New Data: The Genetic Effects of Conservatism & Religion

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into robust, replicated studies on fertility, intelligence, politics, and religion. They explore why progressive (”dysgenic”) fertility patterns are clearing out high-IQ individuals faster than conservative ones, while certain religious groups — especially Latter-day Saints (Mormons) — show neutral or even eugenic selection for intelligence.

Key topics include:

- The landmark study “Will Intelligent Latter-Day Saints and Smart Conservatives Inherit the Earth?”

- New 2024 findings from the Vietnam Experience Study on how conservative religiousness reverses the typical negative intelligence-fertility link

- Why “moderately” religious people often have the highest fertility (not the fanatical ones)

- Cultural and structural reasons behind Mormon success in building high-trust, low-corruption institutions

- The Quaker origins of modern “woke” culture

- Enlightenment ideals vs. 1960s–1970s cultural shifts

- Implications for civilization, space colonization, and the future of humanity

They also discuss Techno-Puritanism, corruption in religious institutions, and why fanatical, high-agency groups are best suited for building utopias (including on Mars).

If you’re interested in pronatalism, dysgenics, cultural evolution, or long-term civilizational strategy, this episode is packed with data, graphs, and unfiltered analysis.

Watch the full conversation and let us know in the comments: Which religious or cultural group do you think has the strongest eugenic fertility patterns today?

Studies referenced:

- Kirkegaard & Dutton (2022) on LDS and conservatives

- Dutton (2024) on conservative religiousness and intelligence selection (Vietnam Experience Study)

Subscribe for more Based Camp episodes on the future of humanity, fertility, and culture.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about a number of studies that were reconfirmed recently. Mm-hmm. So this is the, the third time that these studies have been tested and reconfirmed. So this is a, a very robust finding at this point.

And I wanna talk about them and talk about the, the implications of this for civilization. It is strategies, culture, and how society’s going to change in the future. So, a study that a lot of people are aware of is the study titled will Intelligent Latter-Day Saints and Smart Conservatives Inherit the Earth?

And what this study looked at, ‘cause a lot of people were familiar that it looked at Latter Day Saints versus Non Latter Day Saints. And when I heard the results of this study initially. Some people misframed it as saying Latter day Saints are one of the few religions that has eugenic effects. Like the, the culture of the latter day [00:01:00] saints has eugenic effects on the people who follow that religion.

This is not actually what it showed it just, just looked at latter day Saints versus non latter day saints. And now newer studies have looked at other religious groups and they have a similar effect. Mm-hmm. Well, at least Christian groups. More that a second. And, and there’s been some people who said that this effect has died down in Latterday Saints.

I, we actually had a fan who did a really cool thing. He, he went through Utah and then went by region to find the of effects of earning and IQ by looking at it regionally. And the amount that the region was. Sort of fanatically latter day saint. And, and this guy can pin his results if he wants to.

In, in the, in the comments. He did this sort of recreationally himself. And he found something very interesting which we’ll also talk about in this because I think it adds to this a lot which is in his findings at least, was in the latter day [00:02:00] Saints, the very, very, very most religious individuals actually began to have lower fertility rates.

Now they, they weren’t below the non-religious individuals, but the highest fertility rates are in the. Kind of religious individuals, like the, the, yeah, I’m, I’m really into that, but not super into that. Mm-hmm. And, and it’s interesting I point this out because at least anecdotally, this is what I see in other cultures.

This is what I see with like the Catholics, for example. Of the Catholics I know who are like super high fertility. And I’ve pointed this out before. It’s not the fanatical ones. It’s the ones who are enjoyably culturally Catholic. Like they really have fun being culturally Catholic, but they don’t really mm-hmm.

Care about the theology stuff that much. Let’s see, let’s get into the data here and then we can go into what might be causing that phenomenon. I mean, I think that phenomenon is kind of obvious. If you’ve seen the two groups, I don’t know how much I need to go into it. But well, [00:03:00] within Catholicism you’re gonna be like, well, obviously, you know, the most Catholic people are gonna be nuns or priests, so they’re not gonna have any kids at all.

But the fact that you don’t see that in the letter they saints and, and they also have a fewer number of kids. I think it’s because they are just. Not particularly like the more you get heady about religion, the less you care about the concerns of this earth and the less interested you are in playing out those roles.

You’re more interested in, i, I mean, I think that the Opus Day are a perfect example of this. Like they should be one of the, the coolest and most based groups of Catholics, and yet 30% of them are, are celibate. Like just to be celibate, right? Well,

Simone Collins: you can be based and celibate, but yeah, I mean, it’s

Malcolm Collins: Or the, the, I mean with the Mormons like the most religious of them might have trouble operating in society.

They may be too basically nerdy to date. Or find partners fast enough, and they may not even care that they’re not finding a partner because they have so much belief in sort of the, [00:04:00] the theological backdrop is going to protect them.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But let’s continue with this study, because this study didn’t plot the graphs like that.

It was just plotting like straight lines, like, does this matter or not? So, the first study, the, the one that most people are aware of, it looked at expected fertility rate versus intelligence and then divided people into extremely liberal, centrist and extremely conservative.

And what we can see very, very interestingly, is that when they are very unintelligent being progressive actually leads you to have a higher fertility rate than being conservative.

Simone Collins: Aha. Why would that be

Malcolm Collins: Dumb? Conservatives have fewer kids than dumb progressives.

Simone Collins: Why? Why? Why? Why? I guess maybe to successfully marry, also conservative, you have to be [00:05:00] smarter.

And then if you’re progressive though, you’re not getting married to have, like before having kids, you’re just having kids kind of by mistake. Yeah. Okay. So if you’re conservative, if you’re having kids. Presumably it’s because you’re getting married it that requires that you are attractive enough to get married.

You’re ambitious enough to get married. You have enough conscientiousness to do it. Then you’re having kids.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, actually, that’s a good point. Especially for conservative men. Yeah. Because conservatives have children in wedlock. Mm-hmm. What that means is that if a man doesn’t have money, he can’t find a partner and he can’t get married.

