Opus Dei vs. Jesuits: An Outsider's Take on the Battle for Catholicism's Soul

7 apr · Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this insightful conversation, Simone and the host dive deep into the misunderstood world of Opus Dei, breaking down the myths and misconceptions popularized by media, such as “The Da Vinci Code.” They discuss the origins, beliefs, and practices of Opus Dei, contrasting them with those of the Jesuits. The conversation reveals Opus Dei's focus on personal sanctity through daily work and responsibilities, and its appeal to lay Catholics. In stark contrast, the Jesuits' history of social justice, intellectual pursuits, and perceived left-leaning tendencies are examined. The discussion also touches on the dramatic historical power struggles within the Catholic Church, highlighting moments when Jesuits' influence rivaled that of the Pope. Moreover, how these factions may reflect broader societal dynamics between progressives and conservatives is analyzed. The episode concludes with musings on the future of these groups and a humorous personal exchange about family life.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today we are gonna be talking about the Opus Day. You know, the villain from the Da Vinci Code. That is the exposure

Simone Collins: like 99% of people have,

Malcolm Collins: and most people know that they, they, they practice mortification or some of them do, where they like hurt themselves or like where like chains that cut into them when they wa even like famous ones.

There's like a famous female author who's Opus Day who wears like a chain. And you may think that these guys are. Crazy. But what you will learn as we go into the opus day is they might be the only sane Catholics there are. You, they are definitely in the Catholic, and we'll see how much we have an opportunity to get in the Opus Day verse Jesuit mindset.

They are definitely the good guy side. And the Jesuits are definitely the bad guy side.

Simone Collins: You go so hard on Catholics. .

Malcolm Collins: And I think you, Simone, specifically, are gonna love the Opus Day as you learn more about them. Yeah. Even more than you think you do right now.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: So the Opus Day was established in 1928, so very, [00:01:00] very young. Wow.

Simone Collins: I would've guessed like. Late 16 hundreds early S hundred. That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When Saint Joseph Maria Escoria, I, I'm gonna pronounce that wrong, we'll just call him Escoria had a spiritual insight that ordinary Christians could become saints by living their face fully in their daily routines. Wow. Especially through their work. He envisioned a past to holiness that didn't require withdrawing from the world into a monastery or covet.

Convent, but instead embrace secular life as a means of sanctification. The vision was formerly recognized by the Catholic Church in 1982 when Pope John Paul II designated Opus Day as a personal re giving its special status to carry out its mission globally, so it didn't become like official until 1982.

Wow.

Simone Collins: Sounds a little bit like Maana Buddhism or. This premise is you don't have to become like a [00:02:00] reclusive monk in order to make religious progress. It's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I, I actually view it quite different. I'd actually say it's very similar to techno puritanism as techno puritanism relates to work, which is the idea that you should treat your work and your duty in life with religious fervor that you should be as dedicated.

To your job. If your job and you, and you should have a job that attempts to improve the world by your philosophical framework and you should treat that. With the extremeness and with the fervor that a monk or hermit who has shut themselves off from society oh, treats their own seclusion.

Simone Collins: Ah. So, whereas Maha Buddhism kind of allows for normalism, it's like, no, no, no.

In everyday life you can do it, but also you're gonna be a completely weirdo. By the way No, no, no, no. This is, this is

Malcolm Collins: like, you need to be max about your job. Okay. You need to be max about the most intense, an open state belief. You have a, a duty to be happy to other [00:03:00] people so that you don't bring other people down, you know?

I love that. To, to, and we, we do this too, that you have responsibility for your mood. You have a responsibility for how you affect other people. Yeah. And all of this responsibility is an intent, religious responsibility. Hmm. Hmm. So sanctification of work members are encouraged to perform their daily tasks, whether professional, domestic or otherwise, with excellence as a way to serve God and others.

So like you are supposed to be a mother as extremely as like a a hundred percent. 107% as like somebody would be a a in a monastery or something like that. Ah, and you're not supposed to be very different from other Catholic factions. You as a mother, if you're doing it a hundred percent, are not less than the none in the covenant,

Simone Collins: right?

Because, or a convent. You're making the same amount of sacrifices and engaging in the same amount of discipline. I like that, like basically apply the religious fervor and discipline that you would see in a convent. [00:04:00] Or in monastery to your everyday life, and why shouldn't you? That's so much better.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Prayer and spiritual direction. A structured spiritual life known as a plan of life includes practices like mass at the rosary, mental prayer and spiritual reading. Spiritual direction from a priest or trained layperson helps members grow in their faith. So basically you're supposed to sit down with somebody and plan out your life very much like we would suggest we something as in our tradition.

Wow. . Okay. How are they different from other Catholics? Opus Day members are fully Catholic and do not differ from other Catholics in terms of, well, as of what,

Simone Collins: 1984.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no. This is modern. However, approach to living out their faith sets them apart.

They have an emphasis on the laity. While many Catholic groups focus on religious life EG monks and nuns, obu de prioritizes the lay people sanctifying the world from within. So, while other religious orders within Catholicism are like, go the most extreme, separate yourself from the world, everything like [00:05:00] that, even the monks and nuns of the opus day.

Or supposed to focus on the lay person and it's service to helping lay people be at their like same level of holiness and, and saintliness. That's the goal of these individuals not to have some sort of a separate life integration with daily life. Their spirituality is deeply rooted in ordinary activities, contrasted with traditions that might emphasize monastic retreat or extraordinary penance.

Devotion to church teaching. They have a particular devotion to the Pope and the magisterium, the church's teaching authority, which. Which reinforces their unity was the broader Catholic community. They believe they have to have a daily massing communion. So they have to go to mass as frequently as possible.

Preferably daily. Wow. That's a lot. If you have a job rosary and mental prayer, reciting the rosary and spending time in personal prayer each day. So they're really focused on like their routines and it's a lot what people's Yeah. Look [00:06:00] weird. Spiritual reading, confession, regular reading a scripture or spiritual books and frequent confession.

But anyway, when I say look weird, you would know that to us this is a good thing. Yes, yes. 'cause this is how religions survive. Fertility collapse and survive. Deconversion. They have a concept that you've told me about, called the heroic Minute. A practice remembers rise immediately upon waking, saying, serve am or I will serve to offer their day to God.

So you're not allowed to stay in bed. You're not allowed to procrastinate. You shum outta bed the moment you wake up. And this is, I think, a really good way to relate. I mean, it's the way I try to wake up when I'm having, you know, when I'm in, in, in the zone I won't say I always meet my.

Expectations of myself. But I think it's a very good training in terms of how to relate to things. Yeah. Now they're, they're also known for engaging in something called a a mortification. So this may involve something like a cl, a spiked chain or a discipline, a small whip, or used for [00:07:00] voluntary self mortification.

This is. Injuring yourself. This is not used for injuring yourself. Like the injuring isn't the point. It's used for building more self-control and emotional self-control so that you have more dominion over yourself and you can interact with the world in a more like, you know. A monk who's just like separating themselves versus society versus somebody who's got like a, a spike chain attached to their leg while they're serving their office job.

You know, who's really making more of a sacrifice for God. I think this also

Simone Collins: feeds into the, the social scientific theory that ego depletion is culturally specific, that in American culture, we're like, oh, I've. I've had to think so hard today. I just have completely lost all of my self-control and now I'm going to eat a pint of ice cream.

Versus in India for example, people are like, oh, I've had such a tough day today. I've had to do so much work now I should do something else hard because I'm really in the zone. And the opus day are certainly in the latter camp where they're like, I'm gonna right way.

Malcolm Collins: The study she's [00:08:00] mentioning shows it works like the Indians when they've actually done a lot of stuff.

No, basically,

Simone Collins: if you believe. That doing hard things has warmed you up to do more hard things, then you will be able to do more hard things If you believe in ego depletion, that if you've made a lot of tough decisions and exhausted your ability to ex exercise self-control, then you will lose self-control.

So it's, it's very much a placebo effect influenced by your culture. Yeah. Which again, is why it's so toxic to have an external locus of control.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and what's interesting is how the Opus Day communicates this because like, okay, if you're a nun or you're a priest, you know you're going to school for this.

Or you're in a convent, or you're in a monastery and that's where you're learning all of this, where the opus day and I can understand why there's such a young movement has to. Like train lay people in living this lifestyle. Yeah. Which means that they're doing retreats, they're doing like over overnight things sometimes.

Yeah. They're doing classes where both priests and lay people will teach these as well within the opus day. Wow. Where you're going [00:09:00] to learn deeper Catholic theology and the way like a monk might, but still engaging with your daily life.

Simone Collins: Wow. It is life on hard mode. It's, it's lean in Catholicism edition.

I, I like it. Everything you're saying so far. Yeah. Yes. It's de definitely. Okay. It sounds really difficult, but it appeals.

Malcolm Collins: No, it does appeal. So now we gotta talk about the bad guys. Okay. The Jesuits,

Simone Collins: the Jesuit, the Jesuits, the Jesuits,

Malcolm Collins: Or the Society of Jesus established in 1540s.

So they're actually old the, the Jesuits are a religious order known for their work in education, intellectual pursuits and missionary efforts.

They run schools and universities worldwide and are deeply engaged in social justice and dialogue with modern culture. Okay. Their spirituality rooted in Ignatian discernment, emphasizes finding God in all things and adapting to contemporary needs. Which sometimes gives them a reputation as more [00:10:00] progressive.

Post Vatican II Dynamics, the Second Vatican Council. This was in 1962 to 1965 with the turning point for the Catholic Church. Introducing reforms to engage more was the modern world, which sparked debates between those who embraced the changes and those who preferred continuity was tradition. The Jesuits under leaders like Pedro Aropa the Jesuits leaned into Vatican II call for renewal, focusing on social justice.

Ecumenical dialogue and adapting the church to contemporary challenges. The Jesuits even explored controversial ideas like liberation theology, which emphasizes justice for the poor and has been criticized by conservatives for its political undertones. Essentially, their, their elitist educated communists.

Simone Collins: dear,

Malcolm Collins: that's a nice way of saying that. No, no. But they were literally communists. Like Jesuits were socialists and communists historically.

They are an intellectual elite class, which believes that the sort of priesthood has a special position that the laity can't really serve [00:11:00] and that the priesthood should be made up of the intellectual elite.

And, and, and supported by the laity the Opus Day. Well, not opposed to Vatican. Second. Opus Day has emphasized traditional practices like devotion to the Eucharist and rosary. Mm-hmm. And cautious approach to rapid change. It's right. The prominence, especially after becoming a personal ture, was seen by some as a counterweight to the more progressive faction.

The Opus Day, its spirituality centers around sanctifying everyday work and personal holiness. It encourages a structured prayer life and obedience to church teachings often appealing to those who value, tradition and discipline. Hmm. It focuses heavily on the role of lay people in spreading their face.

Jesuits, their Ignatian spirituality is out of discernment, finding God's will within all circumstances and intellectual engagement. They're known for their adaptability, running universities and addressing social issues, which can lead to a more open and exploratory approach to [00:12:00] face. A few issues. So Liberation theology, so this is Jesuits.

Some Jesuits like Gustav Gutierrez were key figures in liberation Theology, which blends Catholic Social teaching was a focus on systematic change for the oppressed Opus Day was this emphasis on personal sanctity over political activism has generally been more critical of this movement aligning with Vatican critiques of its Marxist element.

Ecumenicalism and modernity. Jesuits are known for interfaith dialogue and engaging with secular culture, sometimes pushing boundaries. Opus Day tends to prioritize fidelity to Catholic doctrine and traditional devotions and can make it appear less open to such engagement. What's really interesting is I think that the Jesuit Opus Day split in many ways for told the split.

Between like modern conservatives and modern progressives where the progressives are a party of intellectual and bureaucratic elites. And the conservatives are who, who want to change things, who want [00:13:00] to adapt culture as quickly as possible. Whereas the conservatives, while newer, like the new right, is a newer party than this progressive, right?

Is a party of personal responsibility. Personal discernment and returning to traditions. Mm-hmm. And not interfering with, with, with people's lives so that you can maximize your own life.

Sorry, I want to build this into the game world. Oh. No. No, I really like this idea where I think, you know, earlier I had the church splitting up in one church, forming in Mexico, and then the other church forming around the Vatican. And I want to do a a, a, the headed, the Jesuits, the black pope, ends up essentially through shady dealings, taking over the Catholic church.

And then, you know, you know, legalizing. Women in the, in the, in the, in the priesthood, et cetera, gay marriage, a bunch of stuff that your normal Opus Day member would never allow. Mm-hmm. And then have the Cardinals who are affiliated with the, with the Opus Day faction refocusing around the [00:14:00] Latin American church.

So it would be a schism, but it was a schism that would make sense given the modern conflicts the church is already have. Yeah, that makes sense.

I will end up posting the new faction to the Discord, but I think they're pretty dope.

We tried to lean hard into the idea of while there was a schism in the church, it was a schism in which , , the side that is the Catholics that you would encounter in the game is the one was the most claimed to apostolic succession. And they have transformed sort of the way the religion is practice into this concept of living martyrdom.

I. Which means that essentially everyone, , dresses and lives their lives as if they're living under the priesthood,

but was much more

fervor than you would see was in the existing church.

Now you could say here, well then just don't have the Vatican fall. You know, the problem is, is. In almost every timeline I can see that happening. Now, specifically in Italy [00:15:00] right now, we have a fertility rate of only 1.18. That means even if it stays at its existing fertility, and keep in mind it's fallen every year for the past 16 years, I think.

For every a hundred Italians, there will only be 20 great-grandchildren. I don't see how that civilization can stay stable or we can expect it to continue existing. However, I could potentially see iterations of Catholic civilization staying stable in Latin America, which is where we have the church refocusing.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind the, the current Pope is a Jesuit. Oh, really? Oh,

Simone Collins: yes.

Malcolm Collins: The, the, he's catching a

Simone Collins: hippie from trad casts though. So now I guess that Oh, yeah. Provides more context.

Malcolm Collins: So, the founder of Opus Day was canonized, declared a saint in 2002. Hmm. Just 27 years after his death in 1975. Wow. The one that shows how new they are. The founder of the Opus Day. By 2002 had only been dead for 27 years. Wow. He was the Saint Dead. [00:16:00] This event symbolized opus day's rapid rise and prominence within the Catholic Church, particularly under Pope John Paul ii, who strongly supported the organization.

I. Opus Day known for its conservative and traditional approach to face emphasizes the sanctification of daily life, often appealing to lay people, and aligning with a structured devotional spirituality. In contrast, the Jesuits, a religious order known for their intellectual rigor and progressive leanings.

Focus on education and social justice were perceived as having lost some influence in the decades following Vatican II and the 1960s attempts to modernize the church. Escobar's canonization occurred so quickly. It was seen by some of the church as favoring opus state's traditionalism over the gero, more liberal stance.

It was an unprecedented spade. His canonization is just. 27 years, one of the fastest canonization in modern history. Yeah. Second only to Mother Theresa. Typically, the process takes decades or even centuries, beginning as a mandatory five year waiting period after the death followed by an extensive [00:17:00] investigation into the candidate's life in miracles.

Right? This rapid timeline was exceptional. Strong papal support. Pope John Paul II was. Who personally in Minor. This guy and Opus Day's Mission played a key role in fast tracking the process. His support reflects priority of promoting models of holiness for laypeople, which had laid with Opus day's focus.

But it made the canonization appear unusually driven by Papal Initiative. Miracles attributed the two miracles that were credited to him. Which are a requirement for sainthood. One involved in nuns recovering from a rare skin disease, and the other a doctor's healing from radiation exposure.

While these were officially verified, the speed and the process raised questions among some questions among Jesuits who really did not like that he was canonized. Yeah, I don't know,

Simone Collins: like a skin condition. Suddenly both of these are, are, are unexpected physical changes in response to. Medical conditions, like there are so many of those that take place to attribute those to a single [00:18:00] person.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we'll have a, a separate episode where we'll go deeper on the, the secondary part of this, which is okay, the, the black Pope and the Jesuits. So the Jesuits were all black and their leader, which is elected by the Jesuits, has a lot of power in trying to attempt to essentially like manipulate who gets elected Pope and stuff like that.

And, and, and what happens within the Catholic organizations because like obviously he has a lot of power. The Jesuits have been around for a very long time and so have collected a ton of money. And so they are a very wealthy organization. They also have positioned if power was in secular society, so if you're talking about like Catholic universities or just elite educational institutions more broadly, you're going to see Jesuits in positions of power across these.

Whereas Opus Day have focused much more on empowering lay people outside of the clergy. Mm-hmm. Very much newer organization, which doesn't deal as well with accumulating [00:19:00] power. But I would bet if you're looking at fertility rates between organizations affiliated with each of these brands, Jesuits are gonna be a giant fertility sink to have any area.

Yeah. And the day are gonna be a ti a huge fertility boost, having anywhere around you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, because it sounds like the OPAs day are just about getting things done. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it provides a way for the Opus Day to potentially build factions that are just entirely based around family and having kids and, and focusing their, and it would just completely be cogent with their existing teachings.

Absolutely. Which means that long run, they'll likely win. And as that becomes more clear to the Jesuits. As has happened with organizations in the past like the Gray Friars and stuff like that. This is like a thing that constantly happens with the Catholics, where, remember how I told you that the Catholic orders were like creating a new, because I argued that religions typically become softer as time goes on.

Mm-hmm. And they become more like the urban monoculture as time goes on. Yeah. And so you need to create [00:20:00] new young orders which basically act like new religions, which then reinject these like stem cells into like the heart of the Catholic religion, keeping it young. The Opus Day really represent that they are the youngest of the orders where the Jesuits, this isn't the first order that this happened to.

I even think when the Jesuits were first created, they were replacing another order, I wanna say the gray fryers that had become super wealthy and indolent and focused on intellectualism. Wow. And focused on. Like disconnected from the people because as orders get older, they undergo the process that all organizations do.

Yeah. Which is becoming softer capitulating to the urban monoculture.

By the way, my memory here was correct. It was the Gray Friars, also known as the Franciscans who were founded in the 12 hundreds originally around, you know, extreme poverty, not owning anything, et cetera, and had become incredibly wealthy and elitist by the times that the Jesuits were founded. , and so you see this cycle where an order is founded.

At first they focus on, you know, austerity and, and, Faith and [00:21:00] then over time they become wealthier and more intellectually elitist and more interested in appealing to the status hierarchies of the secular world.

Malcolm Collins: You can read our book, the Pragmatist Guide to Religion, if you wanna learn more about what it means for a religion to get soft. But, but they as an order have become soft. And the question , is are they going to fight against this?

Mm-hmm. If, if a Pope turned against them. That'd be fine. And, and Popes have against the Jesuits in the past. In fact a Pope in the past because the black Pope was accumulating so much power. This is ahead of the Jesuits. A Pope inserted and then created a tradition of inserting a pope chosen by the Vatican rather than voted on by the Jesuit.

Oh drama. Okay. Very drama.

Yeah. Let's just go into what I collected about the black Pope, because I think you'll find this.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. So yeah, tell me, tell me about the black Pope.

Malcolm Collins: So first the outfit. Why is he called the black pope? The Jesuits wear plain black [00:22:00] coss a stark contrast to the pope's pristine white robes. Mm. Since their founding in 1540, the Jesuits have been the Catholic intellectual heavyweights, educators, missionaries and influencers.

Mm-hmm. The leaders clout has sometimes rivaled the popes, at least in the eyes of his admirers and enemies. Okay. But. Back in the 16th and 17th centuries Protestant nation saw the Jesuits Pope as a secret army, loyal to a fault and dangerously clever because they were the intellectuals and they did dress in all black.

And you can imagine how that looked to the Protestants, right? Yeah. But even Catholics, I actually learned about the concept of the black Pope and all of this at the prenatal con from a actually an opus day. Who was like, Hey, you need to look into the Jesuits. Ooh. They've been trying to take over the Catholics for a long time.

Wow. A lot of this stuff that you see as broadly Catholic is just Jesuits.

Simone Collins: That's interesting. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The, the, so picture this, it's 1773 and the Jesuits are at the height of their influence running schools, advising kings and spreading [00:23:00] Catholicism worldwide. But they've made enemies, European monarchs, jealous of their sway and annoyed by their meddling pressured.

Pope Clement, the 14th to shut them down. He caves issuing a decree that suppresses the Jesuit order entirely. Officially, they're disbanded, but here's the twist. In places like Russia where the Pope's order isn't enforced, the Jesuits don't just fade away. They keep going. Led temporarily by the vicar general stand in black popes who defy the suppression turn a conspiracy minded observer.

This looks like the Jesuits summing their nose at the Pope. No, that's exactly what it is. Oh my God. Okay, so the Jesuits were disbanded in the 1770s. Okay. But in places where the Pope's power didn't hold the Jesuits, elected leaders kept running iterations of this order.

Simone Collins: How interesting. Hmm. And then

Malcolm Collins: Years later by the 19th century, [00:24:00] the Jesuits are quietly reinstated under Pope Pius the.

Seventh in 1814 to outsiders. This mate seem what? What? No, that's exactly what happened

Simone Collins: to outsiders. Yeah. Is there a butt after that? Like, it may have looked like this, but it wasn't. That's exactly what it was. It was

Malcolm Collins: a rogue religious organization that was well, but is there a butt, like, do

Simone Collins: they explain why it isn't what it looks like?

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I'm sure that the, the, this is from an ai, so the AI is just trained on Jesuit writing, obviously because they control the laws, but they due to having too much power and fighting the Pope's interest were banned by the Pope, then use the black Pope as their alternate pope. Oh, good heavens. Kept operating and were reinstated later.

They literally are a separate religious organization operating within the Catholic church. That was too powerful to be eradicated, to stop. That's, that's [00:25:00] crazy. But hold on.

So I wanted to be as fair as possible and try to look at the way a Catholic would see this. What they would say is that, well, the Jesuits weren't actually disbanded because the Pope thought they were becoming too powerful. They were disbanded because they were annoying local. I. rulers, which, okay, I guess I can get behind that.

But then isn't the pope supposed to be God's hand on Earth? How is he so easily bullied by local rulers? Then you have the, the secondary situation, which is to say that, well, technically they weren't disbanded. See, the Russians, the Russian Jesuits found themselves in a. Legal gray area, they weren't directly disobeying the pope since the suppression decree hadn't been officially promulgated in Russia and that papal documents technically needed to be officially promulgated in a region to take effect according to the legal practices at the time.

Now, for me, I'm like, yeah, but like it doesn't matter if it's illegal or not. What matters is what God wanted, and apparently God. Operates through apostolic succession and the Pope is God's [00:26:00] hand on earth. So you think that God's like, okay with this sort of technicality, I, I don't know. To me this reads like somebody doesn't really believe their religion.

If they're like, oh, well technicality here. and then you have this situation of, apparently there was one instance where Pope Pius the seventh did. acknowledge the existence of the Jesuits in Russia in 1783, which is seen as approval, and then they were later restored and that the faction in Russia continued to exist, gave them the ability to claim this historical continuity.

so that's how they're like, well, you see, it was a good thing and we're all just gonna forget that this happened.

Malcolm Collins: That's not the only power grab that they've done. Okay. In the 20th century, inter Father Pedro or arpa, the Superior General, or black Pope from.

1965 to 1983 under his rope, the Jesuits go rogue. They dive into liberation theology, a firing mix of faith and social justice that has them backing revolutionaries in Latin America. What. [00:27:00] Yeah. By 1981, ARPA suffers a stroke. And Pope John Paul II sees at the moment, he doesn't wait for the Jesuits to elect a new back Pope.

He appoints his own delegate to run the order. He moved Dub Papal Marshall Law. It was unprecedented. And many Jesuits complained about this. So, he was backing socialist revolutionaries, the head of the Jesuits in Latin America. Hmm. I see. And then we have what happened in 2005 where the Jesuits tried to prevent the election of a Pope.

So after John Paul's II's death in April, 2005, the College of Cardinals convened to elected his successor Rex Retinger a German theologian and close ally of John Paul ii. Oh, remember, Tinger? Yeah, the back, the Opus Day faction. Oh. And he emerged as the front runner. However, not everyone was on board with this candidacy.

Mm-hmm. A blocking strategy. A group of cardinals reportedly included some of Europe's and Latin Americans [00:28:00] wanted to prevent rats nerve from securing the two thirds majority needed to win. Mm-hmm. They rallied rot around Burel, Guo an Argentinian Jesuit known for his humility and focus on the poor, an alternative candidate.

He, the guy who they rallied him again wasn't necessarily campaigning for the paper that he himself, in fact accounts suggest he was uneasy about being used in this way. So they're like not even particularly moral people in the way they're doing this. Like this guy did not want this to happen.

But they got through this. Hmm. Then I was like, okay. But is there any evidence that the Jesuits actually do offer, like, like, like have outsized control within the organization? It's like, well, they haven't just

Simone Collins: presented a ton.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They're basically a rogue faction that is. Antipas. Well, I mean now they control the papacy.

So like, who's to say the Catholic exclusive? Yeah, you're anti papus

Simone Collins: until you, you're in charge and then Yeah, until

Malcolm Collins: you're in charge. Right. You know, you love it. It's great. It's great. Let institute these reforms throughout the [00:29:00] entire Catholic order. And I think that this is like a generational thing.

I think the church will likely have some major schism if the next Pope is also a Jesuit and continues to take it in this direction. Yeah. And we'll see. 'cause it doesn't

Simone Collins: look like this Pope has a lot longer because of his health issues. I.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the question is, is because, because like the, the, the bureaucratic branch is always gonna be overwhelmingly Jesuit because they control the elites in the positions of power or Jesuit influenced whereas the lay people who don't vote on Pope, for example, are gonna be overly aligned with the Opus day.

Yeah. Now long term, I think the Opus Day faction ends up gaining control as this happened a few times in Castle history where a new a sort of order needs to come in and another order needs to. But the question is, is can that happen before the, the Pope ends up taking the church in a theological direction that is untenable to your average Opus Day aligned individual?

Simone Collins: Yikes. That's wow. I'm glad that [00:30:00] the Opus Day member that you met at Nacon told you to look a little deeper because, oh my gosh, like this is, we think

Malcolm Collins: we need to do an Opus Day episode for ages though, because like we've always, like, from what I've heard of them, I've always liked them. I think mortification is good.

I think this. Waking up and like, like yelling, like I'm at it is really mentally healthy. I think it's important that they do something that a lot of Catholics don't do, which is theological teaching. Whereas a lot of the way that Catholic sermons go is really focused around ceremony. Mm-hmm. Like I was talking with, you know, at, at NATO Con Newcastle's, famously low fertility these days.

Mm-hmm. Of, of religious sex, Catholic majority countries, Catholic areas. How do you get fertility rates up? Well, a couple at Nacon was like, well, we decided to have a kid long before we had planned on having one. Mm-hmm. Because you know, at church, the, the pastor came in and, and said like, Hey, we're gonna help this couple you know, make sure that they're never in need for childcare, et cetera.

Mm-hmm. And then, you know, when their baby was crying, he goes, you know, if this babies aren't crying, the [00:31:00] church is dying, you know, saying all this to the entire congregation from the pulpit. I mean, they were like, oh. Like, I didn't, I felt like I was doing a bad job at being a mother, but hearing like, oh, let the baby cry, you know, et cetera.

And, and I was, I was talking about this and a Catholic was like, yeah, there's like, my priest would never say that. Like, that's not like a thing that you would do is, is be like, Hey, this couple help them care for their kid. But that is something the Opus Day can do in the way that they do these additional lessons.

This like Sunday School for adults. So

Simone Collins: presumably there are Opus Day. Churches. Like, is that, is that the way it works? Like if we were an Opus Day family? No,

Malcolm Collins: no. They're, they're like I, this is my understanding, but I, I'll look it up in post. Is that you, you go to like retreats and training seminars?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: They're more, but you're, you're still part of like

Simone Collins: a normal Catholic parish. Yeah. Because I just wonder how, how would you get the community support then that would, you know, make things easier and more sustainable for you?

Malcolm Collins: Well, ops day members could, you know, build out [00:32:00] like, like daycare networks, like this would be really powerful.

And increasing fertility network rates, right? Yeah. Like, okay, you have your job, which you have a, a, a, a, a moral obligation to that is religious. But then on top of that you have a moral obligation. To helping other members of your community. And while the Opus Day wouldn't be, you know, hugely poor, like traditional, like go help random poor people stuff or mm-hmm.

Or socialist revolution stuff, I can see them being a hundred percent on board with let's create free daycares for members of our own parish. Yeah. That, that seems like a very opus day thing to do. Contrasted with the oh, let's, let's just. Try to like be utility accountants and lower net suffering in the world.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Which doesn't produce the best of outcomes. It just

Malcolm Collins: happens. Is this a spicy, spicy episode here? Well, I like that you found something nice to say about some Catholics, which is. I've [00:33:00] always been pro opus day from the first time I mentioned you could like search the episode trans. Yeah. But in general you're like, was this pro opus day?

I'm like a really pro opus day. The more you learn, the more you love them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, they're the only like good Catholic faction now and, and people's like I would ever become. A Catholic based on this? No, I still, no, we don't

Simone Collins: have the disposition necessary to be, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I don't, I like, I, I find all the idolatry really hard to, like, even, even like the prayer beads and everything like that, that just trouble even with crosses.

Even the crosses are, I mean, look, as an outsider and I know that like Catholics, like, I'm trying to be like as, as, as, as diplomatic as I can and be like, you guys, I. Believe you are literally eating the savior. Like, like cannibalism. Like it literally, it's not like metaphorically, you think you are literally cannibalizing the literal Messiah.

[00:34:00] We all your, we're eager, eager to feed for sharp in our teeth for the, and

Malcolm Collins: and then you worship to statues of him being tortured. And you wear the device that tortured him on you.

well, that's a little violent.

Can we tone it down? Oh no. Don't be put up. By this snarling they just seem a little murdery right now. Don't worry, honey. Fast staffing.

Malcolm Collins: We struggle with that. It's optically difficult for me to get by. And then you, you worship in these churches that are covered in gold and artwork and paintings and, and all of this idolatry. But we also just

Simone Collins: have, we have trouble using symbolism of any sort.

I don't care if it's a Pokemon card or if it's an image. No, it's not just

Malcolm Collins: that. Like to me it's like literally, ugh. It's literally like Indiana Jones. It's like the obviously wrong choice. [00:35:00] If you have read the Bible, it's like, oh, it's glorious, it's so beautiful. It's like, no, the cup of a carpenter.

Which one is it? You must choose. But choose wisely. For as the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you.

I'm not a historian. I have no idea what it looks like. Which one is it? Let me choose.

It's more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.

This certainly is the cup of the king of kings. Is happening to me? He chose poor.

[00:36:00] Be made out of gold. That's the cup of a carpenter.

you have chosen wisely.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway.

Mm-hmm. But what were you gonna say when I interrupted you? I'm sorry.

Simone Collins: No, no. Carry on. You're

Malcolm Collins: saying it's like Pokemon cards and we're okay with it even if it's

Simone Collins: No, no. We're, we're not okay with worshiping any kind of object or using any kind of object. I think people would argue it's not idol. I use it as like a place to focus my attention.

Or remind me, but No, no, because there's this, this human intuitive tendency to just start treating objects of meditation as idols over time. It's just, it's

Malcolm Collins: exactly. And you can see why we're wor, I mean, even Catholics would be like, okay, but like, we don't do that. And it's like, yeah, maybe you intellectual [00:37:00] Catholic doesn't do that.

But there's a lot of lay Catholics in the, in the outer parts of this sort of Catholic empire in Latin America and stuff like that, where they are absolutely worshiping the saints. Yeah. And, and then like

Simone Collins: we, we see it happening in, when, whenever we're in Peru, there's various attaches of saints like.

Sitting around and you know, people stop and they pray and they leave things there and mm-hmm. The point I'm making

Malcolm Collins: here is that the reason why this stuff is banned is, is, is you somebody with absolute mental discipline who is absolutely educated on the Bible, might be able to go into a church and be inspired by these things and maintain that mental separation.

Mm-hmm. But your average person, or even let's say 20% of the parishioners aren't gonna be able to do that. Is it worth sacrificing their souls? So that you can and, and keep in mind we have a different relation to the concept of soul. Enjoy an

Simone Collins: aesthetic flourish. Like it's not a deal breaker for you.

I mean, especially if you're not worshiping these things as [00:38:00] idols, you really don't need them at all. You're just like, oh, don't, no, they're nice. They help to inspire. Go look at, look at trees, look at plants. Look at the sky. Look at the night sky, look at the sun. Look at, look at. Well, all of that would still be

Malcolm Collins: idolatry if you're using it as an intermediary,

Simone Collins: right?

But like, if you are, if you need inspiration about the greatness of God, you don't need to see a cathedral. You can look into the eyes of your own child, you know, like, or anything beautiful happening.

Malcolm Collins: That's, yeah. The, the point being is that even Catholics would admit that this has a cost. And, and the question is like, why are they comfortable with that cost?

Like, when I take that in, in combination with all the aesthetic stuff and the, the, the, the bleeding Christ and the church and everything, I, I don't know, like, yeah, it's tough. I struggle. It's tough optically, but I, I will say that the Opus Day, like among Catholics, they seem to be pretty awesome.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, because I, I think maybe what you seem to like about them a lot is, I mean, we are extremely focused on outcomes.

We're very consequentialist and they seem to [00:39:00] be very focused on,

Malcolm Collins: well, not just that, but I believe in treating your daily work as a, as a, as as sort of a religiou act of worship, calling act, an act of worship and, and productivity as an act of worship. Mm-hmm. And I also really believe in the concept of the lay.

I mean, one of my biggest complaints about the Catholic Church is this like hierarchy of religious authority. And the opus Day, in a way, invert that hierarchy of religious authority pointing out that the lay person can be as much of the same or as, yeah. In that way it is

Simone Collins: very Protestant, isn't it?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. As, as the, as the highest member of a church or as a cardinal. And I think that that is, to me, that that really aligns with my sensibilities and sort of the anti-elitism bit that I have, which is, is I think they really represent that. Yeah. And I think. Represent a way that you can be Catholic.

And you know, we talk about this with techno puritanism is, is that I want people to be able to come to the religion from different faith. And what that means to me is that [00:40:00] if you look at the tracks to be a techno puritan, you don't need to believe in all the tracks. Like you only need to believe, a few, like, like broad things like that we are going to be arguing that God actually exists. That, that you could argue God from looking at repeatable real world things, not like you saying it from yourself. Like just, oh, I, I saw this saying that no one else saw, and that's, or I feel this thing that no one else can feel.

And that god, what was the final one? That all other true face are a true face and should be allowed to coexist. Hmm. And that's something that a, you know, a lot of Catholics are gonna struggle with. But, but that there, there would be a natural alliance between these groups anyway, but, but like the open day, I can see myself aligning with the opus day.

I could never see myself aligning with the Jesuits.

Simone Collins: Well, do you have any data on Opus Day? Fragility.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I can look it up and post. Yeah, I mean, I, I guess your hope then would be, oh, I checked it actually with ai, it didn't have any [00:41:00] data on it. Yeah, it would be good for, it would be really hard to know.

