How Child Support Laws Could Cause Human Speciation

We discuss how child support laws may be contributing to a form of human speciation by enforcing reproductive isolation between high and low income groups. We explore the two main reproduction strategies - having lots of kids due to lack of contraception/impulse control vs having resources to support kids. Historically, some genetic drift occurred between the strategies but child support laws now punish the wealthy from straying, preventing gene flow. We cover how you see a U-curve in fertility by income, touch on ethical considerations, and the damage from affirmative action.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] I almost feel like there's been speciation culturally, like even within generations. So there's not like a genetic incompatibility, but we've reached a point at which like some groups are now so culturally and like.

Um, worldview incompatible that they're almost like different species. Like each of them will view the other, like an animal that they cannot comprehend and that cannot possibly have a soul because they're so different. And they don't make any sense. And they cannot empathize with them and they, they will not see them as human.

And that really scares me because when you get that level of. A, a lack of ability to empathize or relate to other groups. That's when you start seeing atrocities, that's when you start seeing violence. And I, I very much worry about it.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone.

Simone Collins: Hello, gorgeous. Okay, so remember that day where you gave me this tweet to edit and I edited it and I had no idea what you're talking about and then I I I tweeted it and then Subsequently deleted it because you're like you [00:01:00] completely ruined my point and I didn't understand your point at all because your point Then I find this very intriguing is that child support could cause human speciation.

Walk me through this,

Malcolm Collins: Malcolm. Okay, so, and not child care, which she changed it to, which is a nonsensical statement. Child care could not cause human speciation. None of this made sense to

Simone Collins: me, though. So, help.

Malcolm Collins: Help. So, this involves understanding how speciation happens in animals and how humans bred in a historical context.

So, first, let's talk about speciation in animals. There are two core types of speciation. You could either have something called geographic isolation or something called behavioral isolation. Geographic isolation happens when something like you have a population of deer and then a stream starts to form between them and then the stream gets bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually becomes a river or like two continents drift apart or something like that or an animal gets stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere.

What you're [00:02:00] having in all of these instances is two populations of the same species have become genetically isolated from each other. So mutations that are happening in one part of the species are no longer drifting to the other part of the species. So typically if you have a population of animals and they're all interbreeding with each other, any beneficial mutation is going to increase within the species as a whole.

Right? You know, it will begin to spread throughout all members of the species and then in, in, in, you know, help the species as a whole. But if it's isolated with two populations, you might have some beneficial mutations spreading within this group and other beneficial mutations spreading within this group.

And now, these two groups end up having sort of a new optimal state in which different types of beneficial mutations are benefiting each group because they are, Utilizing different ecological niches are utilizing different strategies to take advantage of their ecological niche. Now, this is a form of [00:03:00] speciation that most people are familiar with if you're studying evolution at like a child's level, like this is how it's often explained.

But then you also have behavioral isolation, which is, maybe even more common as a form of speciation. Behavioral isolation happens when one of the mutations ends up isolating the portion of the population that has it from the rest of the population at a breeding level. So let me give an example here that's very easy to understand.

Suppose you have a nocturnal species and then some behavioral trait like mutation causes a portion of that species to become only active during the day. These two populations can be living in the same area, but essentially They're no longer interbreeding. Yeah, completely genetically isolated from each other.

And this, this happens more common where, where we're actually, or like you have a change that causes a change in what some of the females look like in a species. And it turns out that some of the males in that species still like [00:04:00] this and some of the males don't still like this. I mean, so then you have sort of sexual behavioral isolation, right?

What behavioral isolation looks like, or it might be instead of nocturnal versus day, it might be that, it's a species of turtles, right? And this species of turtles would always go to this one little island or, or place to breed and have sex, right? And lay eggs. But then this other faction within the turtles is okay with having eggs anywhere!

Then you have Isolation of those two groups, right? Or they have slightly different navigational prospects coded into them due to a mutation and that causes them to breed on a different beach. Now you have behavioral isolation, which is also sort of geographic isolation and an interesting way because they're not actually geographically isolated.