Mm-hmm. And therefore he doesn’t have kids, which is a much healthier way for society to act than just do whatever you want. Yeah. Which unfortunately, I mean, I really, it is so wild to me that and I, I think that. What, what’s his name? Ho Math has a very interesting episode where he goes into this

Simone Collins: Oh

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Where he talks about how. Basically, [00:06:00] Western civilization reached a place on like the, the hierarchy of like their own thoughts and, and the way that they were structuring society where they actually thought like you could just be like, yeah, do whatever you want. Like of course that’s gonna work. Rules are all basically bad because everybody I know if they didn’t have rules, it’s like when, when we as a society like.

First had this idea, most of the places of power where it was being spewed from, and even, even still that that spew it to some extent. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Like, of course we can just have people do whatever they want and that will have no negative repercussions. Mm-hmm.

Right. Everybody I know if you just said do whatever you want, they wouldn’t, you know, go out and slut it up. You know, they wouldn’t go [00:07:00] murder people or rob stores or grape children. And I think what we’re seeing in our society now is like. Okay. We unfortunately, and what he pointed out there is it’s sort of ironic that it was a very level of civilizational development that we had reached that allowed us to even conceive of such a stupid idea.

That caused the civilization to collapse. And he argued within that video, I think very interestingly that, you know, this has happened multiple times. He’s like, this is basically what happened with Islam. If you watch our video on how Islam went from one of the strictest moral cultures to one of the most debauched moral cultures you, you could argue.

I mean, maybe this was part of that. Right. They basically hit a point where it was such a de botch society. And like in that video we go over a number of examples of this. I think people today sort of forget that Islam was ever seen as the Java, the Hut society [00:08:00] the endless harems and parties and drinking and everything like that.

That it basically just collapsed out of any form of efficiency.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I’d also note here that a lot of people misattribute all of this, like many of the, the, the falling apart of civilization to the ideals of the enlightenment. And not to the ideals of. The 1970s and or even let’s say the 1920s to 1970s is really where things begin to, to break apart.

And when people began to say, oh, you could do whatever you want, whatever you want, in the ideals of the enlightenment. For those who like haven’t studied this cultural period the idea that you would give people something for like not hard work was a complete anathema. Their [00:09:00] utopias were very like.

Many people throughout the enlightenment tried to create utopias. But you today, these utopias would not be recognizable to any modern progressive. They’d be like, I’m gonna create a factory city where, you know, every day people will spend this amount of time praying and this amount of time studying science.

And no one will be allowed to drink or sing. And you know, we’re, we’re going to have, no sex before marriage and everyone will live in strict communal housing, you know, the strictly gendered communal housing and everything like that. It was a societal view of order, right, of we can build society like that.

That’s how they, that’s what the enlightenment was, was how can we structure and order society better? And when the thinkers of the Enlightenment attempted to build a country on the ideals of the [00:10:00] Enlightenment the, it was a country where most people couldn’t vote, right? Like America was not like a, oh, we, we’ll just do whatever the masses want.

It was No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like. Obviously poor people are tarred, so like, it should be like,

Simone Collins: it was, it was obviously, I mean, that’s what representative democracy was. It was, we will have the people vote for the smartest aristocrats or landed gentry, essentially like in in their local area. Trust that person to make the best choice for say, who will be president.

They were never expected.

Malcolm Collins: No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t the people, Simone. It was Well, we

Simone Collins: should, okay. Sorry. Land, land donning white men. Sorry, sorry.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. It wasn’t just land. As I’ve pointed out, Catholics could only vote in two states. Half the number of states that Jews,

Simone Collins: no one Catholic land owning white men.

So, okay. There, there,

Malcolm Collins: so, so, oh, sorry. Not. It’s colonies. But the, the ideal was, and, and note here, you say that in a bunch of ways that if you look at it from the perspective of the urban monoculture, [00:11:00] ooh, but no, this was their way of saying what we want. It’s society to be structured where we take the aggregate opinion of educated people who have proven their competence and are culturally aligned with us.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, the, the equivalent of it today, if we were to sort of apply more of our modern values, would be like, look, I respect MG Gold. I’m just gonna select him as my representative, and then he’s just gonna decide who’s gonna be president and who’s gonna, you know. What laws we pass and stuff, and, and it has become abstracted from that.

Like now

Malcolm Collins: it is just, no, you’re talking of the electoral system. I’m talking about I am. All the various colonies decided who could vote.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: And and that’s very different than the electoral system because

Simone Collins: No, but what I’m talking about Yeah, I know. You’re, you’re changing the subject. I am, but

Malcolm Collins: I’m not, I’m talking about how democracy actually worked, how it was supposed to work, how American democracy,

Simone Collins: but it was never democracy.

It was representative [00:12:00] democracy.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Representative democracy, you are getting stuck on the representative part, which I think can be used to obscure the fact that the ideals of the enlightenment were never. Society should be run on the aggregate opinion of the average person because people would be like, but isn’t that person average and could they be culturally misaligned with me?

Right.

Simone Collins: Well, I think if we look even further in history though, like to Athenian democracy to other like very, very, very old forms of democracy, what fundamentally people came to conclude was. We will give a vote to the people we need to do important things. And that evolved over time when they needed people to help them.

You know, row try reams in military conflicts, guess who got the vote? You know, like basically if you’re contributing something useful to society, if, if you’re needed to make society work, you should have a say. And if not then. [00:13:00] We don’t really care to hear

from

Simone Collins: you.

Malcolm Collins: And this was transform and when people look for like, where was the origin of the rot before I go into all the dysgenics research the origins of the rot happened before anything that looks like modern wokeness.

