9B: Episode 9: Grok spits out family odds

Grok spits out family odds. In this episode, we query GROK - 'on the statistical odds of outrageous family success,' and the results are surprising!

This business and BS is hashed over a beer, a bourbon, and a Boulevardier cocktail by our three bombastic, bloviating blokes in Bryan, TX — the 9B’s.

Work with us  Fidelis Creative Agency 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

9B.

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to the 9B podcast once again. Um this is the Beer Bourbon Boulevardier Business and BS from three bloviating bombastic bros in Bryan, Texas. He did it? Yes, I did do it. Yeah. Today's topic, this is this is going to be wild, is the statistical odds of outright outrageous family success. Here's the prompt of I prompted Grott to do this. What are the statistical odds that a young American male graduating from high school in 2026 will be able to earn enough money to afford a home, get married, stay married to one wife, have four or more children, and remain gainfully employed long enough to see his children exit his household and raise stable families of their own such that he gets to see his great grandchildren thrive in similar prosperity without divorces or becoming dependent of the state.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

This is what are the odds of that?

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Yes. What would you guess?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

90 10? I'm a hopeful. I'm an optimist.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Okay. Now, I prompted, and I'm going to give you the results of that, but then I added another addendum. Okay. Now, second prompt is adjust all figures to account for multi-generational religious devotion to the Christian church. Do those increase at all? Does it increase the statistical odds at all if all members of all generations remain devoted in their faith? Ready for the ready for the results?

SPEAKER_01 1:57

This is some uh this is some clickbait right here. Is it? You'll never guess what happens to the second generation.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

They make it.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

It's good. The odds of all of those things, owning the homes, gainfully employed, all of that, one marriage, one lifetime. One one in three million. Oh, those are the odds. One in three million. When you add when you add multi-generational devotion to the Christian faith, it goes to one in thirty.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

So you go from statistical odds of maybe winning a lottery to one out of a classroom. One out of thirty. All right. That's more than a hundred thousand-fold improvement. This is not magic. It's the result of institutionalized social capital, behavioral norms, and community support that systematically counteracts modern economic and cultural headwinds. This is what Grok spit out. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Geez.

unknown 3:10

Grox.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

For the 2026 graduate, joining and raising a family in a devout, family-oriented church is the single highest leverage intervention to make this vision statistically plausible.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

What sects or denominations, if you will, are making the cut as Christian?

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Okay. Who's in? Yeah. And who is out?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

You put the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in there?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

I didn't, but I s I don't know what Grok says on that.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

We're not asking Grok to parse those lines for us. All right. 2026, Grok Jehovah's Witnesses. Grok starts the Holy Wars.

unknown 3:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

That's the head of the question.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

So no single study tracks this exact chain of events. Right? I prompted it in a way that's a long study. Nobody, nobody is like stacking all of those variables in just that way. However, we can estimate the cumulative statistical odds by changing probabilities. And they're going to do that by pulling U.S. demographics, economics, social data, all of that. These are independent multiplicative probabilities for simplicity. In reality, factors correlate. Example, stable marriage boosts fertility and employment. Makes sense. By the way, all this data reflects 2020 trends. 2020. 2020 trends. Okay. Let's see. There were some other really interesting things.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

A census? That's what it was.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

I uh I'm going to see if we can embed this chart. Um, but it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

You can we zoom in on it? Yeah, yeah. Can we show it on a camera?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

I mean, I'm gonna see if I can just get it to layer in. Okay. Put it in post. The the highest probability, the highest probability out of all of those variables is home ownership. But that is at 37%. There's a 37% chance that he'll be able to own his own home. Then it goes down to 26%.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Did you fat did Groc factor in the trying to own a reliable uh durable car? Ford focus? No. That didn't make it into this?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

It didn't make it. Wait, wait. We just talked about that. That was a different episode, though, is the forerunner. Right. Okay, so 37% you own a home, uh, 27% that you marry once, so it's going down. And then down to about 14% that you're gonna be in a lifelong marriage. Only 14% that you're gonna be in a lifelong marriage.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

12% you're gonna mean a lifelong career. Only one career.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah. Check this out. Four kids plus, you're down to two percent odds. That's how rare all of those things are. Uh gainful employment all the way through is about one percent. Uh that the kids are stable, we're down to uh sub 1%.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

All kids stable?

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Yes. And that your grandchildren are thriving is almost statistically zero. That scares the hell out of me. That that is that is the reality.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

The kids not being stable.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Yeah, yeah. I uh I just assume all those things are gonna happen for me.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah. I just I kind of operate off of that stance that this is the life for me. I just have hope.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah. I trust.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Exactly. Exactly. It's not it's not so much that you're saying I I feel that supremely confident in my own abilities or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Walking in my vocation uh on what I've been called to do. That's right. Doing it faithfully and called to do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

It's not entitlement. I mean, I I definitely don't feel uh entitled or deserving of those kinds of things. I just also know that that's like central to conversations with my kids all the time.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Okay, so each of these variables has this compounding cumulative effect, right? So why the massive uplift for those who are devout devout in their faith? They they're gonna examine the mechanism and the impact. Grock did this, yeah. Uh the marriage market, that's the mechanism. The impact. Church creates high trust, values-aligned dating pools, which lead to earlier and better matched marriages. That's conventional wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah. Yeah, the the idea I think Dave Ramsey says this thing that there's really three things that cause divorce. There's like mismatch in religion, mismatch in um money, and mismatch in uh uh how many kids are we gonna have. It's like those three things.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Like vision for the family.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Vision for the family, yeah. Okay. Those are his three variables.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I thought it was mismatch in what we're gonna have for Sunday dinner. No, that's just your house, I guess. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