So. What behavioral isolation looks like classically within a population cluster is you have some genetically linked trait, and then you have a sort of U curve on a graph. So what that means is for individuals who have a lot of The trait on this side, they're having a lot of kids [00:05:00] for individuals have a middling amount of this genetically linked trait.

They have very few kids for people on the other side. They have a lot of kids. That is what behavioral isolation looks like. That is the graph we see. With IQ or well, not IQ, but earning potential, at least yeah, wealth and fertility and wealth has a high correlation with things like IQ, things like educational attainment things like all sorts of genetically linked traits and interestingly, it doesn't just go to that, it goes to the other genetically linked traits so you see this in things like weight, for example the people who have the most kids aren't just, the least wealthy kids are also the most obese people.

And this is obesity, not just at like the accidental obesity level, but at the polygenic risk score. So at the, my genetics, obesity level, the polygenic risk score is a track with obesity. Now keep in mind this is not due to some sort of difference in metabolic rate humans, even within like two standard deviations of the standard [00:06:00] metabolic rate only really differ by like, 200 calories a day.

This is due to self control reasons.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, or, or when exposed to highly processed food, people with a certain collection of genes appear to have less ability to not overindulge,

Malcolm Collins: right? Yeah. And I, I say this as somebody who believes that I have a genetic predilection for a specific susceptibility to types of alcohol addiction.

So I am not saying that, like, I am above this, but this is a different type of addictive process, which is not discorrelated with Wells, which is an interesting thing. Like, if you look at most of the most impactful people in human history they drink a ton. Like, a ton. Like, a ton more than normal people, whether it's Alexander the Great or Kublai Khan, or Churchill it's just something you see throughout history, and you

Simone Collins: don't know why.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know if it's something to do with the deficiency in this pathway gives one an advantage within certain types of leadership roles or if it's that the [00:07:00] pathway is has some sort of genetic. Okay, so hold on. I'll explain something that can happen with genes sometimes. Sometimes a beneficial gene is like right next to you.

Okay. A bad gene on, on like the way that the human genome is coded. And so it means that most mutations that are selecting for the beneficial gene also select for the bad gene. It wouldn't be surprising to me if alcoholism propensity, Is somewhere on that was in the genetic strand, or it could be that it's literally the same gene.

Like, it's literally the same part of the neurochemical pathway that leads to these advantages that cause an Alexander the Great or a Kublai Khan

Sorry, I admit to say OGA daikon. ICAN here. Actually funny story he's. Counselors became so worried about his copious. They made a rule for him that he could only drink one glass of wine a day. And so he had a giant challenge fashioned that could hold multiple gallons of line in rebellion to this rule.

Malcolm Collins: or a Winston Churchill

A lot of people don't seem to realize how much Winston Churchill [00:08:00] drank. , so for example, if we're just talking about champagne, Winston Churchill consume 42,000 bottles of Paul Rogers champagne from 1908 to 1962. Never switching to another brand that breaks down to around two to three bottles per day on average. There's reports of him during the war period.

For example, having six scotches before dinner, on top of other beverages, , he would often, , He wake up with a pole, Roger champagne for breakfast, then another pint at lunch. , and then a 10 ounce. A series of 10 ounce glasses of scotch and whiskey for dinner. , and several more glasses of whiskey as nightcaps.

, so I think we did the math on this and one of our books, because we got like a thing and he drank the equivalent of, I think it was like, Four and a half bottles of hard liquor a day.

Uh, so a lot, a lot.

Malcolm Collins: are causing but that's a completely different thing. We're going to get to, this is not correlated with obesity. Obesity is not correlated with outside leadership or economic success is actually inversely [00:09:00] correlated with it.

But actually what you're seeing here within the, the, the, the human genome is two strategies for reproduction that are both successful in our current socioeconomic environment. Now, the problem is, is that the high wealth strategy, you need to be extremely wealthy. You only get above repopulation rate, again, at least within the US if your family is earning over half a million a year.

But as you go up from there your fertility rate just gets higher and higher and higher. Now, my suspicion has been that this dual optimization around fertility strategies might have been the case for a long time in human history but it wasn't relevant. And this is where child support comes

Simone Collins: in.