And if you wanna trace it back, you can trace it back very easily to one of the four original cultural groups of the United States, which was the Quakers. They always wanted the vote to be for everyone. The Quakers did. They always wanted everything that Wokes want today. Even the way that they’re, we pointed this out, even the way that they’re like, celebrations happen where they do like the, the hand signals so that nobody feels too or like something just moves them and they stand up and start talking. It looks exactly like, you know, occupy Wall Street or something, or one of these protest movements. And it’s because it’s the same value set.

Speaker: So I, when we record, this is from before we did the Quaker episode. , So we did the Quaker episode and I was unaware of this just as an idea of , how right we were on this. Quakers we’re actually the origin of woke. [00:14:00] Somebody’s like, do you not know about the public universal friend? And I was like, I, I do not know about the public universal friend.

They’re like, I hope you go into that. I was unaware of this when we filmed the episode. So for context, the public universal friend, this was, . Someone who in 1776, the friend that means is a Quaker. That’s what they call themselves because they’re psychopaths and that’s like the wokes thing you can call yourself.

Claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the public universal friend, and afterwards shunned. Her birth name and pronouns and, , dressed in androgynous clothes. The friend preached through the Northeastern United States attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends.

The friend theology was broadly similar to most other Quakers. And the most committed members of the Universal Friends were a group of unmarried women who took leading roles in their households, basically dominated the men in their lives. , And in [00:15:00] 1790s, members of the society acquired land in Western New York, where they formed the town of Jerusalem near Penn, Yan, New York.

, By the way, still there. The Society of Universal Friends ceased to exist around the 1860s. Some writers have portrayed the friend as a woman, or either a manipulative fraudster or a pioneer for women’s rights, while others such as Scholar Scott Larson have viewed friend as a. Transgender, although note, never experienced any gender dysphoria as believe Note this was never experienced before in the 1920s.

, Absolutely crazy. , The woke them very clearly came directly from this movement, not like tangentially from this movement.

Speaker 2: So the next time that a Quaker EG Ruby Yard slash what of Alt Hiss tries to tell you that Puritans were the creation of woke, , I would ask you to kindly look at your history because Quakers have always [00:16:00] attempted to manipulate history to not paint themselves as what they truly are. , And check out that episode by the way.

Malcolm Collins: And if you, if you’re a watcher of the show. And you haven’t read Albian seed I would strongly suggest you read Albian Seed because when you read Albian Seed one, it can help you better understand like American culture and get in touch with your own cultural roots if you’re from America. Or if you don’t have cultural roots look at the ways that the four founding cultures are different from each other, and it can help you model who you want to be and the culture you want to adopt.

But a lot of the things that pushed the, the proto movements that allowed our society to begin to collapse in the way that it is collapsing were largely Quaker movements. But. That’s for a different tale. I, I, I promise you guys some graphs. Let’s get some graphs.

So here I’m putting a graph on screen here of political ideology versus fertility rates.

And what you can see is the fertility rate difference for intelligent conservatives and intelligent progressives is [00:17:00] quite extreme, which means they will have even disproportionately less power in the future, economically speaking because that’s where they’re being cleared out the most, right?

But note. Even here this is still a discogenic pattern. Intelligent conservatives are just less discogenic than progressives because they are still having less kids than unintelligent conservatives. And then with Mormons, you actually see a purely eugenic pattern. And this, this Mormon study that they found was hugely, it’s, it’s slight, but it’s definitely there, right?

So to continue with the new study that they have here, which expanded it to other religious traditions. Sometime ago, ed Dutton and I published a study showing that the USA being a member of the Mormon Club seemed to protect one against having dys genetic fertility pattern for intelligence in plain language.

The total population, more intelligent people have somewhat few in. In children on average. Although this varies by country however, this negative [00:18:00] correlation is absent and maybe even reversed positively among Mormons. Due to the small number of Mormons and the need for complex cohort and age controls, the exact slope of the fertility intelligence for Mormons was harder to estimate precisely.

Hence, they had a big confidence interval. The Mormon study was based on the general social survey, GSCS. GSSA large American dataset. There were some problems with this. First, the intelligence measure is a poor to mediocre being the tin item, wood drums, vocabulary test. Second . Religiousness was not measured as a continuous construct, but by self-reported membership of different religious beliefs, their subdivisions, denominations.

Thus, the power is much reduced as mere membership is a proxy of a more relevant. Trait of general religiousness or perhaps some specific religiously related traits in the new study they sought to remedy this. So the new study, this was, came out in 2024. [00:19:00] Does conservative religiousness promote selection for intelligence and analysis of the Vietnam Experience study?

And here they say this, this study was done with a dataset of 4,602 Vietnam era veterans. So unfortunately it was done a while ago, so we can’t necessarily say that this was the same trait, but they actually looked at religious nu here. And this one showed something different than the Mormon study that I was showing before where it showed that sort of.

Perfectly here. The less religious you are the, the fewer kids you have, the more religious you are, the more kids you have. And the, the most religious people have the most what’s the word, the

Simone Collins: most kids?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, the most kids. When they are intelligent. And what was interesting about this study is it found, and, and statistically relevantly too that the highest rate of religiosity was in a population was found with being strictly eugenic.

It, it was eugenic. They, they, the, the most religious people had more kids when they were [00:20:00] more intelligent.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: With, with

Simone Collins: being much of this, do you think though, might come down to. Out of wedlock marriage, or sorry, out of wedlock, childbirth for non-religious progressive people, which I think leads to lower lifetime fertility because it’s just very difficult to raise a child in as a single parent.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think one of the, the things at play mm-hmm. Is that if you are, and, and this, I think especially in the conservative versus progressive. Fertility difference for poor people is if you are conservative and you are poor, you are less likely to be living off of welfare or to be like a welfare king queen, trying to maximize the number of kids you have to get more checks from the government.

Yeah. Whereas many poor, progressive people, just like, that’s their cultural life strategy and they’ve been doing that for like three generations and it’s all they know and it’s literally like [00:21:00] just how they survive.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

So you think it has more to do with leaning on social services and not making your own way in the world or supporting yourself financially and less to do with out of wedlock, child rearing?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think, I think both of those things are, are relevant.