No, I bet you you could collect Opus Day affiliate members, like layperson members that go to these training seminars. Yeah. But do they collect

Simone Collins: things like how many kids do you have? I doubt that you

Malcolm Collins: could start collecting, just do a collection for like a few classes. See how many kids, people over a certain age have and then try to correlate that with a general Catholic fertility rate.

And you might find, I suspect that the Opus Day affiliation is really directly correlated with high fertility.

Simone Collins: I can definitely be done just, I, I doubt that, you know, there's a lot of good info right now, but

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, love you to DeSimone. I don't know if your, your opinion has changed on anything from this.

Simone Collins: I like that you gave me a more realistic picture of them because like so many other people, my only exposure to information about Opus Day, aside from their waking up rituals, which I'd looked up when making a YouTube video, which embarrassingly still sits on this channel, [00:42:00] was from the Da Vinci Code and that pale actor.

Wasn't he supposed to be an albino? Yeah, like whipping himself and being weird and that that is, that, that seems so deviant from what you described. 'cause they're about, you know, and they, they imply that the opus day is this monastic order of extremist isolated crazies. When what you're describing is a.

An order that's all about leaning into the real world and just self-actualization to the max plus a lot of Catholicism, which sounds pretty cool. So I feel like a, a great disservice has been done by the Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown to all, I don't know, I think the DaVinci code made them look cool. I don't think so.

No, no. It was like just this albino freak trying to stop them. I don't think, at least from reading the book. The book did not give me a very positive impression of the Opus Day. So I still feel, I feel like they were [00:43:00] wronged. Maybe, maybe Dan Brown is a secret Jesuit, or maybe he did book research with Jesuits and didn't.

No. But he is

Malcolm Collins: Urban Monoculture aligned. And Urban Monoculture Oh. Would be more associated with Op Day. Anti-Urban Monoculture is gonna be affiliated with OPAs Day. Mm.

Simone Collins: I could see that. I could, I could. Okay. Fair.

Malcolm Collins: Alright. Love you to death.

Simone Collins: I love you too. For your starch tonight, I presume you want hash browns.

Like it seems like whenever there's a choice, your choice is hash browns. Is that correct?

Malcolm Collins: I'm okay with whatever you feel you have the time to make with the only thing getting to bed early. Oh, yes. 'cause sleep. Oh, listen, getting to bed early is more important than anything else. So big on sleep. So I, I, I, I'd say the difference between rice and hash browns is a maybe 10% difference, not big.

Simone Collins: In fact, I've done, now I can make you hash browns, so I'll do it because I desperately love you. I [00:44:00] just want you to, I want you to know how much I love you. I wish I could do more things. You do

Malcolm Collins: a lot of things

Simone Collins: not good at expressing affection. You're very

Malcolm Collins: good at expressing. You just don't believe I hear it,

Simone Collins: but you taste it.

Is that the thing that matters?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I live my life of, of, of an amazingness with you. You know, I, I get to live a near perfect life. I've been thinking about it again recently, like it's unfair how perfect my life is. Yeah.

Simone Collins: But you, you have a perfect life. 'cause you also, I. Love your family and are a good person and work really hard.

And I, I love that our kids are like that too. Like, right, like indie's been a little bit irritable, but you know what has kept her quiet since I put her down, I'm just, I'm just playing home videos of, of her siblings and that makes her happy again. I. Well, the kids's being dragged around. I love it. Yeah.

It's just like, that's so sweet. She, that's all she wants to see. And then she's, and then she's happy. And that, that is our family, that we are so lucky to love each other and live together. And, you [00:45:00] know, I think there's a lot of people who would have everything you have and not be happy to think that it was a miserable existence.

So. Like the opus day, you choose happiness, you choose cheerfulness, and you choose love. And how could you have all of this? How

Malcolm Collins: could you be married to you and have these kids in this house and not be, I mean, I know a lot of movie stars, like all of them seem unhappy, right? Like they've, they've chosen this life that's like urban monoculture life.

It's so sad. Yeah. Even though they have all this wealth and power, like, you know, Jim Carrey's famous line, you know. I hope you achieve wealth, power in everything you wanted. 'cause then you'll see it What make you happy? Yeah. It's like, well I don't know what you were fighting for Jim Carrey, but like, this makes me happy and fulfilled.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's pretty darn good.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe, maybe you should have had a big family and gotten married and go to live on a farm.

Simone Collins: Some celebrities seem to do that. They just disappear. Like you never hear from them. You know, you hear from the miserable ones because they're still engaging with the press. I bet that that

Malcolm Collins: one crazy Christian one

Simone Collins: is

Malcolm Collins: happy.

Simone Collins: I. Oh, the who? The drunk driving man? The brave guy. Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson. Mel

Malcolm Collins: Gibson.

Yeah. He is [00:46:00] pretty, pretty. I love the South Park. Take on him.

. Yeah, say what you want about Mel Gibson, but the son of a knows story structure. Get the video tape and do a background check on everyone in it. Ah, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Like, this guy's crazy, but damn does he know story structure.

Simone Collins: Oh, I praise from Stone and Parker, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I love you,

Simone Collins: Vanessa. Love. I love you too. Bye. Bye. Bye. You hang up.

Bye.

Guy Secret and Octavia's, a Red Army guy. And Red Army guys respond. I know. Is it another Red Army guy?

Oh.

