The People's Front of Judea, Cultural Speciation, and Catholicism

We explore the phenomenon of cultural speciation - when cultures fragment into distinct new cultures. We discuss why groups feel most hostility towards similar groups, the role of cultural isolation, threats to young movements, Catholic orders as cultural "stem cells", and more.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Are you saying

Simone: that you're saying that Catholicism is a nepo baby?

Malcolm: Catholicism is a nepo baby.

Malcolm: It's a nepo baby of the Roman empire.

Simone: I mean,

Malcolm: we. So, I mean, there's many reasons why Constantine may have chosen. I mean, obviously, there's a reason he gave, but a lot of historians think that what was actually going on there is he really liked the Catholic Church as an alternate administrative unit that already had centers set up throughout the Roman Empire, which allowed him to To implement many reforms.

Malcolm: Administration

Simone: in a

Malcolm: box. Yeah, it was like an administration in a box that allowed him to compete with the deep state

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. How's it

Simone: going? Very good, Malcolm. I thought today we might talk a little bit about your theories on cultural speciation. In other words, how cultures split off into new entirely separate cultures.

Malcolm: Yeah, so this is really important for us to talk about because we talk about the evolution of cultures a lot on this channel. [00:01:00] Yeah. The idea that cultures can be thought of as an evolving software sitting on top of our genetically prescribed sociological predilections, which is our hardware.

Malcolm: And so, So what's really cool about cultural speciation events is one. We can see them in real time all around us. And two, by studying them and by looking at them, we can get a better understanding of why people, one, do something that appears very weird in the moment, and, and two, the long term consequences of this action and why it's important to like the development of human societies and why we might even be genetically coded and why we To do this action that can seem really weird because it leads to faster cultural evolution, right?

Malcolm: Right. So this is, we're going to talk about what we call the Judean people's front problem. And this is from the Monty Python movie, the life of Brian, because it's a great example of this. There's this [00:02:00] little group of four people who are the Judean people's front. And this was about like the anti Roman.

Malcolm: Jewish groups that were really common in Rome around the time of Jesus because this was just a thing in Rome. You want, actually, if you want to see more about this, you can watch this show, Rome. That's what it's called, right? The, the serial. Yeah. That was an APL. Oh, it's so good. It's so good.

Simone: So,

Malcolm: So I'll just do the skit because I'd like to put it here or I'll, you know, we'll have a link to it, but we'll get copyright strike if we do it.

Malcolm: But essentially there's, there's like a small group of people in the, in the Coliseum. Another guy comes up to them. He's trying to join their group. He's Oh, I'd really to join the Judean people's front. And they're like, are you sure you want to join? And they, they're like, you got to really hate the Romans to join us.

Malcolm: And he's Oh yeah, I really hate the Romans. And then they're like, the only thing we hate more than the. Romans is the people's front of Judea and then the guy goes, I thought we were the people's front of Judea.

Malcolm: And they go, no, we're the Judean people's front and he goes, oh yeah, I hate the people's front of Judea. Oh. And of course the popular [00:03:00] front of Judea and he's who's the popular for that guy over there? And it's one guy sitting alone. And what you see there is what we call a cultural speciation event and the key aspect of a cultural speciation event.

Malcolm: It's typically you see this one more with younger dynamic cultures, but you see it across all cultures where the highest amount of animosity and the highest amount of thinking about how you are different from people is about the groups that you are most similar to, not the groups you are most different from.

Malcolm: So. A great place that you can see this if you're familiar with the effective altruists or the rationalists or the less wrong communities is between those communities, you know, the effective altruists and then you've got teapot Twitter and then you've got you know, the post rats, the post rationalists and broadly, these people have a lot of the same views on the world, but they are really obsessed with how, oh, well, I'm not exactly a rationalist.

Malcolm: I'm part of this group. Like they're much more interested in these. Yeah. Subdivisions of the groups. [00:04:00] And these are all the things that I think the rational against wrong, the rationalistic is wrong. And that's why I really hate them. Or these are all the things I think effective altruistic gets wrong. In fact, I'd say it's almost like a, being a hipster.

Malcolm: The way you could tell somebody is like basically an effective altruist is if they have a 30 minute rant about why they hate effective altruists and they're not an effective altruist. Because if you care enough to have that, then, okay, yes, you're culturally adjacent enough to the effective altruist that you're basically an effective altruist.

Malcolm: Yeah. So, but this is, this is really important because you see this across groups. And so what's happening here? Like, why would you have the highest amount of animosity for the people who are most similar to you? So, one, I think that the layperson's assumption is going to be, well, I guess you would interact with that group more, or...

Malcolm: You know, you think about them more, but if that's true, then you should get to know them better and have less of a visceral hatred of them often. So I think what's actually happening is two things. One, you cannot have cultural [00:05:00] speciation. Now, speciation is where a new species splits off, unless you can have cultural isolation.

Malcolm: And so instinctively, and one, faster cultural evolution would have helped a population group outcompete other population groups because their cultures would become better over time faster. So you might have actually an instinctual thing within a human to, when a cultural group begins to split, to begin to feel animosity for the people across that cultural divide.

Malcolm: Two, you, because if you don't have that, you're going to have people moving back and forth across this divide a lot, which will prevent the groups from actually splitting. And now that people can be in like these online environments where they can, without really any cost, just sit around and indolently masturbate an emotional instinct that they have, you will get people who basically spend their entire day.

Malcolm: Online hating on cultural groups that are very, very similar to them. I think that's what basically the subreddit stinger club can be thought of. Is, is people who maybe have a slightly higher emotional output and addiction [00:06:00] pathway to this form of emotional masturbation. And so they just spend all of their time doing it to the rationalist community or the EA community or whatever.

Malcolm: So it's, it's, it'