Simone Collins: Hmm. For sure. Yeah.

And they, I think also there’s the, the factor that just how I think that ultimately affirmative action and DEI.

Not favoring. Ba, basically there’s like this reverse effect of affirmative action in DEI, whereby people think it’s gonna help the people who are getting extra boosts or favoritism when it actually hurts them, both reputationally and in terms of cultivating strength. And in the long run, it helps the people that it’s discriminating against like white males because they have to [00:22:00] force themselves to be more disciplined, to work harder, to be smarter.

And overall that’s going to, I mean, while some people just get totally wiped out in this equation, there is an overall, I guess you could say like per, per the perspective of this kind of long-term human tendencies, it, it has eugenic effect on the discriminated against group. I think similarly when you look at religious families, there is a eugenic.

Element, for example, with the LDS church or any group for example, that that tithes because not only do you need to be successful enough to, for example, in many cases, have a single breadwinning family. So one man that is earning enough to support an entire family by him himself. Oh God,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: Two parents who are, you know, both working and raising children.

It’s not just that they’re also. Spending a non-trivial amount of time engaged in religious worship wearing, they can’t be making money or resting [00:23:00] really. And also where they’re tithing with Mormons are tithing 10% of their income. So this is, this is a, you know, you’re putting a lot of spoilers on your car or you’re putting a lot of drag on your car more accurately.

I think it,

Malcolm Collins: it forces the peacock feathers to have weight.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And well, and then, then you end up a lot ultimately stronger. And that’s that eugenic effect where like if you are in a very non-religious family either that’s leaning very heavily off of social benefits or both partners are working and you know, your kids are going, you know, going to public school and just not really.

Spending that much time with you, you’re not going to church on weekends and you’re not tithing. You don’t have the same headwinds that are forcing you to be stronger, harder, faster, and better. Does that make sense? So like, because religious life is logistically and financially harder, technically speaking, because I do not [00:24:00] think that non-religious.

Families. I mean, I, I remember looking at the stats before, I’m pretty sure from what I remember, non-religious families do not donate. More religious families and especially poor religious families donate the most, which is crazy, like in terms of per percentage of income. Because they don’t have those headwinds, they are not forced to become stronger.

And that could be an effect here as well. What do you think?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, I mean, I think that’s a way that you relate to money when you’re poor is very different from the way you relate to money when you’re middle class. And in, in a way, poor people can afford to donate more than middle class people.

Because well,

Simone Collins: especially if you’re on social benefits. Yeah. Yeah. There’s that. Sure.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I, I think that that’s another thing is you can feel wealthier there, but

Simone Collins: but that’s not the case for Mormons. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tithing is, is huge. And, and I mean, the more you earn, you’re still tithing 10% and then you’re paying progressively more and more in taxes.

So you’re paying [00:25:00] 40% in taxes and then another 10% half of your income that you make. Because keep in mind, tithing is pre-tax. It’s not post-tax, it’s pre-tax. 50% of your income functionally not yours, taxes and tithing, which is crazy. Plus you’re expected to donate a significant amount of your time.

Tracing wood grains has that really good Subick article that really goes into this on just how much is expected of you from the LDS Church, especially if you are high achieving like the more professionally successful you are. The more you’re gonna be promoted within the church to be a bishop, to, to do more and more and more.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that that’s why the church compared to other churches has been so adaptive.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This, this is one of the things that we’ve talked about before, but like, why is it that, I mean, and, and the LDS started from a much harder place than say the Vatican did. In terms of like polygamy, black people can’t go to heaven, that sort of stuff.

Right? Or, or they turn white when they go to heaven. I think they, they, they did,

Simone Collins: they

Malcolm Collins: got [00:26:00] black in because they, they were, they were neutral in the war between Satan and Jesus. And, and so they, oh, and

Simone Collins: then, so they were marked with darkness and not white delights.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway what, but you know, they had a lot, they had a lot of differences to, to start.

And the church was able to you know, sort of build a PR campaign which has been incredibly successful. We have some other videos on this, but like compared to their percentage of the population, the amount that Mormons have been able to capture the public mind share, and in a way that’s not holistically negative has been incredibly impressive when contrasted with the way that the Catholic and church in the Vatican is adapting now.

And I think that the core reason of that is because the hierarchy of the Mormon church is made up of people who. Succeeded in real world activities and lived real world lives, like, I don’t even think you would have much of a chance of being appointed to a high level position if you didn’t have a large [00:27:00] family in the Mormon church.

And so they’re going to be able to relate to the average person more, but be a lot less theologically rigorous. But it, I, I mean, for a long time. You could do that. That’s, that’s actually an interesting, you know, talking about democracy and different democratic in institutions and how they end up affecting things.

The system that the, the Catholic church versus the Mormon church runs on we can see how the democratic structure of each of those led to incredibly different outcomes. In terms of like practice, right? Catholicism really tried to run like a dedicated technocrat institution where, you know, you become a specialist in this your entire life.

And that was an institution that I think worked really well and was sort of needed when. Basically no one was educated like the medieval period. I mean, what, what other choice did they have? You know, were they [00:28:00] gonna allow local leaders to be like elected or something like that? Oh. Or you could have them be appointed, but then you’re just gonna get tons of corruption.

Right. Actually one of the interesting questions is, why don’t you get more blatant corruption in the Mormon church?

Simone Collins: That is a really good question. I mean, even the most critical people that we, we watch talk about it, they’re not really, they’re obviously like, well, the Mormon church is raising a ton of money, and it may be in a, a way that they insinuate is exploitative toward members of the LDS church, and that is insufficiently transparent, but they do not imply at any point that they believe there’s corruption.

That is quite interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Even, even the head, like

Simone Collins: Alyssa has never suggested that

Malcolm Collins: the head guy in the Mormon church he’s like. Basically their prophet like more than ‘cause he can update the religion at any, the

Simone Collins: president.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He’s not like the pope where like he needs to be aware of what previous popes have said and what the Bible says.