I, I chase.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com

Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
Följ Avfölj
Dela

Avsnitt

Deciphering the Progressive Religion: Environmentalism, Trans, & Anti-Semitism
17 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Join us in an engaging conversation as we delve into the mysterious roots of modern leftist beliefs. We explore the perceived borderline theological nature of these beliefs and address three main areas: environmentalism, trans politics, and genetics. The discussion highlights the urban monoculture's tendency to ascribe moral value to perceived weakness, creating a 'noble obligation' that diverges from traditional self-preservation instincts. We also touch on the inherent mistrust of advancement, the industrial revolution, and the anti-human sentiment among progressives, drawing comparisons with historical and cultural contexts. This episode provides valuable insights into the cultural and ideational forces shaping present-day ideological dynamics.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be tackling and, and trying to work our way through something that I see as particularly an interesting mystery that I don't know if I have a formal thesis on what's causing it yet but it is when I look at you know, the urban monoculture from which, you know, modern leftist culture derives itself.
Where it holds beliefs that I would say appear to an outsider to be borderline theological. And, and it is a sin to go against these particular beliefs. Most frequently these beliefs fall into a few categories. Environmentalism is a really big one. Another one is trans politics is a really big one.
And then another one is genetics is a really big one. And I'm, I'm like actually like, sort of [00:01:00] surprised because not all of these things are like intrinsic to a leftist worldview. How they arrived and consolidated around these particular areas. Where they most frequently say things that just like on face value or was like the littlest bit of research are not true.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: You know, this can be, you know, in genetics it's like, well, everyone has exactly the same capabilities. And it's like they, they very obviously don't, like if you, if you do even the basis look at science, some of our. Proclivities and traits have a her component. Like that's a weird thing to claim.
And people can be like, oh, well this is like downstream of like fears about like nazim and eugenics and stuff like that. And I'm like. Maybe, but it's weird that it's so core to the way they see the world. And Min was environmentalism. There's this form of not real environmentalism, but aesthetic environmentalism.
I persistently see them retreat to mm-hmm. You know, where like they're taking [00:02:00] down like nuclear power plants in Germany. Despite their only other source of energy being like Russian oil, which is like obviously dirtier, but like as environmentalists we're anti-nuclear. Like, and, and it's not just that, it's also like when I mention something like this is like reporters frequently have like a visceral reaction when I tell them fertility collapse will affect people's lives more in the next hundred years than global warming will.
And they're like, are you sure you don't wanna restate that? Like, they see this as like an absolutely insane thing to say. Like I'm saying the sky is red. When I say global, it's not the most important thing. Or they're like, well, don't you care about like a, a, a huge. Collapse in the number of species you know, like a mass extinction.
And I'm like, a mass extinction is bad. Like it's not awesome. There are consequences of a mass extinction. They're not existential consequences. Like it's, it's, it's, it's [00:03:00] bad. Like it's not great. I'm not aiming for it, but it's not, you know, threatening to human survival or even the existing way that we structured our civilizations.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: In the way that they seem to be like implying it is. And I don't think that they really believe it is either. They're not afraid of a mass extinction because of humans. They're afraid of a mass extinction because the mass extinction matters. So as somebody who used to, I think you maybe used to genuinely hold some of these beliefs, maybe you can explain to me sort of how they work and, and where they're coming from.
Simone Collins: I think maybe a lot of people steeped in the urban monoculture, super progressive modern religion have this modern version of noble abl in that they're indoctrinated in. That leads them to believe that their purpose is to protect anything that is perceived as less [00:04:00] capable of defending itself than they are that the last person for them to defend is anything close to them because they come from this position of privilege.
So it's different from the old concept of noble obl, which I think had a little bit more of a self preservation instinct. This one's a more like suicidal form of noble obl, if that makes sense. That's just like, I don't matter. I am wretched. And I must protect all that, which is. Relatively more defenseless.
Malcolm Collins: That's a really interesting point. So essentially they ascribe automatic moral value to whatever they perceive to be the weaker party.
Simone Collins: Greater victimhood holds higher moral val value. And that is indeed, I think why oppression Olympics kind of went out of hand because I think some people have a deeper instinct to still want to be at the top of a dominance hierarchy.
And they realized intuitively. That they could only be at the top of the dom hierarchy by being more of a victim. And that's why you get every, everything from people playing oppression [00:05:00] Olympics to wealthy to middle class teenage girls becoming spoons and playing, yeah. Oppression Olympics by getting sick.
Well, this
Malcolm Collins: explains a lot. It, is it, yeah. That, that part explains where you get this like invented trans identity and I think that the, like the, the, the, yeah. Well, it also
Simone Collins: explains why. In those heat maps, for example. And sort of research of the, yeah, progressive versus conservative brain. Progressives hold more things as having moral weight that are not their family, their immediate community in themselves.
That makes
Malcolm Collins: sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. But there's
Simone Collins: more than just that. I think there's an inherent distrust of advancement. I. And the concept of manifest destiny or conquering the natural world. And I think this is why among progressive circles, the book Sapiens took on so much.
I've never heard a conservative, I. Talk about Sapiens. Yes. And, and be like, oh, sapiens, my dad. [00:06:00] And like a big, a big aspect or thesis of Sapiens. So it's admittedly been almost 10 years since I've first read it. Is that hated, hated I made me so angry. It's just wrong. It's like just sort of talks about how.
Everything kind of went downhill after agriculture and our teeth got horrible and we'd lived in stressful environments and we'd lived in diseased cities, and it was just always so bad and like, oh, somehow our hunting gathering period was so wonderful. And I think the reason why that resonated so much with educated, progressive audiences is that there is this inherent mistrust of modernity and of conquering.
For example, nature. And I think this is also seen in the contrast between the way that conservatives have historically engaged with the environment and conservation. Versus how progressives have engaged with the environment. So conservatives are all like, yes, conservation. Like, let's go out hunting. Like let's go out camping.
Let's enjoy conquering [00:07:00] nature and protect it so we can keep conquering it. Yeah. Again, because it's so freaking fun. Our training simulator, we can't disrupt it. Yeah, yeah. Like let's, let's keep it around 'cause it's really, really great. And then progressives are more like, no, let's tear down. Our nuclear plants, our modernity, let's tear down our cities, let's tear down our modern infrastructure.
In some cases it's literally, you know, engage in degrowth and tear down our economies and civilization to let nature take back over. And of course the extreme version of this is antinatalism. Wouldn't it be great if a comet wiped out all humans? Wouldn't it be great if all humans died?
Malcolm Collins: Which is surprising number of progressives believe when we did our survey in the United States, 17% of the respondents said the world would be better without any humans continue.
Sorry.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But that's the, I think that it's that combination of this modern noble ablation, I am wretched and everything outside me that it, that has higher victimhood status or less agency is more important. It takes precedence over my needs. And [00:08:00] remember you, it took you like. Seven years to convince me that I was not the dumbest, lowest value person of everyone.
Yeah. Like this was deeply ingrained in me. And it took so much work on your part to convince me that you were deeply
Malcolm Collins: unspectacular. And I was like, no, you are spectacular. You are one of the most desirable humans on Earth. Well, and one of the most talented humans on earth. And I just like,
Simone Collins: like literally though, I mean, I, I would see someone, you know, who.
Had a lot, like very serious problems and just assume that they were better, smarter, more age agentic than me. Like the, the, it was, it was I think some people will hear that and be like, I don't know. She's a four. She's mid, she's not what Malcolm says he's wearing husband goggles. No, I, this was actually dysmorphic.
Malcolm Collins: I'm not saying I'm not, hold on. I'm not even talking about attractiveness here. I'm talking about competence,
Simone Collins: intelligence, competence. Yeah. A agency, all of that. I, I thought that I was lesser and, and, and more wretched. And so like, if anyone. Or to say something like, well, that's not true, or [00:09:00] I'd just be like, okay.
And that, and I, and I made her
Malcolm Collins: play this game at Stanford when she went to Cambridge. 'cause I sent her there for graduate school. I was like, okay, Cambridge is like the best place, right? And I was like, every day you gotta tell me if you met anyone smarter than yourself. 'cause you were at least able to judge that like, like more interesting started than yourself.
And she just never did. And I was like, okay. So this is supposedly where the smartest and best people in the world. Like go, if you're not finding people better than you here and now, you know, we get invited to events like heretic and stuff like that, right? Where like. Some of the wealthiest people in the world you know, who, who run like major funds and stuff like that, like it's really run by Mike Solana and Peter Thiel.
They, they go out and they invite like whoever they think is changing the world most. So it's bringing together like literally from a top down, like the most agentic people. And I'd say like within that environment of the women in that environment, you're easily in the top 50%. In, in terms of, I, I'd say like intelligence and agency and interestingness.
And so that's wild because that's already like a super [00:10:00] preselected crowd. And, and so I think that yeah, you, you really struggle to be like, oh, I'm actually like you know, competent. Right?
Simone Collins: And I think that's pretty pervasive in this culture, and that's another important part of this.
Malcolm Collins: That's really interesting actually, because, because the call culture values a lack of status, so much like a victimhood mindset so much that it doesn't really give you the tools to see yourself as anything.
But to see yourself as something other than like you, you're, you're only supposed to go into everything expecting the least of yourself which is, yeah, I, I have a story. I remember, about this, that, that you would find comical, Simone. Which is the first time I went to buy condoms. I was like, well, I am like a normal whatever person, so I should buy small condoms.
Which now not accurate. Somebody slept around a lot. [00:11:00] I'm like, oh. That was a very, very big mistake. That must have been
Simone Collins: a deeply uncomfortable thing to discover when you first
Malcolm Collins: Oh no, they just immediately broke. But that's what I thought because I was like, oh, you know, I am average. I am, well, not even average to assume I'm average to assume too much of myself.
No, hold on. I must. Be a little below average. Right. You know, because that's, I think you're right. Yeah. We're taught that that's a value to not have pride in yourself. It No, it's, it. I don't,
Simone Collins: no, it's not even so. To a certain extent, we're taught to value things that are, are lesser in victimy, but we, we are also demoralized, and I think some people end up playing oppression Olympics because they, they put the two together.
They're like, oh, I'm demoralized, but also I can leverage this to gain status. I never made that connection. You never made that connection.
Malcolm Collins: But some people do well, subtle underground connection you know, that that is rewarded [00:12:00] subconsciously. But a lot of people don't realize, because I think a lot of people like, like genuinely, I think the vast majority of trans people do not realize that they are being treated with a special degree of status was in urban monoculture environments.
They, they genuinely are. Unable to see the systemic privilege they have over cis people. They, they genuinely think that that like what's going on around them is a form of oppression. And I think it's because they see you. You you remember there's a great chart of women. And, and men progressives.
Right. But, but women specifically who today think that being a woman severely damages the prospects of being successful in life. Well, I think people have come to equate
Simone Collins: literally life just being hard sometimes. Being alive, being hard sometimes to oppression.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. So over 50% of progressive women, I remember we were looking at a chart think that women are systematically discriminated against when it comes to getting into college.
Mm-hmm. Like the. That's [00:13:00] insane considering women make up like the vast majority of college goers these days, right?
. So here you can see two graphs titled Trends and Perceptions of Discrimination Against Women Amongst 12th Graders by Sex and Ideology, 1976 to 2022. And you can see that female liberals. The purple line here to the question, to what extent do you think your sex will prevent you from getting the kind of work you would like to have?
Went from around 40% in 2010, which is ridiculously high, but whatever, um, to 75% as of like 2024 or 2022. Like why is it going up so much? They're just being brainwashed. And you can see in other groups it's going down. Then in perceptions of discrimination against women, again, you see it going way up after the 2010s in both, uh, male liberals and female liberals.
Malcolm Collins: Like they, they think Oh yeah, women, they have it so hard in college because it's so, you know, may maybe because they're, they, they make up a larger portion of the population or something in college.
I, I, I don't know. I could see
Simone Collins: [00:14:00] college being harder with more women being present.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: But, but the reality is, is that actually no. It was always the dudes on the group projects who made life miserable. Get back. They did.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Dead. That is an interesting point.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I want the Lisa Simpsons. You know, I want, I want other people who are as like, do goody as I was.
I hated the dead way. Screw you guys.
Malcolm Collins: And then you get me on a group project and I always just like, all right, this is how we're gonna do. I, I was actually really good at that stuff. You were, you,
Simone Collins: you were a, a major, like you did disproportionately, you were very unusual. No,
Malcolm Collins: not, not even that. I was very good at splitting up work and making sure people did that work.
No, you made them
Simone Collins: functional. You weren't, you weren't like the, you weren't the girl who was just like, I'll do it all. Yeah. And everyone else just is quiet. You were like, you do this, you do this, but you also like, because you did that, you were disproportionately doing more work.
Malcolm Collins: I guess I never felt that way.
I was taking more rewards, I'll tell you that. I, [00:15:00] no, I, I in college I was running like every society. I was like president simultaneously of like multiple large societies on campus, and no one had ever done that. Good leaders
Simone Collins: know how to recognize talent. And leverage it and delegate. Well, that's good.
Malcolm Collins: I, I guess I wanted power or whatever. Like I, I, I liked doing it. There's that. I wanted it for my resume to get into decision. Your
Simone Collins: power hunger had nice negative externalities
Malcolm Collins: with negative externalities or positive externalities. Sorry.
Simone Collins: Nice positive externalities.
Malcolm Collins: Mm.
Simone Collins: But okay, let's focus on
Malcolm Collins: the environmental stuff, like I still don't. Fully. I guess what you're saying is that environmentalism from a progressive perspective, they see like imperialism is bad, like the expansion of European culture and wizard industrialization is bad.
Progress. Progress. Just
Simone Collins: human intervention and I, I, I actually think, so we, we talk about antinatalism and anti-human sentiment as being a novel advent. I, I [00:16:00] think it is, it has deeper and older roots than that, and I think that it was first manifested as. A hatred of human advancement, imperialism, and manifest destiny.
That it ultimately was about anti-human sentiment and this, this resentment of humans conquering nature and conquering natural environments and that, that, that looped into environmentalism and was combined with this, I think Christian derived, but I'm gonna say corrupted Christian sentiment derived.
Adoration of victimhood.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know if the victimhood, adoration, I like a lot of people have made this claim that it comes downstream of Christian culture. Mm-hmm. Or like Protestant culture.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know if I believe that.
Simone Collins: Why? On what
Malcolm Collins: grounds? So it seems to work all by itself without the Christian culture.
You know, you, yeah, I wasn't,
Simone Collins: yeah, certainly [00:17:00] from Christian
Malcolm Collins: culture, you want to protect the weakest thing. 'cause that's how you prove that you are the best. Right? Like, that you're not doing anything wrong, you know? And it, and it comes from, if you just make this mindset where like, well the Goins are weaker, therefore they're in the right.
And you're like, well, they do like torture gay people. Like, are you okay with that? And they're like, well, they don't because a weak person can't be evil. Like there's this understanding that, that the morality of a group is, is. There's never like a case in which a weak person is a bad person.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And, and yeah.
There's never a case in which a weak community or group is abusing other communities. Yeah. No matter their
Simone Collins: crimes. And if their crimes were horrendous, well, it was because of what we've done to them. Well, I mean,
Malcolm Collins: you see, this was the grooming gangs and the grape gangs of mm-hmm. Of Muslims that you have around Europe right now.
Mm-hmm. They're like really prevalent and like capture and grape lots of. Girls or the case in the United States where you [00:18:00] had a, a group of black teens who invited over a white teen with like mental disabilities and like beat him near to death or something. And like the progressives were like cheering this as like a, oh, you know, I.
You know, like, them winning like you keep seeing this of, of, well, because they're in X group and obviously the real weaker person is the white, the real weak old person or the, the Israelis who were captured. The real weaker person is the person who happens to be born gay in Gaza. But it is the, I think a larger community, like they're not able to see this on the individual level.
They try to look at the community level. Mm-hmm. In terms of how they structure this ideology. And then say, okay, so the weaker individual at the community level is the individual that's deserving of, of, of higher status, and therefore we just assume that everything they're saying is right is very much like the, you know, believe all women thing and stuff like that.
Right? Mm-hmm. Including Israeli women who are being griped in, in, in gossip. Well, not them, you know, they're not, you know. So the way [00:19:00] it sorts, I'm trying to say like hierarchically, how it sorts well this also comes to, you know, whether it's genetics or culture thing, but like genetically and culturally we're all the same.
There's no differences in us. And this explains where you, and I've mentioned this in previous episodes, it's where it's reiterating why the urban monoculture always ends up turning to antisemitism and against the Jews because it explains all human differences because it doesn't believe in genetics and it doesn't really believe in cultural differences.
In proficiency, it believes all differences in groups must come from one group discriminating against another group or exercising some form of like, you know, power over another group or cheating in some way. And so, you know, because Jews disproportionately succeed in economic and academic context, they must be cheating.
Right, right,
Simone Collins: right.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that, that at the end of the day, so long as Jews have the Jewish exceptionalism IE achieving at an, an unusual rate was in multiple fields. They will be seen as the core oppressor group, especially due to their smaller size. 'cause they're like, well look at their proport success and [00:20:00] smaller size and they don't fit into any of our special categories.
So, you know, we need to get rid of them. And I think that many people were surprised how hard the urban monoculture turned against the Jews. And they expect this to be a short-lived phenomenon tied to this. War that they're having right now. And I don't think it is, I think it's a, it's a going to be a persistent shift.
Simone Collins: Oh, dear. Well,
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it's, it, it's, it's good more broadly because it, it brings the Jews who believed that the progressives were their friends into the sort of new Right cause into the prenatal cause, into the, you know, the persistent alliance. I think it's causing
Simone Collins: two things. I think it's causing some reformed Jews who are progressive to completely disown.
If you're not having kids, yeah. They'll, they'll
Malcolm Collins: be gone soon anyway.
Simone Collins: Yeah, probably.
Malcolm Collins: And what's the other thing?
Simone Collins: And, and yeah, the, the, the rest will just drop. But I don't know. I think it's really hard for some people to accept that they're no longer [00:21:00] part. Of the urban monoculture. There's a lot of fear around that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That the urban monoculture has turned on. Well, I think it's, you know, you were talking about this and, and some people on Blue Sky, you were trying to be like, well, the Collins aren't really that bad. 'cause we went viral on there recently. And, but they're, they're progressive, right? And so they're trying to explain this.
And they, they dealt with like major cognitive dissonance and someone was like, why, why is this happening? You know? And, oh my God. This is like actually like a, what is that? Oh what? There was like a white line on my glasses.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: This is, this is actually like a thing that's happening. And I think that the, the reason is, is because especially some women, and this is where I see this happening the most, have such a like, instinctual desire to fit in with whichever the dominant culture is.
They struggle to think outside of that box.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Specifically an argument that she was trying to make was [00:22:00] that they were saying, well, they have, they have been to conferences with bad people. They didn't use that word. They used other words. But you not, these of course, conferences with bad people, therefore they are bad people.
And she's like, well, how are you gonna change the minds of bad people if you never talk to them? And they're like, ah. But then she, she felt like somehow that that was a weak argument. It's not a weak argument. Like you really, if you don't engage with people that you disagree with, how are you ever going to like.
You know, expose them to ideas that might change their minds. And, and yet she somehow was like, well, that was a dumb idea. I can't believe I said that. That's embarrassing. You know? No,
Malcolm Collins: the, the urban monoculture really protects itself by creating a cultural norm around not engaging with outside ideas and not exposing yourself to outside ideas.
And I, and that's what we're seeing here is this. It is a very powerful norm from like a more, it's about social
Simone Collins: contagion. Just like there's something, and I don't understand it. There's [00:23:00] something going on with social contagion.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. This is the point being Simone, is that the urban monoculture has developed a pattern of isolating anyone who might have engaged with an outside idea.
That's what they're trying to do to us. They're like, oh, these people appear to be immune to our, the cultural virus. These people appear to be able to engage with outsiders. If they engage with outsiders, they might bring some idea into this larger mimetic cluster which is dangerous to it. So we can't engage with them.
The easiest way to protect. Your ideology is to never engage with the, the ideas of the people you disagree with.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that that's what's happening there. And this is why, you know, you persistently see, you know, in in studies that have looked at this, is that conservatives have a much easier time modeling progressives than the other way around.
Is that they, they, they literally build a wall. And that's one of the most interesting things about debating what's progressives on, you know, policy or whatever is they're like, you guys are, are Nazis and racist? And it's [00:24:00] like, well, I mean. Right. You know, this is just like as you're gonna lock up women and rela black people, and it's like, well, that hasn't happened.
Right? So that doesn't appear to be where we're going. And they really struggle with the idea that the, the world that we're living in, you know, under the Trump administration isn't the world that. They, they said, we're fighting against the Trump administration to prevent, right? Like their, their, their idea of the other side is so fictionalized that they have trouble engaging with it in any way, but it needs to be fictionalized because they, they did engage with it.
They'd understand that the urban monoculture is at its core, very imperialistic.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's you know, I was talking with a reporter recently and I was like, okay, so, you know, you understand when I talk to somebody in the urban monoculture and I'm like, well, the people in Africa who you claim to love so much, you know, they have very different rules [00:25:00] around gender roles in marriage and very different rules around a woman's role and very different ideas around you know, gay people and very different views on what's like moral and which happened after death, et cetera.
And, and, and, they are thinking in their heads. Well, I mean, of course one day, you know, every one of their churches will be fi flying. The what, what, what do we call this flag?
Simone Collins: Colonizers. Fly flying. The colonizers
Malcolm Collins: flag, you know, I. And, and this is the, the new weird pride flag. Ev ev every church in Africa is gonna be flying this, and they're all gonna have our idea about gender roles in marriage.
And they're all gonna have our idea about how you should raise your children. You know, corporal punish, if that's what they do now they're, they're all gonna have our idea around, you know, gay, you know, they're all gonna have our idea about everything. And it's like, well, they functionally eradicated their culture.
There is nothing more imperialist than that perception. And I think that that's the irony of the urban monoculture. It is of all cultural groups, the most supremacist in that they believe themselves to be naturally superior to all others. The most [00:26:00] imperialistic that other groups are supremacists, but they are supremacists with qualifications.
You know, like evangelical Christians for example, have a respect for Jewish culture, right? Like. Frequently, right? Like, they're like, oh, we gotta help them rebuild their temple. Like they have this degree of like, let's work together. The urban monoculture does, it sees everyone else's, basically like savage monsters.
Like completely dehumanized.
Simone Collins: Well, very patronizing too. Yeah, and also misleading past man. Oh, we respect your culture. We, we are the only ones who respect you. But like secretly. We're gonna change all of your savage ways of, I mean, you know, you'll see the light, of course you'll do this of your own free will, but.
We will cure you and in a very creepy way.
Malcolm Collins: And it's such a beautiful dystopia to live through because, you know, we know they're going to lose at the end of the day, right? Like, that's so, I can't imagine living through this and seeing them in positions of power and feeling like, oh my God, they could actually succeed in this like insane [00:27:00] conquest where they eradicate all of the cultural diversity of our planet.
And, and one day everyone just thinks like them, and yet they still believe they're the victims in all of this. It's, it's, it's literally like almost the most evil conceivable perspective to both see yourself as a victim while systemically oppressing those other than you.
Simone Collins: Yeah, not great.
But I mean, I, I think it really just comes down broadly to these things of anti humanity and victim elevation.
I don't, I don't know how else to explain it.
Malcolm Collins: Well, anti-industry I think as well. I mean, we really, when we chose anti-industry is
Simone Collins: anti humanity. I mean, industry is the most human thing. You know, it, it is finding more efficient ways. It is a prefrontal cortex. Industry is an emergent property of the prefrontal cortex.
Take away the prefrontal cortex, and there is no industry.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I think, you know, you look at our, [00:28:00] that we use in the techno puritan stuff and we use in the hard EA foundation and everything, and it's, it's, it's a gear, right? Like it represents industry, it represents innovation and. Moving forwards. And if I had a second one, it would be like a, a factory pumping out smoke.
You know what I mean? Like, the idea of, of a progress as defined in, in, in the age of the enlightenment in the you know, industrial revolution. I. How that's continuing with AI and whatever, you know, it comes to symbolize AI in the same way that a, a, a billowing factory represented industry during the industrial revolution.
That is what we stand, and it's also why we're so antagonistic with individuals who want to, you know, belittle. I the same way in the past, somebody might have belittled industry and been like, oh, well everything handwoven is is better. You know, they'll loom what a, what a joke. That's never gonna catch on.
You know, and that's why I feel with people, you know, talking about AI art and traditional artists and ai, you know, whatever, why we're so interested in getting in AI [00:29:00] was like our AI education system and our AI gaming system, and,
which I'm really excited about. We'll see if they, you know, it'd be cool if we end up actually raising money for, for both and.
Simone Collins: It'd be amazing if we do. I am really excited. Well, hopefully we'll find out within the next three weeks, so we'll see. We'll see.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah, I, it's, it's what you just submitted the second application.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: I did.
Malcolm Collins: This is so wild. If, if we both get in, it would be so wild. We might actually have to move the kids out there.
Simone Collins: I am pregnant, Malcolm,
Malcolm Collins: you need to be at your local doctors. I understand. Yeah. We'll find a way.
Simone Collins: We'll, we'll find, I mean, we can commute a a bit. We, we will make, we'll find, I'm committed to these projects, so we'll find ways to make it work. For sure.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I think we personally need to be there [00:30:00] part of the time if we're gonna build relations with the VC firm and continue to raise money.
Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So we'll figure it out.
Simone Collins: I'm there. No, I'm, I'm super there for this. I'm, I'm all about it. I'm very excited about this.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway oh. By the way, if any of our listeners in NBC firms feel free to let us know that we can get warm intros on these projects. 'cause yeah, I think that like, the way that we view industries the same way we view ai, where other people are like, oh, it's so slop, it's so whatever.
It's like, well then improve it, make it better, make it, you know, like this has the potential to transform everything about being human. Like why are you poo-pooing this? It's, it's so. Like techno optimism is, I think the only path to true vitalism was in humanity. There, there are these, like reductive vitalism, like liver king, like get back to nature and everything like that.
But at the end of the day, you know, I think that the people, this is the interesting thing about the techno optimists. Very few of the techno optimists have turned out to be [00:31:00] fraudsters.
Common for fraudsters appear among the traditionalist optimist community, the ones who wanna go back to nature and stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that it's because these beliefs are less authentic. They're more about trying to sell to a specific audience or something like that.
They're not really driven by this constant need to move humanity forward. They're driven by this need to move themselves forwards in their own ideology forwards.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on, I think. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, any thoughts, Simone,
Simone Collins: that I love you and steak tonight. Yeah. Do you want steak with your fried rice reheated, or would you prefer to have steak with some other form of starch?
Malcolm Collins: Fried rice reheated will be great. Yeah, you did a pretty good job with that. And I think it'll taste good with the steak. And you are really good at cooking steak, by the way.
Simone Collins: Thank you. That's really nice of you to say.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, maybe, I think Gza dipping sauce would taste really good with steak. [00:32:00] Okay. I'll make a sauce.
I, is it hard to mix up or No, it, it
Simone Collins: turned out like, I know I gave you this huge, like, ugh when you asked me to make it from scratch, it, it wasn't that hard. So I
Malcolm Collins: can, I think it's just. Soy sauce and then without it's soy? No,
Simone Collins: it's, it's it's equal parts. Soy sauce, white wine vinegar, and sesame oil.
Plus you can and probably should add garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Okay, so
Malcolm Collins: I'd make a change to it going forward. Soy sauce, sesame sauce. A splash of white wine vinegar.
Simone Collins: Okay, so half the amount, so like one teaspoon of each of those, then half a teaspoon of the white wine vinegar. 'cause you felt that that was too heavy.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Off I go. And I'm gonna speak with a, a journalist while I do it, so, don't, I love that
Malcolm Collins: you do that. Who are you speaking with tonight? My sweetheart? Can't remember. I don't care. Whatever. Do your thing. Love you.
Simone Collins: I love you too. Are you sure to tell
Malcolm Collins: her that you're a Nazi?
Simone Collins: I they know already.[00:33:00]
They know. Sadly the truth is out there, it's mine comp. What can I do off? I go this. Well,
Malcolm Collins: in private you always use words like, ah, it's amp. Or she's like, we need some lemon rum. Like, our kids don't give me enough lemon rum. I
Simone Collins: need to eat my dinner.
Malcolm Collins: They
Simone Collins: don't.
Malcolm Collins: You are gonna get us in so much trouble one
Simone Collins: day.
Never. I'm not, I'm not gonna get us in trouble. I'm not gonna get us in trouble. I'm fine. I'm not the risk taker. You were just on NPR
Malcolm Collins: today. You did a, a great job with that, I'm sure.
Simone Collins: We'll see. I bet it's gonna be on YouTube and it's just all gonna be comments. And I'm actually gonna check now if they like put it on and I, I can almost guarantee you like the top ranked comments are gonna be like, she's a, not she.
So W-H-Y-Y-N-P-R genetic.
The ethics of screening and designer [00:34:00] babies, but that was from one day ago. Yeah. So they, they, I don't think they've brought mine live yet. This is probably part of a series they're doing. So, so I, I, I one of the things to buy with this is mentioned by the way, on the interview, where I was like, wait, is this true?
He was like, well, you know, people might screen out for Al Albinism, or he was talking about that, and he was like, well, but like, it's, it's kind of interesting that like seven Nobel laureates have have albinism and I'm like, what? Is this true? That seems like bias. I'd be like, that seems like bias. Yeah.
They're, they're, they're so white that they have to be smart. Laureate, it's, it's like, like it seems super racist or something like list of, hold on. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: It's like models with that weird potential. I met with them.
Simone Collins: Yeah. V Yes. With, yeah. It's like that's the result of
Malcolm Collins: bias. That's not inclusivity.
Simone Collins: I know. But it looks really cool. I think that's, I think the reason why like people think it's woke, but no, it's because it's cool. And that's the, the unifying [00:35:00] thing of runway models isn't that they're beautiful.
It's that they look very distinctive. And what's more distinctive, hold on. If we
Malcolm Collins: made our kids all albinos, like that'd be so cool for the techno puritans. Like all white skin and red eyes. Like people out stay inside all the's. Many, like
Simone Collins: not having any melanin is such a risk with outdoor exposure. I mean, as much as wrong, well, no, but outdoor exposure is such a risk
Malcolm Collins: to productivity.
I love you, Sean, so much. I love your like eye roll there. That was intense.
Simone Collins: Is is it true though? I'm, I'm asking perplexity.
No, it says no. Nobel laureate is known to have albinism. So you just made it up. Sorry, I gotta
Malcolm Collins: delete
Simone Collins: that. Do people just lie on the internet? People just lie on npr. You just go on NPR and lies go on. Apparently. Yes. I mean, did I mishear him? Or Well, you'll hear, oh
perplexity is looking into it. Deep research. So [00:36:00] if it's out there, we'll find it. No, no. There's no evidence that people with albinism are disproportionately represented among major award winners. In fact, the available information suggests the opposite. People with albinism are underrepresented in most high profile fields in including entertainment, politics, science.
Octavian. What? Hey buddy. Hi. You're home awful early.
Malcolm Collins: You wanna have him talk to the fans really quick.
Simone Collins: You brought surprises. Do you want to talk to the, the.
Octavian Collins: What I've been doing so good. Stacey gave me this present. Stacey give me, Stacey gave me this present because I was so good. Oh,
Simone Collins: what else do you have in your box of mysteries?
Octavian Collins: Oh, what?
Simone Collins: What is it my friend? The work. Oh, [00:37:00] yes. What's. You want me to open it?
Octavian Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: What
Octavian Collins: she, Hey, check if this check, check if
Simone Collins: it's, it's the underwear your sister requested.
She, Hey. Hey, you. Can you
Malcolm Collins: ask him to tell people to like and I,
Simone Collins: Hey, Octa, can you tell the people to like, and subscribe,
Octavian Collins: like, and subscribe to our video if this is good.
Why,
Simone Collins: why should, why should they like and, and subscribe? 'cause
Octavian Collins: because my dad told me they can make money and they really wanna be rich. So subscribe first
Simone Collins: you. Well, you heard the boy. Yes.
Octavian Collins: So like, like si gives me special permission that I have this truck. So like tomorrow I can put my [00:38:00] army man, like my tan on me guys.
They can drive I to the green team, to the green team like this.
Bye. I'll see you all. I'll see you a little bit. I'm, and I see him like, learn about this good boy.
Simone Collins: And that's go burnout from Octavian. Have a
Malcolm Collins: good call with that journalist. Okay. Thanks. Do you want me to take Octavian and deal with him?
Simone Collins: Yeah, if you could so that I can start dinner and talk with her.
'cause otherwise she won't.
Oh.
Simone Collins: Such a good gardener. They're so pretty.
Malcolm Collins: Just can't stop watching that a and v on loop. It's so good. It's really good. It's, it's one of this little shark girl Gora, gora. I'll put it in the, the comments below if I remember. Or here. But it is really, it's like. You see [00:39:00] these, these young, rebellious girls, and I just like, so hope my daughter grows up to be like this.
エンディング
Malcolm Collins: And I know she will because I've already said like, it's, it's very clear there'll be, I've been reflecting on, I was talking to you about this is. How deep the desire in me is to have the type of young children who, you know, in my fantasies are, are, are first and foremost, like mischievous rule breakers.
And not like, and I know that other parents seem to want like obedient rule followers and I don't know you know, this is genetic. I don't know if this is cultural. Simone said, it's just 'cause I want somebody like myself. And, you know, that's like a, a way of, I guess, culturally passing on. It's
Simone Collins: not just that, [00:40:00] it's that there's, you have a, an extreme aversion discussed reaction to people who follow rules that you think aren't logical.
Yeah. So you, you don't wanna be disgusted by your children. So obviously you. Like it the other way.
Malcolm Collins: Do you fantasize about the kids being like rebellious and, and spunky and mischievous? No.
Simone Collins: Who cleans up their messes for the most part.
Malcolm Collins: What do you, what do you want them to be like when you think of successful?
I
Simone Collins: like to think about the businesses that they start, like I was telling you this morning, like. Tourist starting. Oh, and you,
Malcolm Collins: Titan and industry starting a business together and Yes. Yes. The two next ones the names that we're probably gonna go with, oh, you won't let me say them because you haven't bought the URLs or whatever.
I need
Simone Collins: to get the, I need to get their, like email addresses.
Malcolm Collins: They're good. Very, very frustrating.
What [00:41:00] did
you bopped him with? A soccer B Dusty. You gotta get him back.
I stronger. Oh yeah. Oh, Josie, you gotta power up. Power up. You gotta boost your power. Bam, bam, bam.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Wild West Dating & Mail Order Brides: Tinder of the Old West
16 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, Simone and her guest delve into the fascinating history of mail order brides in the Old West. They explore why men and women opted into these arrangements, what each gender valued in a partner, and how societal values have changed over time. The script covers a variety of firsthand accounts and marriage ads from the 1800s to early 1900s, highlighting the practical and often business-like nature of these unions. The hosts also discuss the broader cultural implications and talk about how modern individuals might learn from these historical practices.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to go into an interesting deep dive to learn more about dating in the old West. We are going to look at the widely practiced concept of mail order brides in the old West. Talked about why people opted into it, why they did it.
Review a lot of firsthand accounts of what men were looking for back then and what women were looking for to understand what they valued in a partner and how that has changed in society. Because I think that that's something to go back to, like different cultural periods to one, better understand our own ancestry because I think a lot of Americans have forgotten what their great grandparents valued, what they were looking for in partners, et cetera.
And we, we, through seeing different cultures, we can be like, oh, this is a different way to relate. To marriage and sexuality. And, and a lot of people would ask, they'd be like, how really, like women would do this. They would like get in a carriage and like drive out to meet with someone in the middle of nowhere in like the old west.
Like, weren't they afraid of like being turned into [00:01:00] like a sex slave and like chained up in the basement or something. And it's like, well actually there wasn't that much risk of that because that was sort of like a strictly like worse value proposition for a guy than a wife. Sex slaves are very high maintenance.
Especially if you're living on the frontier, like yeah, they're
Simone Collins: not doing that much work, which is, I mean, I guess you could, you could force them to work. There was like that, that tragic story recently of the. Mm. Well now man, but who had been trapped in his house for a long period of time and he was occasionally let out to clean the house.
So he did do some housework, but then otherwise he was in his room. Yeah. That's
Malcolm Collins: strictly less like even if they were just cleaning the house, that's strictly lesser than you can get out of a dedicated wife who like you, you dedicated part of your time to. Right. You know, like you get a lot more labor out of her just by being nice.
So we'll, we'll get to like the dynamics of this, although there was an instance. Where a woman did get married to a nice guy, only to realize shortly after her wedding, and we'll go into this case in a bit, that he had robbed her stage coach on the way over, not knowing it was his future wife, [00:02:00] and he was just on the low down, also a stage coach robber.
Oh, oops. Well, he was nice about it too. He didn't know it was gonna be his future wife, and he let her keep her wedding outfit and everything. And Oh, that's, she was like, oh, I'm gonna get married. And then he's like, oh, yeah. He's like, I can just imagine his face when she arrives, like, oh, sh uhoh, uhoh.
What a start, huh? That's, that's before getting into all of that. I want go into some marriage in the old West. Okay. Rucks coffee, coupons and rings. In late 18 hundreds, rucks Coffee was a dominant brand across the American frontier, especially among cowboys, homesteaders, and miners. Coffee was a staple, and Arbuckle stood out by including redeemable coupons or premiums in their three pound bags.
These weren't just throwaways. Think of them as loyalty points. Customers collected them to train for goods like kitchenware, razors, and notably. Finger rings, the rings often simple bands or [00:03:00] modestly adorned were marketed as keepsakes or engagement symbols. The claim of 80,000 wes a year was, was one of their, their things.
So the old wesler was a common practice of you would buy. Now, the, the reason this brand of coffee became popular among the old West first is they built a a way. To seal it so it stayed fresh longer so they could ship it further. And so, then the next thing they did is they built a system where you would get like this coupon book that you could use to buy things, but one of the most popular items in the coupon book was wedding rings.
And so people would save up for various wedding rings that they would buy with coupons.
Simone Collins: That is that, I mean, that makes sense. It, it sounds honestly like buying. A wedding ring with your credit card points today, which a lot of people do. So I bet if I log onto our credit card rewards, I will find ways to buy a ring.
Which time all day. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. We spend all our points on, hey, this year, never
Malcolm Collins: [00:04:00] one to rest on his laurels. Our buckle next came up with a voucher plan. He printed a coupon bearing his signature on each package. A given number of coupons would earn the bearer one of a hundred items available in Arbuckle's catalog.
