quarter of the population experiences and at some point in their lives.

Malcolm: But Quaker culture would massively reward an individual for having auditory hallucinations. Whereas other cultural groups like the Calvinist cultural group, which lived alongside them geographically massively would punish auditory hallucinations. So. So everyone from the Calvinist cultural group who experienced them would have gone to the Quaker cultural group and people in the Quaker cultural group who didn't experience them might think God wasn't talking to them or like they didn't get why people were doing this in their cultural group and they would leave at a higher rate.

Malcolm: And so you're going to end up with more auditory hallucinations within people who come from this Quaker cultural group. Now this gets really interesting. Interesting. Because what it [00:05:00] means is that not all software packages, not all cultures are going to fit well. on all individuals, all biologies.

Malcolm: So one of the places where I've heard this, where it was really most meaningful to me is you know, I was talking with somebody who was like involved, I think it was like the JN community in the San Francisco area. And they were talking about. How high the, the suicide rate was among people of a broadly European ethnic background who converted to Jainism.

Malcolm: Yeah. And I, and I suspect you'd likely see this more broadly. If you look at. Europeans who convert to not like the fake American form of Buddhism, but like real Buddhism I'd imagine you're going to see a pretty high suicide rate. And I, this makes a lot of sense to me. If a cultural group has co evolved with a cultural software, For thousands of years, you can't just plug it on top of another cultural [00:06:00] group and expect them to work together really well.

Malcolm: And this is why when we say our goal is genuinely people are like, are you trying to recruit people into your weird secular Calvinist thing? I'm like, no, I do not think most people would really thrive in an environment where it is constantly reinforced how sinful Happiness, music, fun, is, right?

Malcolm: And again, this is something that people don't get, so people can say oh, then why do you do things that are sinful? Why do you do things like, you know, drink alcohol, for example, right? There's no efficaciousness behind that. And, and the, the, the Calvinism as a, as a cultural understanding is, is mankind is wretched.

Malcolm: You know, we are, completely morally destitute. And it's through recognizing that destitution, we can begin to try to improve ourselves. And so it is very important to [00:07:00] be able to say, yes, I will still sin because I am man. I am like, my soul is a maggot covered loaf of barely edible, , sailor bread.

Malcolm: But at the very least, what I shouldn't do is try to glorify my sin, try to act like my engagement with self masturbatory behaviors, whether it is exercise for the point of physical vanity, or music, or drinking, or anything pretend that that is a positive trait instead of what it is, a moral failing.

Malcolm: Now this cultural group Is something that most people, I, I just don't think would like really mentally thrive in engaging with, whereas you and me, we really mentally thrive when engaging with this cultural group. And this is also why I'm broadly against people who preach like stoicism more broadly. I do not think stoicism works for the [00:08:00] average person.

Malcolm: And I think that pretend cause causes. Spiral and become, you know, drug addict and barely function. Right? Like it's, it's not a good thing. And, and that it's more important to look to your ancestral, the way that your, your ancestral traditions work and try to reform them for a modern environment to be strong for a modern environment without, going into these, , cool sounding like manly sounding movements, right? Well,

Simone: because again, you're, you're like evolved mental landscape probably isn't designed to thrive with non native. mindscapes.

Malcolm: Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's why in the, the pronatalist movement, we are not about trying to convert people to our way of thinking.

Malcolm: Cause I don't think our way of thinking is compatible with most human biologies. But this leads to another really interesting thing, which is when a cultural software group is really, really, really, really, really, really [00:09:00] good against defending against a specific type of mindset or sociological profile.

Malcolm: It can lead to that sociological profile existing within populations under that cultural group at much higher rates than they do in other populations. So, let me explain this in different words. If a culture is really good against defending against a specific type of thing or preventing that thing for leading the individual to spiral out of control or not breed for some reason, you will see that thing at higher rates within that cultural group.

Malcolm: So if you're talking about Calvinists, traditionally, one thing that's always known about Calvinists is they're like unusually happy. They have like Really high happiness at points and unusually energetic to the extent where like some of the quotes and if you look at I'll be in seed, you know, that the Calvinists invented the rocking chair just so [00:10:00] that they would never have to stop moving or that people would mark when they go to these territories that people would run everywhere they were going.