That's just Sundays.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yeah. Y'all are okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

You're okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Okay. Uh so marriage market one, the next mechanism is behavioral regulation. So the impact is lower premarital sex, cohabitation, substance abuse, therefore fewer disruptions. And then social capital is church equals job leads, free child care, emergency aid, and mentorship. That's that's a high view of what's happening in the local church, and I hope and pray that it that's true.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

But seems to make some sense. Yeah. I mean, it'd be nice to get a little more free child care, let's be honest. We're we're we're gonna reference big family.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Okay. Norm transition. The impact is three-generation consistency means cultural inheritance of a work ethic, of thrift, and the priority on family. Make sense? And then the last mechanism is fertility culture. Large families celebrated, not penalized. Communal support reduces the cost of burden. Especially if you can get uh, you know, the oldest generation to actually provide support for what's happening in the rising generation. I was encouraged. One in thirty, one in a classroom, that's not like amazing numbers, but it makes me have hope. It makes me think it's it's within reach versus one in three million.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah. So what's the takeaway here? What's the advice? Teach yourself to a church.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Sure. And start with a mentality that says get married early.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Be be in thick community, spiritual community with other people. Know that you're in it for the long haul. Never take the exit hatch, um, and then inculcate all of this into your people.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yeah. We had a we had a buddy years ago who used to say, You want the life plan, young man? Here it is. And he was actually telling this to a 14-year-old uh dude. So that was kind of fun to watch. But he said, uh get employed, buy land, put a house on the land, put a wife in the house, put a baby and a family in that home. That's your plan. And I was like, that's an interesting order of events right there. But that seems to follow success metrics.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

But all of those things are easier if you have an older generation that's willing to help make those things possible.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yes. Training and encouragement and support and money. Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Yeah, and there is, there exists in older generational cohorts some sort of stigma about helping the rising generations. Like, well, nobody helped me, or I worked hard for what I got, or if I help and invest, then they don't know how to struggle, and then they don't feel like they really pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and it actually handicaps them. There's all this sort of narrative that runs in their minds. That's a weird narrative. It's that is truly strange when you realize that you could actually be having massive impact in the rising generation. Oh, yeah. But it's like they weren't tutored into that either.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Right. They weren't trained in it. I think in our case, Robin, in my case, um, we didn't necessarily have a lot of we we had financial help from our from both sets of parents. But not massive support. Not right. Or buying you a first house a house or something like that. But I think what we what we really had was we had um common religiosity with one another, and on both sides, we had both sets of parents married to their first spouse and to the spouse of the of us.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Um How many generations did that go back?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Oh gosh, I mean as far as I know.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yeah. That was the norm.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah, that was the that was the norm.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Yeah. And how many kids did you have in their age their age range today is what?

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Six and their age range is seventeen to three. Um and then like pretty thick community, even on my side in an urban, suburban environment in Colorado, still pretty thick ethnic and religious community. At least memory of that helps. And then very much so on her side, small town Texas. But that was the that was the difference maker. And that's the you know, and and our children seeing that modeled and that that's the reality. That's what like normal life is. Yes. That's huge.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Yeah, that's good framework. But but it's also going away, or you know, it's harder to find.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Which means, which means that like before I get on a soapbox about boomer generation and all of that, it just means that uh we are I am going to have to be that in my grandparenting days. So I'm kind of like here I am in my early 40s, yeah, and I'm already kind of mentally prepping for okay, how how can I help buy the first house? How can I have to get there mentally, even though even that though that may not have been part of my upbringing or my experience.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah, I was gonna say there's two things. One is um there's a lot of press right now about fertility rates and replacement rates, and how you know the US needs to sort of pick up the pace a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Come on, everybody.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Eventually you don't want to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

I'm trying to do my part over here. You're you're you're doing great. Um go make of the babies.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

But like South Korea and Japan are way, I mean, they're they're totally in bad shape. Um, and it's one thing to say that, but then when you look at the trend line, it's like not going the right way. And uh I just heard about a city that some of the local church people um were like bumped into each other in coffee shops and realized we go to different churches, but are you noticing this about replacement rates and about young people not being able to find one another or create marriages or whatever? And they actually found one or two people, young people from there, you know, in like the you graduate college and you're 21, 22 years old to 30. So they created a window of like 22 to 30, and they found some key people, and they said, we want you to spread this around in the city, and that is that on August 21st, at this coffee shop, uh, free pastries, you buy the coffee, uh, and you invite as many people as you want, but they need to be between 22 and 30 and go to a Christian church and coffee provided. That was it. And they had hundreds of young people show up on a Saturday morning for pastries and coffee to mingle and mix and just have have conversations and meet one another. Like they the church people saw this is a problem that they're not actually connecting. What can we do? And uh we actually know somebody who met the person that they proposed to later, just from that context. Right. So just providing an excuse or a context for why this would be a very normal thing to do. It's just coffee and a pastry, and it it's it's making a way for that to happen. That's an older generation looking at a problem and going, what can we do to help facilitate an answer?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

I thought that was super cool. Yeah, that's encouraging. There's some hope there. Yeah. Um it is a little bit like kind of harkening back to the old ways. I don't know. Mixer in the church basement. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Pretty cool. Anything, Dr. Romanski?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

I think that's good. I think that's good. That's a good that's a good hopeful place to end.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

That's where we want to end, is on hopeful things.

unknown 17:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah. I'm really glad that I'm not in the dating pool right now. It would just be terrible. Yeah. I'm I don't I don't want to be there. I don't think anybody else would want me there. I'm just very thankful for my wife and family.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

That's right. All right. That was it. We just completed uh season one.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

At a boy.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Nine B