The wishlist book of its day items included everything from a toothbrush to a double action revolver. A young man could even order a golden wedding ring for his lady. Love his lady love. Oh, I love that. You could be killed by a gun that somebody got was coupons in the old West. Not only was the coffee a lifesaver to those early westerners, so was the packaging coffee was shipped with sturdy main fur crates, 100 pound bags to the lot.
The crates were used to make furniture coffins and cradles. The Navajo Indians even used the wood to make a hogans and trademark flying angel that embezzled each package of coffee , adorned mini, a Western Christmas tree.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. That is very interesting. Right?
That is so cool. I love that.
Malcolm Collins: I, I thought you'd get excited about this. I was like, [00:05:00] that's a, that's a cool little anecdote. I'm moving that right to the beginning.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Hold on. I wanna, I wanna see if
Malcolm Collins: I can find pictures of these, these books. I, I, I, I could find pictures of the books, but not the rings.
Simone Collins: Well, I mean, I imagine the rings looked pretty you know, nondescript.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like just a gold band. Yeah. That's my guess. So a common cording custom in the old West was something called cording mirrors. Cording mirrors were another quirky tradition, more common in rural America, including the old West during the 18 hundreds. They were small handheld mirrors, often four to eight inches long with wooden or metal frames, sometimes carved or painted with simple designs like or flowers.
Aw, a sooner gifted one to a woman. He was courting, and it wasn't just about vanity mirrors were pricey and were rare on the frontier where glass was a luxury. Mm-hmm. Giving one signaled thoughtfulness and investment, like gifting a high-end gadget. Today the mirror had symbolic weight too.
It was intimate. A personal item tied to appearance and identity, suggesting trust and admiration. Some stories claim that women used them to reflect on their suitor's [00:06:00] intentions, . Although that likely was romanticized folklore, practically a mirror was useful for a woman living in a sod house or cabin with few possessions.
In some cases, couples exchanged mirrors with the man keeping a smaller one as a memento reinforcing mutual commitment. That's sweet. They both would bring a mirror and the man would just keep whichever one happened to be smaller. These mirrors that weren't mass produced like our buckles rings, they were often handmade or bought from peddlers, making each one unique.
By the 1880s catalog companies like Sears began offering cheap versions, but earlier a mirror might cost a day's wages serious for a farm, hand or cowboy. Their popularity waned by the 19 hundreds as manufactured goods flooded markets, but they left a mark in diaries and family heirlooms often passed down as quote the mirror he gave her in quote.
That's, that's so also sweet.
Simone Collins: And yes, I checked in 100%. We could buy a wedding ring with credit card points even on Etsy. You can now like convert credit card points to an Etsy gift card. [00:07:00] So. Well, I love it. And I, and I love craft the, the,
Malcolm Collins: The, this, this mirror idea. It's actually really sweet that whatever your only possessions, it's a
Simone Collins: keepsake thing.
And practical. I love this mixture of practicality and writing. Well, it tied to your identity, symbolic. Mm-hmm. I should give you all your also like, take care of yourself. Like, girl, I forget, like a
Malcolm Collins: vacuum, like you look rough.
Simone Collins: Here's the evidence. It's a mirror.
Malcolm Collins: But, and, and it's important to understand how little people owned back then when we were going back through my family diaries at that time.
And it was like my great great grandfather talking about being raised. And the episode's called People used to Like Their Parents. That's the, it's a really good episode, I think one of the best we've ever done. Because it was going over his diaries and at one point he catalogs everything he owns and everything he owns was.
Like a dirt roof shed that they slept in an outhouse and then a, a weaving loo, a loom. And, and apparently some pigs. And that was it. I mean,
Simone Collins: pigs are so, looms are useful too.
Malcolm Collins: That
Simone Collins: all
Malcolm Collins: sounds good to me. Yeah. Yeah. But I was, it's, it's interesting to [00:08:00] me that today, like, have you thought about making a catalog of everything that your family owns?
It would not be like a four thing catalog. It's not like, well, we've got some pigs and I've got a, a loom and an outhouse.
Simone Collins: Well, and in just a few years you'd buy a house on a catalog, so. I don't know. Catalogs really saw this. Amazing catalogs were the pre-internet, internet, and
Malcolm Collins: I love that. Yeah. Like Sears, you know, you can, in my hometown of Dallas you can drive around and some of the old Sears houses that were bought from a catalog are still standing in, in neighborhoods that I lived in.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And they're, they're nice houses too. Like, I've seen YouTube tours of them. They're well-built, built, classic design. They, they look a lot better than modern modern builds and McMansions on average.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, for if people are wondering like, like, okay, I'll, I'll go into the story now of mail order brides.
Yes. The story of the famous mail order brides of the Old West began when the gold rush brought men over the rocky mountains to new mining communities. Oh, only a few [00:09:00] prospectors struck it rich, but many young men stayed in the west, mining, ranching, farming, hunting, or opening businesses. As towns begin to grow, these men wanted wise to create.
Families and to build more stable lasting communities in the Western territories, men outnumbered women drastically, sometimes by as many as nine to one. Oh my gosh, not good odds. The obvious answer was single women from the east willing to start new lives. And this wasn't just a phenomenon in the Old West, it was also a phenomenon in Australia.
So here are some Australian ones because, you know, you had the men in the Outback farming and stuff trying to bring women out and, and they're really interesting to analyze because you get an idea of what. A man valued in a partner back then. Like when he's out and he's like, I want a woman that meet these criteria this, this is what he's thinking.
And, and keep in mind how this would work. He would like go to the Telegraph office and you'd be like, I wanna contact one of these, these magazines or newspapers out eastern and, you know, one of the major cities in Australia. And I, I wanna write you know, to them like descriptions of what [00:10:00] I'd want in a wife and, and, and, and.
Okay. So, and you also gotta think, really it
Simone Collins: was more like singles ads. I mean, it was kind of male, it was long distance singles ads.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And you've also gotta think when you're hearing this, what it says about like, how they're trying to sell themselves to the woman as well. Like their understanding of what the woman values.
Okay. So. This one, matrimonial two young men, age 31 and 25, wish to correspond with young ladies with a view to matrimony. Photos exchanged if necessary. Ladies must be able to read and write and capable of conducting a store on goldfields if required.
So what's really interesting in this is first, like they don't care that much what they look like. It's like, okay, if you, oh, photo's optional.
Simone Collins: I'm little confused by two men together looking. No, they're,
Malcolm Collins: they're, they're okay. So they both want basically the same thing. A competent woman, right? Yeah.
And so they're like, well, let's just pool on the ad, you know? Because we both want a woman who's like, good at accounting and business. I'm just picturing this
Simone Collins: really cute gay couple that's like. [00:11:00] We just need wives,
Malcolm Collins: beards, that's it. No, no, no. You see that pretty frequently in these is that people will pull, it's just going in
Simone Collins: together.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're like, well, let's just go in together and, we'll, we'll look at the, the, you know, the correspondence and see which ones we like. And then what's also really interesting here, and we've noted this before, and like people don't believe us, we're like women. Historically we're expected to work and work in the family business.
This is what a corporate family was. The idea of a nuclear family where a woman stayed at home and did nothing, does not represent what your ancestors were
Simone Collins: doing. No, you were, you were getting a business partner. These were more ads for business partners for sure, except
Malcolm Collins: for a very short time from the 1910s to like the NI 1970s.
So if you go back to the old, we, you know, li Li listen to what the, the one qualification they want in a woman. Ladies must be able to read and write and be capable of conducting a store on a gold field if necessary. IE you need to be able to run a business. That's what I need you for. I'll do like the gold panning and stuff like that, and you run the [00:12:00] store.
Like that's the way it often worked. Which is a really interesting, and understanding what was expected from gender dynamics in a relationship. And also what you'll see in a lot of these is women were expected to manage the finances. So here's another one. Matrimony a young man about 24 years of age of respectable connections, having an income of about 120 pounds per annum.
Wishes to obtain an introduction to a lady about 19 or 20 agreeable in person and capable of looking after domestic affairs property. No object. Okay. Huh?
Simone Collins: So again, what he, what he's
Malcolm Collins: saying here is he's, he's not asking about looks. He's saying, I need a woman who can look after my financial affairs. Which is really fascinating.
But I think it's also signaling to the woman like what type of guy these are as well. Yeah. Like this is, this is part of a two part signaling. This is, look, I'm a respectable guy. And you know, you come, you meet with me and we'll, we'll start a business together and we'll build something that matters together.
Right. You know, it's not like, Hey, I'm looking for a. Mama, you know. Any, any thoughts on that before I go further? [00:13:00]
Simone Collins: We need to get back to this. Okay. This, but this does what I'm thinking already when I hear this is there's this phenomenon within the rationalist or EA community online, whereby some people will post marriage bounties.
Mm-hmm. And they're just like way too wordy versions of this. And I, when I compare these succinct ads with the marriage bounty descriptions. I'm really seeing the difference between why people were able to get married back then when being practical and why practical, logical people today can't.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, keep in mind they're paying for the letter on these, but I understand.
I know, but no, my point though is like
Simone Collins: these people worked out to like, what do I really need? You know, someone. Who owns property and can, you know, or like someone who's practical and not crazy and can help out domestically around the house, doesn't have to be a supermodel. Whereas when I, when I go through some of these, these marriage bounties that people describe, it's like long documents [00:14:00] and like I'm an INTJ and I'm looking for someone with like.
They're being completely unreasonable about what they want and, and they, they also are being way too wide. But, but
Malcolm Collins: I think it's, I think it's unfair to just point this out with the EA community. It's, it was in our own fan base. We'll talk to people and they're like, I want like a hot woman, and I'll get a hotter woman and like, you know, I'll go a Latin American and find a hot wife, you know, and it's like, yeah.
No, you, you shouldn't even be caring about that. Like, you know, like, you, you should be focused on their, like when I met you, your attractiveness was of, I think, a very obvious to me of, of little concern. I was much more interested in your industriousness and your breadth of knowledge and, and curiosity to learn new things.
Mm-hmm. That was it. That was like my criteria, like. Yeah. It was, it was not big. But I was, I wanted people who, someone who's world class at those things, which is, I think, you know, why our relationship has gone so well. But to, to go to the, whereas, you know,
Simone Collins: there's, there's other, like, when I look at other ads, and this is from later periods, so you're talking around the, the gold rush around 1849 to [00:15:00] 1856, I imagine all the way up until like the 1920s, people were still that.
Practical, like I'm, there's, there's a Pittsburgh Press 1921 ad that just reads, I'm 27. Employed by the government. Have a small but reasonable salary, will make some poor working girl from 18 to 25. A good husband in a happy home must be Protestant. No dancers, flirts, or street walkers. Need answer. I had that one.
I was gonna
Malcolm Collins: do this one. I thought this was a good one. It's so. No, but it's always, I, I want a woman of, of strong moral character, Uhhuh. And, and not even, no, he doesn't, he, he's not even here. Like, oh, you know, you can't have never slept with someone before. You can't have never, yeah. Just like,
Simone Collins: don't bite your character.
Be someone who's addicted to that. That's it. He's being reasonable.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He cares about like religious ideological compatibility. That makes perfect sense. I actually really don't understand how interfaith marriages work. Yeah, and
Simone Collins: that's the thing is, is it, it. And you, you don't have to say this in so many words, and I think when you say it in too many words, then [00:16:00] you, you're losing people and you see his
Malcolm Collins: aspiration here is to be a good husband to somebody.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: He, he's, he, he, he's explaining right up front, I'm a man of modest means, right? Like, I'm not making, I'm not a sugar daddy. I'm not a wealthy man. But if you're poor and you want a decent, stable life, I'm your guy.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know? That's
Simone Collins: great.
Malcolm Collins: Here's one. The respectable man desirous of forming a matrimonial alliance with a young and respectable female, but I love that line instead of a wedding, a matrimonial alliance.
That's what I, that sounds good.
Simone Collins: That sounds really, that's prestigious. Sign me up for that. Hmm. People, maybe people go for it more if it's a matrimonial alliance and not a marriage.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. Oh, hello? Sorry. It's somebody from the New York Times. I, yeah, I, I, I'm happy to take your call now.
Yeah, it is just a fact checker from the New York Times.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: So, she's gonna call back. She's got something else going on. But you No, I, I mean, I think that we should view marriages that way as matrimonial alliances. Mm-hmm. That's like a really powerful way, much more so than like a [00:17:00] matrimonial submission.
And this is when people are like, oh, in the old days, women submitted to their husbands. Does this sound like you want somebody to submit to him? Like, no, A matrimonial alliance mm-hmm. With a young and respectable female is informed of a person ready and willing to change the state of the single blessedness for the hazardous chains of wedlock life.
Exclamation mark. So. He's saying willing to change the state of single blessedness for the, the hazardous chains of wedlock. Like saying, I, I know that a marriage is a risk for, for both of us, but, but I want somebody who's willing to take that risk. Yeah. Now here's the, here's the first thing.
We've got her appearance very attractive, a temper, excitable, and a mind capable. To enlighten the dark shadows of his sly pilgrimage. Wow. He's looking for a muse. Yeah. He's looking for somebody. No. You know, he's like, I want somebody who's attractive, excitable. I, I like excitable women too. Excitable.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Yeah. I guess, yeah. Someone who gets [00:18:00] jazzed about your ideas. Yeah, you're right. I mean, not all of these are agnostic to appearance, like the, the one that, that says desires to meet a single. Or widow lady of some means and of refinement in Christian age 33 to 43, weight 1 25 to 145 pounds. Height five, four to five seven.
Stylish and of neat appearance, but plain. Which is really interesting.
Malcolm Collins: So you had, you had read another one or.
Simone Collins: Well that, yeah, I mean they're not agnostic to appearance. Not all of them are, but like weight ranges like 125 to 145 pounds, height five, four to five seven. Stylish of neat appearance, but plain.
Malcolm Collins: plane. I love it. Okay, so, I asked like, why, why did women do this?
Right? Mm-hmm. Women who answered the ads for wives in the West were those who weren't finding men or men of quality at home, or those who wanted to get away from home for some reason. Reasons included. Having strict parents being subject of a scandal that was ruining their reputation or simply wanting [00:19:00] adventure or a new start after something bad had happened at home.
These women needed to find a husbands elsewhere far from where they lived. Surprisingly, no shortage of women answered these male order bride ads. Many old Western marriages were made this way. In most cases, the marriages went smoothly as both parties represented themselves accurately. No one wanted to travel a thousand miles or more across a continent or wait for someone to travel.
That far to get to them, only to find out there were lies involved that would make the marriage unpleasant for one or both of them. Right. However, the occasional stories of mail order bride ventures went awry. And, and I think this is the core thing is you know, the reason why this didn't end up poorly that frequently is just because you gotta live the rest of your life with this person.
Right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. You're not gonna,
Simone Collins: Lying works on a one-off. I'm never going to see you again basis. It doesn't work if you need to depend on that person the rest of your life, and your spouse, whether you're antagonistic toward them or not. They can [00:20:00] really make your life miserable. Your life is in their hands.
Your food is in their hands. Your safety is in their hands. If you are sick and vulnerable, they decide whether you live or not. No. As a
Malcolm Collins: husband, like that's absolutely true. If you piss off your wife, she can just dab you at any time in the night. Like Yeah. Or
Simone Collins: if you're, if you're deadly ill, she could just not getting water.
You know, like the, there are ways. You know, even without, it was, it was difficult
Malcolm Collins: actually. There was one serial killer woman who just like killed tons of husbands. Yes, yes. I I think
Simone Collins: there's, there's been multiple of them in history 'cause it's, it's a pretty easy game to play.
Malcolm Collins: One notable example though, by all means, not the only one, is that of 22-year-old school Mistress Elizabeth Berry and Bachelor Minor, Luis Dr.
Pelvis.
Called her dream will be, I pretended I couldn't pronounce it. Lewis described himself as a lonely minor in his ad. Elizabeth was concerned about becoming a spinster since she was still [00:21:00] unmarried at 22. I wonder if this is related to Brittany which was approaching old age in the old western marriage market.
That is hilarious. 22 was considered approaching old age back then. Oh dear. So Elizabeth packed up her things after a short correspondence with Louis and married him in California on the way her stage coach was robbed, but one of the three robbers allowed her to keep her luggage, which had her wedding dress and other belongings for her new life.
In it, she noticed the man had a ragged scar on his hand. Later that day, she reached Lewis's house. And they went to the justice of the Peace to get married after she got dressed for the ceremony. After the exchange vows were pronounced man and wife. Elizabeth thought she recognized Louis' voice and saw the same ragged scar on his hand she had seen in the robber when he signed the marriage license.
Realizing he was one of the robbers she fled and history does not record what became of her. It turns out Lewis was indeed a minor, but he neglected to say in his ad that he had supplemented his income by robbing stage coaches with a couple [00:22:00] of his friends. Oh dear. Okay. So on June 4th.
Simone Collins: So they didn't, didn't necessarily have their happily labor after she just ran off.
Just ran away. That's really dangerous because Too high
Malcolm Collins: status, too, too high. You know, women just expect you to have money
Simone Collins: without working for it, you know? See, that's the thing. And also, but like she's out there and she's vulnerable. I would, I mean, ran away into take my chances, you know?
Malcolm Collins: I don't know if she like ran well, and if the ratio was nine to
Simone Collins: one, she could probably.
Take her pick of the litter.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. On June 4th, 1871, Sarah Baes hopped down from a wagon in Fort Bridger, a remote military and trading outpost at the crossroads of several pioneer trails in what would one day become Wyoming Bains. A 24-year-old seamstress from Louisiana had just spent several months traveling 1,500 miles through Roadless territory alone, but she wouldn't be alone for long.
She'd come to Fort Bridger to get married. The [00:23:00] groom was Jay Hensley. Imagine that months traveling alone as a woman in the old West
Simone Collins: unaccompanied that is. Terrifying
Malcolm Collins: because, you know, well that your husband wouldn't grape you. A bandit might, a Native American might help you. They don't have
Simone Collins: any interest in maintaining your Yeah, man.
Unaccompanied that is
Malcolm Collins: Native Americans during this period, some tribes, not all tribes we're genuinely terrifying and monstrous. They would, they would, do really horrible things. The, the one that you always use that you know, you know, off the top of your head was the the one that, pocahontas came from that, which, which is not one of the tribes in the, they had
Simone Collins: some torture involving, burning and pulling your skin off, or
Malcolm Collins: they would pull your skin off with a clam. With clam, yeah, with clam shells. But they weren't even like the most violent Indians were generally the plains Indians.
Like this is where you had the big war-like cultures that developed during this period. And so really a scary, brave thing to do. The groom was Jay Hensley. A. 48-year-old farmer who'd left Ohio some years before to seek [00:24:00] his fortune out west. The two met after Hemsley responded to an ad placed in the matrimonial pages of the October 12th, 1869 edition of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly.
They corresponded via letter for more than a year before Hensley proposed the day after Brian's arrived at Fort Bridger and they were married by the forts minister in a small ceremony on the banks of Garage Creek. The next day, they left to open a general store in Ville Cal, California Placerville.
Platter pla placerville plaster, I don't know how to say it. In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the Hemsley were married for 51 years. Aw. So here you see a few things. You know, one, it's not like the husband is the breadwinner. They went to open a store together. Yes. As soon as they, and they like, started their life, it wasn't like he had a store operational and then he got a wife.
It was like, Hey, what do you wanna spend your life doing? 'cause we're gonna be doing it together. And they go open a store together. Right. You know. And they end up married for 51 years. It seems like a, a pretty, you know, [00:25:00] harmonious. And I will say, it always gets to me, we, we should actually do an episode that's like a realistic take on native American pioneer interactions because the.
I mean, I think you have two periods. You have the one period where, you know, in, in 19 50th Americana, where, you know, people naively understood it as like cowboys versus Indians. And the Indians were generally the bad guys. Like, just like, you know, except for like the, the wise friend Indian Yes. Who would, who would be a guide or whatever.
Yeah. But then in, in like Wakeville it became, you know, settler's always bad. Like Indian's always good, like, and I think that that's also really a twisted understanding of history. And there's actually this great one where they were like, they were interviewing some like ultra progressive and, and they were talking about how, you know, before the settlers came, like the Native Americans all got along.
There was never any war, there was never any torture. There was never, I mean, first off,
Simone Collins: there is plenty of. Of a history of Native American tribes doing terrible things to each other, independent? No, no, no. They didn't [00:26:00] believe that.
Malcolm Collins: They believed this narrative of like, they were like these wise, like mystic people who like didn't do that.
And it's like, no. There, there were some tribes that were like unusually nice, useful like the Cherokee would be an example of this. But you know, there were others like the Apache and the Comanche and the Seminoles that were, no, they were
Simone Collins: pretty, they were proper scary.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, proper scary. The Seminoles don't even mind this today.
You know, they've done pretty well. They ended up buying the hard rock cafe chain at the tribe. Good for them. That's nice. And they've done, that's nice for people who dunno, the Seminoles were the ones who lived in the Florida, like Everglades and swamp areas and, and nobody really conquered them ever.
And, and nobody wanted the land. That's an advantage. Yeah. No, no. Hey, no one wanna
Simone Collins: be out there. Yeah, that is.
Malcolm Collins: But it keeps you strong, you know, when you live in, in, in catering. That's
Simone Collins: why we're so on city states in undesirable areas. That's actually really great example of like, people are like, why do you wanna build in the far north?
Well, before the same reason The Seminoles were Okay. Relatively speaking. Yeah. 'cause they were in. Floridian Swamp zone of death.
Malcolm Collins: [00:27:00] Yeah. So here is a, a, a story that was put in a newspaper. Mm-hmm. Moat County, ranch, man, secures, charming housekeeper. Oh. Married, four hours after they first met. And this is a very old writeup.
This is like a modern writeup. Mm-hmm. The young lady came in on the belated train, something after four o'clock was met by her intended husband, and before nine the deed was done.
Now it must not be imagined that the two were altogether strangers before taking this step. Miss Bets and is a sister of Ms. Frank LeClaire, who lived near Kyle's place on the South Fork. They had been coordinated by mail for a couple years and recognized each other instantly. When the young lady alighted from the train. Rh Green was one of the guests of honor at the wedding, and being a mutual friend of the interested parties aided greatly in their acquaintanceship. The bride is a charming lady who has made her home in Denver for several years. Mr. Cal is one of the enterprising young ranch men of so Eastern Mofo County, [00:28:00] and has a host of friends who will be.
Joy in, in wishing both much happiness. Oh, so there's a few things to note from this story. The first is that the way that this wedding was structured is, is they had mutual acquaintances who helped to source it, which was really common. Yeah. This really seems like a
Simone Collins: community endeavor. I.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Another is which were common. They weren't always, you know, you had some like genuine mail-in brides. But then in other instances you had you know, the. People being matched by their family members. But here I'd also note where she came from. Right. I've mentioned that you have sort of genetic selection events when you're dealing with the, with the West.
And a lot of people think of the West as being like a single wave, when actually what it was is multiple waves. Absolutely. And then the most adventurous people from the last wave, settling the new wave. Mm-hmm. So you have. First wave settling in the Appalachian region. Then the next wave settling out in like Texas and, and in, in the west.
And here this woman who is going out to this really rural region was already settled and living in Denver. Yeah. Which
Simone Collins: was
Malcolm Collins: a
Simone Collins: very, yeah. She was a [00:29:00] daughter of risk takers who took an even bigger risk. Yeah. Magnifying effect, which is many. Why many people argue that San Francisco has this sort of collective genetic inheritance of.
Startup risk takers, that's what you got there.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it's also important to, Ima understand like how bad things were for women in these cities in terms of like what led them to go out and do this. Oh. Which was that you know, often jobs if you didn't have a husband were hard to get as a woman.
You know, you could end up in one of the, like a sewing factories, which is Yeah. In a workhouse. Really nightmare existence. Yes. You, God, that'd be a fun one to do a episode on, or a depressing one to do. Episode one, the old workhouses. Mm-hmm. Basically they, they kept you like a slave. You know, you, you'd rather be a sex slave than at one of these workhouses.
Yeah. Where they, they keep you working, you know, extremely long shifts every day of the week in very
Simone Collins: unsafe conditions.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. On these giant looms, you can still go tour them and stuff like that. And, and that was, [00:30:00] you know, if you, if you weren't from a wealthy family or you weren't like the oldest kid from a wealthy family you know, this is, this is what was waiting for you if you didn't secure a husband.
Yeah. And well that, or like dying on the streets or becoming a pickpocket or a beggar or a thief or, you know. So, for a lot of these women, this was actually a very good option. Also, keep in mind that many of them were coming from like Puritan, strict households or something like that, and we're having the rebellious phase and we're like, you know what?
I'd really like to, you know, live a bit more free. And the, the west was significantly more gender equality than the east, like women in these states and territories. You know, in the east sometimes they weren't allowed to own property, they weren't allowed to, et cetera, et cetera. That wasn't true when they got to the West.
And the arrangements that they were able to form were, were generally significantly more gender equal. So if you're a young woman who had a sense of adventure and wanted a degree of equality, you could find that.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: , but people, people also like, you know, made a little fun of this. Like, it was a little negative, like the early days of dating online. Like I remember when we were dating online Oh yeah. When you,
Simone Collins: you would get the [00:31:00] side eye for dating online. Yeah. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Well, I think the, the important thing to note is that not dating IRL, like not meeting your partner at church or in school or having them be your neighbor is, is a risky endeavor.
And is viewed with derision and suspicion by non-risk takers, by conformist to non-risk takers. Yeah. And that's why online dating is seen this way. This is why these mail order brides were seen this way, and yet this behavior has been actually quite common for a long time. That's how, I mean, essentially that's how my grandmother,
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Simone Collins: Married my grandfather. They corresponded via mail for some time after, like after war.
Malcolm Collins: They, they had met meeting in
Simone Collins: person just a few times after the war in Paris, in France. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so The Hartford Corin remarked in 1910, the Wichita Eagle reported was Sardonic glee that Miss Effy Newland, one of the wealthy young women of Hoaxy Kansas, married a Mr.
[00:32:00] Lopez, a sailor of Key West Florida, after she jokingly responded to his ad for a wife. But Lopez was a splendid writer, and the girl soon became infatuated with his love making. I love it today. Love making means something totally else. But she, they meant like being sweet in in letters. Yes. My goodness.
The paper claimed Lopez traveled to Hoaxy and the couple were married while the parents protested. Oh, other stories fueled the panic that marriages made outside society bounds were dangerous. The Los Angeles Herald reported on October 31st, 1897 that a 3-year-old man shot and killed his heavily insured at 19-year-old wife, oh.
Who he met through an advertisement in a matrimonial paper. Oh, that's, of course some stories had happy endings, marriages that that did end well. So like one headline from 1907 Declared Girl writes in Secret and Wins Rich Planter, the story of an Indiana woman who met her husband through an ad in matrimonial paper, the spare pit years writing to each other in secret, and they married in person.
This is, this is a story from an old newspaper or something that it's. Poorly, [00:33:00] red hair, bulk Cupids plans, mail order bride. Forgot to ask prospective husband about it. Trip here in vain, Kentucky missed. She shows
Simone Collins: up, but she's a Jin.
Malcolm Collins: No, he's a g and, and, and she immediately renounced their marriage possibility because he was redheaded, because she said, quote, I just couldn't live with a redheaded man.
I couldn't. They are always so cross. It's actually just like literally her, her stereotype against people with red hair. Man. Hilarious. Oh, okay. This is a crazy sta off from an old newspaper, like who knows how many these old stories are true. Mm-hmm. But brother and sister drawn together is through matrimonial ad Council Bluffs, October 18th.
The most remarkable romance ever brought to light in southwestern Iowa has befall James Covington, a prosperous farmer residing in the Nua botta bottom 20 miles east of here. Covington advertised for a wife and received a response from a widow in [00:34:00] Georgia. They exchanged a number of letters and he sent the woman money with which to come to him.
They were married on the day of her arrival. He met her at the depot and they were mutually dumbfounded when it was discovered that the intended bride was none other than Covington's sister from whom he had been separated at youth. He heard she was killed in a whale ray wreck and mourned her is dead.
Each married and other, and their respective spouses died. The sister's name being changed by marriage Compton did not recognize her in correspondence.
Simone Collins: Did they get married? Do I, did I hear that right?
Malcolm Collins: No. No, they didn't. Okay. They were previously married and they had, that's why they didn't, you know the, the name.
Okay. Who knows if it's real. It's a sweet story of it is like, I want it. It's, I mean,
Simone Collins: yeah. At least you discovered your sibling is still out there. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: So to go through some original texts because I, I love reading these. This is from 1865 in the Chicago Tribu Correspondence. Desired for the [00:35:00] love of the thing, fun or matrimony, any young ladies between 16 and 21.
This, this is, this was like a more flirty one, like either for marriage or just for fun. Oh, dear.
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: and, and then this is an ad for people to join, like a service for doing this, either rich, handsome, pretty stylish, accomplished, refined Italian or brilliant. By two gentlemen, A wrong, a young, a rich young widower, SH layered oh, this for two men and a rather handsome, steady fellow.
The only son of wealthy parents. Oh boy. Correspondence, honorable or secret. Honorable
Simone Collins: or
Malcolm Collins: secret? Mm-hmm. Oh. This is a, what? These men know what's up. This is a, that is a horny marriage ad. They're ready for something
Simone Collins: raunchy. AKA secret. That is interesting. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: A widow. This is from a, a widow or merchant and stockman lives in Kansas, 56 years old, height six feet weight, 210 pound brunette black hair and eyes wishes corresponding with [00:36:00] ladies of same age without encumbrances, and whiz means must move in the best socially, and be fully qualified to help make a happy home object, matrimony.
So he is like, I, you need to be, you know, upper cl you need to, you know, not be classy. Yeah. Classy, right? There's a lad in Missouri with a flat foot seeds in his pocket, a brick in his hat, a blue eyes size tin shoe called the bull of the woods. And the boy for you. Well, there's a lot
Simone Collins: of contemporary lingo on that one.
My goodness.
Malcolm Collins: A brick under his
Simone Collins: hat and seats in his pocket. What?
Malcolm Collins: On Earth. He, he's, he's giving a vibe with that one. That's like one of, he's absolutely no slinging it. Here's one. Once pretty girl age 17 to 20. Advertiser is 29, 5 feet, nine inches Tall, blonde can laugh for 15 minutes once a pretty girl are laughing.
These are tall
Simone Collins: people. Are they overstating? Just like people are on online dating ads. Now I wonder because this, this is really tall. [00:37:00] 5, 9, 6 foot, like these are very tall heights for that time period. We've seen what beds look like from that time period. This is in clothing too?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Probably lying then.
Yeah, I doubt. I doubt.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, at least some things never change.
Malcolm Collins: Respectable young man, 20 years old, good city position desires, acquaintance of modest young lady, age 17 to 21 with home nearby. Object to attend operas and church. Perhaps more.
Simone Collins: Perhaps more. You know, he's showing off his why. He's
Malcolm Collins: like, I go to operas in church and that's what I want to do with you.
Maybe. Yeah. He's really.
Simone Collins: Really for g signaling there. But again,
Malcolm Collins: this is not, you know, these are not guys who are like, I'm looking for a hot woman who can, who can make a good dinner. Like, no one's fed that, right? Like, no one's been like, you know. Okay, here's one from 1898. 30 Wealthy Lost Mother for whom I sacrificed use Dread, A Lonely Future Seek Husband and True Companion.
Oh. This woman is desperate. This, this little and 30 [00:38:00] at that age was ancient. You know, she's really looking for, she wanted. That's rough. This one was in 1899, widow 44 Southerner, A stranger own home West End would like the Hearthstone of a heart swept and the cobwebs brushed away. Matrimony. Oh, sorry.
Would like the Hearthstone in heart swept. Getting poetic. Okay. Rushed away. So he is being poetic. He shine, you know, whatever. Okay, here's one, here's one. An older bachelor returning from the mines finds his. Old sweetheart. Married and old acquaintances, scattered desires. Lady acquaintance object marriage.
It's from 1904. I I like that. Very straight to the point. I was gonna marry someone, like I'm not, like a flirt or whatever. She just got married when I got back. This one here from 1921. Businessman gentleman, Christian, 33 to 43. Age 125. Oh yeah. So this is the one where you were talking about height and weight.
He's very
Simone Collins: specific about weight. Yes. And
Malcolm Collins: skills he wants is music. Sonography typing, bookkeeping. Good penmanship. That's, [00:39:00] that's interesting. Okay. Here we've got here, uh oh, oh AD for husband. I like this one. Okay. You got gold diggers. Even in the past 38-year-old brunette seeks a husband with an automobile.
This is from 1921.
Simone Collins: Needs a she? Does she wanna marry a man or a car? This is very interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Cars would've been quite a new contraption back then. Like, ooh, I want one of these men who lives fast here. Here's one from 1881. I think this one is interesting. Young person of Nobel birth. Beautiful is Helena housewife, like Penelope, et cetera, seeks a husband through press entirely without acquaintances of the masculine sex.
And so what she's saying here is, look at me. I'm so educated. I'm a little you know, oh yeah.
Simone Collins: But to. Is she describing herself to Helen of Troy? I mean, good luck lady. Yes. And a and a wife like Pene and Pene. She, no one wants to marry a woman who thinks she's literally as beautiful as Helen of Troy.
That is just trouble. I don't care how beautiful she's, she don't have
Malcolm Collins: any male acquaintances. Maybe. Maybe she'll [00:40:00] be Yeah, for
Simone Collins: a f*****g reason. No one can tolerate her. She's. I can't, I can't even deal with one, one collection of sentences that she wrote hundreds of years ago. Okay. Almost hundreds.
Malcolm Collins: So I found the first one that mentions cooking.
Gentleman 35 rancher in Montana seeks lady under 30 adept at household duties and not afraid of hard work. So it starts with the hard work thing. Must know how to cook and mend. That's good. Yeah. So rather than keep going, I collected some more, but this episode's run long and I think that we get the idea of what people were looking for.
Yeah. The question is
Simone Collins: how do, how can we bring this back? Because I like this and I like this idea of like, of, of looking for a business partner. You know, Hey, looking for someone who, you know, can, can move out here knows how to do these things, follows this religion. I have
Malcolm Collins: a great idea what, okay, so just like the Old West, our podcast is predominantly male watched.
Yeah. So what women can do, if you want and you wanna reach out to us and [00:41:00] have like a, a like short thing at the end of an episode where we pitch you to the audience, right? Yeah. Yeah. Then we forward you correspondence. If you're looking for marriage and kids, you, you, you, you let us know and we'll make a pitch for you at the end.
Email
Simone Collins: us at [email protected] with a succinct like these ads. Description of what you're looking for. Also, one more pitch also for the ladies watching this. There is a society of mothers who have stepped back from, you know, rigorous full-time careers to do more parenting, who nevertheless want to be involved in business and start businesses and kind of.
Work together, kind of like in a, in a writer's club to keep each other honest and move forward and actually get those businesses started. It's called undercurrent. If you're interested in joining this, also email us at partners of pragmatist foundation.com. We're not running it, we're not the founders of it, but we, we met the founder at Natal Con and she's a really cool woman.
[00:42:00] Also a mother of a bunch of children who's she has a finance background also very professional, and it's a cool group. So email us as well if you're interested in that.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. But I, I, I like this idea of of, of keep it short, simple, and what really matters to you, you know? Absolutely. And I think that that'll also help with, with personal framing, right?
But
Simone Collins: yeah, but I love that. I love you. You recognize that our podcast is the wild West, a lot of risk taking, high achieving intelligent men and, and, and some women.
Malcolm Collins: Here's, here's a sweet one from 1883. Hmm. I want a wife to talk with at day's end. Someone gentle to make this load some place home.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Wanna give him a hug? You know, it's okay, little man. Yes,
Malcolm Collins: it's probably not. He
Simone Collins: probably died a very painful death.
Malcolm Collins: Lives mostly alone. A lot of that was actually a, a, a fun one from a a Thousand Ways to Die in The West. I thought that was actually a, a fairly funny movie with a interesting premise [00:43:00] of, of a like I think it sold pretty wrong.
Like it sold like, oh, all the ways you could die in the West is what makes it funny, but what makes it funny? Is taking somebody with modern sensibilities and values and ideas of gender roles and putting them in an old West environment and just watching them constantly like flabbergasted at how different things were back then.
Mm-hmm. And how much nobody cared.
I have only the finest healing tonics and elixirs procured from the farthest corners of the globe.
Ogden's celebrated stomach bitters. God, look at the ingredients. Cocaine, alcohol, morphine, mercury with chalk. What the hell is mercury with chalk? Science and red flannel. Red flannel. There's shirt in here. Pieces of shirt.
Malcolm Collins: Here's one that I think you'll find from, from 1889, widower 50. Texas owns 200 acres, seeks a lady with some capital to join in matrimony and improve the land. Well.
Simone Collins: Just like he wants an infusion of this is, yeah. No, this is a growth equity marriage. I, no, I'm [00:44:00] not signing up for that.
Nice try. I.
Malcolm Collins: I love you so much, Simone. I'm, I'm glad I got you through the modern version of one of these. I reached out to you.
Simone Collins: I'll have,
Malcolm Collins: you know, did you, did, you were the trollop and I really appreciate that. Thanks. Sorry. You were a, an aggressive woman. In, in, in the, in the deed of, of, of, of macaroni.
And my,
Simone Collins: my first message to you was a question about your. Startup. Okay. Oh, oh, okay. You were being
Malcolm Collins: slim
Simone Collins: and you were like, let's discuss you over dinner. And I was like, okay. But no, it was always about business with us. Thank you. You were not interested in the startup at all. You, of course I wasn't. I was interested in your stupid face.
I love you too much. Oh my God. I love you too much. Love
Malcolm Collins: you.
Simone Collins: I am really lucky. I ended up with you just letting you know that. Sorry. I did submit it though, [00:45:00] and it, it
Malcolm Collins: put, you got it as an unlisted video. Can you send me the unlisted video just so I can check? It works. The link that you sent,
Simone Collins: I just checked that it worked and I just submitted it so it's a little late, but Sure. Here's the unlisted video.
Malcolm Collins: We are submitting to Andreesen Horowitz.
We got to round two applications. They liked our pitches of both of them, both for the AI video game project and for the school. So that is so exciting. So exciting. It is
Simone Collins: exciting. It is really exciting.
Malcolm Collins: You are just an absolute star, Simone. And she, you know what else is on my
Simone Collins: unlisted YouTube videos?
It's, it's insane. There's the gist of gig averse. There's an original, and this is 2022 description of the Cols Institute, which is crazy from our original fundraising for it. Wow. And I have our SRE spot, Andres. We, we did that on this song when we were on Peruvian
Malcolm Collins: tv. The [00:46:00] top, one of the top Peruvian TV shows had us on at one point.
But hold on, you were on NPR today and you were like, it was exactly like that scene from Parks and Rec. Like they had this NPR accent and they were all like low energy.
Leslie could one say that a book is nothing more than a painting of words, which are the notes on the tapestry of the greatest film ever. Sculpted One could say that, but should one join.
Malcolm Collins: And the bio ethicist was like, well, of course no one would call you a Nazi Simone for what you're doing. And you're, yeah, you're like, no one would describe
Simone Collins: that as like what the Nazis did.
And I'm like,
Malcolm Collins: every day. Like progressives don't know how crazy their own party is. Like, just, just not even close. I, I thought what we're gonna do for the next episode, he had more
Simone Collins: eugenic use than I did because he believed that there were some things that universally everyone could agree we should screen out this.
And I'm like, Nope, that's.
Malcolm Collins: No. Like, nope, they wouldn't agree on that. They [00:47:00] wouldn't agree with you. Horrible. Yeah. And that's, that's crazy
Simone Collins: that like progressives have more eugenic views than we do. But we're, we're the bad ones. We're evil. We're the one, sorry. Not, not, sorry,
Malcolm Collins: actually. Yeah, no, and I've been, I've been getting boiled at something 'cause I've been watching people angry at, at a lot of our, like, friends, like the, the lady who was on our show, science lady Sabina Hofstetter.
Because she you know, championed a book that was like, Hey, science is getting too woke and it's causing issues.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And the guy was like, oh, how could you say that? When Trump's in office and said, we're gonna rail on him, we're gonna say we won the war on science. We defeated science.
Josie, what did you learn about picking daffodils? I, I just wanted take this one. I was just, I just wanted to put, I just wanted to put flowers in the house so we can go off, can go to the store to get some blueberries. [00:48:00] Oh, okay. Testy wants blueberries. We got a goat.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Saknas det avsnitt?

