Episode Details

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 indivi