Malcolm: And this is something I actually did in high school. I remember wondering why anyone ever walked when they were alone. When you could always run up to a place and get it done faster and more efficiently and a normal cultural group is actually likely going to select against. like this level of happiness because people who like are overly happy may just be content with their lives or may not breed or may spiral out of control in some way.

Malcolm: This is also probably why Calvinist groups drink as much as they do. So that's another thing. One of the, so where I'm from in Texas, there's a saying. Which is that what is it? Jews deny the divinity of Jesus. Protestants deny the Pope and Baptists deny knowing each other at the liquor store.

Malcolm: And when they say Baptist here, they're talking about primitive Baptist, which is the type of Baptist, which is most common where I'm from, which is [00:11:00] a Calvinist group. And it's because they had this cultural software that was like. Good at preventing people from drinking to an extent but, but when people began to, like, when it began to soften, when the rule stopped people who had this intrinsic drive to drink at this high a level in most other cultural groups were just removed from the gene pool because they drank themselves to death.

Malcolm: Whereas in this cultural group, there was enough of a protected pressure on that that didn't happen. And so you get really high rates of alcoholism was in Calvinist populations, and you also get stupidly high rates of happiness. You also get stupid. So the things that a culture tells you not to do, you will begin to see as a vice was in that culture as the cultural waterline receives.

Malcolm: So let's talk about a few of these because they're really interesting to me. Okay, so, probably the, the, the biggest one that we've mentioned before, but I just can't mention enough because it's so glaringly obvious to anyone who could see it, is Catholicism as a cultural group [00:12:00] is really, really good at guarding against familial nepotism.

Malcolm: By that what I mean is because the Catholic group is one, a hierarchical cultural group, you know, I, you have this priest caste, right? Which, which is this almost like governing body. And because priests aren't allowed to have wives what that did is it created a, You can say like an ethically sourced eunuch, we often call them, right?

Malcolm: And we do mention in a lot of videos that actually this is why, this is how the Catholic cultural group handled same sex attraction. And, and why it's so common, and you can look up the Wikipedia article on this, there's a lot of studies on this, why a lot of people in the Catholic clergy are actually just same sex people.

Malcolm: Attractive people who were born in the Catholic culture and it sourced them into these positions of power. But also you get heterosexual people who don't choose to have a partner and end up within this hierarchy. Well, within both of those groups, you're creating an environment in which these people don't have kids.

Malcolm: So you don't have intergenerational nepotism, [00:13:00] right? Right. And historically was in many of these. These Catholic cultural groups, a lot of stuff was run by the church, so they never really needed to guard against what is called amoral familial nepotism. Now if you look today around the world, pretty much everywhere in the world where a Catholic group is dominant, you know, whether you're talking about Italy or most countries in South America or, you know, et cetera you have extremely high rates of amoral familial nepotism.

Malcolm: And by that, what I mean is individuals promoting members of their own family over more competent individuals who aren't in their family. And so, if you're not from a group who understands amoral familial nepotism, that can seem really unethical to you to promote your brother just because they're your brother instead of because they're competent, whereas to a cultural group that doesn't have protections against amoral familial nepotism, cultural protections they're [00:14:00] going to be, like, it would almost be immoral to not promote your brother.

Malcolm: Because like he's family, of course, you're going to promote, of course, you're going to hire family first, of course, you're going to promote family first. What are you thinking? And, and this is something that their, their culture had gotten so good at protecting against that the secular cultures that sort of evolved underneath it, as well as sociological profiles that evolved underneath it became a really, really susceptible to this.

Malcolm: I think. From the perspective of other cultures, it would be a vice, but from their culture, it's not, you know, in Jewish culture, a great example is it's a soft sophicism or, or sophistry and mysticism. So, we've said that Kabbalism Jewish mysticism is sort of like a fly trap for people with a sociological. profile that is susceptible to mystical thinking or who's really good at mystical thinking. So if you watch our video on how garden gnomes are destroying academia, we [00:15:00] talk about this, how some individuals can have a really, really high level of verbal intelligence, but a really low level of general intelligence or other types of intelligence.

Malcolm: And these individuals can be incredibly dangerous to any group that they're in. Because people will, you know, when somebody is like really good at engineering, but not good at anything else, nobody thinks they're like a good at other things, but if somebody is really good at sophistry, but not good at anything else, it's very easy to misjudge that and believe that they are broadly competent and begin to take advice from them and then begin to fail as a cultural group.