We're getting to it.

Malcolm Collins: My, so anyone who's familiar, one of my favorite sort of sex books for learning about the history of sexuality is My Secret Life. And it was written by a Victorian noble about his sexcapades going around. They might've been pre Victorian but it was, it was early, you [00:10:00] know.

I

Simone Collins: think it was Victorian and he, and this was in across different cultures.

Can different continents. The man covered a lot of ground in many

Malcolm Collins: ways. And he talked about how he would sleep with peasant girls and where, how peasant girls were different from sleeping with noble girls and how you could convince a girl you met like farming in a field to sleep with you. It had like a full strategy for like every, it was like, Oh, innkeepers daughters.

This is how you seduce innkeepers daughters. This is what innkeepers daughters are like in bed. But this man was clearly in this, you know, upper class community, right? And I should point out when I'm talking about like, upper class communities, they are remarkably persistent intergenerationally, even when the odds are really against it.

One of the most shocking studies that I had ever seen was looking at in China. So people who don't know how Thoreau, the Chinese revolution was it created a societal inversion read the red scarf girls, really great book at showing how bad it was for people there. If you're interested in this. But in China when they went through the cultural revolution, the amount of wealth, a family had had [00:11:00] before that in the amount of social and political power, the family had had was inversely correlated to their new status.

Whereas farmers were the highest status individuals and the former wealthy were abused and really. Just like it was horrifying the lifestyle they had to go through. They had nothing and they now became basically the untouchable cast of society. What is shocking is that if you look at the CCP today, after a few generations of this, it was something like 85 percent of the leadership cast of the CCP comes from families that were previously In the well, this

Simone Collins: untouchable intellectual class slash,

Malcolm Collins: you know, from the dynasty period of China,

Simone Collins: I think similar findings resulted from looking at like post Soviet social composition as well.

So in, in, in a couple of different cases, it has been found that families that had a lot of wealth and or power or influence and then had that. Removed then within a few generations [00:12:00] after the exogenous corrective mechanism was removed found themselves once again and decisions of wealth and power and

Malcolm Collins: again, we're just like signing like objective research here.

Like, you can go out, you can find this research like this is not like these days. Can

Simone Collins: you find this research? None of you want to chat GPT, none of you Google it. I mean.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think you can Google it these days still. I don't think they scrubbed the internet of this, but I'll see when I'm doing the episode.

Cause I often try to post like pictures of it and maybe it's all gone now. I think I

Simone Collins: still have the links. I really, we can try to add these to the show notes cause I really don't know if people are going to be able to find it otherwise.

Malcolm Collins: So what you had historically is you have these two different reproductive strategies, but they weren't completely behavioral.

The reason they weren't behaviorally isolated is because women are often unfaithful to their husbands. As you know, you know, we've talked about, then this is study is inflated because it was looking at what guys who thought their wives had cheated on them. But when we go to something like a third of, of kids, when the husband wasn't sure actually [00:13:00] turned out to be from another guy.

I think population overall, it's something like 3 percent or 5 percent or something like that. It really is quite low. I mean, that's not low from a genetic standpoint, from a genetic standpoint, that's not low. You cannot have a behavioral isolation. If you have 5 percent of the time guys who think that they're in one group are actually raising the kids of people in the quote unquote rich group or upper class or whatever strategy.

So you have two strategies here. One is a strategy that is primarily. focused on getting people to breed either because they couldn't figure out contraception. They couldn't prevent somebody from sleeping with them, or they lacked the self control to not have sex when they didn't want to have kids.

And then the other group is a group that is having lots of kids because they have lots of resources. And, and there are. Obviously, these two groups have almost nothing in common in terms of what makes you successful within both of these strategies from a genetic selection standpoint. Well, child [00:14:00] support, which is a very interesting phenomenon, that is almost universally implemented.

It is implemented literally, like if there were a few, or not a few, but a good chunk of countries that didn't do it, like a third of the world that didn't like really egregiously and effectively do child support, where a large portion of this well, see. strategy we're living it wouldn't be effective because you'd still have the genetic drift between the two populations.

But it is really an all encompassing thing, and it is extremely punishing to anyone who is in the high wealth generation group who ends up dallying from people within their group. They, they suffer extreme penalties, both to their ability to secure partners within that group and their quality of life.

And they're often not going to have that many more than like one child outside of that group. Now, this causes problems. When I first mentioned this, you're like, well, what about basketball players?

Simone Collins: Yeah, like they're the classic example of [00:15:00] like, you know, wealthy people who are then obligated to pay child support who still end up seeming to do it a lot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I would argue in this case that they're almost sort of the exception that proves the rule that you know, sports stars are one, not normally genetically optimized for this group. Whereas this group is typically optimized for industry, right? Whereas sports stars have a, an elite an elite insofar as like their, their genes.

It's their

Simone Collins: physical prowess that gets wealth and influence. Not their mind. That's what you're saying. It's

Malcolm Collins: a different optimization function. And it's an optimization function that can arise. I think at equal rates in both of the behavioral groups, it can arise both accidentally was in the group that is focused on.

The, the, the lower income group and the higher income group. And so, yeah, this is a path for genetic transfer [00:16:00] between the two groups but it's not a robust path for genetic transfer between the two groups because it's such a relatively rare and odd phenomenon. And the sports stars that succumb to it are typically those who came out of the lower income.

By that, what I mean is they're often those who lack a level of self control. When you enter like a lot of sports these days, like NBA and stuff like that they warn you, like there's courses about how women will like invert condoms that you use, how women will try to trick you to get pregnant, how women would.

It was a really, I mean, it's such a prodigious problem that it's something that they put a lot of effort into training people to avoid. Yeah, yikes. So people who don't avoid it are, I don't want to say like intentionally not avoiding it, but they

Simone Collins: either lack They were warned. They were given fair warning,

Malcolm Collins: you're saying.

The self control or the, the future planning abilities, or they just don't care. Which is a problem, but it also means that you're also then not dealing [00:17:00] with, because remember I said that people can enter this group of elite physical specimens from either of the two communities but it, but the only communities that are really getting tricked by this are the ones that enter it from the lower income community because the, the other cluster of genetic traits, like low impulse control and stuff like that, that's clustering was in that community as a successful reproductive strategy And I should be clear around all of this.

I have no animosity towards either of these groups. I'm just pointing out a phenomenon. These things are genetically linked, and these are two stable, successful genetic strategies and I think that in, in many ways, both of them can add to the betterment of our species, but it is worth calling out that we are, and this isn't a good group and a bad group.

Like this is the, I want to be clear about that. However, one group is more likely to be economically successful because that is the core thing that's differentiating them. And that is, [00:18:00] and also I should note that this isn't particularly ethnically clustered. Ethnicities exist.

Simone Collins: No, it seems to show up across nations.

Yeah, but then are you implying that like the child support is on a broad societal level, something that you could say worsens class divides and income gaps because when you didn't have that, you would have like very very high agency, very high intelligence, high grit high hustle people occasionally.

inserting genetic copies, partial genetic copies of themselves into low economic opportunity parts of the population. Thereby giving those groups, like, an end to higher resources, like, as,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. Well, it was preventing a level of genetic [00:19:00] isolation and, and I should note, and to be realistic here, there are cultural differences between different ethnic communities.

that can lead to them being more susceptible to certain practices. So, for example, if you take the Black community, right, like there is definitely a lot of our Black friends that are like really educated, really smart and they are not going to go out sleeping with random women, regardless of their ethnicity, because they understand the cost of that to them.

But they lack one avenue that our white friends have due to cultural pressures, which is that the black successful women we know that can't find a partner but still want to have kids white women will often just, you know, use their gay friend's sperm or something like that, and then have kids and care for them as a single mother, whereas the stigma against black single mothers among black successful communities is so strong that many of our black female friends who are Genetically, like strongly in this, like, super [00:20:00] successful, super competent community are choosing not to have kids.