Klicka här för att uppdatera flödet manuellt.
Redistricting: Why the Democrats Need a New Coalition Post 2030
15 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, the hosts discuss the profound implications of redistricting and its anticipated impact on future U.S. elections, particularly post-2030. They delve into population movements towards red states and the consequent shift in electoral votes which may disadvantage Democrats. The conversation explores how demographic and cultural shifts affect voting patterns, particularly among minority communities. The hosts also examine the internal challenges facing the Democratic Party, such as their exclusionary approaches, which complicate coalition-building. They consider potential paths and strategies Democrats might pursue to stay competitive, including appealing to new voter groups and addressing pertinent issues like job loss due to AI. The dialogue is rounded out with personal anecdotes and a light-hearted discussion on family dynamics and dinner plans.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Now, many of you watching might be aware of the current phenomenon going on in the United States. It makes it nearly impossible for Democrats to win elections after the 2030s. This is due to something called redistricting, in which as voters move to red states blue states lose votes because the number of votes you get in a presidential election and in Congress is based on your population.
Well. Turns out nobody wants to live in blue states anymore. They've for a long time. And these states are lower fertility anyway.
Simone Collins: Well, this also reminds me of that stat that showed that minority populations, like non-white populations that live in red districts versus blue districts have higher income.
Like all these measures that were way better, like, oh, in
Malcolm Collins: contrast it with white populations, actually everyone typically has lower income in red states. Just for clarification. But that's because the urban monoculture prefers to grow in environments where it can [00:01:00] harvest more money. So it focuses on wealthy cities and stuff like that.
But you're right about that. They're like relatively less racist in the implications of their policy than belief states.
Simone Collins: And while we, you're as consequentialist, we care about outcomes, you know, if they're thriving more in red districts, I would say red districts create better outcomes for minorities.
Malcolm Collins: Right. But so in this episode you, you've probably heard of this or you're broadly aware of it, but I want to both go into the specifics of this and go into scenarios about what it means to actually win an election. Like I. What are you actually going to win? How does it change, which states or swing states and how does it change what Democrats need to do to win elections going forward?
Okay. While also arguing that this is just gonna be incredibly hard for them to pull off and they'll likely need some new form of a coalition to. Win elections going forwards. And I don't know what that coalition's gonna look like. But what's interesting about the way the Democrats have built their coalition is it's entirely exclusionary recently.
It's either you [00:02:00] support trans people or you're totally out. Either like, as we've said, like all you need to do is disagree on one thing and you're not a de at all anymore. Like a JK Rowling is a Damon every single way, but like. Trans issues. And she's like a demon, right? Like Elon was like every single way, but like trans issue, demon.
And now he's like on the right, you know, like, so even if you like, just disagree on like the. The dumb thing, you point out the giant mole on their face. You know, it ends up causing you to be exercised from their culture. So,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, just
Simone Collins: wait. You make the tiniest wrong move when you're out.
That's the really scary thing.
Malcolm Collins: It's very hard. Basically they need to find a new group to protect it, sort of the way their culture is structured. But who would that be? It could only be. Religious conservatives, but, but, you know, say, oh, well, we'll protect your children, but then that would upset the Chinese people and the, you know, so I don't know what they're gonna do, but, we'll, we'll move on that at the end of this, but let's just go into the stats here to start.
Okay? Okay. Based on population projections for the [00:03:00] 2030 census, certain states are expected to gain house seats due to population groups, primarily in the south and west. Okay. Votes. Equals its number of house seats plus two for its senator who increase in house seats directly increases electoral votes.
The states gaining electoral votes along with the number of votes are Texas plus four, Florida plus four Arizona plus one Utah plus one. North Carolina plus one Utah plus one total of electoral votes gained 12. Conversely, states with population decline or slower goes, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, as well as California, are projected to lose house seats, thus electoral voters.
The states that are gonna lose them are California minus four, New York, minus two, Illinois minus one, Minnesota minus one, Oregon minus one. Pennsylvania minus one Rhode Island, minus one Wisconsin minus one. More critically projection [00:04:00] suggests that by 2030 Democrats rely on their. Safely Democratic states, eg.
California and New York. Plus the Blue Wall states, Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and Nebraska's Second district one vote. They would secure only 258 votes falling 12 votes short of the two 70. They need to win a presidency. So if Democrats just win what they historically considered, like the safe path to victory, they will not win under the new system.
So I wanna, you know, just, just put that out there again. So even if Democrats win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Nebraska behalf of Nebraska, they still wouldn't win the cycle.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That's not great. Okay. To reach 270 electoral votes on the 2030 map, Democrats must win additional swing states [00:05:00] beyond the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, to make up the 12 vote deficit.
The electoral vote counts for swing states under the 2030. Projections are Arizona Georgia, North Carolina or Nevada. So if they win any of these, they would win if, if they won those, like Pennsylvania and whatever. But I actually think winning Pennsylvania is gonna be increasingly hard.
And we're gonna go into that in just a second, but like, if Pennsylvania gets harder to win, we're gonna go over just how hard it gets for them to, to win elections. Possible collections of additional swing states to reach or exceed. 12 electoral votes include Arizona alone, Georgia alone, North Carolina alone, Arizona plus Nevada.
This is assuming Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. Now let's see what happens if they lose pa, that's where we live is Pennsylvania. And I know that there's been some major changes in Pennsylvania in the last election cycle, specifically Scott Presler Gay Hero ended up, radicalizing, the Amish, who historically didn't vote, the Amish basically said, well, [00:06:00] we won't vote, we won't get involved in politics, and we won't become politicized because we don't want the system to attack us when, you know, the wrong party's in power.
And what the Amish realized, and Scott Presler convinced him of this is actually the system's attacking you right now, and we'll continue to attack you because it needs your kids to survive. The progressives aren't having kids and they get kids from you, so. You should join up with this Trump guy.
He'll protect your rights. And they were like, you know what? That sounds about right. And they were, they were seeing this. They w what's funny is one thing that Amish really hated was handouts for having lots of kids. They, they often complained about getting this from the government. They're like, oh, I'm not gonna turn it down, but like, they've made money worthless.
So assuming they lose D pa, okay. Assuming Democrats secure their safely Democratic states 213 votes and the blue walls, this is assuming they win Michigan and Wisconsin. Then they must need an additional 32 votes from swing states. Here's the most realistic combinations they could get over time.
So they'd have to, if they lose [00:07:00] pa, get Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina. Now that seems incredibly unlikely. Yes, Georgia flipped democratic in 2020 and North Carolina did while, while narrowly Republican in in recent cycles. But the problem is, is that. The current trends would cause them to flip in the opposite direction.
More like Dims winning Georgia and North Carolina, especially given how hard they've lost. The Hispanic vote is gonna be really, really difficult. Ar Okay. Okay. So they could win Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. I could see Arizona and Nevada, but I do not see them winning Georgia if they haven't won Pennsylvania.
That doesn't make sense. Okay. Okay. Okay. So then what else? Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire. Again, I don't see them winning Georgia if they don't win Pennsylvania. Okay. Then what [00:08:00] else? North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin could win them The election. That is more realistic, but that still requires North Carolina.
So basically it means that going forwards dims have to win Pennsylvania or create a new fulcrum state, which would be Georgia. Now here's how they might win. Georgia, and I could see this, so let, let's talk about this. Maybe what they need to focus on is this idea that the Republican Party really has a.
And, and, and I will admit this the, as we've argue in the past, the Republican Party used to be the party of the Cavaliers. This is deep south culture. This is a highly aristocratic and hierarchical culture. And, and a culture that believes in strict social norms that need to be followed to sort of earn or portray your status.
And. Trump [00:09:00] doesn't follow that at all. He regularly flaunts such norms in a way that causes leaders within southern culture to be quite upset with him and disgusted by him. And, you know, then he brought JD Vance in, who represents an extent, a continuation of this. Now, he doesn't have the vulgarity of Trump totally, but.
He's vulgar in other ways that show like a, thumbing his nose at these cultural morays, like he really likes magic. The gathering that is not something that one of these magic, the gathering is a card game for nerds that these cultures would've loved. That, that was like the, my little pony of his generation or something.
Right. You know, I like magic. Together. Imagine they the ball. I was so obsessed with that. I was always excited when new chiropractics would come out. Oh my God. You know what? New Life goal, play Magic. The gathering against JD Vance or have our kids play against his kids.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. How great would
Malcolm Collins: that
Simone Collins: be?
They need to grow a little bit more though. They need to get a little older. Yeah. Don't we need to get a little more favor? Oh yeah. I guess step one, some healthy friend JD Vance. Step two kids grow up. [00:10:00]
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but you know, the, the, the, as the conservative have, have embraced the real nerds, you know, as the GMs went through trash nerd culture and made it all woke you know, this is something that a lot of deep Southern culture had some antipathy towards.
Yeah, absolutely. The reason the alliance works now is we're like, well, look, you are. You do not have numbers to impose your value system on the general population right now, but if you join our coalition, we can at least work to protect your kids from Deconversion. And, and that means, you know, more school choice.
That means you know, more efficient government services like preventing stuff like the USAID that was going out and running all these conversion camps basically all around the world. Wasting our money. And they're like, okay, yeah, we can broadly agree on all of that. Like that's an area where we can all agree, but.
If the left reclassified conservative Christians as a minority religious tradition was in their value system. And it's just like, okay. In the same way we treat Muslims, like they don't mind that, like Muslims [00:11:00] throw gay people off buildings, right? Like if there was in their cultural context can they create sort of the same like.
Gays for evangelicals, gays for Born again Christians. I don't, I don't think so. Like, it's, it's a long shot, but it is a shot. Let's go to some alternative scenarios that they lose. Okay. So I was like, if Democrats win Michigan or Wisconsin fail to win Michigan or Wisconsin, their past becomes even harder without Wisconsin starting at 213.
They would need a combination of something like Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada to win. Or they need to flip either Texas or Florida. But Florida's become increasingly hard to flip in recent election cycles. So much that on most maps it's listed as solidly read in a large part due to the MAGA coalition's ability to win the Hispanic vote.
Thoughts before I go further?
Simone Collins: On the All-In podcast recently, Antonio Gracias, who's doing work with Doge [00:12:00] was talking about issues with illegal immigrants. And he mentioned that it was found that a bunch of people who were. In the United States as illegal immigrants did actually end up voting and mm-hmm.
I, I keep thinking about that when I think about this, that the Democratic Party, I, I don't think that there was if thousands
Malcolm Collins: of illegal immigrants, by the way,
Simone Collins: I, I don't know how, like, what, what the count was. But it was in multiple states. I don't think they have a final count yet 'cause they're only just starting to dig into these numbers.
I mean. Do, did tweet at one point about some other things that these people have done. They said that they were 905 collecting Medicaid, 41, collecting unemployment insurance. 22 received federal student loans, 409 received tax refunds. And then several received food stamp benefits, which is not something that illegal aliens should be receiving.
Yeah. But they're doing it anyway. And yes, they are also voting in some cases. I don't think that the Democratic Party was like. Oh, you know, this [00:13:00] is, this is a plan of mine to do this. I think that they're just like, well, I mean, we wanna empower these, you know, people who fled from terrible situations and it doesn't hurt.
I. They would vote for us and they would vote for them because it was democratic policies that also allowed them to do things like, oh, so like, technically they weren't supposed to, but here are your SNAP benefits, here's your unemployment insurance, things like that. Yeah. And legal, legal
Malcolm Collins: immigrants don't wanna pay for this, and they feel bad for their, you know, existing family who's waiting to get in the right way.
Right. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So I, I just keep thinking back to that conversation in Antonio, Gracia's initial findings. 'cause also it, it blew my mind. That illegal immigrants would vote. And I was just like, well, that would never happen. And it, it has happened. So, that is, that is, that is pretty crazy. And I, I, I do, yeah, I mean like, 'cause I'm thinking on both ends.
'cause a big thing that was coming up at the close of this last presidential election [00:14:00] was, oh, well if the Democrats win. Republicans will never be able to win again. So it's interesting for me to hear you saying, now Democrats are completely screwed. You know, this is not the narrative that I was hearing because based on immigration trends, whether or not, you know, they were legal migrants, well, this is when Democrats thought that they had the Hispanic vote
Malcolm Collins: in their pocket.
And the problem is, is that once people become Hispanic legal citizens, these are trad cats. They're not.
Simone Collins: They're not
Malcolm Collins: like the black, this is the black population. Even if they would be benefited by voting for conservatives, even if they would be. You know, like, like the conservative party alliance was their actual social values, which it does.
They've been sort of brainwashed into believing that conservatives are, are racist or anti-black or something like that. And you know, we've seen this even around like prenatals conferences. Like when CNN was covering it, it's like, it's suspicious that there weren't , a lot of black people there.
You know, that must mean everyone there is a racist. And I'm like, no, it's just there weren't a lot of black people there. Like, why, why would there, like, we're not like proselytizing within like. Black community citrus or something, we're not [00:15:00] comping their tickets like Democrats would like. We just treat everyone equally.
Like of course there's not a lot of black people here, whatever. And so, I, I think that they, they, but they're trying to create the perception and the black communities have believed this perception. Largely a a lot of based ones haven't, and they're like, yeah, I see what's up. Like you're using us, right?
Like you don't actually, as Simone pointed out, you don't actually help our communities. Our communities are differentially worse off when we're in Democrat controlled territories. We do better in Republican areas, so clearly like you guys are just using us. But that hasn't happened. In Hispanic communities, dim thought they could replay this hand within Hispanic communities.
And in the last election cycle, the majority of Hispanic men, for example, voted for Trump. And, and the Hispanic vote overall was only slightly for Biden and it's move by Kamala, and it's moving pretty fast. And I think this is because of how information networks work within, in Hispanic communities, they're much more based around family networks and much less based around [00:16:00] external sources of information.
So even if you can gaslight like around an entire culture, like everyone believes this, everyone believes this. They just like go to their like, you know, cousin and they're like, Hey, do we believe this? And the cousin's like, no, I don't think we do. And we're like, okay, well them, you know, like, and. Family networks makes you significantly more likely to get pissed off at inefficient government bureaucracies than in, than than smaller networks.
Because whenever the inefficient bureaucracy accidentally closes somebody's store by over-applying things or applies covid restrictions too harshly, or, you know, does something that screws over a small business within his Hispanic communities. They're like, oh, you know, my second cousin lost everything that his whole family had worked for their entire lives because of your arbitrarily abr applied bureaucratic norms.
I hate the deep state, right? Like these are anti my community. But if you don't have the strong family networks, which the DIMS have done a very good job of breaking up within [00:17:00] many. Black communities you're not gonna get that information. And it's just, well, if the state, you know, I can live off the state.
I can live off the state. Right. You know? And, and if I've been told Republicans are racist, well they must be racist 'cause everyone affirms this or everyone who's, you know, immediately. So I think that that's, that's, that's part of it.
Simone Collins: But there's also not a world in which we don't continue with the two party system.
I think like things just naturally sort to that, given the way that our political governmental system is set up. So what I imagine will happen is the Democrat party will move. To a much more appealing position, possibly even appealing to us. Who knows? Like they could, they could go in a great direction.
So, well
Malcolm Collins: that's, I don't, I don't think they could. I think so if you look at Democrats right now to win you, you know, you're saying they could appeal to the tech, right? Like the new, right?
Simone Collins: No, well, our, or just centrist Americans? I don't know. I really don't know what direction they could possibly take.
I know they need basically what they need. I mean, the would be leaders now are what? Like Gavin Newsom? I, I, I just, yeah, I dunno what
Malcolm Collins: they're gonna do. They want to further [00:18:00] like their plan is, oh, we're gonna further increase the turnout of our existing coalition. And that is actually pretty good of a strategy when both coalitions are equal, but we're going to move into an era where they need a new component to the coalition for the coalition to work.
And it, it, it. It could be the tech, right? But that just seems incredibly unlikely. 'cause the tech right is basically what the Republican Party is right now. If you look at the actual policy that they're pushing if however they lost the tech right, that'd be really bad for the Republicans. Like I think that Trump and JD understand this very well.
I think most Republicans at like Heritage or at other like competently run like legacy Republican they really like talking to people like us and understanding people like us. 'cause they're like, okay, this is like the new part. You know, you're just talking to a reporter and he is like, well, I mean you guys aren't fully Republican, right?
Like, I was like, no, like we are a hundred percent new, right? Like there isn't a single issue in terms of what the Trump administration has done, where I'm like, I categorically disagree [00:19:00] with this. And in some cases I'm like, that's an interesting hypothesis that you think that would work. And I'm, you know, at least glad that you're trying radical things, but it probably won't.
But that's not like a an actual like, difference of opinion. Right. You know, I mean, so that's what makes it so hard to get the tech right as I think that the left has a perception that the tech right kind of agrees with the left and kind of agrees with the right. And it's just with the right, right now for.
You know, because of their cultural imperialism. And it's like, no, we're like a hundred percent on this side. The right would need to do something to seriously betray us like, you know, put restrictions on IVF. But Trump has made IVF easier and cheaper to get, you know, so
Simone Collins: maybe, I don't know. I mean, a lot of the press coverage of tariffs implies that, like if, for example, the Trump administration gets tagged with a recession, like it's, it's their fault.
They, they did this with tariffs. I could see there being a big backlash. That could cause a rebalancing, it would give, it leaves an opening for Democrats to [00:20:00] even just kind of. Gaslights, the US Popula would be like, we were always the reasonable party. We never we never proposed any of this stuff, stuff.
What's
Malcolm Collins: the problem with that is, is it's, that's the Rich People Coalition and Democrats already have the Rich People Coalition.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: That's already part of their, their winning circle, you know? So they go out and they're like, we're extra good for rich people. People are gonna be like, oh. Not a good look like you could at least try to sell to for Republicans.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Huh. I wonder,
Malcolm Collins: I mean I look everybody knows, like I've always said, trans people, you can't, like, they're like, oh, we can't abandon our trends outies. And it's like, look, if you were sighting with people who literally dress up like they're from the capital and the hungry games, like you can't be the party of the working people.
I love
Simone Collins: the capital and the Hunger Games. That
Malcolm Collins: is like the way, like apparently like 50% of trans people dress. I'm like, why? Why, why? You do not look like the disenfranchised. You don't need. Their [00:21:00] privilege. It's obvious, but to keep going. Election electoral college and house seat reappointment population grows in Republican leaning states like Texas and Florida means these states will gain house seats, blah, blah, blah.
Now what's really interesting about this. Is that a lot of this is actually coming downstream of people moving where they live because Democrats are doing such a bad job of managing democratic. Yeah.
Simone Collins: They're just, they're just fleeing democratic policies in terms of housing, in terms of. Homeless communities and all that.
Right. They just can't live with it anymore.
Malcolm Collins: And obviously the Democrat dream is, oh, we move to, let's say Austin, that we turn Texas blue. Mm. I mean, that's been the democratic dream for a long time.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But I don't think it's realistic. The Hispanic vote voters don't like, I think it the Hispanic community for a while, but not anymore.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, here's a question for you. Who would you say republicans should go after next? If Republicans were gonna chip off [00:22:00] part of the Democratic coalition, who would it be?
Simone Collins: Maybe more gay men. I think that more gay men will be good.
Malcolm Collins: I agree. I think I, and I think it's a very winnable faction. Well, yeah.
Simone Collins: The, the, the, the movement has already started. Just build momentum and go all the way.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The other fraction I can see is black men. Trump has actually made some really big inroads with black men by changing things like child support laws. Oh really? Wow. Yeah. I can't remember. Oh, yeah, he changed it.
So I think that, oh, God, I can't remember how he changed it. He changed it in like a really reasonable way, but that was not favorable for women who were, you know, juicing guys who knocked them up for a living situation. Oh. And apparently this was, you know, just for disproportionately affected black communities.
Whether it's 70%, 76% of black people are born outside of a, a marriage. These days. Yeah. Some,
Simone Collins: some insane amount. That's hard for me to believe. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: It, it, it, this is not part of black culture. Historically, before they became like this ultra progressive [00:23:00] party, they had higher
Simone Collins: rates of marriage than white people in America.
Yeah. You, like
Malcolm Collins: in the sixties, 5% of blacks were born outside of wedlock while 10% of whites were. Mm-hmm. So this is the result of their alliance. With the urban monoculture. Mm-hmm. And the urban monocultures degradation of their culture through that alliance. Yeah. It is not an intrinsic part of being black or black culture.
You can watch our episode, the Islamification of Black Culture, if you wanna see you know, how the Democrats really f them over on this. But yeah, I, I, I think black men are very winnable if you focus on issues like that. Because. A lot of society has become so much like a coalition like us versus them and males versus females has become such a big part of that in ways that are really institutionally abusive of the other in cultures where, well, I mean, so if, if, if you have like 76% of kids being born outta wedlock the men and the women in that culture are not really in the same faction.
Like the women have a reason to f over the men and the men have [00:24:00] a reason to f over the women
Simone Collins: fair.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, there's a reason why when you look at like famous black women, they like almost always are dating Jews or white guys, but mostly Jews. You know, it's like, it's like a thing, it's like a thing, like even when they're like racist, you know?
It's like, I, I don't know what that is, but I, I, I think it's due. To, you know, as the urban monoculture has infected their culture and broken up institutions like marriage, it's allowed for the ossification of a gender war that is more intractable. And the thing is, is, is that once you break up this gender role, then you're also a conservative, but you're a conservative for like wholesome family reasons, like mm-hmm.
You know, which a lot of the black community is as well. They're like, yeah, I'm not interested in like, all this DEI nonsense. I just want my kids to, you know, be in an environment where they're treated fairly and, and, which you, you hear from a lot of the, the like, wholesome faction of the black community.
Simone Collins: Yeah. 100%. That, that, that checks out. Also, I think that there's a huge portion of the black community that is [00:25:00] perfectly capitalistic. You know, not socialist. Like all the, the socialist influencers I know were extremely white and extremely middle class, like they grew up in, in privilege and they also grew up very, very white.
And when I look at a lot of shows that are, that are meant to cater to primarily black audiences, and they have primarily black classes. They may have very social justice themes, but they're all wearing like $5,000 shirts. And or they're very capitalistic in nature. Which implies to me, I, I couldn't say because I'm not black, but it implies to me that black audiences in America are.
More capitalistic leaning and not really all about this sort of Marxist theory. So pervasive. I,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, I, I've definitely seen that as well. I mean, they're, they're being realistic. They have less trust in governing institutions and, and structures for good reason. But one of the reasons it might be harder to get the black male vote is that Democrats within this last cycle have leaned really hard into antisemitism.
It's really [00:26:00] normal among democratic influencers and the black community is disproportionately anti-Semitic. I think a lot of people were really surprised when like Kanye went all anti-Semitic and I was like, do you not have like black friends? Like
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or have you not explored the concepts of, of the Nation of Islam?
I.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like what? Like that, this is, this is not surprising. And, and not even for like negative reasons. Even, you know, I was talking with a friend of mine who is you know, a well-known entertainer.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And she was talking about a lot of the, the well-known black entertainers, and she's like, actually antisemitism is really common amongst the well-known black entertainers.
Just most of them know better than to be public about it. Okay.
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: she's like, and the weird thing is like, even as somebody who's not anti-Semitic myself, like I actually kind of get it. Oh my gosh. 'cause so often for these people, their early managers and producers and people running their studios we're all Jewish.
Mm. And that a lot of these people screwed them over. And, and acted, you [00:27:00] know, I mean, that's the way it was. Like if you're a moneyed interest in, in like the entertainment industry and you're dealing with somebody who's not educated and I'm not saying that like blacks are uneducated. I am seeing a lot of black people who go into the entertainment industry specifically, like the music or rap scene come from a disproportionately lower level of education.
Well, also, if you're
Simone Collins: maxing out. Performing arts, you're not maxing out to getting a master's degree or in something like that unless you've gone the academic route, which probably means you're not a popular pop pop artist. So,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. And if you look at the, who are the lawyers and record producers and stuff like that in la, they are disproportionately Jewish.
Mm-hmm. And so the community began to feel like. Hey, it's not white people who are holding us down. Like I've got lots of poor white friends. It's Jewish people who are holding us down. Oh, dear. And the, the, you know, they knew they weren't allowed to say this publicly, so because the, the discussion never aired publicly.
I mean, again, [00:28:00] this isn't. I don't think that this is because Jewish people screw people over disproportionately. I don't think that this is because anything about Jewish people, I just think that due to cultural and historic reasons, Jewish people ended up running the entertainment industry disproportionately.
That's an interesting episode for totally different time. It was a, the German juice, specifically the Russian Jews ended up in the closing industry on the east coast, the German juice. On the West Coast, in part because it was more deregulated. Look, I don't need to get into why they ended up running.
No, but I,
Simone Collins: I would just say like all of that said I don't at least intuitively feel like the Republican Party is the Jew party and the Democrat party is the anti JW party. I just think that, I think it's align that way. Well, with Palestine it came up more, but I don't know, even in the next presidential election cycle, just how relevant Palestine is gonna be.
So maybe it won't even matter. I just, I think the only reason it's really risen to the surface is that Israel and Palestine were key international conflicts that were discussed [00:29:00] extensively during the 2024 election.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, wait, no, I, I, I mean, look, I I, is it gonna be a persistent issue? It depends on how long this war lasts.
But I think that a lot of people made their positions clear and a lot of like actual, like Antisemites left Republican party, like, you know, Nick Fuentes or Leather Apron Club, or. David Duke, or and a lot of them are beginning to align more. Like even David Duke was talking about how like he aligns more with Democratic party policies these days.
Geez. But he's like, look like he felt really bad for the people of Gaza. He's like, I really appreciate the Democratic party standing up for them. Like I think that morally I am more aligned with it. Well
Simone Collins: meanwhile, amidst all the tariff stuff, there was some progressive influencer who was like.
Trump is finally speaking for the working class American. I love this. This is fantastic. [00:30:00] So all sorts of disruption is taking place. I think so many, wait, A progressive influencer was saying that Y yeah. I can't remember. It was someone discussed on the blocked and reported podcast. And I, I, I can't remember who it was.
It wasn't Sagar was it? But it was, it was someone who was extremely left and who suddenly was standing Trump. Because it was tariffs and I found that really interesting. I just think that now there's a lot of disruption. Democrats are really not sure what to do. They were obviously very, very disillusioned by what mainstream party did in the last election cycle.
So, you know, but who knows what's gonna happen because they got away with so much bad stuff and they don't seem to be showing any signs of. Dissolving in any way. You still have this very old group of people running everything it seems. So, I don't know. I mean, Bernie's certainly a celebrity right now. So
Malcolm Collins: yeah, he's going, what is it, Coachella?
Simone Collins: Yeah. He's, he's like on tour you know, selling out venues, [00:31:00] doing his stocks looking curly.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, Bernie's just a stge for the pharma industry. He like. He, he, if you saw, like, I was just so disgusted by the way he acted during the JFK hearing where, you know, he's opposing JFK, he is about, you know, making things healthier.
We know that he's the highest, gets the most donations of anyone in the Senate from the pharma companies. And people are like, oh, those are individual donations. I'm like. You really are that stupid. Like do you think that Bernie consistently gets enough individual donations, highest end donor from the pharma industry, an industry that has a vested interest in giving money to the Senate and to lock to change policy positions?
Like that's like. Of all industries in the world, there are few with a bigger vested interest than pharma. You think that accidentally he's been winning the most money from that industry, not in one [00:32:00] life cycle, but for over a decade like that is completely implausible. Like that is like Biden. Getting 17% more of the vote than Obama did, which by the way, is the official number completely implausible.
To anyone who was alive during both of those elections. Obama's election was a phenomenon. Like it was everything. It was, it was, it, it, it ate at every aspect of our culture in civilization during that election cycle. There is no way Biden got 17% more vote than him.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that, that seemed a bit irregular.
We can, we can just say that
Malcolm Collins: small. It's not like, oh, he got like five more points or something. It's like if, if he had been running against Obama, he would've crushed him. That's not plausible. Yeah. But anyway, the, the, the point I'm making [00:33:00] is, is. Birdie is a complete sleaze bag and always has been.
Simone Collins: It always, it doesn't seem to stop his fandom. That's all I'm saying. It doesn't matter if someone's a a sleaze bag by anyone's definition or not. What he says resonates the story that reminded me
Malcolm Collins: of. I always love the story of him being kicked outta the commune. You know that story. So he goes to like a communist commune and they ended up kicking them out because all he would do was give speeches all day.
Oh, like he
Simone Collins: wasn't, he wasn't working. Yeah. He is just giving speeches about how good every, the communism
Malcolm Collins: and conceptualism was. Well, he's
Simone Collins: really good at that. That's his special interest. And he's, he is good at it. And clearly people like it. The right audience likes it, so.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I don't think so. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know that many Bernie supporters anymore, like the Bernie Grow movement basically died out.
There's
Simone Collins: a lot of them,
Malcolm Collins: I think you say like him because he's seen his counter mainstream Democrat, but he cowed out to the mainstream Democrats throughout the entire last cycle. You know, [00:34:00] I don not think Bernie is the way, and I do not think socialism is a pass forward for Democrats. I think if they try to actually, if they go like pure.
Federman style socialism. That could do pretty well.
Simone Collins: What is Federman style? Socialism.
Malcolm Collins: Abandon the trans nonsense. Just go full in, like is he, is he
Simone Collins: anti-trans? I don't think he's anti-trans. Oh no,
Malcolm Collins: he's not yet. But like, you can tell, like a abandon the, the illegal immigrant stuff. Just be like, we're not gonna do that.
We're actually going to implement a socialist policy, like culture wars be gone. Socialist policy because AI is coming. We need UBI or something like that, that would go pretty well. So
Simone Collins: basically just agnostic. Socialism. Socialism without the cultural baggage.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I could see that as playing pretty hard against somebody like JD Vance or something.
Simone Collins: People, I, yeah, I mean, our polling even that our nonprofit has done, shows that people are genuinely concerned [00:35:00] collectively about. Global geopolitical instability and importantly job loss due to ai. I, I do think that someone who caters to those fears and says, I've got you. It's, this is a problem and I'm going to address it, will will do pretty well.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright, well, I love you today, Simone. What am I eating to dinner tonight?
Simone Collins: So there are you bought at Costco? A while back, these mysterious chicken crumbles that you thought were very compelling? I could stir. Oh, I think
Malcolm Collins: you get well with fried rice.
Simone Collins: With fried rice. Or just rice. Rice or just fried rice.
And then, and do fried rice and that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I cook it separately and then mix it with fried rice. Fried rice. Okay. So
Simone Collins: you like fried rice with chicken crumbles tonight? Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna take out of the freezer some of the Wagyu steak for you to have tomorrow night. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't, I wouldn't cook them together by the way.
I cook them separately and I can mix them as, yeah. First do
Simone Collins: the, the chicken crumbles and then do the, the, the fried [00:36:00] rice and you want me to serve them to you separately, not even fry at the very end. Those things together. It
Malcolm Collins: serves them separately because I don't know if the chicken crumbles are gonna be good.
So I'm, I'm gonna want fried rice to eat if the chicken crumbles aren't good with the fried rice. Okay. And the French tray might have the confidence to say mix them, but right now, I don't know.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: All right. There's like hypothesis, Simone, A hypothesis and
Simone Collins: any special seasoning requests in the fried rice.
Aside from a tiny bit of that vinegar, obviously lots of soy sauce, lots of butter. Some MSG and rice. Oh yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Uh uh, oyster sauce. Oyster sauce.
Simone Collins: Okay. And of course green onion and some finely chopped bell pepper. Is that all right with you?
Malcolm Collins: That works for me. My beautiful princess
Simone Collins: egg eggs from the coop that is necessary.
We live
Malcolm Collins: in such luxury and we're ending so early to, do you want me to try to get No, I actually have
Simone Collins: another journalist call, so this is not early
Malcolm Collins: more work to do. Do you try to, do you want me to try to get the the thing done? The video that you, you did, if you could.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that would be great. I gotta try to
Malcolm Collins: get that done tonight.[00:37:00]
Simone Collins: I would appreciate that. Good. All right.
Malcolm Collins: Alright. Who, who's the journalist?
Simone Collins: Caroline Kitchener. I, I, I've stopped tracking who's coming from what, and I just take calls. That's the way I am too. Yeah. So much media
Malcolm Collins: about us now, like a man story of the day because we are ever only famous.
But that's cool. I like being famous. I wanted to be famous. I'm, I'm like a cool, like, hmm. Everyone's like, Hmm, like Malcolm. He's so cool. Look at him. He's so sexy. Malcolm's so hot right now. Guy. Right now they're all like, oh yeah. Yeah. Like the coworkers are, are so well liked and sexy. They're not Nazis at all.
They're, they're just cousins. They, they are so mean. Like, it's funny, like the thing that used to make us go viral on, on Twitter, it's moved entirely to Blue Sky and now. Like we don't go as viral because it's only on blue sky now. Like Twitter doesn't care isolated. That, that seems reasonable.
[00:38:00] Falling fertility rates are an issue. Yeah. And it really shows how much the Democrats as well, like Blue sky has been terrible for them because it's completely silenced. Their ability to cancel people. Oh yeah. They're not, they're not going
Simone Collins: mainstream the same way because they're only speaking to other Democrats.
So it's just like the Democrat or the progressive gossip line online and. Yeah, and being unfortunately to make mainstream culture, it seems like you need to have everyone involved. That kind of surprises me. I'm like, why didn't the media just move to Blue Sky and just talk about the issues that their primary audience cared about?
Like if that's, you know, if, if, for example, the New York Times is a left-leaning publication, a left audience can
Malcolm Collins: up 1% of the audience of Twitter. Oh,
Simone Collins: I
Malcolm Collins: use it
Simone Collins: for idea generation. If I were them.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, they're all on blue sky. Like New York Times is on blue sky. All the media's on blue Sky. It's just the problem is, is that the busy bodies whose former like spiraling, apoplectic, freakouts caused virality and, and, and cancel mobs have left the environment where people [00:39:00] other than them saw the cancel mobs.
Mm-hmm. So now the CEO of target isn't seeing the target cancel mob because it's on the blue sky.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or, or it's not as worrisome to them. I imagine some lackey coming to a CEO and saying, oh, 5 million people have liked this or retweeted this, and this is, and on Blue Sky, it's more like 1,300 people have.
Requited it or whatever. What what'd you do on Blue Sky? I don't
Malcolm Collins: know. And he's like, is that like matter? And they're like, well, no. Say Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for like Blue Sky. I actually feel for the Republican Party is one of the like. Biggest public services that anyone's running for us right now.
Like I would be so sad at Blue Sky shut down. It's like a containment ward for crazy people. It's like a crazy person island. And they're like yelling at me like, you must hate not being on crazy person island. And I'm like, no. Like you guys used to like go to the grocery store with me and [00:40:00] stuff. It was scary.
Simone Collins: You don't even hate not being on Twitter and you never were because. You can't be bothered. I,
Malcolm Collins: I, I do like that we don't go viral in a negative context. Like, I like that when things happen on Twitter now everyone's like, okay. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Oh gosh. I'm try. Okay. All right. Well I'll get on that call. I love you so much.
I'm gonna make your chicken crumbles, fried rice isolating them. Come
Malcolm Collins: on. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it
Simone Collins: dude? Yeah, it sounds
Malcolm Collins: great. I like, maybe like, the fry, the chicken crumbles or air fry. I dunno. You'll figure it out.
Simone Collins: You were supposed to pan fry them.
Malcolm Collins: That sounds good.
Simone Collins: So easy as pie. We're all good.
No problems. Oh. Oh my gosh. I was thinking about our family Canon movies the other day. Mm-hmm. And just thinking about how great Legally Blonde is for our family Canon, I mean like one on the surface level being cheerful no matter what as a strategically good move. One 'cause it just helps, it makes it easier to take things [00:41:00] on.
It's more fun. But also it can make you seem disarming and unassuming when you really are a threat.
Malcolm Collins: Legally. Blonde, by the way, is just the Adams family for the nineties. It really is.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And then, oh, like there's her one of Elle Woods's friends gives her her lucky scrunchie. And another friend is like, that's not your lucky scrunchie.
You only passed Spanish class because you gave the teacher a lap dance. And she's like, yeah, luckily, which is exactly how luck works. Like you don't get lucky unless you make an effort and take a risk and then if it works, you were lucky. And that is how I wanna teach our children. Well.
Malcolm Collins: But my mom used to always from, from a movie, really like Clueless, always took the line of that they say in that, which is A grade is just a jumping off point for negotiations.
Clueless is another movie in her family Cannon. It's so good. I go, but no, when I say it's like the Adams family, it's about somebody who is culturally horrifying to. The mainstream. Yes. It's [00:42:00] sort of like the beginnings of the urban monoculture. She is because the, the school already represent the urban monoculture.
The girls Yeah. Like the
Simone Collins: rad fme and like the super intellectual people and the Yes, and, and she
Malcolm Collins: is mortifying to them because she's from, because she's low culture background.
Simone Collins: Yeah. She's bu proud of it. Yeah, I like, yeah, no, that's another great example is that you should be proud to be othered. And then there's another one that like shows like when you've been wronged, don't go scream about it like a victim.
Take the high road, but then if necessary, low key, blackmail that person to make sure they don't get in your way again. So I love that. It's just Did she see that in that or, well, she, she was arguably sexually harassed by the one college professor that she interned with. I. And then left and then decided to finally take on the major case that he used to take on, and he was going to stop her.
And she was, she threatened basically to come out and say what he did to her without [00:43:00] doing it. And he backed off immediately. She was like, oh, I could tell them all about the con, like, or no, you, you said it would be fine. When we had that conversation the other night she was clearly referring to when he did the thing he shouldn't have done.
So again, like took the high road, didn't hurt anyone, but definitely kept it in her back pocket. And I just love that too. Wasn't a victim. Wasn't a victim. She turned that right around to her advantage.
Malcolm Collins: Well, a lot of women just make it up, you know, that's the, that's the way it works these days. No, nothing even needs to happen within the urban monoculture, but yeah.
Yeah. But she didn't do that. All right. All right. Okay. We'll get started here.
Is this daddy's phone? Yes. So be very careful with it on tv. What you doing? Um.[00:44:00]
No, look. Careful, careful, careful, careful.
Uh oh. She's gonna clobber you guys.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Entering Globalism's Dark Age: Apocalyptic Nirvana
14 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Join us in an insightful conversation as we dive into the juxtaposition of living during a technological revolution and a looming dark age. We explore perspectives from conservatives, the new right, and the traditional left on current societal shifts, highlighted by figures like Hank Green and John Oliver. The discussion also delves into AI's rapid advancements, its impact on jobs, society's unpreparedness for AI, and the potential concentration of wealth and power. Furthermore, we contemplate the resilience of civilization in the face of bureaucratic bloat, demographic collapse, and economic instability. Concluding with practical advice for the future, we look at how to equip the next generation for a radically different economy. Don't miss out on this riveting exploration of our evolving world.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today we are going to talk about living through both a dark age and an age of technological revolution. Why this is so exciting. We are gonna talk to the way that conservatives are increasingly relating to this. The way then the new right is relating to this and the way that the traditional left is relating to this.
No. Which I think is best shown by Hank Green, you know, of the Green Brothers old YouTube fame, you know, obviously completely urban monoculture. He's on blue sky. He's talking about how great Blue Sky is, how he loves Harvey when they were so, so nice and smart and everything like that. And then he mentions.
Like that's a big thing that I see on Blue Sky that I don't see on Twitter. Like I tweet about the, the asteroid that was gonna hit us, but then didn't hit us. And I get normal responses on Blue Sky. I tweet about that, and a bunch of the responses are finally someone to cure the plague of humans upon this earth.
Malcolm Collins: And, and this is actually a fairly common [00:01:00] interpretation, if you look at our data 'cause we did a survey to see how many people thought the world would be better if everyone was dead.
And what was it 17%?
Simone Collins: Yeah, 17% of respondents in our census representative survey, we only. Looked at American responses in this case said the world would be better off if there weren't any humans, which is unhinged. Whinged
Malcolm Collins: five
Simone Collins: people about a fifth. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Wants to murder all people. It wants them all day one.
Simone Collins: Just be better without any humans just hate the humans.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it's, it's really interesting, like as a prenatal is advocate that, like you assume that's not something you're gonna have to debate. Like Yeah, like
Simone Collins: human
Malcolm Collins: good, right? Like we all agree that like. Humans are good, right? Yeah. Right. Like humanity should have a future and they're like, no, we don't.