In Mormonism you can just like be like, yeah, I know that’s written there, but like, we got, got new rules. But he makes from what I’ve heard, 150,000 a year. [00:29:00] Like literally the voice of God. It’s

Simone Collins: basically you, you don’t make money from. Serving in the church. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and the big scandals that I’ve heard about is like the church investing in like a mall.

And I’m like, I mean, that’s what they should be doing, right? Like they’re supposed to. What, what did you think they were gonna do? Give away all the money. Like, no, they should be investing it in building financial security in case things change. You know, they could have huge declining membership in the future and then need to to work like they’re acting responsibly.

Why are you mad at them? Yeah. And so, but you know, progressives be progressive, right? Oh, how dare they have money? But why, why isn’t it had any corruption issues? I actually, I, you know, I’ve heard of sex scandals in the Catholic church, but I’ve never heard of corruption issues. You know what?

I’m actually gonna ask ai, do either of them have major monetary corruption scandals?

Simone Collins: Yeah, good question. ‘cause there’s a lot of money sloshing around.

It could [00:30:00] have to do with the transparency required of tax filings of, of nonprofits, including religions in the United States, like perhaps based on the tax filing structure. It’s just, it would be harder, but I don’t know, you know, like harder to hide. I, but I, I, that can’t be it. No.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I I say this because I know that they’re, he’s

Simone Collins: normally

Malcolm Collins: very common in evangelical churches.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, the whole Prosperity doctrine thing, and like, you know, the, the, is it people on YouTube or Instagram who like tell you the price of one preacher’s shoes whenever he comes out wearing insanely expensive sneakers?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean,

Simone Collins: some of

Malcolm Collins: it’s just so blatant as, as for

Simone Collins: why that happens.

Yeah. It’s especially trope now is yeah, like the evangelical Christian preacher who exploits members typically through some kind of document. So

Malcolm Collins: Protestant culture leads to that more, even though you have less corruption overall, as I’ve pointed out in Protestant [00:31:00] societies. And, and this is just like a factual thing, you can just look at a map and do correlations is because Protestantism is entirely decentralized.

You have a, a thing where if somebody can grift, then there’s nothing really, no central organization that can come down and say, Hey, stop grifting. So if you’re particularly good at grifting, you’re just gonna grift.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so let’s go through this Catholic Church versus Mormonism. So it says The gap is large Catholic incidents number in the dozens, historically with several high profile ones in 2024 to 2026 alone.

Well, in the LDS church, there’s essentially zero personal grift that has been proven by leaders.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Why? I wanna know why. Why?

Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s so interesting. Because there’s plenty of money. Good for them. I mean, honest. I mean, I think a, a lot of people’s reaction might just be like, well, yeah, we just haven’t found it.

You know, no one got caught. But I, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that the, that just, it hasn’t happened. [00:32:00] Mormons,

Malcolm Collins: Cannot have a Mormon, I, this, this, it says, the main reason is the Mormon church. Okay. I, I’m gonna have two, two answers to this one actually. One, I think many people in the Catholic Church rise but do not really care about Catholicism.

It’s just like you’re born in a Catholic country. Joining the priesthood can be a pretty good deal for a lot of people. Or joining in nunnery. I mean, this even historically was, was. Cool profession if you’re like nerdy about stuff. And then you you get invested in the bureaucracy of it and you attempt to climb the bureaucracy of it, right?

So, but within Mormonism because the, even on the ground, like individual rewards for joining. The priesthood, like you can’t even get like an income from joining the priesthood. They, they expect you for most Mormon things to do the work for free. So you can’t even enter a position.

Simone Collins: Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no.

You pay to go on your mission.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. I’m sorry. They, they have you [00:33:00] pay to do stuff for them.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

You,

Malcolm Collins: you can’t even enter a position where grift is possible on your part until you have already demonstrated that you are. Pretty invested in actually what’s in the church’s best interest. Whereas in Catholicism it’s very easy to get to high level positions without that proof.

I pointed out this is why Catholicism never adopted allowing priests to have kids because then they just have even a higher reason. The second reason is likely cultural differences. If you look at Mormonism historically, I mean, it’s the one instance in the United States where something. Close to communism has ever worked.

Right. For people who aren’t aware of, like the way the original Mormon colonies were set up you would, one, you’d have to think that it was a good idea to move to a place like that. So you already have a strong genetic selection filter. And they’d be like. Okay, here’s where you’re living. Here’s what your job is, here’s who you’re gonna be married to.

Like, they basically set up your entire life for you. When you [00:34:00] showed up. It actually sounds pretty cool, you know? I, I think for a lot of people that’s a, a decent way to live life, right? And, and they, they did this to also acqui, acquire mini’s genetically better people. The, the way that they did that is they went to guys around Europe and were basically like, Hey, if you’re rich and come to our settlement, you know, we’ll set you up.

And so they got, we’re like, we’ll get you like three, four wives. How does that sound? Right? You don’t even need to believe it. Four wives, how does that sound gonna live in the American frontier? Live a, a hard, honest life. And so they, had a culture that needed a lot more trust historically to survive.

And that was like really eugenically selective, like Mormons also would kick out the guys because they had multiple wives who didn’t look good enough. This is where you have the lost Boy problem was

Simone Collins: look good enough.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huge. Problem, even today within the polygamous Mormon sex is you know, obviously the birth ratio of males to females is 50 50.

But not [00:35:00] all of the guys can have four wives. Oh, sure. Yeah. So that means. One guy marries for every four guys born into the community. And the three guys that were not successful enough or not good enough, or not faithful enough get kicked out which creates a really strong eugenic pressure. Whereas Catholicism basically grew up in the rotting bureaucratic corpse of the Roman Empire.

I, no, I mean, it, it, it did the, the, he’s

Simone Collins: just always, always hanging on the Catholics. Come on,

Malcolm Collins: Malcolm. Go. I even Catholics would say this. That’s where the church came from. It, it grew out of a Roman empire in decline. I mean it

Simone Collins: did,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. It had a few bumps like w Constantine and stuff like that, who was really cool.