Malcolm: But the Jewish cultural group, it has this really great defense mechanism against these individuals, which is Kabbalah, which is sort of like a fly trap for these people. They get engaged in it, and they go really deep in it, but in a way that can't be that damaging to the broader society or cultural group.

Malcolm: What it means... And if you look at studies on this, this is a great thing. We might do a video on [00:16:00] this because we write a lot on it in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion. Is this belief that Jewish groups are like much higher IQ than other groups? But that's actually not true if you look at any of the research.

Malcolm: They just have much higher verbal intelligence than other groups. And, and that's why you have this whereas other groups would select against that. So you always have some sort of parody of verbal intelligence and other types of intelligences. Hmm.

Simone: So my question to you is, I mean, you're able to look at how a culture essentially creates a certain type of person.

Simone: What could people who are crafting culture, what could cultural entrepreneurs be working into their cultures, their cultural technologies and amenities that would create people who have, I guess, specific advantages and more what we're interested in, right, which is, is, is building the future, you know, being the people to build the infrastructure, the technology and the governing societies of the future.[00:17:00]

Malcolm: Yeah, so there's two broad answers to this question, right? One is, let's assume genetic technologies didn't exist. And the most important takeaway of genetic technologies don't exist is the thing that your culture is best at protecting against is going to be the thing that was in the biology of people under your culture sort of spirals out of control as a predilection.

Malcolm: So, you know, if Calvinist culture is uniquely good at protecting against hedonism, then extremely high rates of happiness are going to appear biologically within that cultural group. So, extremely high energy and giddiness rates, right? And so be aware of that, because sometimes people can be like, this is a problem we want to do a very good job of building a culture that protects against amoral familialism, and then through protecting against that, you end up.

Malcolm: With really high rates of amoral familialism, just I guess naturally form underneath that culture. However, I think that this trend is not relevant into the future. [00:18:00] Okay. And here's what I mean in the future, because we can begin to intentionally through polygenic screening, select individuals for specific sociological profiles, right in traits the cultural groups that engage with this technology I hate to be the one to say it, but they're the only ones who are going to matter in the future, because if you just run the math.

Malcolm: A family or cultural group that engages within this within 75 years, because it looks within 75 years, the general population is probably going to decrease in IQ by about one standard deviation. If you engage with this technology, you're probably going to increase in IQ by 2. 5 standard deviations.

Malcolm: So you're just going to be like astronomically higher IQ and other things that you're

Simone: also like probably healthier and happier. Yeah, also

Malcolm: healthier, lower rates of cancer, lower rates of all sorts of stuff. And then when you begin to get to human CRISPR, you get into a whole other thing where like you can, you can move really quickly.

Malcolm: But then, so within the cultural groups that are making these selections you're just going to see really high rates of things. So like a cultural [00:19:00] group that says, I value happiness, I am going to select for happiness, or I value creativity, I am going to select for creativity, much more so than cultural practices affected the human genome in the past.

Malcolm: Cultural choices and values and the status signals are going to, to impact the human genome. And so cultural groups that really care about things like generic attractiveness, you know, like height and stuff like that. I mean, they might get huge in the near future, right? But they're likely going to be less and less economically relevant.

Simone: Yeah, it's going to be an interesting future then.

Malcolm: Well, I want to know why you thought this wasn't an interesting topic. Because you're like, Malcolm, this seems like a really boring topic. I guess,

Simone: maybe because we talk about it so much to me it's obvious. It's well, duh. If you create through your culture your own set of evolutionary bottlenecks, of course you're going to shape who you create.

Simone: Huh, you know, if we all live in a desert environment, maybe we're going to deal better with heat and you know, hydration and we're going to turn into camels. [00:20:00] I don't know it just seems well, thanks. You know, I'm glad

Malcolm: something you see. So like people who live in really high, like mountain environments.

Malcolm: They become more barrel chested, they develop more

Simone: They, yeah, they tend to be smaller and have larger and larger capacity.

Malcolm: Yeah humans, all

Simone: species respond to evolutionary pressures. Of course, if you create a culture that has

Malcolm: evolutionary pressures, humans will

Simone: respond. It's just okay, well, thank you for letting me know that studies show that when you drop something, it falls to the ground.

Simone: Okay.

Malcolm: No one else is talking about this.

