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 ...