Joseph Henrich

It's got a bunch of weird elements, but –

You know, Japanese law, despite being the same as the U.S., operates very differently.

So unlike Americans, Japanese don't tend to sue each other and they tend to use mediation and things like that, even though the superficial law is pretty similar.

So I do think there is creation of novelty, which could be useful.

But, yeah, in general, I worry about the loss of novelty.

Yeah.

And I also should say that I think that the sort of impersonal world of impersonal institutions and weird psychology is quite fragile.

So, for example, in the U.S.

and rural areas, you see moral universality declining over the last since 2008.

This is based on John Heights, your morals dot org data.

And so there's an increasing difference in the morality of urban areas versus rural areas in the U.S.

Hmm.

Well, I definitely take declining fertility pretty seriously because especially if you're like a collective brain guy like me, just having fewer people is going to be a big problem.

And I think that there will be spread of ideologies or religions or something which are pronatalist.

And those groups will have a big advantage in cultural evolution because a community that is pronatalist tends to produce more pronatalist babies.

And so, I mean, that's the Christianity spread using that.

Mormonism spread in the 19th century using that trick.

So I just feel like we're – cultural evolution is going to find the combination and there's going to be some pronatalist groups spreading.

Well, I mean, from a cultural evolutionary perspective, this is relatively new, right?

So the demographic transition is only really like late 19th century.