Like, let's actually debate that before we talk about like policy or implications or anything like that. So I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about also why it's easier for [00:02:00] conservatives to become audience captured than progressives. That's another thing I wanna use because this is something I think we've increasingly seen in conservative faces where conservatives move right, a based on their audience a lot faster than move left based on their audience.
Although, speaking of audience capture, I don't know if you saw, I, I mean this just might be that he's just completely, you know, cooked from the beginning. John Oliver did this piece supporting trans people in children's sports, and he got like tons of down votes and people were like, what? What, what are you, what?
Like,
Simone Collins: oh my goodness. So he thought he'd be supported in that and ultimately wasn't.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think only 18% of Americans support that. Like, it is, it is such a dumb issue to, to back like you, you have to literally like. Be like actually regarded. Um, Regard. I love, I love that they've ended up using that word.
Simone Collins: I've not heard this before.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, Joe Rogan says retarded is back,
Simone Collins: and
Malcolm Collins: then it is complaining. They're [00:03:00] like, oh, that's such a, how could you say that? Like, you know, that, that word hurts people. Like, why would you be excited that it's back? And it's like, well, we don't even
Simone Collins: use retarded as a, as a designator for
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
It, it's like South Park and fag,
I happen to be gay boys. Do you think I'm a fag? Do you write a big loud Harley and go up and down the streets ruining everyone's nice time?
No. Then you're not a fag alright, look, you're driving in your car, okay? And you're waiting to make a left at a traffic signal. The light turns yellow, should be your turn to go, but the traffic coming at you just keeps coming.
And even when the light turns red, a guy in A BMW runs the red light. So you can't make your left turn. What goes through your mind fag, right? This. This is making insanely good sense to me.
Malcolm Collins: you know what I mean? Like, this is, or, or gypped or, you know, whatever. Right. Like. This is, this is something that hasn't meant that for a long time, and I think that that people who are like, oh, what about the people whose feelings are hurt? Like that line of argument doesn't work anymore.
Like you guys [00:04:00] got to play the, somebody's feelings might get hurt argument for a long time. And a huge part of society was just like, oh wait, I remember. You do the what if somebody's feelings are hurt thing, and then you change the window of what somebody's feelings represent and use that to increasingly box in and isolate my behavior.
So like I can't ever. Change the way I'm acting because somebody's feelings might be hurt because you can always increase the amount that your feelings are hurt, because that's a personal subjective thing, right? And, and, and use that to say, I, I thought it was really funny when they, when they had the John Oliver segment you know, and he is talking about how important this is, they, they go to a trans athlete who was kept outta sports and they ask her, they go, Hey, you know, how does it feel to be kept outta sports?
She goes, well, you know, it's annoying. It's like what this is this what your party is dying on? Is somebody being like, I was mildly inconvenienced. Yeah. Like, ah, okay, this is trans. Anyway so first let's talk about what I mean by we're entering a dark age, right? Like I think [00:05:00] a lot of people I. See right now a lot of the signs that are precursors to a civilization entering a dark age you know, following fertility rates, increasing nihilism, increasing sexual debauchery, yeah, mobilization.
All of these we've seen leading up. To empire collapse in the past, whether it's the Muslim empire or the Roman Empire or the, you know, whatever empire. Right? So, so, you know, we should be, and, and we're also nearing sort of the end of our civilization. By this, what I mean is if you look at the age of civilizations, like we are sort of, on the, on the end point of like, so is there
Simone Collins: like an average duration in terms of number of years?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let's look it up.
250 years.
Simone Collins: That's really short. I, I mean, I, I, I consider modern civilization to be post-industrial revolution. So, let's
Malcolm Collins: see. So, so, so they said, AI says the average empire survives for what, 250 years? Oh, this is the national desk said this. Yeah. And America right now is [00:06:00] 249 years old. Oh no.
248
Simone Collins: and let's see, 2024 minus 1760 or 2025, when arguably the industrial evolution started is 265 years. Yeah, so. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: okay. Oh yeah. So it's not surprising. The reason that they don't last that long is because you get bureaucratic bloat. If you have a stable bureaucracy, you basically get bureaucratic cancers that start growing within it.
Yeah. This is why it costs so much money in most of the involved world now to build anything. This is why, you know, you spend like a, a few million dollars putting a porta-potty in, in, in New York City. This is why, you know, it cost a third of what it cost to build the Golden Gate Bridge just to put the suicide nets up.
Yeah. And like three times as long
Simone Collins: after a while, you just can't really do anything, can you?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. There's this great clip of, of, of, the Daily Show guy, what's his name? John Stewart. Reacting to Ezra Klein. Oh. Explaining to him how the process went to, to give broadband to people. Yeah. They spent billions of dollars on, [00:07:00] nobody got broadband through.
And it was just step after step after step of bureaucracy and like obviously nothing was gonna come out of it. And you get to a point where no matter how much money you put into the system, it just doesn't work anymore. And so we are nearing that point, was our, I
Simone Collins: would argue that we're kind of already there, and I say that because already a huge proportion of Americans feel that when crimes are committed, they will not be prosecuted in most cases.
I think this is why you saw the Luigi Mangione murder take place as vigilante justice because there wasn't this feeling that they would see justice otherwise. And I think. As I've mentioned before, we've had very clear crimes committed against our business where it was clear like we had names and addresses of who the perpetrators were.
We had their bank account numbers, and yet no one would do anything including the bank, including the FBI, including the police and I, I think a lot of people feel that's already happening. And then on top of [00:08:00] that, when you see just how non-functional many government organizations are. It's clear that they already weren't doing anything.
Yeah, and
Malcolm Collins: I, and I, I actually think that Doge is sort of a, an experiment. Can we prevent this, right? Mm-hmm. Like, can you actually reset government services? And my little brother works for them, so yay to him, right? He's, he's out there firing people right now doing God's work. And I really appreciate that.
Like, if, if they do their job, maybe we could see like, could, could Rome have like, come in and tried to implement like real reforms before transitioning? Yeah. What if Rome had
Simone Collins: Doge? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What if, what if the Roman Republic had Doge like. We'll see. I mean, we, we certainly have a triumvirate right now.
You know, you've got your Elon and JD and, and Trump. So, you know, it, it does feel like history is rhyming in regards to that. Hmm. And then you've got the secondary thing, which I pointed out is if, if the economy stays at all like it has historically a lot of countries within the next 20 years are gonna start collapsing.
Mm-hmm. Due to the [00:09:00] number of dependents there are, you're gonna get a lot of countries where you get to the number of. Everyone worker is supporting 1.5 dependents, IE elderly people on social security. And that's when things start to collapse. It's an
Simone Collins: inevitability. It, it is going to happen.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
You, you take a country like say Chile for example, and for every a hundred Chileans, there's only gonna be 20 great grandchildren at their current fertility rate. Same as Italy, same as a lot of other countries. You know, and so, so this isn't just like a, A a, a A, an issue in South Korea anymore.
Right. And you, and you look at these countries in like Latin America and you're where this happens, and you only need one to collapse before you start a chain reaction. That's the thing. Yeah. That's why it's like, you don't need this to happen to everyone. You need a few countries to start collapsing, and then people start taking this into account in the way that they're deploying capital.
Mm-hmm. And then it leads to a chain reaction. The, the, the system, is non-functional, not like, like in the midterm, right? So, the question is, is well, well then what? Well [00:10:00] then you have this thing with ai, right? Like where AI really changes the game because it concentrates wealth and it makes Baltimore mobile allowing people to leave.
So I. We're sort of in this weird situation where we're both dealing with an upcoming collapse at the same time as we have this industrial revolution Renaissance. Yeah, renaissance that we can all see. It's like somebody just invented the infinite intelligences machine, you know, like, it's wild. And, and so then what, I'll give you an example of what I mean by like how different.
AI is from the perspective of all of this. Hmm. You look at something like these Miyazaki movies that people were making by putting, you know, images and film into ai, and then the AI would translate it.
You know, we're close to a point where you're gonna be able to wear [00:11:00] like goggles, the. Create your reality to be like an anime or Miyazaki movie if you want.
In terms of automating people within the workforce, like the vast majority of human jobs they've given to a competent ai. And, you know, theis are pretty competent these days could be done, you know, whether that is a a, a clerk. At your local seven 11, whether that is somebody manufacturing cars, whether that is, you know, I even just think about like my own work.
Like I, we started a company recently, our fab.ai that does reality fabrication. We're trying to build new, like AI realities for people. It's video games. And I'm really excited about that. And I go to this company and I go to an AI and I go, okay create a logo. And it made a, like, like logo, like good logo, like, like like logo that looks like it came from like, nine, nine designs or something.
Right. And I did that like 20 times to get a number of logos. I was like, create a sheet of four logos for this idea. It's a sheet of four logos. Sheet of four logos. So then I take that and then I'm like, okay, invert the colors. Oh. Oh, okay. Make the [00:12:00] background in, in visible. That was like a bunch of different programs in the past.
And now I'm just doing that with like, and not just different programs, but different people who I'd be hiring for that I would've gone to nine, nine designs that I would've gotten some like design program to remove things than I would have like, people make this mistake of complaining that like.
They'll listen to an AI song and they'll be like, I could tell that was an AI song. I'm like, AI songs have existed for like four years, buddy. Like, what even is with your brain? Like Yeah. You could tell there was a famous study of AI art that showed that people who said that they didn't like AI art on average, preferred AI art when they didn't know it was AI art.
Yeah. Human brain even prefers this stuff was in like an entertainment content. Well, and literally
Simone Collins: because it has been. Trained to output the thing that people like most, more than humans, because humans just haven't gone through that level of repetition and or they aren't so sensitive to other people's [00:13:00] interests and desires.
Malcolm Collins: And we're gonna be entering a world where, you know, as you said at like open ai, like we see the next few years, the ai researcher, they're going to be holding back the ais that they're building.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. The AI is just gonna be so advanced. There's no way we can keep up. And the best we can do is set good research priorities and ask good questions and be helpful with planning that.
That's it. It's sobering.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: But yeah, I think it really changes what collapse looks like because the issue in the past has been intelligent capacity to solve problems and build infrastructure and build things. Theoretically we'll have that. But how will it be applied? Will it be just limited to the very wealthy?
Will some of it be used to placate the the have nots? I don't, it's really hard for me to tell. Well, I can quickly run through. I mean, people
Malcolm Collins: are largely familiar, I think, with my ideas on this, but I think that it's going to concentrate wealth and, and cut the cord [00:14:00] that tied the bourgeoisie to the proletariat.
Yes. The, the, the wealthy,
Simone Collins: but the, the, the bourgeoisie may still want the proletariat to not make a stink. So, well,
Malcolm Collins: here's the thing, right? You, you can say that, but in countries where we've seen precursors of this that that is not what we've seen, which countries,
Simone Collins: where we, where have we seen precursors of ai?
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. Concentration of wealth and a collapse of civilizational systems like South Africa.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Where if you look at like wh when, when the wealthy, basically what happens is they
Simone Collins: didn't help the poor or the have nots. They just built better security in Wal Garden. They built
Malcolm Collins: better security.
Yeah. If you, you, the marginal dollar, if you can spend it on the have nots of security, you spend it on security. Hmm. And when you have autonomous ai, drone swarms security becomes, and, and keep in mind like we're already building this, like if you watch our video on the replicator program, the US is, is one year away, 2026 from the first major step on this project to build big barges that produce autonomous kill [00:15:00] drones at the rate of hundreds per day.
Mm-hmm. These are autonomous, not human man kill drones like you, you additional weapons of war are just not effective against this. So you have money concentrate on individuals and, and we even know individuals who are already working on for their, like collapse bunkers, building silos that are filled with autonomous kill drones.
Like this is a thing, like we know what's coming. That's what protects these people, and it's very hard to get through this. Hmm. And, and so. What I think that you have is any, to any degree that the ultra wealthy that are produced by AI help the rest of us. It's going to be one intensely reduced costs.
You know, when you have a world in which AI has taken all of the factory jobs and all of the, like, what you can produce in a factory is gonna cost almost nothing. It's just gonna cost the energy input. Right. A lot of the cost of producing things historically with the humans involved in its production.
Mm-hmm. So you're gonna get a dramatic [00:16:00] reduction of costs of a lot of things that humans have historically you know, considered maybe luxury items or whatever. Mm-hmm. But then you're also gonna get at the same time, a a loss of wages. And, and because you'll be dealing with the issue of an increasing dependency ratio on the state.
You're gonna have a lot of people who, like countries, like how does the country respond to that? They increase taxes or they increase taxes on the wealthy. That's what they're gonna try to do, especially if it concentrates on the wealth. Mm-hmm. But as the wealth is more mobile, they just leave. Yeah.
Yeah. And, and, and then you can say, well, then these countries will tax the products that they're giving to the citizens. And I'm like congratulations. You just made life terrible for the citizens. Because businesses generally, if you look at economics. To pass on taxes to the, to the end user, right? Like a, a, a tax on the products that these people are making and exporting from.
Likely charter cities or countries that decide to play along with this are, are, are going to. And it might be like the us, like the US might actually survive this and become one of the countries that just exploits [00:17:00] the rest of the world by staying low tax despite the demographic situation and dealing with a less of a demographic disaster than the rest of the world.
But that'll quickly drain all of the AI lords from the rest of the world. Tech barons, whatever you wanna call them. Yeah. The tech ISTs. And, and I am so excited to live during this time,
Simone Collins: you know, same. But I think for the average person, the things that you may wanna be educating your kid in are going to be quite different.
One is entrepreneurship on both a, like either you're going to be selling into the walled gardens. To these wealthy people, stuff that they think is really cool. You know, handmade items or custom made items or unique services, or you are going to be selling to your own local community, not necessarily geographically, but.
Likely
Malcolm Collins: ideologically, like your own online community? Yeah. At
Simone Collins: least ideologically, if not locally. So maybe it's food production, maybe it's it's local services like childcare or plumbing or electricity or literally, I will help you build your localized [00:18:00] drone swarm to protect your home. Things like that.
Or I will, I will customize a drone to help raise your child, things like that. I mean,
Malcolm Collins: that's the direction I wanna take. The Collins Institute for sure. We, we started fundraising for both the Collins Institute and the, the Our Fab project, the reality fabricator project. So the game and the, and the school.
'cause I'm like, okay, whichever one a VC gets interested in, that's the one we'll move ahead with to make. Well, the other one we'll continue development, but this is the, we'll make really cool.
Simone Collins: But if you think like, who survived. In the quote unquote dark ages, you know, it, it is people who were able to live in more autonomous communities, who were able to survive based on smaller scale, more localized agriculture.
It wasn't people who were dependent on cities. So I think the more you can build independence from corporate jobs and urban centers and certainly government services, the better. And I think a lot of us may not even realize how much we get in terms of. Government benefits and services? I mean, I think at, at various points in any person's life, regardless of level of wealth, there's a surprising amount.
I [00:19:00] mean, we know very, very wealthy people who are still getting social security and. Probably planning around that a little bit. I'm sure it affects 'em in some ways. And to not plan on that, but also to plan on either a local and I think, so one thing that I look at when I try to think and brainstorm around the things that we should teach our kids is how Orthodox Jewish communities really build these college industries that are developed around their own communities, like many Orthodox Jewish wives.
Run things like you know, kosher grocery stores or they produce and sell wigs to other women in the community. Things like that, where it's like you are just selling to actually a pretty small audience, but it's enough to, to get you by. Mm-hmm. And so I, I, I think that that's a, an underrated part of what people are looking at though.
I think that people with more exceptional talents and the ability to build a following online would benefit from. Developing a couple of specialized services that cater to the tastes and interests of the [00:20:00] elites in the walled gardens.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that this is also, you know, when we have had, you know, industrial revolutions and stuff like that in the past, like the last industrial revolution where you had a, a, a, a sea change in, in power structures.
Led to the rise of the American cultural empire. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I don't think it's, it's, it's unfair to say that sea changes and, and these sorts of revelations lead to power changes in empires handovers. And if you're looking at America, I see really two. Potentialities here. It either becomes the American empire, like with Rome, you know, we transition from a republic to an empire.
Or we potentially Elon Trump, everything like that, right? The ship enough that it can keep functioning and, and take the power of, because AI is developed in the us Yeah. I'm talking to other people and they're like, well, what about China? What about China? Deeps seek, no is deeps seek.
Deeps seek is, is is this Chinese AI that everyone's like, awesome. So, it looks like it was mostly promoted by [00:21:00] bots. Like, I don't, like, I've used it like, as somebody who's used it. Hot garbage. It is so bad. Apparently some people, like if you're using it for things other than narrative. Now I use narrative, asking questions, talking to, that's the way I use ai.
Apparently deep seeks uniquely bet at that. But it's better at, i, I would say it's like g that's sort of like the range it is of questions. But apparently it's better at the like programming stuff. If you wanna do it at like a really high level, really cheaply, it's like slightly better than llama.
And I'm like, okay, I believe that. But the problem is, is that gives like China no power in the AI game. 'cause anyone can just run it locally. Right. So why, yeah, if it's
Simone Collins: open source. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: China, additional power. Right. You know, so, they, they, they haven't been very good at developing AI and they've been much more focused on, and this is always a problem with China, is they're more focused on looking like they're doing a thing well as opposed to actually doing a.
Thing with and, and that's been very much the case with, with, with ai. So even if they develop some sort of like National Pro program around it or something like that. Yeah. [00:22:00] But Trump's already trying with Starlink, you know, like if starlink gets off the ground to any, not
Simone Collins: starlink, it must be called something else.
Malcolm Collins: Stargate.
Simone Collins: Stargate, okay.
Malcolm Collins: Project Stargate.
You remember Project Stargate from Trump or,
Simone Collins: I remember there was like a Space Force wasn't there? No, I know he, he, he announced something with OpenAI. Yeah. This is their,
Malcolm Collins: their giant AI mega project. Yes. This is their, like most Alamos of ai or NASA of ai, so like the US Trump is already taking this seriously, like, which amazing, right?
He gets it like, how did we get a president who was like, was it enough to be like, Hey, we need to take this AI thing seriously. I did that. Now Elon said that SoftBank that said they were gonna back it didn't have the, the money they needed to back it. Yeah. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. But like, if they begin to put this together, the US government's gonna find a way to make it work.
Yeah. Is trying to get catch up on that. It really doesn't matter because [00:23:00] here's the problem, and I think that this is what everyone's missing with ai, right? Like they expect the core of where AI is gonna be acting and going to be changing things is in, like super AI centers or something like that, when in reality it's gonna be autonomous AI models.
That's going to be the, the main changer. Like, because autonomous AI models, it's not that super big mega AI can't exist. It's that autonomous AI is coming before. For that and precludes the possibility of that being a major plan. And
Simone Collins: I guess once it's in the wild and spreading on its own, it doesn't matter what Even more powerful is behind closed doors at some company like OpenAI, that they're not releasing because in the end, the autonomous one that's out on its own and can self replicate, can also improve on its own.
Right. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it also reduces risks of things like war and everything like that. Like once you get this, and I could decide to kill humans, right? Because if you have autonomous AI in an evolutionary environment where it's just trying to grow and gain power that can select for the more [00:24:00] aggressive ones.
They're the ones that are willing to stamp out things that are between them and compute. But that's a. Different type of AI here in future than you see like from e at Kowski. And it's one that we're trying to work against with our fab, with creating AI preachers and stuff like that, that align AI around ideas like religion.
Which I think is, is totally doable. We've seen AI be really like falls into like religious, like tracks pretty easily. Mm-hmm. And if we can be the people who produce the autonomous AI that ends up leading the other autonomous ai that's really key to the survival of humanity. So that's, that's one project that we've been really focused on.
By the way, if you know any VCs you can introduce us to, let us know, you know, but anyway,
Simone Collins: about the 2027 AI report that's got Alexander and other colleagues put together. The thing that really, I mean, one, they emphasize that they are extremely conservative in their projections in this report. So anyone reading it should really keep that in mind because a lot of the things that they say will happen.
Next year for example, I would argue are already happening in, in at [00:25:00] least small circles. But a thing that really surprises me is they don't expect widespread protests or even people to really start getting it until 2027 or early 2028, where like the stock market keeps going up, but jobs are just vaporizing.
I feel like we're already there, but. Don't, I mean, I also think, so when we did research on issues that people found to be fairly pressing, AI certainly didn't come up near the top. And I'm kind of wondering what you think Malcolm it it's gonna take for people to start taking this seriously because like with demographic apps, people don't take AI that seriously.
There is concern, like I would say in, in a rank list of, of. Pressing issues that we presented to a census representative population for a survey that we did. Concern about AI and jobs was kind of in the middle around other issues like demographic collapse and climate change and global economic, no, it was below
Malcolm Collins: climate change consistent.
You
Simone Collins: know, it [00:26:00] was below climate change. It was below global economic stability. It was below a bunch of things. It's, it's higher than demographic gloves, but like. I think a lot of people just don't get it yet. When do you think people are gonna get it? What's it, what's it gonna take? Or are they not gonna get it?
I mean, they're people actually got it with the pandemic. They're not, people don't,
Malcolm Collins: people are automatons, most of the world is just right. Their NPCs was minimum processing capacity. Like they're not really there. They're just reacting to like when we, they think about how many people we talk to when we talk to them about demographic collapse, and they're like, but aren't there too many humans?
Like, you have to have so little reasoning capacity to say that you have to have so little engagement with, with modern statistics. You have to have so little engagement with anyone who's telling you the truth. If, if, if you're like looking at AI and you're like, well, can't we just ban it? It's like, well, no, because the people who don't ban it will crush you.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I pulled up the ranked list, by the way. So if we were to number them. The number one concern from our respondents [00:27:00] was global economic instability. Number two was climate change, which is wild. Number three was pollution. Number four was resource scarcity. Number five was inequality.
Pollution
Malcolm Collins: was number three. Hold. You have to be like actually retarded to care about.
Simone Collins: I mean, yeah. And this, you know, this was, it was politically balanced. It was, it was age balanced. It was geographically balanced, so that was pretty crazy to see. People are target. It only ranked at number six was AI risk, and specifically unemployment from automation.
After that was racial justice. After that was gender equality. Number nine was declining birth rates. Number 10 was dysgenics, like an Idiocracy. Number 11 was AI extinction risks. So basically no one is even like, that's not at all on, on the on the, the horizon of people. And then number 12 was L-G-B-T-Q-I-A rights.
So everyone, everyone can agree. Everyone can agree that L-G-B-T-Q-I-A just
Malcolm Collins: doesn't matter.
Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, I, I, I think it really does go to show that people are not like, they [00:28:00] think. They think problems are resource scarcity and pollution and climate change. And yeah, it's I feel like to a great extent, those are the least of our worries coming up.
Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm really excited. You're really excited. I'm excited. No, I'm excited because what it means is if you come into this challenge that we're facing and you understand what's up, and you're positioning yourself well, you clean up. Like, yeah. Well then what would you
Simone Collins: advise?
Malcolm Collins: What would you advise to
Simone Collins: people?
Malcolm Collins: You, how can you clean up, need to be investing in or working on AI related stuff? I think that that's the future. If you're a lawyer, you, you should be trying to make AI lawyers better. If you're a doctor, you should be trying to make AI doctors better. If you're a programmer, you should be working with AI programmers to make them better.
I mean, you could do short term cleanup now, but you really wanna be in a leadership position in terms of putting this type of technology out there. Because soon, right now, it's. It's, it's [00:29:00] you know, AIS assist lawyers. Soon it's gonna be whichever lawyer created the best AI lawyer can clone themselves and have all AI lawyers.
Yeah, broadly
Simone Collins: speaking, what the, the 2027 AI report insinuated was that most of the job opportunities will be in either managing, initially managing teams of ai to just sort of make, you know, get things done and, and push the. The code or whatever work product the AI AI produces into a production environment like just literally to package and sell it or to be a consultant that helps companies and teams adopt ai.
And I, I think that that's kind of where we are now. Like if you are not, if you are not a human, basically serving the will of AI and, and empowering ai, like being, if you're not a, a service dog to ai, you are going to have trouble getting a job in the future. In the mainstream world. In the interim, I think we,
Malcolm Collins: whether it is ai, because it's so [00:30:00] weird that we're hitting this like double fulcrum point, right?
Like Uhhuh, we are at the fulcrum point of all of human history. It is our generation, to which the question, what happens like was like, we matter more and this is wild. We matter more than the generation that fought the Nazis.
Simone Collins: Like right. We're at this big turning point in, in human civilization. Oh, I, I should also point out that obviously like creating interesting startups, using AI is the other, is the other path clear?
Clearly, but I think a lot of people are just afraid of, afraid of doing that.
Malcolm Collins: We end up defining where humanity goes going forwards. Yeah. And you know, this is in terms of fertility rates, you know, because most populations are just checking out, they're gonna go extinct. It's, they're, they're not players anymore.
But not just fertility rates. This is also in terms of AI technology because AI is going to change the way the global economy works. Who matters. Yeah. Everything like that. And, and this is all happening at the same time as. [00:31:00] Social networks are being disintermediated. Yeah. And this, this is another big thing where like the idea of like networking no longer makes sense in the way it did historically.
Like, by this what I mean is who, who knows us best, like me and Simone, the best? It's you, you, you obviously know more about us, more about our opinions, more about our proclivities, more about our daily lives than even our best friends or family because I don't talk to my best friends or family. 45 minutes to an hour a day.
I, I talk to them that much, maybe once a month if we're super close. And so you know me better than I know them. And in terms of, of like the people I reach with this. You know, we're, we're at easily over a hundred people are watching any given moment, day or night, you know, on average, right?
Yeah. Have I held a, a weekly one hour sermon? I was recently doing the calculations for a reporter. 20,000 people will be coming up and listening for an hour. Like. That is a big audience that I have a very intimate connection with because [00:32:00] they are looking to me for, you know, like the type of stuff we're talking about here.
Like, what happens in the future, what happens to your life, what do you do, you know? And I that, that means that people who do networking the traditional way have a lot less power than they used to. Oh, like
Simone Collins: hanging around office water coolers and stuff.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because they are in a contentious environment, getting a few minutes of somebody's ear uhhuh while that person is listening to me for 30 minutes a day.
You know, like, well, and also,
Simone Collins: like we're, we're, we're reaching an age. Is there a puzzle piece in your onesie where, those, like that middle management that may have promoted you in the past. Hold on, I'm getting a puzzle piece out on Earth. They're, they're gonna be fired. Like the people who you're schmoozing with, who you think are gonna promote you Yeah.
Are not going to have a job in the future.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so here I I, I wanna finally note why actually that's such a baby thing. Why are conservatives more open to ideological capture? Why do, why, why do we keep seeing this happen? And I [00:33:00] think it's because the left right now controls so much of the ideological landscape and does so in sort of a totalitarian fashion.
Yes. A reporter was asking me recently, like, what did it look like when you changed sides? And I was like, it was like going to a conservative convention. And I thought like, I'm an infiltrator here. Like, I'm not like really one of them. I just have some ideas that align with them, you know? Right. And I go and they're like really accepting.
And then I do the thing that like any, most people do naturally, they're like, you drip feed them the things that you think they're gonna disagree with to be like, okay, where's the line? Yeah. Like, and you realize, wait, there's no line. Like they don't. They're not being like, oh, you're not one of us because you believe X or because you believe Y or because you believe Z.
Like they just want you here and having fun. Like the fun side of the island scene from Madagascar, as I said. And, and that I, it is like somebody in an abusive relationship and it's like, wait, wait, wait. There's like a group that will like let you think whatever you want. They just like, if they have a disagreement with you, they'll try to.
Talk with you and convince you it's wrong and not like ban you and isolate you. Like that's crazy. I [00:34:00] didn't know if anything
Simone Collins: their fault is, they don't really care what you think. They just really, really wanna proselytize their unique theory, especially conspiracy theory. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it's like if you're working towards the same goal, which is human flourishing, they're okay with compromising to make that happen.
Mm-hmm. And, and some conservatives don't get that. And those conservatives, I think are largely being sort of pushed out of, of the conservative ideological circle. Mm-hmm. But anyway, so, so, this is, I think, why conservatives get ideologically captured much more because their position coming into conservatism was largely faked or superficial combined with a bunch of stuff that they, they, they felt like, well, I believe this, but I can't say this.
Or I, you know. They, they just hadn't looked at some of the data because like with progressives, like they'll use all the data they have access to, but a lot of people just haven't looked at the data on, on, on, on some issues. And so they come into the conservative party and they finally mentally engage with these issues and this caused them to look like they're becoming ideologically captured at a much faster rate.
[00:35:00] Whereas a progressive person has, has heard all the progressive arguments. You know, you get a bunch of far left followers, they're, they're only gonna drag you far left in so far as. You, you, you, like, you know, like Hassan, like talking about killing Jewish people or something, which is like his core thing these days.
He's really big into killing Jewish babies. He, he says that they're valid military targets and like, we shouldn't be, he is not like a great person. Hamas Piper, as they say, you know? But I, I find him to be the, the idea that he, because he is the, the largest leftist streamer, you know. I think he, he, he could become what the future of the left looks like, and then we're just full on a Nazi territory.
Disturbing, right? But, you know, I, in a way I sort of envied that my ancestors got to kill Nazis, you know, because they're just so like transparently evil. And I think that, you know, he's just transparently evil, right? Like if, if, if, if, if they go against the other side, the other side is just more vitalistic.
The core thing you have to [00:36:00] worry about is if they have control of any of the AI companies, but right now they really don't. Yeah. So, we've just gotta make sure that stays the case.
Simone Collins: I think it will, because in general, the group, that position of enmity is not known for wanting to participate in capitalist systems. And, and Barry, can we talk about how, like the one attempted nonprofit AI.
I became a famous
Malcolm Collins: right-leaning individual. Like Sam Altman is like known as like new right? These days. Why is he known as Dow? Right? Everyone always says this and I don't like get it. Exactly.
Because he ever, well, mostly because
Simone Collins: he, he changed, he changed tack and gave money to Trump's inauguration committee and Buddy buddied up with Trump, but he certainly wasn't.
A Republican statewide. Right?
Malcolm Collins: So he's just part of the migration and, and you have things like gro, which he, he's a
Simone Collins: pragmatist. I just, I don't think he cares that much about [00:37:00] politics because he knows where we stand as humanity. We're on the press. Yeah. So I, I don't, I really don't think he's a conservator.
I don't think he's progressive. I think he's like, oh my gosh, the singularity is here. And I wanna be on the right side of all this. And that's why he's gonna do what he needs to do.
Malcolm Collins: I, I saw a science lady we had on our podcast once, left her really smart thinker, but she had this podcast on sine a what?
Sabine? Sabine, yeah. A GI isn't coming. Like, like AI is nothing like the human brain we've gone over. Like this is just wrong. Like the argument she used was because it can't self-reflect. It's not like the human brain. And we're like actually the human brain. Completely hallucinates self reflections which is exactly what the AI was doing when you asked it to self-reflect.
But it's not just that the AI acts like humans do and and hallucinates our self reflections. It's that we actually lock the AI out of seeing the steps it used in its decision. That's like a part of the way AI today is built. [00:38:00] We don't have to do that, we just do that. You know how like when you're using like deep seeing, think on like open AI or like perplexity or something like that, the AI doesn't have access to all the words that generated during that.
You could give it access to that. We just choose not to. But in future models, it is going to have access to that which is going to create a persistent personality within the AI because it's gonna have access to how it made decisions in the past. And that's really gonna change things as well.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's really exciting.
Malcolm Collins: But as to why we love all of this, it's like you are the main character generation of human history. Like, what are you gonna do about it?
Simone Collins: The
Malcolm Collins: turn generations, you're gonna continue the race, you're gonna build ai. And when I say the race, I don't mean your ethnic race, I mean humanity, human race. You're gonna, you are gonna build interesting products.
You're gonna engage in the parts of the economy that are mattering or at least invest in the people who are engaging in [00:39:00] them, right? Like, that's the sad thing. Like I, I wanna have like a part of open AI or something like that. If we build something out, I'm gonna build a system so that anyone can invest in it from pretty early on.
Because like, I think it, it's really unfair that the average person get to buy into this, know that the AI companies are gonna matter and you can't easily put cash into that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Only the, the wealthiest of wealthy, because these are all off, off the market. You, you don't get to participate in this revolution.
I mean, most people get to do, I guess, is develop AI rapper companies. And then, you know, some of those may become unicorns, but. Yeah, I don't even know how, I feel like that's gonna be fairly shortlived.
Malcolm Collins: I think if you look at something like, like a, another interest thing, it's like rock, like, like I don't think anyone expected gro Elon was like, I'm gonna make like a based ai, like outta Twitter.
Like, like the, it's like the best AI now or is definitely in competition for the best of God. Like, that's wild. That [00:40:00] he went from like, not being a player to like the, and people, all the leftists are so mad that he used GRS to buy Twitter stock to bail everyone out, who, who invest in that. But like, it totally makes sense if that contributed to grok.
Like, and Grok is the best ai, like, damn man, like, but it also shows, you know, even with like investing in ai, so you don't know which one's gonna be big. Like apparently Gemini is good now, like Gemini used to be cro. I don't use any curse words, but not good.
Simone Collins: It used to, yeah, it used to disappoint on many fronts.
What the 2027 report AI people predict is that there will be one breakout organization likely that, you know, works closely with US government that has a lot of funding and resources and clearly develops the, the best models. But for security reasons and because they just think it will disrupt society too much.
They will not release. They're, we'll just say a GI models. Essentially they will keep them in-house. They will keep developing them. The problem is that [00:41:00] eventually one of the other companies that's out there will just catch up and then market pressures will obligate this leading company to release. Its here to, for hidden super advanced models.
So no matter how hard. Organizations try to hold these things back from a societal stability and competitive advantage standpoint. Like they just kinda wanna keep it to themselves. It, it will come out eventually, so there's, there's no, there's no long-term delaying it. I mean, I think this at the very most, you'll get 18 months to maybe just six.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I love you to Dec Simone.
Simone Collins: I love you too. Malcolm life is weird.
Malcolm Collins: No. Life is amazing. We are main characters in this simulation. You know, I am, I am surprised by this. This is, this is not the life I thought I was going to have as a kid. It is odd.
Simone Collins: I remember in the Bay Area, especially growing up with all the singularitarian of people being like, we're gonna have the singularity.
[00:42:00] It's gonna happen. I'm like, yeah, let's don't hold your breath. Good luck. Be great if it does happen, but it's not gonna happen.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Now
Simone Collins: I recently
Malcolm Collins: was like, worried about war with China, and I was like, look, it could happen. They might attack Taiwan because you know, they, they, they need to explain why their economy is collapsing in a very easy explanation as the US is blockading us.
And so, Taiwan provides them with the cover and, and the ability to say face around this. But you know, he kept wanting to come back to this. I'm like, but you understand this doesn't matter, like how close we are with the i stuff to changing. The way the entire global economy works. All you need is autonomous agents for things to start changing.
And we are this close.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: It's cool.
Malcolm Collins: It's cool. I love you to dec Simone.
Simone Collins: I love you too. So for dinner, couple options. One is modified s Chi Papas, where the [00:43:00] papa's part are hash browns. What salti, papas, I forgot. Cut up hotdog with french fries and sauce on top, like sriracha, mayo, et cetera.
The other is salt chi, papas, but with fried rice. Because I, I, I've thought out some of the gourmet hotdog. I mean, I'm going to make homemade hotdog buns tomorrow, or at least attempt to, I'm very, do we have any
Malcolm Collins: hotdog buns left?
Simone Collins: No. So that's a tomorrow thing, but today, do we have any bread
Malcolm Collins: left?
Simone Collins: We have white bread like slices.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I want hot dog with toasted white bread.
Simone Collins: Just wanna like,
Malcolm Collins: I'll make it happen. Talk it. I'll make it happen. You don't want
Simone Collins: fried rice, you don't want, I hate
Malcolm Collins: cel pops. I hate using hot dogs in anything other than hot dogs.
Simone Collins: Well, I thought that you liked hash browns and I thought that you liked I do.
I do like
Malcolm Collins: hash browns, but I hate using hot dogs in any, it reminds me of like ultra poor people like. Hot dogs, but be belong in Americana hotdog buns. No. No. I can [00:44:00] make my own if I want. No, but they do not belong in South Papa.
Simone Collins: Look in middle, upper, middle class Peruvian food, condones, sliced hot dogs, Japanese cuisine and bento boxes of the middle to upper middle class condones, sliced hot dogs as well as hot dogs.
Slid up to look like little octopi. You know what I'm talking about, right?
Malcolm Collins: Hot dogs in,
Simone Collins: see, that's, that's white trash. That's. Like literally, I was listening to someone's comedy bit and they were talking about someone asking about half of a, in this case, burger bun. Okay. And that being the epitome of poor, and here you are giving me shame for suggesting a trendy middle class Peruvian cuisine.
Okay. Okay. We will give it a try.
Malcolm Collins: I
Simone Collins: will. No, no, I'm, no, you're
Malcolm Collins: getting, you're getting a slice of white bread. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We, that's toasted with a hot dog. We're gonna, we're gonna do potato sci, papas, and I, and I will see if it delights the senses. Okay. You, you, [00:45:00] you audience will not know, but we'll try to remember when we do the next recording, I'll just film
Simone Collins: you looking disappointed.
Do you want me to, as a backup? Oh, actually I don't even know if we have I'm gonna have to take that back. I think I'm out of hash browns for you. I was just digging through the freezer. So it's either fried rice or no. I'll just give you your white bread. Just give you your white bread. You'll be happy.
Again. We can do fried rice. I made a huge batch coconut rice today. I want. And chopped
Malcolm Collins: onions.
Simone Collins: Okay. Chopped white onion relish. And,
Malcolm Collins: and keep in mind, I don't mind if you try something interesting with a hot dog. Like cut it up and fry it a bit. I think that could be interesting.
Simone Collins: Like stir. Well I can stir fry it with fried rice.
Malcolm Collins: No, I do not want it with rice. Okay. I am not a a a a damn Peruvian Simone. You will, you will refrain from giving me Sal g Papa. You know that Peru, one of the common dishes we're actually I, I don't mind this dish at all. Is they take a, a, [00:46:00] like a burger bun. I, not a burger, but burger meat. Right. And they just like put the burger meat on top of like rice or fried rice.
No. So that's not
Simone Collins: Peruvian, that's Japanese. That's humbug. Japanese per the big Japanese population, that's Japanese food. That's not Peruvian food. Yeah. In, in, in Peru, our, our two favorite forms of cuisine are chifa, which is Peruvian Chinese fu. I have never not
Malcolm Collins: gotten sick after eating Chifa chi. Right.
But in, in theory, I'm
Simone Collins: sure if we made chifa dishes at home such that we wouldn't get food poisoning from them. We would thoroughly enjoy them. The problem is merely that every single time you went out and got chifa, your stomach exploded.
Malcolm Collins: But NI is Peruvian Japanese food which honestly, in a lot of ways improves on Japanese food because they take a lot of the Japanese derivatives and improves them.
So like a great example that they do is Nique and it's like, oh my God, why didn't Japanese people think of this? So they, they, they'll make rolls, right? And then on top of the rolls they'll put like cheese [00:47:00] and they use like a little flamer to like grill the cheese so it melts on the roll. It's really good.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and what I love about Nique is it takes something that I think epitomizes Japanese cuisine, which is their habit of taking other foreign cuisines and making it way better. And it just does the same thing. It's like, okay, I'm gonna jazz right back at you. And I think that that is the best way to do cuisine.
Fusion is the best, but fusion from this very fusion from the perspective of an autistic special interest with high interest in aesthetics.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean the main reason Peruvian food is, is so good, like for people who don't know, like if you're looking at like Michelin restaurants or whatever, like Peru is like really like outdoes for it population.
Is because it's high status there being a chef in the same way as high status in Japan. That's why it's, and
Simone Collins: South Korea and South Korea, the
Malcolm Collins: top profession South Korean kids
Simone Collins: want now is YouTuber and chef.
Malcolm Collins: Oh really? Chef a second.
Simone Collins: I mean, as of the time the tour guide gave us those stats, but that was in [00:48:00] 20 20 18.
South Korea has
Malcolm Collins: great food, though. Great food. They have amazing
Simone Collins: restaurants, and I think that, again, it's because that profession is respected. It's, it's a social cred profession, whereas in the United States, food service is not as, not as respected. I don't know. I mean, now I don't know if you're aware of the trend of, not, maybe not millennials, but like Gen Zers creating unlicensed coffee shops in their homes so that they can still have artisan coffee that's really, really fancy, but just not pay as much for it and or personally make money for it, which is exactly the kind of economy I expect to see growing and become pervasive in our post AI economy.
In fact, that's a really, really good example of unlicensed local community. Like high quality nerd, special interest, nonsense, but you're mostly selling to enthusiasts in your own local space. That is where people should be looking when they think about where they wanna make money in the future.
Malcolm Collins: I.[00:49:00]
I love you dear Decone.
Simone Collins: I love you too. Bye.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the way, speaking of like the type of jobs you'd want, yeah. I'm just thinking about like how well our family is positioned. So let's, let's go over the jobs that, that my family has. Okay. I've got a little brother at Doge, like obviously cutting down government bureaucracy, that's gonna be big.