Simone: Yeah, but that's because I think people, and this is, this is something that's interesting, which is that culture is a highly underrated tool. I mean, I would say that China understands this and the fact that it's like trying to, Outlaw certain cultures.

Simone: Like just this morning, I was watching one YouTube commentator discuss how China has tried to outlaw like hyper feminine males, and it's trying to, you know, create this like new standard for masculinity, which is a [00:21:00] more macho kind of male, and also a male who shows a huge amount of devotion to his nation.

Simone: Right? So, so China does understand this.

Malcolm: That's like a virgin man trying to unhook a broad types of cultural engagement.

Simone: Well, so, well, but yeah, China may not be getting it tactically, right. But at least I respect that China is one of the very few nations that appears to understand the importance and impact like Georgia also understands that.

Simone: But I think that's more just a product, product of it being a more religious nation. So I do think that that's important.

Malcolm: Offering to be people's, what, what was it? God, the

Simone: patriarch of the church. Yeah. Authoring to either baptize or become the godfather of anyone who was, yeah.

Malcolm: Yeah. Simone, I guess what I, the reason why I think this is interesting or might be interesting to people is if you look at the two groups in the world today, there's one group, which is like this progressive monoculture, which is like, there is no difference in human populations.

Malcolm: And then there's this [00:22:00] other group, which is like this scientific racism community, which is like all the difference that matters is, is like black versus white versus Native American versus Hispanic. And, and because everyone's so ideological motivated, they can't see the, to me, what, which is the.

Malcolm: Groups that matter are your cultural groups and your recent family decisions. Like families that you know, live in Texas usually regardless of their, their ethnic background, you know, they are people who migrated to the U S once and then felt the need to migrate again, at least once, which is why they're so outgoing and okay let's move, let's do something new.

Malcolm: Let's, you know. They represent a multiple migration mindset, which you may not see in other environments. So, so even little things like that can really impact a person. Yeah,

Simone: I mean, I would also argue even now Texas selects for pretty practical and [00:23:00] resourceful people because people don't usually move to Texas because they're like, oh, yeah this is my easy way out, right?

Simone: They move there because there are job opportunities and because cost of living is low. This is something

Malcolm: we saw in Dallas, right? Versus like Miami or San Francisco. San Francisco, you might move to San Francisco because you wanted to be part of the next big thing, you know, you might move to Miami because it augmented your personal status.

Malcolm: If you moved to Dallas, it was because of job opportunities and cost of living, which is selecting for a very specific sociological profile.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it is interesting. This is interesting insofar as people are not... I'm not really aware of how powerful culture is as a long term mechanism of power and influence.

Simone: However, it's just so freaking obvious that, at least internally, I'm just like,

Malcolm: Do we have to? No, well, so, I mean, I think if genetic technology wasn't beginning to bubble up now, [00:24:00] which it is, which sort of changes everything about how this, this works. If you said no genetic technology at all. You would begin to see really big, much bigger than any potential ethnic differences between population groups differences in people living in different cities in just the next, you know, 100 years or so, because air airplanes make it so easy to relocate that you are getting it around the world today.

Malcolm: And I think this is often having was in countries incredibly powerful, assortative sorting. Of people based on their sociological profiles into specific cities and geographic regions, which I think is why, you know, today, if you look at the progressive regions becoming more progressive and the conservative regions becoming more conservative, you know, there's been great like twin studies on this.

Malcolm: The way you vote is what I think around 80% genetic. No, 60%. It was

Simone: 60%. It's not that high, but it is highly

Malcolm: heritable. Yeah. It is highly. So, so you're beginning to actually get this sort of [00:25:00] concentrated where if you are a conservative leaning person like yourself living in San Francisco, you leave.

Malcolm: And you go move to like rural Pennsylvania, which is where we live now. Right. So, I, I think that you are seeing an incredibly high level of like assortative sorting.

Simone: Yeah. And, and, you know, that's, that's interesting.

Malcolm: It's interesting that in 200 years, you will have like the Detroit or Dallas or Miami or San Francisco, like genetic sociological profile.

Malcolm: And this is something that people, I mean, unless they're just like. Religiously oblivious to it, like the progressives are now, will be really obvious to everyone. Yeah, but

Simone: somewhat depressingly I guess the other reason is, is one, it's super obvious. Two, pretty much no one is acting on it. And three...