But the majority of the period where the Catholic church was basically running the empire, the empire was falling apart. And that means that there was institutionally. Like even trying to [00:36:00] fight grift in those sorts of environments would’ve been incredibly difficult. Also I think even the idea that the church wouldn’t have grift is almost a modern idea.

If you look, if you read about the Catholic church historically, grift almost seems like the point. If you get what I mean, like,

Simone Collins: no, I don’t. I

don’t.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So if you read about. Any point of Pope in history, you know, you would have like a Pope making his son who he had outside of wedlock because Popes around all the time.

Oh, that period,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And he’d make him like the, the, the Duke of Venice or something. Right. And the, no, the Popes were always doing corrupt stuff. Sure.

Simone Collins: No, no. I, yeah. I, I know.

Malcolm Collins: They were like and, and it, and it wasn’t even seen as like a weird thing for a pope to do. It was just like, I mean, obviously he’s the pope, he’s gonna corrupt.

Right? And, and then you had this going down. All the, all the cardinals were corrupt, or the vast majority of them were, I mean, that’s why they [00:37:00] elected the corrupt popes, because then the popes would give them. Handbags. And you had this going down to the local levels. I mean, if you went to like a cardinal from this period they, they, the, the cliche was they lived in a giant mansion and had lots of mistresses and were incredibly lot wealthy.

How did a cardinal afford a giant mansion? Right? Like, today, I think if a cardinal afforded a giant mansion, you’d be like, the Catholic church would be like. You’re not supposed to like have any other jobs, right? Like how do you have a giant mansion, Mr. Cardinal, this seems like a problem. So I think part of the problem that the Catholic Church is dealing with is even an expectation towards a lack of corruption is a new idea within the Catholic Church.

The Mormons. Interesting. The Mormons had corruption in the early church, but then they just theologically defined it as okay. Right. Like, what I’ll mean by this is in the Catholic church you know, you take. Five mistresses and people would be like, well, you’re not supposed to [00:38:00] do that, but you know, whatever.

In the Mormon church, oh, they’re like five miga. Like, and God told me to, and then the next leader does something against the rules and he is like, ah, but God told me to. So it’s the new rule. But they never seemed to be particularly avarice for money. Mm-hmm. Potentially because they already had such high status or their commu, I don’t know.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s important to study this. It’s important to ask this question. Yeah. How else did the Mormon church historically have much corruption at the top levels?

Simone Collins: I think there’s, there’s, the issue for me is, my understanding is there’s not much transparency as to how the wealth of the LDS church is spent, but it’s clearly not spent on salaries or on directly benefiting anyone. So I just, you know, we, we think some is spent on ads. It was kind of weird that they, they tried to influence legislation.

Gay marriage bills in California. That [00:39:00] just was odd. It doesn’t, one, I don’t think a religion should try to influence legislation.

Malcolm Collins: That actually does seem odd. Well, like why would Mormons care about that?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like look, if other people are debauched and lost,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, the people aren’t,

Simone Collins: you know, invest money in trying to win them over.

Yeah. Like tend to your own flock. That’s my big thing. Just your people hand handle your people. Okay. If, if you don’t want them. Do get married to same sex people, then convince them that there’s a better way. I don’t know, but don’t. Force non-Mormons to do the Mormon thing. Don’t force non-Catholics to do the Catholic thing.

Don’t force non-Muslims to live by or non, non-Islamic adherence to.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So this basically explained how the Mormons ended up building their culture of no corruption. Okay. So what happened was Joseph Smiths was a famously very corrupt and Brigham Young, who then. I consider to be the real founder of Modern Mormon tradition.

He, he, [00:40:00] he basically put everything in

Simone Collins: place. He was the ray crock of the LDS church.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he, he, big

Simone Collins: crock bought McDonald’s from its founder just in case you were not,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway but Brigham Young he apparently, because remember how I said how he operated in almost like a communist society.

Like you go work here, you do this, you do this. Okay. That put him into a position even without having to do self-dealing or grift to become the wealthiest person in the settlement by, by far

Simone Collins: sure.

Malcolm Collins: And because he was already in a position to effortlessly be the wealthiest person, he had no reason for corruption.

And was able to put systems in place that prevented corruption from ever happening.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. I suppose I could see that.

Malcolm Collins: And now one of the questions that I have for you is sort of a closing out question.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Is the way that techno Puritanism is structured, would it have eugenic. Fertility practices or would it have anti eugenic fertility practices?

Because [00:41:00] interestingly it doesn’t have as many protections as some of the other religion systems do. You know, it’s like, find out how to have kids find out how to improve those kids. I think the mere mandate of genetic selection along with genetic augmentation when the technology is available means that it would be.

Like the most eugenic of the religious groupings, because even people,

Simone Collins: well, I think it also is important that there’s a rule that you, you can’t make your income from being a religious leader

Malcolm Collins: that never got baked in. I actually never read that track.

Simone Collins: You didn’t? That’s kind of important.

Malcolm Collins: It’s one of the tracks we have never read.

So, there’s like five tracks that I’ve, or maybe more, maybe like 10, I’ve never read. Hmm. So we gotta get back to doing tracks, if I’m gonna be honest. I mean, piss off part of our audience, but we’ve pissed off so much of them recently by being like,

Simone Collins: do you keep going for their sacred cows? Carl Young Tucker Carlson.

Apparently people care about these things.

Why? But go on [00:42:00] Carl

Malcolm Collins: Young one. I do not know why anyone was surprised that Carl Young is like the heart and soul of the urban monoculture. And I. It’s, it is weird to me. It’s like, woo, psychiatry, like feel good, positive psychiatry and a

Simone Collins: lot of people, yeah.