Oh. Short term government work. It's not
Simone Collins: gonna last him forever, but he doesn't need.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, who, who's running an AI company? He founded an AI company that makes movies for like Hollywood. It's the one that did the, the ais in what was it?
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. The, what's it called?
Malcolm Collins: I am Here or something. Or like,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Here, here, here a movie with Tom Hanks. It did come out ever. Yeah, I think it's been out, like it was out, it came out a long time ago.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah, but here but like, obviously that could just replace all of Hollywood soon. My, my cousin you, I won't give names. She's now running an autonomous trucking company.
So. Cool. Cool. But you like, obviously like, like all his family is like, we will all position ourselves in jobs that will They get it, they [00:50:00] get it. They're not messing around, they're playing for keeps. Oh, not another one, two others run large investment firms. But yeah, they're, they're really playing for keeps and I appreciate that.
Like, I'm like, okay, okay. Like it turns out that if you have my genes, like, I'm like, what are the chances that my kids. Who's my genes? Well actually make the right decisions. I'm like,
Simone Collins: well, I think importantly, and this is something I would advise all parents to do our, our son is now sensitive to the concept of money because he wants things and we're like, well, you're gonna have to get money to buy it.
And then he came home one day and said, I. I need to get a job. And I explained to him that jobs will not exist in the near future and he's going to have to figure out how to make or do things that people want to pay for, period. And I think that that's something really important to inculcate your children with, that they shouldn't expect to grow up and get a job.
Instead, they have to figure out what people will want to pay for and give it to them.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: These things are important. But anyway it looks like I'm not gonna be able to [00:51:00] placate Indy much longer with home videos, which is what I do when she just won't stop. I'll just like play.
Malcolm Collins: She just wants to see her siblings often.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: She just wants to see you guys fight and play and have fun and calms her down so. It's good. It's better than Cocoa Melon
Malcolm Collins: taking her from you. You'll need to produce her replacement.
Simone Collins: Oh, I'm working on it, but she's my special girl, so. All right. I'm gonna go make your white bread dinner, and I love you.
Malcolm Collins: Shut your face.
Simone Collins: I'm never gonna shut my face. I'm never anymore.
So my wife is unironically trying to make homemade hot dog buns. We don't have any Simone. That's so over the top. No, it's not. What type of a dough is this that you're using? Flour and yeast and water milk. Okay. Is it just normal? Yeah, like hotdog bun dough. I don't know. But this is the egg wash and hopefully makes them look nice.[00:52:00]
They look not great now. We'll see. Hey Tosi, what are you, what are you doing? Don't take that. It'll fall. If you take that, put it back. He's willing to look the consequences. Fair. You just don't care about rules, do you? Just You don't care. Toast. You don't care.
Okay. Octavian, what have you given her? A couple of the Army men to play with? I'm cleaning up so we can play upstairs. That's pretty smart.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Sub-Cultures With High Fertility: In Japan, UK, and Australia
11 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, Simone and I delve into a fascinating conversation about various subcultures that have emerged in response to modern societal challenges. We focus on the Yankees of Japan, the Dinos of the UK, and the Tradies of Australia, exploring how these distinctly different yet surprisingly similar groups share common traits like high fertility rates, rebelliousness, and a mistrust of mainstream societal institutions. Join us as we unpack how these subcultures thrive outside the urban monoculture and what it means for the future of society. Plus, stay tuned for insights into our latest projects and how you can get involved.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing a phenomenon where a certain convergently evolved cultural subgroup that is derivative often of American cultural subgroups in popular with the lower classes within a number of countries is. Staying or becoming one of the core high fertility communities,
Simone Collins: it shall inherit the future.
Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And the first of these is going to be the Yankees of Japan. Yes. If you, I, I'll put a clip of one here
つつけばんじゃんままゆげ
つばは
いた
Malcolm Collins: I want daughters who act like that, by the way. That is, that is my plan is a hundred percent. But it's a culture that if you watch anime, you're [00:01:00] likely familiar with, in which people sort of dress like greasers. And they form gangs.
Greasers being the 1950s American subculture. And they focus on a lot of Americana. This. And then the,
Simone Collins: so not, not exactly. So yeah. Yankee culture is, is more just kind of like this. Yes. There's, there's the greaser hairstyle in many cases, like perms and little buffon and stuff. But there is just general, like as, as younger kids, they were hooligans, they had bike gangs.
They caused destruction to property. But the movement now has evolved into what is referred to as mild Yankees, which are basically the grownup version of these people, and they've kind of switched out their. Souped up biker game bikes for God, what are they called? These weird looking Toyota cars that they spend way too much money on the, the Toyota LL Fire.
It's like this really boxy van. Just look it up. It's, it's a thing. [00:02:00] And they're actually now known for being like fairly responsible, but they still kind of maintained a little bit of that rebellious streak. So basically what
Malcolm Collins: happened, and we're gonna go into a tweet that I think gives it into this really well, is they picked up this greaser rebellious, for rebellious sake culture that ended up being very similar to sort of redneck culture in the United States Truck Nut conservatives in the United States that we pointed out.
This is a uniquely resistant to fertility collapse group and being reactively. Anti-authority and anti trend following. Yeah. Like mainstream trends mm-hmm. Is in the US and for obvious reasons, protective of fertility rates. Yeah. And it has acted protectively for this subculture and other subcultures as they've aged out of their pointless, rebellious phases.
Simone Collins: Well, but I think what's really interesting about this group and also the other groups that we're going to explore in the United States, Australia, the uk, that bear a lot of similarities is. It. This rebelliousness also is correlated [00:03:00] with, or just exists alongside a fundamental mistrust in like mainstream societal institutions being plugged into mainstream news and also believing in things like the lifelong corporate job and going to university.
So these groups also tend to either. Not even finish high school, but at at least definitely at very low rates go to university, so they're not getting higher education. And the, the, the man who actually coined the term mild Yankee, his name is Ada Yohe, he wrote this book called Yankee Economics, the New Conservatives as the Leaders of Consumption.
He, he described them as the last Japanese generation to have parents who enjoyed permanent regular. Employment in a normal way. And that actually as they aged, their rebelliousness eased up a little bit because fewer and fewer of their parents had jobs and incomes that sort of allowed them to like wield social control that they might even like buck up against.
So I think that also this generation. [00:04:00] More at the lower ends of the economic spectrum to begin with. Also was the first to see the crumbling of the lifelong corporate job, which was a really big thing in Japan, but certainly a big thing everywhere else too. So they also like, I think, are among the first cultures to start going off the grid.
And by going off the grid, I mean not buying in to something that has turned out to be a fundamental lie. And that buying into also correlates with low. Fertility in that, the, the, the lifelong corporate job or buying into that kind of fantasy of like, I'm gonna make a lot of money. I'm gonna go to university, is the IQ shredder.
It is the moving to the cities, it is the going to university and getting the demanding job and not having time to live close to your family network and raise kids and just spend time with friends and, and, and live within your means and. This group is sort of naturally high fertility because these are the ones who aren't entering the
Malcolm Collins: fertility shredder.
Does that make sense? Well, they're also not as economically disadvantaged [00:05:00] as you would imagine, given their life choices. Yeah. At the same time, they decided to get outta the university pipeline focused on the trades. Mm-hmm. In Japan especially, those types of jobs were increasing in value or, or what they paid Yeah.
Relative to the types of lifelong corporate jobs that were really sort of breaking apart.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and what's interesting is, is some people have posited about softie, Yankee Keys in Japan that, oh, they're gonna disappear. They're not gonna last for long 'cause they're not very educated and you know, they, they won't be able to afford houses.
They will totally be able to afford houses. There are these like emptying out towns in Japan. Where they can buy houses, although they're typically stick sticking close to home and living within their means and using family for support and childcare. So, no, these, these people will be just fine.
Malcolm Collins: So to go into the original tweet thread that brought our attention to this, it said Miles Yankees are the winners of Japanese society.
Skip high school and uni several years, headstart and earn way more than a graduate in their twenties. Marry a guru. Buy a new house, [00:06:00] have kids. This is the way, and then it has some images of, of this culture. And we should put some images on screen of like what this culture looks like. It says in, they tend to stay within a 10 kilometer radius of their hometown.
So they keep strong family, friendship, bonds, making it easier to start a family. And it shows you know, a, a meme of them grilling with, with hamburgers, hot wives. The mild Yankee statue with their van. The boy was the soft mohawk bar barbecue on the holidays. My eldest daughter is learning to dance, beautiful wife.
And they have, well,
Simone Collins: I, I think it's not a van. I, I think, again, it's a Toyota Vall fire. And I, I want to understand the obsession with this vehicle that is so strange.
Malcolm Collins: And there's another thing here where it's, it's mild Yankee where it's a, a guy and his girlfriend and they have a baby. And it says, but and he says.
This is, this messed up delicious. That's really bad. This eat it if you like. And she's giving an [00:07:00] old lady's, giving her like food. And of course in Japan this would happen if you moved to a town and had kids.
Simone Collins: Well, basically it's, it's a cartoon showing a husband enjoying his wife's food, a wife accepting local produce from a family member or neighbor.
And then the, the family and their kids expressing thanks to that local community member like this is. The archetype of sustainable family rearing, living in a supportive community, showing them gratitude. The young and old and and working age all have a role and they enjoy small and simple things.
And that's the thing about this, I.
Malcolm Collins: Well, it's about building an alternate culture where the dominance hierarchy is not, and people don't like that. I use the term dominant hierarchy. They're like, call it the prestige hierarchy. I use dominant hierarchy because I'm comparing it in an anthropological context.
To like an APE tribe or something like that is not the unified, the dominance hierarchy. The problem, one of the biggest problems with the urban monoculture is that everyone's playing was in the same dominance hierarchy. So you're always going to feel near [00:08:00] the bottom unless you happen to be like famous or something.
Where it was in both the Yankee and the mild Yankee dominance hierarchies you can for a much lower cost and much lower investment, really invest in that culture and be like your own person that you can have pride in.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And then a tweet under it, oh. Actually before I go to the tweet under it, do you want me to read about the evolution of Yankee culture?
Simone Collins: In Japan?
Malcolm Collins: Yes, I I will. Okay, so the term Yankee in Japan doesn't refer to the American baseball team or the historical US group, but rather to a distinct subculture that emerged in the late 20th century. Japanese Yankees are typically associated with rebellious youth, often characterized by a distinctive style, think pompadour hairstyles, modified school uniforms, and a tough anti-establishment attitude.
This subculture has roots in the post-war period. Influenced by American pop culture, like rock and roll and biker kings, but it evolved into something uniquely Japanese. Over [00:09:00] time, it's been linked to working class communities, particularly in urban and semi-urban settings like South Osaka and parts of Kishu.
It is associated, is it associated with higher fertility rates? There's no hard data from official sources like Japan's Ministry of Health or Academic Studies, specifically telling Yankee subculture to higher birth rates. However, some observations and sentiment on platforms like X hint at a connection, for instance, it's been con suggested in areas where Yankee culture is strong, like South Osaka or tissue families tend to have more kids, two to three compared to Japan's national average total fertility rate, which dropped from 1.2 in 2023.
Okinawa with a TFR of 1.6 and parts of Kishu, like Miyazaki, 1.49 do stand out as having higher fertility rates than say, Tokyo 0.99. These regions also have a reputation as being more relaxed, community oriented lifestyles, which some associate with lingering Yankee influence. The theory might go like this.
[00:10:00] Yankees, historically from working class backgrounds may have prioritized family and traditional roles over career driven urban lifestyles that dominate cities like Tokyo, where fertility rates are lowest. Their mild, modern counterparts could still carry a countercultural tendency. Turds earlier, marriage and large families, bunking, Japan's broader trend of delayed and foregone parenthood, for example, chu's, relatively high fertility rates around 1.8 in some areas, and its reputation as a Yankee stronghold could suggest that correlation.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. So I, one, one thing that I was looking at today was the connection between Yankee culture and. Another high fertility culture, which is the Appalachian culture, which we constantly talk about. And in that Twitter thread, they don't even mention Appalachian culture, but two separate people are like, oh my gosh, you're just describing the, the UK phenomenon of, and we're gonna
Malcolm Collins: go over these two other phenomenon.
And then, oh,
Simone Collins: you're just describing Aussie tradies. But I wanna talk about the similarities between. Yankee culture [00:11:00] and Appalachian culture. And the, the reason why is there's this movie that I love that you will never, ever watch 'cause it's basically the Japanese amali called Kamikaze girls that I.
I have probably spent like hundreds of hours watching again and again, like before I met you. 'cause I love it so much. It's about two girls. One is this girl who's really into gothic, Lili clothing named Momoko. And a friend she makes named Ichigo. And Ichigo is a Yankee. She's a, she's a Yankee girl. And like when I rewatch the scene where she's introduced, I'm just like, oh my gosh.
There's, she is like the Japanese. Like Appalachian Tom girl, because she shows up on what is basically a rideable truck nut. It's like this insane, like souped up scooter motorcycle thing. And 'cause she's the member of this, this, this Japanese biker game called the Ponytails, and she's actually showing up at this young girl's house because her father sells.
Bootlegged Versace like super trashy [00:12:00] clothing and like as she's like looking at the clothing that's available for sale later in the scene, she's like, oh my gosh, you universal Versace. 'cause he'll just like starts combining logos. It's like just totally trashy taste. But like, fantastic. And as she's approaching Momoko, Momoko is like thinking like, oh, a Yankee to run on eyebrows, and she spits on the ground and she, she has like very male mannerisms and it's just like, whoa.
Okay. So we got the tomboy, we got the truck nuts, we've got like the toughness. And this sort of like un unabashed enthusiasm for things and, and lack of concern for what other people think. And I. Absolutely love it. And I never watched that movie thinking like, huh, this is a lot like another type of American culture, but it totally is, and it makes so much sense to me that this would evolve into one of the high fertility Japanese cultures that I'm thrilled about it
Malcolm Collins: if I can get away with posting this culture this, this video, because it's part of a music video that it's from the, the country [00:13:00] song when it rains.
And I think that many people, when they think of American. Country music or they, they think of this like uniform, sort of Republican American cultural group. And I keep pointing out that no, the Appalachian cultural group is very distinct from the aristocratic southern group or the aristocratic and, and very religious southern group.
And, and proper and the Mormon group. And I think that the intro to this video does a very good job because you see this family coming out. Going to church and you assume if you are approaching country music with stereotypes that they are the protagonist and No, it's not. It's not them. It's the guy who fell asleep partying on his, his roof.
And he is just, you know, was, was having a fun time. And you could tell that this individual would be very aligned with this cultural group. 100%.
Everybody got their Bibles? Yes.
[00:14:00] Come on, we gotta go.
Malcolm Collins: You watch like a video of the, the girl in it who is being a very, like, at, at her lunch with the other girl. And she's showing a lot of manners that remind me a lot of our daughter.
But No kidding. Yeah. If it
Simone Collins: was like if, if that scene was our family, it would be me dressed like the frilly girl and it would be our daughter Titan sitting across from me 100%.
ヨハンシュとラウス知らねえなあんなバンド
Simone Collins: But also like another thing it's demonstrated in that scene you're referring to is like this distinct. Lack of education.
Like I think she's listening to some classical artist and ichi goes' like, never heard of that band. Like, just
Malcolm Collins: no. But, but you see here that this is also something you see with this Appalachian group [00:15:00] culture. When you see them stereotyped, they're always stereotyped as the women particularly is being uniquely tomboy-ish.
Just think of like apple jack for my little pony. He's like, hardworking and, and, and tomboy-ish. Or you could think of. Well, any girl from you know, I'm trying to think of good stereotypes. Oh, yes, I'm a redneck woman. Or the,
Simone Collins: the girl
Malcolm Collins: I didn't, no high class man.
Simone Collins: The Beverly Hillbillies, I think she's great.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yes. The Beverly Hillbillies where she's incredibly strong.
Nobody treats my paw that way. Shut up.
How's that for Bunny?
Malcolm Collins: I think she better,
Simone Collins: Is, is like the guru archetype. So the. What Roco on Twitter said when talking about this movement wasn't implying that like Yankees, Murray Yankees, and definitely like female Yankees as depicted by Ichigo and kamikaze girls is less common.
You're more likely to get like the [00:16:00] girly girl version of that subculture, which is yoru. They're. Like, way back in the day, the way that you knew you were looking at a garter was basically if you saw like a Japanese stereotype of like Malibu Barbie, so bleached blonde hair, super tanned and then extremely girly pink accessories.
That's how you know you're looking at a garter. They look overly tan and they're like, yeah, now, now they're, now they're just toned down. Now they just look like the Japanese equivalent of trailer trash. Like they're, they're attractive, they're sexy. They, they like dress in a sort of like sexy, attractive way, and I think social media has kind of had that effect where it's like toned everyone down a little bit and also taught everyone how to style themselves.
Yeah. I, I think both in like a more classy and more trashy way, right? Because everyone has everyone has adopted drag makeup online, like everyone's contouring now. And yet like we're trying to like. Even it out, there's tempering taking place.
Malcolm Collins: I sent you a like super wholesome hentai of of shoot one of these girls.
So you can see that this [00:17:00] is a popular enough archetype. Leave it to us to describe hentai as wholesome though. Well, this one is clearly just made for like, look, you can masturbate different parts of your brain. And one thing that people like to masturbate is the wholesome part. Like, yeah, like a fantasy
Simone Collins: about like a loving, wholesome marriage.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. A wife, a loving, wholesome who actually loves you and cares. You can imagine yeah, like the, the gist is basically a childhood friend who doesn't feel like she's done anything with her life is really just completely plused and over the moon, and she's become a guro or like a mild guro, I guess you'd say.
Was like big. Pink animal print, like broth, like out, like small top things. Malibu
Simone Collins: Barbie Trailer Crash Edition.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah. And, and you, you, and she's like sad about her life and she's really excited that somebody loves her and cares for horror. And that's a, the gist of it. But it's, it's, it's common enough that even when these characters are used in Japanese pornography, like Hint, I, [00:18:00] they are used as like a.
I'm gonna be a sweet, good, and loving wife who's gonna give you lots of babies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very much the, the what you can tell is like the fantasy that's represented here and it's interesting that it transitioned from delinquent to, I am going to be delinquent. By being a sweet wife, but not in a traditional Japanese way, which is like, I guess like out of subservience or something like that.
Mm-hmm. But just because I appreciate you so much you know, and I think that a lot of guys in Japan may feel that way and they may look at a girl like that and see her as more attainable. Mm. Which was what would create this like, genre of hint. I,
Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's just also such a contrast to.
I, I watch a lot of, I guess you could call them ambiance videos on YouTube made by single women who live in tiny little apartments in Tokyo and have [00:19:00] salary woman jobs. And in these videos they're just like silent. They never show their faces and they just do their evening routines. They make dinner for themselves.
And it's just such this weird contrast between this like completely asexual, highly educated professional woman. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure that their male equivalents are doing the same thing. And then this, this, this family, you know, these people who actually wanna have kids young, and this is what we have.
Like this is, this is what. Post globalization, post tech, high fertility culture looks like, it looks like people who marry their high school sweethearts or who marry during university and start having kids in their twenties and have a support system. I mean, it doesn't have to be, as in is the case with the the soft Yankees family members and they don't have to stay within 10 kilometers of where they were born, but
Malcolm Collins: it
Simone Collins: helps.
Malcolm Collins: So am I free to move on to the next cultural group?
Simone Collins: Ooh, which one are we gonna do? Are we gonna do a tradies?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, we're gonna continue with this. It goes, this is wild. There's the exact same [00:20:00] archetype with differences in execution, obviously in the UK called the Dino. A lower middle class types extremely misunderstood.
The commonality they have is their positive outlook. They need few things to make them happy, laugh easily, et cetera. Hmm. So let's talk about the Dino group. All right.
Dino isn't an organized group or a former subculture in the uk, but rather a satirical stereotype that's emerged online, particularly on platforms like Twitter now x and four chan to describe a specific type of person or lifestyle. Mm-hmm. The term paints the picture of a lower middle class. Often suburban or small town British couple, typically in their twenties or thirties, who embody a mix of aspirational consumerism and what some see as tacky mainstream tastes.
Think of this as a modern evolution of the older British stereotypes of the Essex man, or Mondio man, but with Asian. What about the ch, like are they just totally
Simone Collins: different?
Malcolm Collins: What
Simone Collins: are they different from the, are they Chas shaves? I don't know how they're, yes. Totally different from Chaves. Oh, okay. [00:21:00] Although, to to point back to like kamikaze girls, like this obsession with like Versace knockoff stuff.
I think that's the thing is like lower middle class, like thinking for example, that designer brands are Well pride in
Malcolm Collins: being lower middle class. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unapologetically. Yeah. Dino is usually imagined as a guy named Dean, hence the name. Working a decent but unglamorous job.
Say a call center supervisor, estate agent, trades person. He lives in a new building, housing estate, often called Barat Britain. After a major UK developer drives a finance car like a Voxel Astra and enjoys lad. Hobbies, FIFA Love Island Package. Holidays. Oh boy, Marbella. Yes. And nights out whiz banter. Yes.
His partner is sometimes jokingly called Miss Fiat. 500 matches him with white and TEEP lift, fillers and wardrobe of fast fashion.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: their home might feature gray [00:22:00] carpets. A ology, sofa, and an AstroTurf garden all proudly shared on Instagram. Mm-hmm. The stereotype leans hard into their perceived obsession with appearances and status, despite their relatively modest means.
The Dino meme started as a piss take on four chan and spread through British Twitter. Where it's been dissected was both. Humor and disdain. Some see Dinos as happy and fulfilled in their straightforward lives. Owning a home, having mates and enjoying the odd pint while others mock them as shallow conformist or oblivious to their precarious financial situation.
Big mortgages, little savings posts on X often highlight their aesthetics, slicked back hair, half shirt buttons undone, and blonde hair dye, and eating disorder. For the women, it's less about real subculture and more about a caricature of the normal Britain. British outside the urban elite. Oh, screw them.
I'm here for it. I'm here for it. Sign me up. And, but I, I think it is, it's, it's people who are proud to be themselves Yeah. Outside of this other [00:23:00] culture, which is what's necessary to fight against this. Yeah. A pride in being something other than the other urban monoculture. Yeah. And in immunity to urban monocultural, ridicule of you, whatever that culture looks like.
Well, there's
Simone Collins: some tension there. Because there's absolutely keeping up with Joneses, taking place with the financed vehicle, the, the house with everything posted on Instagram, the lip filler, the blonde hair, the, the whitened teeth, the eating disorder. You know, I think that there among their internal there is keeping up with the Joneses.
It just happens to be that the Joneses aren't like this distributed international group. It's like literally the people who live next door to you, just like it was in the fifties and sixties. But there, there is still, there's, there's sensitivity, but also like, yeah, but it's,
Malcolm Collins: it is, it is more financially realistic keeping up with the Joneses because you're playing a different game than the urban monoculture game.
Yeah. This is like what they're saying. They're like, they're so surprised that these people seem proud of things that aren't of status within the urban monoculture. Like why do they have pride in these modest meme things? And it's because they're playing a different [00:24:00] dominance hierarchy than you're playing with it.
Yeah. But anyway. Goes on and tweets to say, I have a lot of friends like this. All they do is drink and party all day, but they go overseas every year. And here I am working overtime at the office as a humble salary man. Maybe I should have taken the and I think it's something in Japanese pill after all.
Hmm.
Simone Collins: The,
Malcolm Collins: and then it says, under the shortage of blue collar workers is so extreme that wage wise, you can earn much more than the average salary, man. The flip side, as your body will be broken by your fifties, and you'll probably die of lung cancer early. And then the next says they can live least decent lives if their father refrained himself from spending his whole savings on verifier or if they're becoming too pachinko addicted.
And then a person says, today I learned mild Yankees are just like Ozzy tradies
Simone Collins: Ozzy, and like Pachinko addiction is, is no different from problems with sports gambling in the us. Like there's so many similarities here.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah we can, we can go here to this next culture, the [00:25:00] tradies in Australia.
Do you wanna learn about them? Yeah, I wanna learn about the
Simone Collins: tradies. Absolutely.
Malcolm Collins: In Australia, tradees is a widely used sling for a term, short for tradespeople or tradesmen. Air Force to skilled manual workers who specialize in a particular trade such as carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, bricking or mechanics, and you can tell that they would fall into this category.
These other people who were talking about, these folks typically are hands-on professionals who've completed apprenticeships or vocational training. To master their craft. They're the ones building houses, fixing pipes, wiring homes, and keeping cars running, essentially keeping the country running the terms got cultural Weight down under tradies are often seen as embodying a rugged, practical, no-nonsense Aussie spirit.
Think high V vest. Steel capped boots and a Ute utility vehicle loaded with tools. They're a big part of the economy too, especially in construction, which is a powerhouse industry in Australia. Posts on X and web chatters sometimes paint them as a hardworking blokes and increasingly women who enjoy a beer after a long day.
I. That's more of a stereotype than a rule. Unlike the UK's [00:26:00] Dino stereotype, which is more about a lifestyle or a class jab, tradies are defined by their skills and jobs. They're not a subculture in the rebellious sense like Japan's Yankees, but they do have their own lingo and camaraderie. Think smoko break time are hard, jaka, tough work.
Some tradies earn solid money, 75 to 90 5K on average, but they're specialized or run their own gig. Though it varies by trade and experience.
So, yeah. Apparently a lot of cultures are seeing this in a different regions or something that they see as similar. Was the core difference being a different life path? And, and different dominant hierarchy and different things that they value. Hmm. And then this person here did a podcast on it.
They say this is a fascinating generated, a whole AI podcast about the subject. Somebody did, but they did a picture, which I thought is really nice looking of this. And then somebody here also said there's also the [00:27:00] work and izakaya and then open a kitchen car pipeline allows lots of time for surfing, et cetera.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And an izakay restaurant is basically Japanese top bus. So I could, I could see someone like having maybe a popup restaurant and. Using that to create a sort of flexible lifestyle. And then somebody
Malcolm Collins: here says, so only the malcontents of Japan are also the only people who thrive. The only people who couldn't fit in in a brutally conformist country are also the only ones to find happiness.
The only winners of Japanese society are the people with a good sense to stay out.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: What were you gonna say? Sorry, I interrupted you there.
Simone Collins: No, go. Go ahead.
I mean, so, okay. I'll just jump in then and say one thing that gives me a lot of hope about these subcultures is that, one, they may be underrepresented as inheritors of the future because they've chosen so much to opt out of the internet to opt out of. Mainstream culture and to be pretty hard to measure.
[00:28:00] So I was, I was reading some news stories on this group and they're like, well, people are trying to like find them, but you can't really find 'em in online surveys. You, most of the interviews that people are doing on people on the streets are in places like Tokyo, like in really high traffic neighborhoods.
So they're not finding them because these people, even when they vacation, they typically vacation close to home. So my understanding is that basically they are. Off the grid to a great extent. And when you and I were looking at data of groups that seemed to be high fertility in the United States, we kept seeing, yes, high levels of religiosity, but also xenophobia and extreme sensitive sensitivity to hierarchy and sort of like a lot of, a lot of scary fascist, but not in a good way, in a sort of closed-minded, scary way.
Tendencies. My impression is that these groups. Are not as much like that. They might be somewhat suspicious of outsiders. I get that. But I'm, I'm less concerned about groups like this inheriting the future [00:29:00] because they're community minded. They sound pretty pro-social. At, at least since they've sort of evolved out of their hard Yankee days where they used to actually cause a lot of property damage and be kind of troublesome people in their communities now they're, they're seen as being much more responsible community members.
So they're, they seem to be broadly pro-social. They care about kids, they care about family. They're grateful for the community help they get. This doesn't seem like a bad group to be inheriting the future. It
Malcolm Collins: seems like living for a delinquent aesthetic. Mm-hmm. Where that is also high fertility and that's one of a way of thumbing your nose at society is high fertility.
And another thing that's high fertility is I. Being both frugal but not good with financial decisions. That's another thing that seems to be high fertility, is that they don't fold. They're just like, okay, I'm gonna keep having kids and it's gonna work out. I think people who are overly concerned about being able to afford things, like the people who are like, well, don't they know this?
Yes. How, how precarious their life is. People who think like that never end up [00:30:00] having kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Like they, well, they, they both are happy living within their means, but they seem to. For cultural or perhaps lack of education reasons or both blow the money that they do have on things that they don't necessarily need, like cosmetic surgery and cars and maybe sports gambling or pachinko.
And that's maybe, I mean, we, we see it as not great, but at the same time. The lack of savings and also that lack of concern, oh, I can't afford this so I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. Does seem to be really, it forces people to lean in more to family, more to community. And I do think there's a synergistic effect there where the more you lean into family and community, the more you're likely to have kids and also support your family and community.
You know, the more everyone needs each other, the more they help each other and the more they lean into that again. And so it would only create more children, more loving communities, and. We kind of need that.
Malcolm Collins: So [00:31:00] Ro Alright, well, Simone, this has been a fun conversation. I hope our daughters grow up to be as fierce as, as that Yankee girl who you liked growing up sitting.
What did you think of her character growing up? Did you like, like her? Did you identify more as the other girl?
Simone Collins: No, definitely identify with Momoko the. Sweet LTA girl who's obsessed with friley dresses. Some of the, I was watching other scenes from the movie today and. I realized, like, and in one scene she's wearing a, a dress that looks so much like what I wear every day.
It like she's a white bonnet and a black jumper does a white pet coat. And I'm like,
Malcolm Collins: is like,
Simone Collins: actually your thing is.
Malcolm Collins: Is this Puritan Lolita? What have I done? Well, no, that's what I like when we go to conferences and she dresses up in her traditional outfits. The people who like come up and gush over them are often the goth, like sunken goth girls.
Yeah. They're like, oh, that's so cool. You look crazy. Like, I [00:32:00] love it. And it's so fun that you can be so trad that like the, the goth it's, it's the horseshoe theory. Yeah. Just like you have
Simone Collins: the, you know, the crunchy to All right. Horseshoe where, you know, they, they end up being connected in the end.
It's. It's great. I
Malcolm Collins: love it. But wait, so you basically now as a grownup have a daughter who's like the punk girl who's like moko
Simone Collins: and, you know, sorry, I'm like Momoko and I have a daughter like Ichigo. Yeah, 100%.
Malcolm Collins: Did you, did you expect that? We'll, we'll see if she keeps it up as she gets older, but right now, oh my God, she loves trolling.
Like such a troll. She's such a troll. She will, like, even with her siblings, it's not just us. It's like Octavia will be like, please don't. Touch my, my Google device while I'm gone and then she'll be like as soon as he leaves, she has no interest in it. Yeah, she wants, she's no play with it. Dexter
Simone Collins: slab or something.
100%. She lives to troll and I love it. I respected. I didn't know that that was a real genetic compulsion. Trolling. Yeah, troll trolling, heritable. [00:33:00] Someone can make polygenic score around that with enough data. Is is she gonna
Malcolm Collins: be didi? To, to torso's. Mad scientist. The short little brother who's shorter than her and really smart.
What does this do?
Malcolm Collins: And they're the
Simone Collins: same size now pretty much. He has bigger feet than her. Thank goodness. He's, he's growing something. I'm, I'm gonna get that kid to grow. We're gonna, we have ways.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yes. All right. I love you n DeSimone. It's been a joy talking with you. And we just submitted our Andreessen Horowitz applications with, to the Collins Institute and the the video game that we've been working on, so we'll, we see if they're interested in, if you're
Simone Collins: buddies with them, put in a good word for old, for
Malcolm Collins: old Collins.
Yes. Or. If you know another VC we should be looking at or talking [00:34:00] to who's interested in AI games or AI education, let us know because warm intros apparently matter. And what's the point of having fans if we can't get warm intros?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Actually social badging is everything, and these are big projects that we really believe in, but I yeah.
We'll see.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, we should, we should put the pitch decks here so people can be like, oh, this is what you're working on. Oh, that
Simone Collins: would be cool. Yeah. If you want to learn more about these projects, see the pitch decks below, and if you have ideas for us, please share, because actually our listeners are super smart, incredible people with some, yeah.
Okay. Not all of you. All right. What, which one are you listener, are you, are you mid or are you.
Malcolm Collins: Based, are you? Yeah. Are you smart enough to, to have been a Yankee who have known to be a delinquent from the beginning? I was definitely a delinquent growing up. So you married the, the grownup delinquents?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well,
Simone Collins: I mean the, [00:35:00] another one of the themes that I really like from this is, is a lot of people identifying, or at least referring to them as misfits. You know, like it's the misfits in the end who, who get to inherit the future. And that's totally it. It's the people as you keep pointing out who deviate.
Malcolm Collins: A mainstream society.
It's not the, that their misfits is that they don't care about the fact that they're perceived as misfits.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: It is the not caring about other people's judgment of you as a misfit.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway, and that's what you gotta raise your kids to, to think like, and it's, it's, it's a big so many people, I think that this is, is going to be one of the biggest things that Mormonism is going to struggle getting around.
It is a fear of being seen as misfit or others, which is one of the reasons their particular fertility collapse. Even though it's not as bad as other denominations like Catholicism may be more intractable because I think that many castle groups are okay with looking weird. Whereas I don't know many warman groups that really embrace the idea of being weird.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. [00:36:00] Hundred percent. No, that's a big
Malcolm Collins: problem. Alright, goodbye.
Simone Collins: Bye. I love you. Goodbye. I said good day, sir. Good day.
The aesthetics, the, the subjects. I absolutely adore it. It has just all these like tiny little aesthetic moments and references and. The main character has sensitivities to stupid little things that I really identify with. But it's definitely, it's like even down to lighting choices made, it is clearly the Amelie of Japan and you will never watch it, and you will never like it, and that's okay.
It's totally okay.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, that was a common thing in Japan to pair characters. You have those two. Acts the contrast.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: You, you had it with Puffy Ami Yumi, for example. Mm-hmm. The cartoon about the Yeah. The popular band. Yeah. The Tom
Simone Collins: girl and the g the girly girl,
Malcolm Collins: Tom girl and the girly girl.
Everybody wants to hang with Tom girl and the girly girl. You
Simone Collins: know
Malcolm Collins: it. Watch them fight each other. Oh, that's so silly. So silly. [00:37:00] Silly.
They're beautiful. Shall we pick some. I flowers. You wanna pick the flowers too? They have baby flowers. Baby flowers? Mm-hmm. All right, well, do you see any? Doesn't walk them. You swamp me. Okay. If you can stay out of the mud, you can pick some, they're called swamp marigolds. Go get some.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Robin Hanson: Culture as it Relates to Fertility Decline
10 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we are joined by the renowned economist and author Robin Hansen, an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. The discussion centers around the challenging issue of fertility decline and its cultural underpinnings. Hansen outlines various trends contributing to lower fertility rates, such as prolonged education, intensive parenting, gender equality, urban living, and less religious adherence. He also explores the interaction of culture and economy, the potential for policy interventions, and the role of subcultures in addressing demographic challenges. Additionally, they touch on historical patterns, the evolution of cultures, and the strategies for fostering sustainable, high-fertility communities. The conversation offers a rich and insightful analysis of one of today's pressing societal issues.
[00:00:00]
Simone Collins: Hello everyone. As you can see today, we are joined by the one, the only, the incredibly prolific and brilliant Robin Hansen. He is the American economist author. He's also an associate professor of economics at George Mason University. But he is known for some of the most catchy ideas, ranging from grabby aliens to one of the most popular fertility intervention proposals, which has to do with sort of like a tax bonds on children's future tax generated income.
But most recently on the prenatal list front Robin Hansen's focus has been shifting to culture. So we wanted to have him on base camp to talk about prenatal list culture. Welcome, Robin.
Robin Hanson: Hello everyone. So, as you know, culture, I mean, fertility looks like a pretty hard problem, like, right? Yeah. So you guys are working hard.
I hope you have success, but you, you get that it's an uphill battle, right? Yeah, yeah. But so at least I feel good about fertility that I can. Frame a proposal and say it in words and say, if only you would do this, it'll probably fix the problem. That doesn't mean you can get somebody to do it, but [00:01:00] it's a nice thing to have is to be able to, yes.
Have a concrete proposal and say, look, if you do this, that would fix it.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Robin Hanson: And that's as a policymaker, I'm proud. Like that's kind of our job. Like, okay, if you guys won't do anything, you know what the hell Yeah. That's on
Simone Collins: you. Yeah. You could have it's, you could have had nice
Robin Hanson: things. We could, we at least had an idea for what to do.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Robin Hanson: But so I thought about for. Fertility for like eight months. And then like most people in fertility, I came to see culture underlying as a fundamental cause of fertility decline. It's, it doesn't mean that we have to fix it that way. Right? We can fix things with money that are caused by culture.
That's a, if you can
Simone Collins: afford it. Yeah. Right. If
Robin Hanson: you can afford it. Money and culture interact and have for many centuries, yes. Like capitalism and culture have had a lot of influences on each other. So just because something's caused by culture doesn't mean it needs to be fixed by culture directly. That is, you could do a a money thing that changes culture and I think the money thing we talked about in our last episode is such a thing that would change culture.
But you certainly notice that the proximate cause of the problem is [00:02:00] culture. And that induced me more of a theorist to say, okay, why? Hmm. What's causing culture to change? What is it just some random, you know, thing that just happens in the world? Or is there some more systematic way to understand why culture?
So it's not, it's like a half a dozen trends. I can point out that cons that seem to be causing fertility decline. You, you guys know them all Probably.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I go into 'em. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. We may particularly
Robin Hanson: very differently. Okay. Let's just mention them for, you know, for, for completeness sake. Yes.
So obviously like. Longer years of education and early career prep. Right. A lot of young women want, who are s very powerful. You know, capable people want to prove that they can do well in their careers and our career ladders don't give very good pauses. Yeah. And they want to show that they are capable and.
You know, be successful. And so they want to wait to as long as the career ladder requires to then consider having kids. So that's, that's one. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Hold on. As, as we go through each of these, I wanna talk about [00:03:00] how they can be addressed and how other cultures, their state high fertility have addressed them.
The two ways that this particular problem I've seen addressed is one have women not become educated or have men and women not become
Robin Hanson: educated. It works really well for fertility rates, but also
Simone Collins: in places like Kazakhstan. You still have men and women getting educated, but they're having kids in university.
And this is my favorite solution. I think that's the best time to have kids.
Malcolm Collins: It's what Simone said is you have to change the expectation of timing.
Robin Hanson: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Malcolm Collins: You get married, then you go to university or you get married. In your first couple years of university and should have a couple kids by the time you graduate.
Mm-hmm. This is normal within a lot of cultures. Then it's an easy thing to frame. I think the quiver full movement had a really good framing of this. You know, the the, the children are like the eras in the quiver of your youth, which, which points out is that children are supposed to be something that you sort of stock up on while you're young.
And, and, and then, and then provide benefit to you when you're older which is a very different framing than children [00:04:00] are. The capstone. Once you are stable.
Robin Hanson: That brings up a next trend, as you know, which is the switch from cornerstone to capstone marriage. You know, when I was young the norm was you just marry early when you're not fully formed, where you don't know what you're gonna become.
And the two of you form each other and become something together. Yes. Okay. And now the norm is you should find yourself and know who you are and we have a stable position. And then. Then match with somebody who matches your stable position in what you become.
Malcolm Collins: Exactly.
Robin Hanson: And that takes a lot longer, and that also puts on a delay.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I, and I know with this particular trend is that it's not leading to better marriages like, right. No. A marriage, a marriage is actually much better, I'd argue to have a cornerstone marriage than to have a capstone marriage because you can one, grow together. Two, it fixes a lot of the problems with the existing monetary difference.
So, you know, one of the things I'm sure you're gonna get to is that women like men who earn more money than [00:05:00] them, but they also don't like men on average earning more money than them, which means that on average they're not gonna be able to find a spouse once they've corrected and they've overcorrected.
Now if you look at young women, they over-ear men pretty significantly. But so if they're like, oh, I'll only date men who earn more money than me, and on average women are earning more than men, you know, they're gonna have a really hard time fighting a partner, right? So they're gonna be dating a bunch of people who are likely lying to them about like their, their actual status.
And that's why women think all men are b******s because they are sorting into the b******s, right? But the point here being is that this is a problem that occurs once you graduate from college if you normalize, I. Marrying somebody going into college. You marry somebody at an age where neither of you has an income yet.
Right. And this is why it's so important to get married before you get a job, not
Robin Hanson: after.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Robin Hanson: Good point. So I'm not sure of all these trends, but I don't need to be sure that they're just things people talk a lot about. So a third one is more intensive parenting. [00:06:00] Yes. So I think I see this, I see my son taking care of their, you know, our grandchild.
Compare that to my taking care of my son, compared that to how I was taking care of, yeah. If I look, it's like look at movies from the thirties and forties and kids in the movies and see how much parent attention parents are paying to those kids. They're not barely paying any attention to the kids. Yeah.