Simone: You know, no, no one is going to do anything about it or they'll flub it. Like China's flubbing it or China appears to be flubbing it at least. So you know, if it's that kind of thing will, will it matter? You know, [00:26:00] because no one's going to pull it off. Like

Malcolm: it matters in terms of how you look at it.

Malcolm: So a great example of this that I'd always say, is when I talk to people and I'm like, yeah, you know, what do you think of Cubans? You talk to a Florida, you're like, what do you think of Cuban? They go, yeah, Cubans. They're all, you know, they, there's the typical Cuban sociological profile.

Malcolm: They're very conservative. They're really good at business. They're really educated. And it's that's not the profile of Cubans more broadly. That's the profile of the Cubans that were differentially sorted into trying to escape a communist dictatorship and move to the United States. And to some extent, this is what you see with the Taiwanese sesquiculture.

Malcolm: Like why is Taiwan able to have all these advanced semiconductor plants that nowhere else in the world seems to be able to run at a large scale? Taiwan is like China's Cuba. There was a period where It's a little different because it was actually founded by a dictatorial regime, but that dictatorial regime, when they were fleeing the Chinese mainland, they did something really [00:27:00] weirdly foresightful, which is they tried to take all of the high trained, like high intelligence people with them in as part of their exodus.

Malcolm: So it's, it's, it's

Simone: like. Well, Cuban immigrants then, you know, but not, not. Yes, it's like

Malcolm: Cuban immigrants. Like Taiwan is Cuban Floridians are to Cuban people as Taiwanese are to Chinese people. Yeah. Yeah. But it is, it is really, or what's also interesting is American Chinese immigrants are to Chinese people.

Malcolm: You know, to an extent within any immigrant population depending on how the, the sorting worked, you're often going to get a very specific sociological profile that may not be the dominant sociological profile of the mainland population.

Simone: Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe this video will make a difference.

Simone: Maybe this video will make people actually do something with cultural technology, I think more intentionally. [00:28:00] Humans are not great at like thinking in terms of generations. It's more like right now. What do I get? But we'll see, Malcolm. Let's see if this vortex of failure continues to fail.

Malcolm: I, you are not a vortex.

Malcolm: You are a vortex of success pulling me to higher highs.

Simone: Well, now let's look more meta. I think that, that success.

Simone: And the only way you will ever achieve success is by marrying a vortex of failures who builds that mountain. Because that's what we're studying. Yes.

Malcolm: You make life so hard for

Simone: me. Yeah. So the secret was they were right, but that's what we're doing.

Malcolm: Here's one question before we leave. Are there any cultural groups that I missed that you feel have had a big impact on individuals living under them?

Simone: I mean, yeah, like every culture has had a big impact on individuals living under them. And I think what's interesting, what you haven't discussed a lot, but this is really more for another conversation is how. Emergent properties or changing environments or [00:29:00] technologies have caused these to crash and burn sometimes and not like the cultural evolutionary pressures that may exist in one, one time series, one climate, one technological environment will totally fail in another.

Simone: And so I think a lot of good cultural entrepreneurship and crafting has to involve anticipate anticipation of what we're going to be facing in the future.

Malcolm: So for example, what she's talking about here are Mormons. Mormons used to be a really successful cultural group and now their fertility rates just absolutely, they're below replacement rate and I think well below replacement rate at this point.

Malcolm: So they fared very poorly in the age of

Simone: Yeah. And so I think anyone doing good culture crafting now has to think a lot about the effect of AI on economies, on people, on mental health, and if you're not factoring that in, it really doesn't matter what pressures you create, because if they don't factor that in, they're not factoring in what reality is going to be.

Simone: But anyway, this is fun. I admire your

Malcolm: perspective, Simone, and [00:30:00] I'm so glad to have married a, gender bent version of myself. And this is something that people often miss about us. They're like, you guys seem to think exactly the same and you look exactly the same. And, and it's just almost like a racist thing to say.

Malcolm: It's like they're seeing somebody of a rarer cultural group that they haven't seen much. I don't know, for the first time, they're meeting two like really Jewish people. And they're like, you guys look like weirdly similar. Are you brother and sister? Yeah. Are you brother and sister? It's no, we're just from the same ethno cultural group.

Malcolm: Not a common one these days. Anyway, I love you, Simone.

Simone: I love you too, Malcolm.

Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe