Overcoming the Genetics of Happiness: The One Thing Antinatalism Got Right

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the controversial views of antinatalists like David Benatar and explore why happiness and satisfaction might come from unexpected sources. They debate the role of genetics in happiness, arguing against the pursuit of hedonism and advocating for a life dedicated to meaningful pursuits like religion and family. The pair also cover the impact of relationships, gratitude, and religious practices on life satisfaction, supported by various studies. Join them as they contrast different religious groups' happiness levels, dissect the misconceptions around life satisfaction, and share insights into how to enhance overall well-being.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to have you here today.

Today, we are going to be talking about the one area, the people who want all humans dead. The antinatalists, David Benatar, that they are right. Which is David Benatar makes this argument. That, well, people can learn to, or come to, he uses like a boiling frog analogy here. Okay. Think that a genuinely terrible life is worth living.

Like, he's like these people who are like starving in Africa. Oh, and who say, but I

Simone Collins: still want to live.

Malcolm Collins: I still wish I was born. And he's like, This is proof that, like, you don't know if your life is any good. Because these people think their lives are good, and clearly, from my privileged perspective their lives are not good.

How dare you want to exist? You're incorrect. What he is missing, and what we will be going over Is these individuals subjective experience of both happiness and life satisfaction is likely higher than or [00:01:00] at least around the same as his own. I'd argue it's probably quite a bit higher than with some of the stats that we're going to go into.

They are experiencing a better life than David Benatar. And this is where we have to talk about hedonism. the way you choose to spend your time and Red Queening. So for people who don't know Red Queening, Red Queening is a scene from Alice in Wonderland where they say, you know, running as fast as I can, but every time they run faster, the Red Queen runs faster.

So it's, it's, if they're not moving at all. And the Red Queen is often used as an analogy was an evolution between predator and prey. Evolution. So the prey will develop some defense against the predator and the predator develops something that gives it an extra edge and then back and forth, back and forth, but it's the same with happiness in your life as you gain more things that give you like subjective experiences of happiness.

You very, very quickly normalized to those things. And as such pursuit of those things is an enormous. It's a waste of [00:02:00] time. Just a complete waste of time. Like, it's one of the reasons why I think a religious life is so much better, or finding something to dedicate yourself to is so much better, and it's one of the reasons why the urban monoculture is so toxic.

Simone Collins: In fact, I would argue that religious life is even a better, an austere religious life is better if you want to maximize hedonism. Because the best way to begin to enjoy things again is to go on a dopamine fast and most hard religions have those where you like have to give, give up dopaminergic, exactly.

And that's, it's after that 30, I think it's a 30 day period. I was listening, I think it was an Andrew. Huberman podcast interview with a woman who's wrote a book. You shouldn't

Malcolm Collins: fast to increase the amount of dopamine. The point being is, I'm just saying,

Simone Collins: look, we respect that people have different objective functions and some people's objective function is just to feel good.

And if you want to be able to feel good, you have to go on dopamine fast.

Malcolm Collins: The point I'm making is that if your objective function is to feel good, marginally, you might feel. 5 percent better than somebody whose life objective isn't to feel [00:03:00] good. And what we'll go over here is Actually,

Simone Collins: I would argue you're going to be a lot less happy.

Malcolm Collins: I'd actually, yeah, I'd actually argue that the, the, if you try everything you can, even dopamine fast, everything like that, from the data, which we'll go into, you will likely live a less fulfilled life. and a less happy life than your average religious person.

Simone Collins: Yeah. 100%. Yeah. You see a similar thing with mental health.

I think when you want to be mentally healthy. And it's like a big thing for you, you are way less mentally healthy because every time you feel sad or not perfect, you think it's a problem and then you're contextualizing it as a problem, makes it a problem and then makes it worse and then you're ruminating it.

And then suddenly you're actually really depressed or you actually have a serious anxiety issue.

Malcolm Collins: It's the same way that, yeah, you're right. People obsessed with mental health, like they end up having the worst mental health.

Simone Collins: And it's the same with happiness. If suddenly for, for a moment, you're like, I'm not happy.

Oh God, this is a big problem. Cause my whole thing is I need to be happy. What do I do to make myself happy? I think this happened a lot with your mother. We're [00:04:00] like happiness, it mattered to her. And then when she, it would be like a big deal to her when she wasn't happy. And she kept searching for it in all the wrong places.

And she had

Malcolm Collins: all the money she could want to do things. She'd go to five star restaurants every night. Oh, but she used to

Simone Collins: think like, if I just get this David Webb set. You know, that costs like 64, 000, then I'll be, I'll be happy. Then I'll be happy. Then she

Malcolm Collins: could never understand. She's like, why do you care so much about this wholesome lifestyle?

That you got really annoyed that I was like, wholesome maxing. And I was like, because wholesome maxing maximizes everything else down the pipeline as we'll go over. But I think that this is a really important, like this isn't like a side thing to know in your life. Someone was like, is this really worth a full episode to go into all the data on this?

Let's just feel like

Simone Collins: it's so obvious. And most of our audience probably understands

Malcolm Collins: this really well. I don't think it is. I think a lot of people still in the back of their head will say, if I do this thing that makes me happy, I will be better off. If I, you know, Oh, at least I need like certain amounts of happiness, at least I need.

And the reality is, is this [00:05:00] just not what the data says. Oh, happiness is a false God, period. Happiness is a false God. If I get the boat, if I get the, the whatever, like everything will be better. No, it probably won't be better. There's a few things that'll make a permanent impact. A good partner. Yes. Wife, husband kids and religion.

Oh, no. We're the conservatives right all along. But we'll go into this. We'll go into this. We'll go into this.

Simone Collins: This is, I think, when you see, like, the average, when you look at those amalgam images of conservatives versus progressives. The conservatives look healthier and happier.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're, like, smiling.

Like, that's the core difference. And the progressives are like, ooh.

This is probably why since records started in the U. S.