And so I think that it's also important to think about the social pressures that you create as a community. And it's also something that I would encourage, you know, to our black successful female audience. I understand the stigma that's, that's, that's facing you, but you are doing a disservice to your community by not having kids.

And I would encourage you to go out and do that because I know there's a lot of you because we know. a number of our black female friends who really want to have kids, but they just can't find a guy that is of their level. And, and, and to be clear, this is also like, a huge problem if the community is, is, is monitoring status in different ways.

Whereas, you know, ultra competent individuals may, if they're male, may see different avenues than the classic educational avenue that makes them look like good partners for these women. So maybe expand your boundaries of what you think is acceptable.

Simone Collins: Not just by employer and [00:21:00] university and income level.

Malcolm Collins: Well, another thing I also noticed within this community is they're more height sensitive than our white friends. Oh boy. Yeah. Which I feel like

Simone Collins: all women are way too height sensitive, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, all women are way too height sensitive, but I would say that height sensitivity and partner selection differs between cultures and cultures differ between ethnic groups.

And I, are there any,

Simone Collins: wait, are there any cultural groups with a female population? that is cool with dating men shorter than them. I mean, I will admit that like in modern society, women are insane. It's not like, please at least match my height or be a little bit taller, but instead just be insanely tall no matter how short I am.

I

Malcolm Collins: have not noticed as much pickiness around it in Hispanic and East Asian populations. It's not that they have no care for it at all. They care like, like all humans do, but they are not as hard lying about it as,

Simone Collins: But could that be because there are more likely to be [00:22:00] income disparities between men and women?

Because the one thing that clearly makes height a no. non issue is a lot of wealth.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, actually, I think that that is what probably makes it. The communities where you see height mattering the most for women, actually, that's a really interesting phenomenon. It's the communities where there is more income equality between men and women, because within both the black and the white communities, there's no

Simone Collins: longer income disparities that can make up for the shortness.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're much more likely to have income inequality between genders, and that's probably what explains the phenomenon. Very clever, Simone! I'm

Simone Collins: not taking credit for that. Well, and there's

Malcolm Collins: even more inequality within the elite black communities. I notice that, like, elite black women tend to slightly out earn elite black men.

Yeah, at least in our anecdotal experience yeah, this phenomenon.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that's also because, and this is like a weird institutional bug that may not last forever. The elite black men that we know are far [00:23:00] more likely to themselves be entrepreneurs or pursuing very risky investment.

Political nonprofit, whatever ventures, right? Like they're not, they're not doing the thing that's going to earn a lot of money. And then the very successful black women that we know are far more likely to be employed by a large corporation that is going to give them disproportionate value because not only are they incredibly high caliber and smart, but they also thank God are not a white male because they desperately need to not hire white males anymore.

You know what I mean? So they're going to be paid a premium.

Malcolm Collins: The genetic damage that the affirmative action is causing to the American black community in that if you are an ultra competent, ambitious black person, you are much better off going into bureaucratic roles than you are going into entrepreneurial roles because you have an advantage within those roles due to affirmative action.

Simone Collins: Well, and the affirmative action is, is also very annoying because to a great extent, these roles that are being offered. I don't see a whole lot of opportunity. And this is a complaint we constantly hear [00:24:00] from these same high caliber women that like they have been, they've been welcomed into these institutions.

They are being paid extremely generously and no one is listening to them. Oh

Malcolm Collins: yeah. No, no, no. It's really interesting. What happens to people is this is weird little honey trap where they get up to a level within these corporations, you know, whether it's, you know, Google or Cisco or whatever. Right. Where they now.

Are extremely powerful, extremely well paid by

Simone Collins: society. They're not extremely powerful. They're, they're making a lot of money and they're in a very prestigious

Malcolm Collins: high status, but they cannot leave the job to do an entrepreneurial pursuit because, you know, it would be such a cost to them given everything that they've been afforded from this bureaucracy.

The opportunity

Simone Collins: cost financially is

Malcolm Collins: too high. Yeah, but they actually have a floor. Preventing them from entering real leadership roles. They can enter token leadership roles, but not real leadership roles.

Simone Collins: Because talk about a trap, like that is so damaging, like not all. So the only thing that affirmative action is giving to some [00:25:00] people in some cases, and it's typically people who already come from somewhat privileged backgrounds, but happened to be the right.

Yeah, checkbox. They're giving some opportunities, but they're not giving them power. They're not giving them influence. They're not getting them satisfaction and they're not giving them high fertility culture. So this is really bad. This is

Malcolm Collins: really bad. It's like a mouse trap for, for these communities.

It's, it's, it's, it's horrifying. Erasing

Simone Collins: their best and brightest. What on

Malcolm Collins: earth? I, I, yeah, I find it genuinely repulsive because these communities produce some really interesting orthogonal thinkers who don't think like the communities that are often most likely to go into you know, entrepreneurship and stuff like that, because it's, it's through orthogonal thought that you can now compete with an entrepreneurship, which is one of the reasons why first generation immigrants do so well.

But I wanted to end this particular topic with a shout out for something one of our listeners is doing. Because one of our listeners reached out to us and we always try to promote when they're working on something that's like aligned with our work. So this [00:26:00] organization is, if you wanted to report, so I think that it was started with the motivation of like, really unfair things happening within family courts and stuff like that.

But, but to quote him, you know, if you want to report a woke teacher or school board member. This is your opportunity to shine. And every time somebody Googles their name, they will live in infinity. No more denials . This will be our chance to shine.

And, and other people can give reviews to these individuals. So basically. Once somebody does something really egregious from like a woke perspective, there isn't a good mechanism to snap back against them right now was in the bureaucracy, right? There is no counterpoint to this. There is no. Real punishment for going overboards in terms of cultural imperialism, which is what we see on the left right now, the belief that their culture is naturally superior to all other cultures, and that everyone else is basically just savages in their wake and must have their [00:27:00] cultures awaked, erased, and that they are only uplifting the children by taking them from their families, because that is how.

Always a great thing to think. That always makes you look good in the eyes of history. But the name of his website, if you want to check this out again, I haven't really vetted this project that much, but it sounded reasonable to me, okay? Is familylawaccountability. com, and I'll put that on the screen here.

And I think that that's a cool project and I wanted to talk about it was in this episode because I figured a lot of people who are having trouble with child support systems and unfair courts and stuff like that might click on an episode titled something around child support. Interesting.

Simone Collins: Cool.

Thanks for sharing that. I hadn't heard of that

Malcolm Collins: yet. Yeah, well, it's a, it's a good project. Like I'm genuinely, I'm like, yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. You know, he's not out here asking us to promote him or something. Fair. Anyway, I love you to death, Simone, and I'm so, I found this episode pretty entertaining.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm glad you explained this to me in [00:28:00] greater detail, because I was obviously so confused when you first explained this to me, because sometimes thinking is really hard.

Malcolm Collins: Do you think that it could, that it's actually a phenomenon that we're seeing that didn't exist historically? Or do you think I'm

Simone Collins: hallucinating?

I think that you can see levels of, of even human speciation historically, not, not in terms of like, oh, they can't interbreed anymore, but like to a certain extent, I almost feel like there's been speciation culturally, like even within generations. So there's not like a genetic incompatibility, but we've reached a point at which like some groups are now so culturally and like.

Um, worldview incompatible that they're almost like different species. Like each of them will view the other, like an animal that they cannot comprehend and that cannot possibly have a soul because they're so different. And they don't make any sense. And they cannot empathize with them and they, they will not see them as human.

And that really scares me because when you get that level of. A, a lack of ability to empathize [00:29:00] or relate to other groups. That's when you start seeing atrocities, that's when you start seeing violence. And I, I very much worry about it. So, yeah, I mean, this is an important thing to think about and to keep an eye out for.

And it's great to know some mechanisms that might make it worse. .

Malcolm Collins: Yay. I love you, Simone. And I'm, I love you too. I'm so fortunate that I don't need to worry about child support with you,

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think we're gonna

Malcolm Collins: be okay. . Oh goodness. All right.

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