But you know, Jordan Peterson really promoted a lot of his ideas and he was the Internet’s daddy for a long time, so,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, and this caused people to make a, a big mistake. They, they had this perception of like. These ideas helped me at this point in my life and I’m like, I’m not arguing that it didn’t help you, that you might not have been at like a lower optimum.

The problem is, is that the ideas of Carl Young are not a global optimum. They are a local optimum. So they may be able to get you. If you don’t know the difference between a global and a logo optimum, it’s like standing on a hill and looking at a mountain. You have to first go down before you can get to a higher place.

And if we’re speaking of mental health yes, there are ways of seeing the world and problems that you can have that would make your life worse than adopting the ideas [00:43:00] of coral young and attempting to work on yourself from his perspective. Unfortunately, to get to a global optimum, you have to.

Give up many of the ideas that you accepted while you were the student of Carl Young. So an example of what one of these would be is something like believing that you have like a bunch of unconscious trauma from your childhood or something like that. Being able to frame and con mentalize, stuff like that may have helped you deal with a life view where you were, because Carl Young is saying you have trauma.

And that trauma can be dealt with. And this collection of toolkits he gave you for dealing with the trauma could get you to a, a higher place. But then we come along and say, actually the science says trauma is mostly a fictional concept. It doesn’t exist. And you would be better off, you would lose the trauma that you have if you simply didn’t believe in it.

But [00:44:00] unfortunately, now that’s harder for you. Because you both adopted the belief in trauma and the belief of the fix in trauma. So you need to dig out both of those now before you can get to the globally optimum place of I am responsible for my own mental state in any given moment, and I actually largely have control over it.

And I have control over the way I contextualize anything that’s happened to me throughout my entire life.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And of course that’s gonna you know, freak some people out who have adopted ideas and that’s you know, shame because Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people in the conservative movement, they, they were genuinely helped by these like, sort of proto frameworks when they had nothing else.

And it’s, it’s damaging to them to point out, well, the proto frameworks may be better. The nothing. But I think that, you know, other, other people probably feel that way about our religious beliefs, for example. They’re like, well, your religious beliefs are better than the urban monoculture. But you know, they’re not the true [00:45:00] often, right?

They’re not at the end. So, okay, you’ve got the eugenicist question, but then also the corruption question. The way the index is set up, because we actually worked really hard on creating the governance system for technical parent if it ever got large. Yeah. And the way that funding is set up was in it, and money is managed within it basically makes corruption organically impossible.

If you are interested in how we did that you can read, I think we talk about it both in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion and the Pist Guide to Governance how we structured the techno puritan framework or the index system to avoid the possibility of corruption. Because it, or basically organically down weights, the power of any faction that is acting in a corrupt manner immediately and aggressively.

So, that is. Fun. But would it work as well as the Mormon system? Probably [00:46:00] not because it does allow living off of the money as it is structured right now.

Simone Collins: It does

Malcolm Collins: as it’s structured right now. I mean, you would be removed if it appeared that you were living in a way that was irresponsible or you were managing the money in a way that was irresponsible.

But the goal of the way the system was set up was maximum flexibility for the person in charge at the moment, was also maximum ability to remove them. I’ve always felt that’s the optimal government type dictator, but very easy to remove is what you want.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess the, the, the votes were structured such that if you made your income or had any benefits from the governing structure, be it a government or I don’t know, like some city state you’re a part of, then that would.

Like force you to recuse yourself from voting. Yeah. You cant, you’re not allowed to vote in, you’re making money off

Malcolm Collins: the foundation.

Simone Collins: If you’re a government worker and you make a salary from the government,

Malcolm Collins: do

Simone Collins: not get to vote about how the [00:47:00] government works.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and this is something I strongly believe. I don’t think anyone who’s making money off the government, I don’t think any government worker, I don’t think any elected official.

I don’t think anyone on well, should. Fair should be allowed to vote if you are a net drain. Yeah. There’s just too much of an,

Simone Collins: I mean, so a lot of people would argue, well, I work in the government, I know how it works, therefore I am more qualified to make a a, an informed vote. But we would still argue that the adverse incentives are such that no, you’re, you’re really just gonna vote yourself more money and more, more secure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we’ve seen this with teachers unions have teachers unions made teaching better. Like, of course not like giving, giving people power over their own employer is always a stupid thing to do.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They vote themselves better benefits, less work, more money. It’s, it’s, yeah. I mean, they, they may know how things work.

Malcolm Collins: But it doesn’t mean they have any incentive to improve them with their votes.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like you can know how an organization works, but the thing that you’re gonna vote for is how that organization can improve your life as an employee. That’s [00:48:00] unmoored from an organization’s core mission, which either is, you know, maximize shareholder value or, you know, pursue some kind of nonprofit mission.

And it can be either, but it, I’ve rarely seen employees act in accordance with. An organization’s true mission or an organization’s imperative to drive, share shareholder value, unless literally their compensation is contingent on those things. Like, you know, they, they make more money when the, when the organization makes more money, so, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So very interesting very interesting. Obviously the big question that I think a lot of people have, and if one of our fans wanted to dive into this. And do more research is, is this true across religions and across religions. Do we see any other patterns where high, high religiosity people might actually see a hit to, to this pattern?

I’d be very, very interested.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m so,

But it is very, very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, well, it means that these groups [00:49:00] are going to, in the future, be able to increasingly outcompete the progressive groups. But I think what people miss is, what does conservative mean? What does intelligent conservative mean?

‘Cause like, obviously if you were rating us, we would come off as extremely religious and extremely conservative in any of these tests. And yet I think part of the conservative movement wants to frame us as being non-religious and non-conservative. Because the way that we are conservative doesn’t align with what they historically saw conservatism to mean.

Which I’ve always found to be very funny. They’re, they’re always like, oh, you, you are nothing like the founding fathers. You’re some weird form of Calvinism that tries to blend reli geos. Like Christianity was modern science. And I’m like, I’ve got bad news for you about the founding fathers buddy. But yeah.

But anyway, if you’re interested in our thoughts on that stuff, look up our track series. It’s, it’s crazy. We’re completely nuts. Well, that’s why I think some people, they’re, they, that’s one of the areas where I think many of our fans just don’t, they don’t [00:50:00] fully grok how materialist we are in our understanding of reality.

But anyway or, or how fanatical we are in our religiosity, which is something that just grows year over year.

Simone Collins: People don’t associate religiosity with materialism

Malcolm Collins: to be Yeah. But they’re not necessarily incompatible you know, as we’ve shown, which is weird.

Simone Collins: Yeah, 100%.

Malcolm Collins: The

Simone Collins: question is, it’s nice, it’s nice to hear.

I think a lot of progressives think that religion is discogenic. So I guess I, I like this in in that sense because I think a lot of progressives are like, oh, those like disgusting stupid people who believe in God. Having all these children or like, you know, uneducated 20 something, married, couples having children, those swine or is it, it, it, you know, that is that is not true.

Malcolm Collins: I just wanna get into space. I’ll tell you about that. Like civilization is seems to have a ticker on it these days, and it is us and the various religious [00:51:00] groups that are obviously going to be taking to the stars. So.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and I’m excited for that. It’s gonna be great. People aren’t gonna go to space because they, they, you know, I think there’s this really weird trend, and that’s just because everyone’s so anti-capitalist now.

But there’s this, this trend it seems in sci-fi movies where if it’s not some like space hero going into space, it’s some beleaguered, you know, victim of, of capitalism going into space to, you know. Make their way or whatever or, you know, just try to like survive. And no people aren’t gonna be going into space because it’s like getting a job at McDonald’s.

They’re gonna be going into space because they’re like the pilgrims who went to the colonies who wanted to build a city upon.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They have a, a vision of a, of a. Nobody’s gonna want a beleaguered person on a spaceship. No. You only want fanatics on a spaceship. Everybody on it believes that they’re building a utopia.

Yeah. That is gonna be hard in the short term and incredibly beneficial in the long [00:52:00] term. And this is why these beliefs of like, oh, well, Elon’s just gonna take all the power after he gets to Mars, or something like that. And it’s like, one of one of my favorite things is like the guy who was like, yeah, I, I was paid consultant money by some billionaires.

They’re like, yeah, I built these like. Post, you know, civilization collapse compounds. Oh that, gosh. Yeah. They have these like giant staffs and how do I keep the staff from like, turning on me and killing me and taking over, you know, after the apocalypse happens. And the obvious answer is you should already be acting in their best interest.

And in the best interest of the shared mission of this post apocalyptic settlement. And you should already have a shared value system so everybody knows what the shared mission is. And if you haven’t done that, then somebody will create one and they will kill you. Right. Like nobody’s going to live just so that you can continue your Playboy lifestyle style.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In so far as you can have one of those in a post-apocalyptic environment.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that that’s something that, that even, people like Elon may, may miss, like even if [00:53:00] like we’re pretty fanatical about the idea of like, I would love to build a stable colony on Mars. Even if we became like, or Roger Stend became some of the first martians and they held to our religious beliefs if he wasn’t acting in the best interest of the colony I think he’d be killed pretty quickly.

By the, the colonists because in a colony environment like this, everybody’s lives are hanging on by a threat in any sort of space, colonization environment. And you really don’t have time for anyone who’s self-dealing. It is just not worth the risk. To invest one ounce in a leader’s luxuries that’s not going to life support and expansion and the birthing center and you know, whatever is needed.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re for a really interesting. Next few centuries. So now that we’re gonna

Malcolm Collins: see them, well, I, I, I [00:54:00] hope that we get off planet and our descendants can come to form the, the, the clan people out in the distant space. I mean, that’s pretty much the way that we treat this. We know that our vision for the future of humanity is incompatible with many of our allies in the conservative movement.

And so get off, get

Simone Collins: going. Well, and space is big. Space is big. There’s, there’s room, space is big. Yeah. Okay. It’s okay. All

Malcolm Collins: right. Love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.

I will start your grilled cheese. I’m still excited to record this. I’m hitting record just so we know.

Malcolm Collins: That means a bunch of actions are not going to work. And did the front end build work this time? It did. So I just need to wait for it to finish now.

Simone Collins: Yay.

Already, people who are using the h ancient AI for just fun are realizing like, oh, this could be used in. You know, some business applications, they’re not. I’m not the only one who’s like, [00:55:00] oh my gosh, please let me,

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, that’s

Simone Collins: where I’m trying

Malcolm Collins: get it. I’m trying to get it to a point where I can use it for the things I want to use it for.

Mm-hmm. And the thing that I want to use it for most is building video games, because I’ve always wanted to make video games and I would be vico video games right now if I wasn’t building this. And so I wanna build this to a place where I can build video games because hopefully it’s, it’s better at building large scale things than what I’m working with right now.

And there we go. It is updating.

Simone Collins: Excellent.

Malcolm Collins: What are we doing for dinnertime Steak?

Simone Collins: I only just started thawing it out this afternoon. I don’t know if it’s

Malcolm Collins: okay. I

Simone Collins: mean, I can, I can, I can take and leave it on at room temperature, grilled cheese, maybe it’s grilled cheese. Okay. And then tomorrow

Malcolm Collins: I can get rid of it last of my, my lunch meat that I’ll put on top of it.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: don’t, don’t put the, the lunch meat in the grilled cheese, although,

Simone Collins: no. [00:56:00] Okay. So you’ll just kind of plop it on top.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because I think grilled cheese doesn’t cook as well when you cook it as a melt. Actually, no. Let’s try cooking it as a melt.

Simone Collins: Oh, I mean, I can make new,

Malcolm Collins: no,

Simone Collins: I’ll do it afterwards. I mean, also you seem to like things deconstructed anyway, so why would I not just give you grilled cheese and you have some meat on the side?

Malcolm Collins: That’s a good idea.

Simone Collins: Okay. Than favorable.

[00:57:00]

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