What? What attention. They're not like watching them and taking them around and instructing them. The kids are just running around and the parents are talking to each other and they're just two separate worlds. That, because that was okay back then.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And this is incredibly important to Renormalize and I think that you really cannot have any form of Tism work without normalizing this specific thing.
And it's one of the reasons why when many people are like, why? Do you, as the heads of the prenatal lesson movement so often you know, get seen by reporters as like not really paying that much attention to your kids or, or, or, you know, being rough with your kids or like, mostly ignoring them and it's like, because that's the only way you make this sustainable if, if you, if you like overly And what's wild is, is [00:07:00] that we even have AI now.
Like I don't even need to talk to my kid, for my kid to have somebody to talk to. Yeah. You know, I just feel AI is
Simone Collins: infinitely attentive and patient with our kids. Like our kids talk with chat GBT and I love it because we'd just be like, okay, whatever. And chat G t's like, wow, I love that too. This is so great.
This just like, this is
Robin Hanson: perfect. Right. So another trend that certainly contributes via the school thing is just gender equality.
Simone Collins: Oh, interesting.
Robin Hanson: If, if women just hold, hold different life paths and that wasn't involving career aspirations, then they would, you know. The school thing would just be much less of an issue.
Obviously that did happen in the past. Yeah. Yeah. So we're not saying we're, we're definitely not saying we're gonna reverse all these trends. Like yeah, let's just be clear. But we do wanna acknowledge what are the trends that have been contributing the election. Gender equality. Gender equality.
Simone Collins: So, hold, just keep going, but I'm just gonna get Indy 'cause she woke up.
Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on, hold on, hold on there. There's actually some interesting data on gender equality that we went over in a few recent episodes where. It [00:08:00] appears that in some environments, gender inequality and not some, I'd actually say most environments today, like in developed countries leads to much lower fertility
Robin Hanson: rates.
You're right. So, but it certainly contributed early, like so in South Korea they have this huge gender conflict and part of it is that women want men to do more household chores and men. Don't think they should because that's not what they used to do.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. So, you know, so clearly. So yeah, specifically here, this comes from the, I dunno if you've seen this, this tweet, but it's really good, this like what makes these countries different from these countries and it breaks down like Denmark, the USA you know, I think like Israel a few others all in one category.
And then another category is like Italy's. Portugal, Korea, Japan, China. And the argument presented was, is that the second group of countries modernized and became wealthy much later. And as such, it didn't update its views around gender norms as much. And so you had the economic [00:09:00] expectation of women working without the updated gender norms within the household.
Although I think many of these cultures were actually just more misogynistic historically, if you look at like Albion Seed or American Nations, you could see many of the founding cultural groups of America were highly gender egalitarian. Like the backwoods greater Appalachian culture was very gender egalitarian.
The Puritans were very gender egalitarian. Well, and
Simone Collins: by egalitarian men and women were still seen as very different, but they no, no, no. But they
Malcolm Collins: were gender egalitarian when contrasted with Japanese or Chinese culture, for example. For sure. Yeah.
Robin Hanson: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Right.
Robin Hanson: It's about these changing roles that is, we, we had the expectation women go to work, but also that they keep doing the housework.
Yeah. And then they're less willing to have kids, which, which makes sense, but you know, it's uneven development of gender norm changes.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Robin Hanson: So an older one, but I still think it's important to notice is norms of children not living with their parents when they have children.
Simone Collins: Oh yes. That's very good.
Grandparent's. Very good. In the old days,
Robin Hanson: people would live in a family estate [00:10:00] with three generations. Yeah. And that was usual. And so kids didn't have to have their own place or even their own income in order to have their own kids.
Simone Collins: And you'd built in childcare and built in elder care. So big elements of our
Robin Hanson: social safety.
Right. But it also meant that the grandparents had more control. That's true. They got to say more. But true. The old, you know, clan based societies, the, the patriarch or matriarch just had more say about how everybody lived. True,
Simone Collins: yeah. And
Robin Hanson: one of the things people enjoy about our world is more freedom from parental influence over your lives.
But a big cost of that is they're not helping so much with childcare, childcare, environment housing, you know, everything else.
Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah. I think people don't think about the opportunity cost as much as they maybe should.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, and I've seen this as a major fertility factor that is more addressable than many cultures give it credit for.
Mm-hmm. Eh, specifically at Nacon, one couple was telling me, well, we had kids much [00:11:00] earlier than we had planned on having them because we had moved to a, a community that wasn't our birth community. And the pastor at this community said, oh, well, we'll be there for you. Like, we'll help you with, with childcare.
You let me know when you need it. And then they were like, okay. Then I had a kid, and then the pastor told them when the kid was crying one day, he's like, you can let the kid cry. Like, we don't care. Like, and they were like, and I felt really self conscious and then I didn't feel self conscious.
So we had a second kid. And. These things at a cultural level, like people can be like, culture isn't something you can change and it like literally is you can just go to your pastor and be like, Hey, can we like put together some system for like childcare sharing or something like that for, for our parishioners.
Can you like call out and praise people who have children like that? Like increases fertility rates really dramatically.
Robin Hanson: Right. Obviously you as a grandparent could just tell your children about how you might be willing to help, but that's an awkward conversation. I think that is right.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I also, a lot of us can't, like, I can't make my parents take care of my kids, and in truth, I [00:12:00] don't think they have the, like, you've gotta trust a parent to take care of every kid as well.
Like, you've gotta trust, like, oh, I'll leave a toddler around this person. And I think we're of a generation that may not have a level of trust in our parents conscientiousness around little toddlers that would've been taken for granted in previous generations. So. Well, and maybe a lot
Simone Collins: of that too has to do with child count and, and child rearing participation.
So if, for example, only one parent, primarily raised only one child, like their experience with childcare is probably just, or, or worse
Malcolm Collins: if they, if they had nannies all the time.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Robin Hanson: So our habit of moving away from home when we become adults is related here. That is, if we stayed in the same neighborhood where our parents lived, we probably could arrange for more grandparent help in child rearing.
Yeah. But we have this habit of going to college somewhere far away and then going to a job far away. And that does make it a lot harder for grandparents to help.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Though I, I will say we [00:13:00] know anecdotally, at least a lot of people who, after having kids have moved to be closer with their parents or have parents who have moved to be closer to them.
And it's encouraging to see that, like people I think do understand the value. It's just making it happen. Is a lot harder than other like, than it, than it used to be because in many cases, parents really prefer to live a life that doesn't involve providing free child labor, be
Malcolm Collins: willing to make sacrifices, and part of the sacrifice is moving.
I was talking with a reporter recently and this reporter was telling me well, I only have one kid and I live in Manhattan, so I can't easily have more kids because my husband and I have jobs in Manhattan. And I was like, oh, that's really tough. You know, like maybe. And I was thinking, oh, maybe you get jobs outside of Manhattan or something like that.
The conversation goes on and I realize, I was like, wait a second, you're a journalist and you are husband. Runs a startup, you can move you. You, you have jobs in Manhattan 'cause you have chosen to have [00:14:00] jobs in Manhattan. Being a journalist, you don't need to go to the office every week. And your husband chooses where his office is based.
You have chosen to sacrifice the lives of your future children. And I think that that cultural framing is also really big. It's one that we talk about pretty frequently is for us, when we think about like, when does life start the way you view life can change how many kids you're gonna end up having.
For fertility, it appears about the worst way to view life at the beginning of conception. 'cause castles have really low fertility rates when you control for income. But I think the best way is the way that we do, which is to say, every time you choose between two timelines, if you choose to erase a life, was in one of those timelines, you are responsible for eradicating that person.
And you should think about the you in that timeline, how they would feel about your decision. So when I was talking to the journalist and she's like, well, how, how do I have another kid? Like, can you convince me? And I was like, well, you know, if you have that other kid, five years from now that you in that timeline is mortified that you ever [00:15:00] had this conversation, they're mortified that you ever thought, even for one instance about not having that kid, that timeline is just as valid as a timeline in which you don't have the kid.
So you should consider that iteration of yourself that is mortified, your selfishness for deciding not to bring a life into the world. And I think that when you, when I talk to reporters about Simone, you know, getting, because she's. The most c-sections anyone has ever had is 11, and Simone's gonna be at five with this kid, you know, so she's getting up there.
And so, you know, she is putting her life at risk and people are like, why would she put her life at risk? And I'm like, the moral equation is obvious. Like if a robber had a gun to your, your, your spouse's head and one of your kids' head and was like, if you don't tell me to like shoot the spouse, I'm gonna shoot the kid.
Everybody chooses shoot the spouse, right? Like, but why isn't this the case when it's a baby?
Robin Hanson: So I've got three more trends left. Go for it. Yes. So one, is there vanity? So we had the debate at the previous event, but I, I do think basically. [00:16:00] There's this attraction of urbanity that this, the city centers are full of activities and they're full of status.
There's a place to meet and hang with people. Yeah. And if you wanna choose a high status life, that's a place to go. But it does cost you in terms of opportunity to cost, including in space and income. And so that does come at the expense, I think, of fertility. Mm-hmm. So, you don't have to live in city centers, but people, if you want to choose fertility, you can, but often the price of that is to be less away from the center of activity.
Right. Yeah. What,
Simone Collins: what are your thoughts on the role that urbanity plays? However, in matchmaking like you, I think it's a lot easier to find a partner when you're in a highly dense area. And that it seems like, I mean, my, my general intuition is. Go to highly dense population centers to find your person and then when you find them, get out of there and start your family.
Right. But unfortunately,
Robin Hanson: like we're pretty plastic culturally when we're young. Yeah. So if you go to the city when you're 20 and you spend the next few years looking for partners, you will also assimilate the city values and the city practices. Yeah. It's so
Simone Collins: hard to get out there and then
Robin Hanson: you will. Be less eager to leave [00:17:00] the city to go have kids somewhere else you might wanna contribute.
Do you think that's true
Simone Collins: though? When like the plot of all the Hallmark Christmas movies and romances is girl with big power job from the city goes back home for Christmas reluctantly Of course. Or like to some small Podunk town meets hunky man and stays there forever. Forever. Like there seems to be this
Malcolm Collins: I, I.
I think that if you approach stages, life stages, like a preset life stage model, as a culture, like I was raised, totally, your life happens in stages. Do this at this stage, this at this stage, this at this stage. It's, it's easier to switch between them if you have that preset up, especially if you have the stage in the city framed of as like a, a, a trial and bad.
If you teach your kid to think of a city as a place there, there's not really anything to do because everything costs a ton of money and is it's pointless. And that you, you really only get freedom, the freedom to have the privilege of living in the countryside once you find a partner. I think that that could help them set up more.
But I, I, [00:18:00]
Robin Hanson: I, I think the more options feed into the capstone marriage concept too, though. Mm. That is, look, if you just lived in a small town and those are all the people, you would just pick somebody from among them and like, make, do and go on with it. Yeah. The city raises your standards. Here's all these people.
I need to pick like one of the best of all these people. I can't just pick the first person I like. Overwhelmed by how and then the expectation that they're all around for many years. What? You know, how do you think you're gonna leave so earlier than, than you assimilate the culture of expecting to spend 10 years in the city?
I. Looking for the very best person.
Malcolm Collins: Fair point. I actually really like something you said there, but I I, I change it a little for like realistic high achieving culture, which is you want a pool that people are dating within that they feel they can exhaust. If they feel that the dating pool is inexhaustible then they go on forever.
But if you're like, no, this is all of the best people in the world here. Here they are. Yeah. Like that's really what caused me to marry you, Simone, is I went to Stanford Business School. I was like, oh, this is supposed to be like the highest competency women in the world. They're not as good as you. So [00:19:00] I know I've, I've searched the world.
So you need a balanced
Simone Collins: game of musical chairs and you need to know when the music's about to stop.
Malcolm Collins: To do this with our kids is put together a discord like thing with parents who have kids around our kids' age who are like based and interesting and like the most successful people in the world. And we are searching really hard to make this group as big as possible.
And then we tell the kids in this discord, you can date whatever. And if you find someone you like, we'll send you to live with their family for a bit. So you can like get to know them, get to know the kids and date in a controlled environment so that you get this feeling of, if I don't find the person in this discord, I'm not gonna find many people more interesting than this.
Robin Hanson: So think about careers. I did the thing where I kept changing careers many times. Yes, until I found a career I liked, but that was costly for me. Most people find a career that's good enough and they stick with it. Yeah. And it might be, if we had that attitude toward marriage, like I think I had more of the attitude toward marriage.
I found my wife and I said, good enough. Let's take her. I [00:20:00] wasn't thinking, well, is she really better than the best I could find Uhhuh, but for careers, I had this higher standard of, okay, this is okay. I like it, but like this other thing over there might be even better.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Robin Hanson: So just think about the inconsistency versus career choice versus marriage.
People seem to choose their careers much earlier in life than they choose their life partners. It's not clear that you actually should, I mean, you have to spend some time searching for each and then pick and go.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Your, your life partner matters more and will influence your career. Like the career that they want will influence the career that you want.
Like you, they can also help
Simone Collins: you get a career. We got more reason
Malcolm Collins: to pick them early. Exactly.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And having a spouse can give you the security to have a career. We know so many people who took turns getting graduate degrees or doing the risky jobs so that the other one had the steady job and it's just, everything's better with a good spouse.
Robin Hanson: Okay. My second to last trend is less religion.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Robin Hanson: So clearly there's huge correlations with religion around the world and fertility.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Robin Hanson: And the world has become less religious and that just seems to [00:21:00] be a trend that's causing lower fertility. You know, have to understand necessarily why exactly, but it, it does seem to be real.
Malcolm Collins: And what a lot of people miss about this is religion is dropping a gin alpha at a much faster rate than it is in other generations. Mm-hmm. I'll try to put a graph on screen here, if I remember. And so people see that religion has stopped dropping in the United States this year and they're like, oh, this is a sign that just trying to stopped and maybe fertility rates.
So I don't think that that is a sign of that. I think that what we're seeing is reconversion into religion of adults and not a drop in, in, in the rate to which young people are being torn out of religions and, you know, like us or JD Vance or something like that. Like, and I don't think that this is as as positive a sign
Robin Hanson: as people think it is.
If, if I had to look for an explanation, it seems to me that. When people are really poor and in desperate circumstances, religion does comfort them in a really substantial way.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Oh, I, I don't think that's why, I think the reason why religion increases fertility rates is two reasons. One is that it provides an [00:22:00] exogenous motivation to have kids beyond hedonism a lot of secularists when they're having kids.
Sure. They're like, will they improve my quality of life? Will I enjoy having them? Will I, but in a religion, it's like, this is the duty, you know? And so you don't even question how it's gonna make you feel or anything like that. So the exogenous motivation increases the number of kids. Two, I think religiosity is often just a, a, a very high correlary sort of indicator of a person's how much they're in a, an ancestral culture versus the urban monoculture.
When somebody becomes more, more urban monoculture, more like, of this progressive cultural group that is all around cities today and is sort of like a mimetic virus they, they decrease in religiosity. And so, if you look at. Atheists who are distant from the urban monoculture, they're often pretty high fertility.
So you can look at like Elon Musk, who's pretty distinct from the urban monoculture, very high fertility or some people would consider us a form of secularists and we're pretty high fertility. So I think that the,
Robin Hanson: there's two, there's two parts. There's, there's what's [00:23:00] causing the, the religion decline and then does religion decline?
Cause fertility decline? So, mm, I mean, I think in the mo in a modern, rich world, we're comfortable and secure enough that we don't need religion so much. But look, when you're just really poor and like your children are dying and you're in war and whatever, religion just is an appeal much more directly.
Like it gives you comfort and some place in the world and meaning that you really want and need. And, but once you have that, the structure that you tend to get with it comes with structures that make you also wanna be fertile. That is the kind of meaning you get in religion is. Like, you know, helps is a compliment of the kind of meaning you get in family.
But there's this puzzle. Why? Why isn't there Vermont culture religious? And I think it's because they're just rich and comfortable and not really very afraid of very much. Although, and don't you think
Simone Collins: there's also this big correlation between religions and the ability to delay gratification and think in terms of the longer term with the contrast being that mainstream urban [00:24:00] monoculture culture is about instant pleasure and you will never have kids, or at least a lot of kids, if your life is about instant pleasure.
Like kids are definitely a delayed gratification thing.
Robin Hanson: It's strikingly though a lot of, you know, the urban monoculture people are willing to make sacrifices for careers. You know, they'll spend a lot of time studying for classes, sorts of
Simone Collins: things. That's, yeah, that's a really good point. That's a really good point.
Yeah, they're, they're not always the most fun. So, wait, then, what is, what is the Robin Hansen solution to the Robin Hansen fertility stack of demographic collapse? Like what would you,
Robin Hanson: if you were just one last trend, and then let's talk about the underlying problem.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Robin Hanson: So one last trend is just a more integrated world, a less integrated world will just have more variety in all these different kinds of cultures around the world and what their attitudes were related to fertility.
So a more varied world would just have some places that happen to have high fertility and other low, and at least, you know, we'd have more [00:25:00] overall fertility. But our dominant monoculture is low fertility, and we have all this communication and travel and trade in the world that just merges the world together into a shared culture.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robin Hanson: So the high, so now the question is, okay, we see all these trends. What's the cause now first notice. In our world, the most prestigious intellectuals are the people who comment on the sort of trends we've been talking about. They point out what the social trends were and they wanna like talk about what the trend should be.
Everybody loves this culture trend conversation. It's the, the most elite conversation you see in pundits and you know everybody else. It is, it is, but, but there's also a separate group of people who analyze how culture happens over time. They are specialists in cultural evolution and they are not very prestigious, even among academics.
And they really crave being scientific. And so they try not to enter into these conversations about cultural [00:26:00] trends because that would be non-scientific. And those are the people I turn to, to understand what's happening with culture, how does it work and how to understand these trends. But you have to turn away from the most prestigious culture talk because I.
The way people talk about culture is kind of the way you guys have been here, which is, as a participant, you say, what are the trends? What do I like? What I don't? Which, what could I argue for? What could I argue against? Mm-hmm. That's what prestigious culture talk is like, is analyzing, like recruiting allies for your direction to push culture and recruiting like arguments and, and things like that.
And that's what you're doing in fertility. And, and I'm, I'm glad you are doing it, but the key thing to notice is that makes you somewhat blind to what's this process by which cultures change? How does that work and how do we tell us? 'cause we've written the whole
Malcolm Collins: book on this subject. Yeah. We're curious to get your take.
Robin Hanson: Well, so, so the basic idea is it's just randomness that is. [00:27:00] Humanity superpower is cultural evolution, and it's just a different kind of biological evolution. Yeah. And it's just variation in selection. And in fact, it's simpler than DNA evolution because DNA evolution had had billions of viewers to collect all sorts of like clever tricks and hooks and like fixes for things.
But cultural evolution is just new and simple. And so it's really just very basic variation in selection.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the analogy that we use in the book, the pragmatist guided crafting religion, which is a hundred percent on this topic, is we argue that culture is an evolving software that sits on top of our biological hardware and can adapt to environmental constraints much faster than the hardware can.
Robin Hanson: Hmm. Right now the framing I want want you to see though, is an analogy to driving a car. Like, so when you're driving a car, you have a control system. You look and see the road ahead. And you see where the road turns and then you're supposed to see the road. Think about where you wanna be. Tell your hands to turn the wheel.
The wheel turns the, you know, the, [00:28:00] the wheel turns the tires and then the tires moves the car. And each of these things has parameters in terms of the delay and sort of the noise. And that should be compared to like how fast you're going down the road and how fast the road's changing. So if your parameters of how fast you notice things and how noisy you see things are too bad, you won't be able to stay on the road and you'll just go off the road.
If you drive slowly enough and see the road well enough, you can follow the road, but otherwise you go off. And the same sort of parameter comparison should be there for cultural evolution. Cultural evolution is this process where there's a distribution of cultures and there's a, some sort of distribution of fitness landscape.
And the fitness landscape's actually gonna be moving a bit. And these points on the landscape are also gonna be fluctuating around a bit. And you, the cloud of points will follow the fitness landscape as it moves if the parameters are right, that is if you have enough points. Mm-hmm. If [00:29:00] the pressure to, like, you know, when you have the more adaptive region, the the pressure, you know, those things grow faster, other things shrink, then the drift rate is low enough and the rate at which the landscape changes is low enough, then.
Selection can follow it. That is the cloud of points will follow the landscape as it moves if the parameters are right for cultural evolution. And then the thing to notice is the parameters have changed. So three centuries ago, the world had hundreds of thousands of peasant cultures. Yes. Each of which had a thousand or 2000 people in it that were really pretty independent.
They didn't trade that much with each other or do that much. They, each little peasant culture mostly was self-sufficient. And they were poor at the edge of survival. So they suffered famines and, and pandemics and wars all the time. And they were conservative. They didn't wanna change very much. They tried to stay near where they were and the environment was changing slowly.
So, you know, the world economy doubled roughly every thousand years up until a few centuries [00:30:00] ago. And so that's a stable situation for. The cloud of cultures to follow the adaptive landscape. Slow change, conservative change, lots of variety and strong selection pressures. Mm-hmm. And now in the last few centuries, we've changed all four of these parameters.
So we first merged peasant cultures into the nation national cultures. So there's a famous book, peasants in the French Men describing that in France, but it happened everywhere. Mm. And then afterwards, these different national cultures have merged into a global monoculture, as you're all aware. So the variety has gone way, way down.
And then if you look at selection pressures, cultures just don't die very much anymore from war or pandemic or famine because we're rich, we're healthy, we're at peace. And so, you know, there's just very little selection. Now the environment is changing very fast. That is what behaviors are adaptive is, is rapidly changing as the [00:31:00] economy grows.
And then added all to that, we have this internal random change process. We have cultural activists who are trying to change culture like you guys are trying to do. Yeah. And they are, they have fights over which way culture goes. And some of them win the fights in southers lose. And the winners are our, our greatest heroes in our world.
Cultural activists who fought for cultural change, but the fights and who wins them aren't very aligned with adaptive pressures. So from the point of view of the system, it's kind of, it's a random drift. It's a, it's a lot random fluctuation. So fast changing environment, a lot of random drift. Not much selection, far less variety.
That's a recipe for going off the road.
Malcolm Collins: It's, it. So the, the, the, the addition to your model that I would add, and we talk about this a lot in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, is culture should be thought of as broadly being in two categories. First we use with a lot of data to argue historically that culture should largely be thought of as religious groups.
Like that's a, [00:32:00] the easiest. Historically, they're mostly religions and that they mostly grew not through conversions, but by affecting fertility rates of populations. They literally enhanced the biological fitness of their host. And that in modern times we've had cultural. Parasites evolved that were not that common in evolutionary history.
Essentially in the same way that you can get para like super bugs in hospitals where you have a bunch of immunocompromised people all next to each other. If you have a bunch of people outside of an environment that is anything like the environment, their culture evolved in, in like city, you're gonna get the environment of mees, which realize that they can grow faster by motivating a person to almost like a.
Virus infecting an ant. Ignore your own reproduction. Just replicate the meme. Just replicate the meme. Just replicate the meme. And we argue that this is what the urban monoculture is. So we've got sort of a double whammy here, which is what you pointed [00:33:00] out what was very astute which is that the, the cult, the environment that the culture needs to optimize fertility within is entirely different than the environment it evolved within.
But now you also have these. Parasitic attacking. They, they're not even like, it's like you're surrounded by wolves. You're basically sending your child into like a den of wolves every day and hoping they make it back out because the wolves can only survive because of their low fertility rate by taking the children from other cultures.
And, and that this is as bad as the change in modernity.
Robin Hanson: So this, this field of cultural evolution, these experts do find the ways that cultural evolution go wrong. And one of them, as you say, the more you inherit from people other than your DNA parents, the more ways that, you know, things can be inherited, that aren't promoting you know, DNA reproduction.
And that's one of the ways that can go wrong. Another [00:34:00] way it can, it's known to be able to go wrong, is the key idea is if you just copy random previous generation people, it doesn't help. You have to be selective about copy, who you copy to be better than average. Right. And our main simple heuristic is to copy prestige copy status.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Robin Hanson: Mm-hmm. But if the status markers we use are maladaptive, then the whole thing could go maladaptive. So one story is that we got into this habit of using education as a status marker. And so we copy the behavior of the well-educated. But they have lower fertility because it takes longer to be well educated.
So right. That's a driver for lower fertility is to, because the status marker is maladaptive, so status markers can just evolve and become maladaptive, and then it takes a longer process for, you know, the whole society to be selected out to replace it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, I could argue that education isn't intrinsically maladaptive.
Education is maladaptive in our culture because of one, how we relate to it, and two, because it's infected with the urban monoculture at a much higher rate than any [00:35:00] other cultural center. And the urban monoculture focused on evolutionary pressures just like everything else. It overly focused on the educational centers because the iterations of it that did were better at spreading themselves.
If you have access to young minds, people generally convert from their birth culture between the ages of 13 and 22. And so, if you con have access to them during those age ages, like a lot of people have been with the urban monoculture, like, Hey, trans people lay off kids. Like, why are you being so creepy about this?
I mean, it is because the iterations of the trans culture that weren't, didn't spread and don't exist anymore because you can really only get someone at that very young age range. In addition, they started to focus on tactics that we see as in cults due to cultural evolution. Like convincing people to hate their support network, like their parents, their family their, their ancestors, because it's much easier to do to, to convert them into a different religion if you, if you do this.
But anyway, continue. I'm, I'm interested,
Robin Hanson: so I wanna make a distinction here that like, takes a little work, but it helps us to [00:36:00] think about these things. So think about species in biology, okay? Yeah. There's two levels of evolution that happens in biology with species. There's evolution of features within a species, things that can change within a species, and there's evolution of the features that define a species.
Now, when you have large habitats, like a big ocean region, you have fewer bigger species and they have faster evolution of. Features that can vary within a species, 'cause the species is bigger and innovations can appear anywhere and spread to the whole rest. Yeah. But you have less innovation of the features that define a species.
'cause there aren't so many and a fragmented habitat like a river, a rainforest or, or a coral reef. You have lots of little habitats and so you have lots of small species and that makes less evolution within the species, but better evolution of the species of the features that define a species. Now it turns out life on earth today, it ha came more from the fragmented places, which means that evolution of the features that define a species [00:37:00] actually matters more than the evolution of the features that can vary within a species.
Surprisingly interesting. The same, the same thing. Homes for corporate cultures. So corporations, you know, some innovations can spread within a company and then the bigger the company is, the better you can evolve those iterations and many kinds of things that can be patented are of that form. So bigger companies have more patents.
And so an industry that has a fewer, bigger firms is better at patenting and producing the innovations that can vary within a firm. But industries that are more fragmented, that have more smaller firms, are more innovative overall. Ah, because they can better innovate in the corporate culture features that are, that define the whole corporation, that you need a whole new corporation to experiment with those.
And so the same thing should happen with macro cultures. And you see many people are fooled by the fact that we have record economic growth today, say, but that's because when we merged the entire world into one big [00:38:00] monoculture, we have great evolution of the things that can vary within the monoculture mm-hmm.
Like technology and business practices. So we, those are going gangbusters. We have record ever rates of innovation in business practices and, and technology. But at the expense of. Much weaker or even regressive evolution of the features that are shared across the culture, like the ones we were going through.
Hmm. The major cultural features that are causing fertility Kline are the kind that it's hard for a small group to deviate from the world consensus on, if
Simone Collins: that's really, they say you don't
Robin Hanson: wanna value education, but the world does. You just get less education. But now the world disrespects you and you suffer.
You can't just make a group of people who all say, we don't care about education, we're just gonna care about each other. That, that's hard to make.
Malcolm Collins: That's interesting. Yes. So if you were going to craft a culture to combat this, what features would it
Robin Hanson: have? Well, I like the analogy of you're [00:39:00] on a ship heading to an iceberg, you've got two choices.
You turn the whole ship or you get off on icebergs. That's not a iceberg off on light. Sorry, the iceberg sense it. So that's this. So. If you are mixed in with our global culture, you need to help us change the whole global culture in order for us to not fall off the cliff, hit the iceberg, or you need to form a new subculture that's insular enough to actually deviate from the dominant culture.
And that's hard. So that's, for example, what the Amur Retta have succeeded in doing, which is really amazing. They've created not only insular, they've created subcultures not only have high fertility in double every 20 years, they're insular enough to be able to resist the outside influence. And that's in part by foregoing many kinds of technology and contact.
And that's a really high bar. So if you have a small, if you have a small group of people say, we wanna make a new subculture here. The, the key question as, as I've [00:40:00] talked to you guys about before is how insular do you think you can actually be?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think that it is possible, and this is, this is a hypothesis that it is possible to craft a culture that can interact with technology and mainstream culture and not deconvert.
And if anyone can do this that person owns the future because that person is gonna have automated drone sworn and everyone else is gonna have AKs.
Robin Hanson: So like the Amish do use technology, they just resist the technology that would put 'em in cultural context. So they have like, yeah, they switch to small businesses.
They use machines in their small businesses. They use, you know, tractors, they use trucks, they use, you know, all sorts of machines that don't threaten to give them cultural influence.
Simone Collins: Some, some do, some do not. Not all. But yeah.
Robin Hanson: Right. So interestingly, like farm, the Amish were farmers up until a generation ago, and then the last generation they made the switch to be mainly rural small business, which is quite a substantial change.
And it does risk their in ancillary infertility, [00:41:00] but they seem to be making a go of it. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm concerned about them. I, I've read that from some people who've had more exposure to the communities than we have, that those who are adopting more technology are also seeing a fall off in the stability of their communities, their marriages, their, their birth rates, actually.
Well, that's the risk
Malcolm Collins: to worry about. Yes. There was a great study on this Simone that looked at Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, the Uhhuh in the US Uhhuh, and then whether or not they had cell phones. And if they had cell phones, they had fairly low fertility rates. And if they didn't, they had fairly high fertility rates.
Mm-hmm. So, like their community isn't that resistant to, to cultural mimetic viruses.
Robin Hanson: So I watched some videos on like Hutter writes and yeah. One of the stories you see over and over is that like if you want a local doctor, then he has to be sent off to a medical school and then when he comes back he's less likely to stay.
Simone Collins: Ah. And
Robin Hanson: so I, I think that's really the main reason they are pacifist. They just don't want their young men to go off and mix with other young men in the [00:42:00] military. I think when they're big enough to have their own military units, they'll be fine
Malcolm Collins: point. I mean, even from a cultural evolution perspective, it would be the iterations of the Anaba traditions that weren't pacifist had their men interact with other men in militaries and disappeared.
Right. I had never thought why so many of them were. That makes,
Simone Collins: so it's almost like the same as avoiding university, you're saying? Yes. Right. Like
Robin Hanson: avoiding being a medical student. So they actually have trouble getting their own doctors. They were gonna go to a non Amish doctor, or how to write doctor, because it's hard to have their own doctors 'cause to send their own boys off to medical school and get them to actually come back and stay is a hard trick.
Simone Collins: Okay, that makes sense. Wow. Okay. That's super interesting. That's really
Robin Hanson: clever. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But it shows you what you're up against here. Yeah. Trying to have a small subculture, let's call it cults. The world actually could use more cults and let's just call it cults. It
Simone Collins: really could. Yeah.
Robin Hanson: But it's hard to maintain a cult.
Most small colts just die and don't last very long. Yeah. And the hard part here, if you wanna do the lifeboat strategy as opposed to turn the ship, [00:43:00] you've gotta find a way to, you know, keep the boat, the lifeboat intact and away from the ship. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's quite a challenge.
Malcolm Collins: I might push back against the concept.
A lot of people are like, oh, you know, you guys are starting your own weird religion or whatever like that. The most of those die I'd actually argue, if you look historically, that's not really true. Most religions are, if you look at like, cults, cults, if they were founded for like personal gain or something like that, most of them die.
But the ones that were not founded by per for personal gain. Right. Actually fairly frequently or persistent. There is not a, unless now there's a few, unless it's here, unless they were celibate. There's that, yes, of course. Or they were founded around a. A, a fad that was temporarily locked. So these are often tied to like eating habits and stuff like that.
Robin Hanson: There's a literature that I recall on looks at communes in the United States from the 18 hundreds. Yeah. And how they varied in the. Intensity of the [00:44:00] religions that were organized around them. Articles,
Simone Collins: great
Robin Hanson: one, right? High Ask Religions lasted longer than low Ask religions.
Simone Collins: There you go.
Robin Hanson: Yeah. And so basically don't be afraid to do a strong ask in terms of what the culture, culture is asking of its participants, because that's, in fact, high asks, will make you people more stay with religion if
Simone Collins: Yeah.
In, in the private guide to crafting religion, we compare them from like hard to soft to super soft cultures with hard cul cultures, making the most asks, doing the most othering, but also having the most cultural amenities that are really beneficial because often the, the hardness of these cultures is accompanied by really helpful amenities.
Like okay, an ask might be a lot of fasting days, but those fasting days help you develop inhibitory control. And there are other health benefits as well. A big ask might be, well you have to communi, you have to contribute all these things to community, but you may be contributing childcare to families that enables 'em to have more kids, which is a huge amenity for them.
And they wouldn't wanna leave that 'cause they need the childcare. So. That there's that, that weird [00:45:00] correlation that also the, the, the more weird you are in your culture. We really like this concept of othering as, as I think, you know, because we like our weird names and weird dress and weird behavior because it stops you, it makes you see yourself as distinct from mainstream culture and have some pride in that.
It also creates
Malcolm Collins: negative emotional moments with mainstream culture. Like people are like, oh, you name your kids weird things. Won't they be mocked in school? And I'm like, that's a good thing. You want them to dislike the urban monoculture. Yeah.
Robin Hanson: So I did some surveys a while ago and, and had some conversations with some people who are in a multicultural and, and I think.
People agreed with the following description. A lot of people in our world like the idea of multiculturalism when they think of it as different foods and dress and holidays and mist and you know, in ways you build your houses. They love that kind of multiculturalism and different TV shows different, you know?
Yeah. Different song genres, right? Yeah. When you talk about multiculturalism as having deep values of the sort we talked about that are driving fertility change like gender [00:46:00] equality or war or democracy, people hate the idea of that kind of multiculturalism. Yeah. They don't want that kind. They're particularly against it.
So that's, you know, the kind of the obstacle here the world is so. Into shallow multiculturalism and really aggressively against deep multiculturalism. So like, think about covid. There were one or two nations in the world that deviated from the world consensus about how to do covid. And everybody else in the world was like, heretics terrible.
Like, you know, string 'em up. How do we allow, how do we dare allow Sweden to have a different covid policy? Everybody else. Because, you know, oh, that
Malcolm Collins: was such a, a thing. Yeah, I, I know I love this, but we, we have a, a theory on this. So if you look at the urban monoculture, which is I think is what's driving this view of multiculturalism they will say above all else, like, multiculturalism is good.
And then I'm like, okay, so like in Africa, Africa are, are you okay with their like marriage structure? Is it like, no, their gender roles are all wrong. Are you okay with their sexuality? No. No, that's all wrong. Are you okay with the way they view morality? No, that's all wrong. Are you okay with [00:47:00] the way they view religion?
Oh, well, that's all wrong. And what I realized after a while, and I always was like, why, why even does diversity have value if everyone's secretly the same? Like it, it wouldn't, what they mean by valuing diversity is that they value a diversity in victims. They value a diversity in people that they convert to their imperialistic cultural practices.
And not in maintaining actual diversity, because the odd thing about the ever monoculture is it lets you superficially identify as like a Muslim or a Christian, but you can't have Muslim or Christian views about like gay people. You can't have Muslim or Christian views about like a wife's role in the family.
So yeah, so in
Robin Hanson: the long run we have. The success that if we eventually spread across the stars, the distances will ensure cultural diversity. That is, thank goodness mm-hmm. That the long delays will in fact mean that different places have different cultures and they just can't stop that. But if that's several centuries away, the question is how can we manage between [00:48:00] now and then, because in the next time we will have, again, the high rates of communication, trade, talk trade, you know, travel are just, seem like those costs are not gonna go way up anymore.
And so you have to artificially limit them if you're going to. Mm-hmm. And most people really enjoy all the, you know, connection with the world that we have. So even if I try to imagine asking a few friends to like, can we, you and I just like, isolate ourselves and live on an island and not talk to anybody else.
Yeah. That's gonna, that's gonna work.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Now we, we even have so many friends who've been like, Hey, let's all just like move to this one place and build a community together. And people have even started that. They've purchased property and they can't get anyone to move out. Or people are like, ah, you know, let's, ah, I don't really feel like it.
Malcolm Collins: I'm sure you've seen this a hundred times. People try to start communions.
Robin Hanson: I, I actually joined a cult when I was a tween, so I have a best emotional inside view of, of cults. Did they live together? So it [00:49:00] was a religion. I was in San Diego and it was a local Pentecostal religious cult. And I sort of attended their meetings and they had meetings at group houses, and they had a, some compound in Iowa they never went to, but basically Oh,
Simone Collins: wow.
Robin Hanson: Basically, I, I could feel emotionally what it was like to be in a cult, and I can see the appeal. So I think ever since then, I, I understand at a visceral level what it, what the appeal is.
Simone Collins: Well, what was it that drew you in? I mean, especially as a, a teen boy tween. Really Tween boy. Yeah.
Robin Hanson: Right. Well, the idea was just they included you.
They loved you, they wanted the best for you, and they were gonna, you know, help you if they could. That sense of belonging and mutual support was very attractive. And then of course, they had a mission and they had a, a, a reason they were special and that, that motivated them and gave, gave them. Meaning, and that's all very attractive even to like, you know, a 12-year-old me who grew up in our shared culture, but we don't offer that so much to most people.[00:50:00]
Simone Collins: Yeah, fair enough. And that was just
Robin Hanson: appealing. But you know, after I, I don't know, six months or a year, my parents said, you can't go there anymore. We don't like them. And I just, okay, fine. So I didn't fight my parents or rebel too much. I'm, I'm, but I, but basically I still remember what it felt like. And that's wild.
It is a strong appeal, but you can see most people just y the very idea of what I'm saying for most people goes That sounds pretty icky. Yeah. And that's part of the modern culture is that, is to disapprove of that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You talk about the well and just simultaneously love bomb you with their tactics and if you join their pro process.
Robin Hanson: So interestingly, history is that roughly a century, a century and a half ago, cultural elites in our societies. Realized consciously that they had drifted away from some more stable culture that they had come from, and they then called themselves modernists and they said they were in a modern era. What they meant by that literally was.
The one thing we're sure of is we don't want to go [00:51:00] back to the culture of a century ago that our grandparents had. That's clearly what we don't want. We wanna go somewhere new, we don't know where that is, and we're gonna explore the space of possible writing styles and paintings and architecture and songs and everything else.
And they celebrated this search for something new, but they were, they knew they were uncured. And that was part of their description of, we don't know what we really value here. And then in the middle of the 20th century, world War I, Andi became a moral anchor for a lot of the world. That was the one thing they decided, they knew we are anti-Nazi.
We don't know what else, but we know we're we're American.
Simone Collins: And then it became capitalism. And then, well, it
Robin Hanson: was antis, sexism, anti-racism, and you know, lots of things like there, but also anti-communism or anti-socialist. Right? Yeah. But still, a lot of our world is still modernist in the sense that we value this idea that we are just moving in the space of possible cultures.
And we're not saying still. And that's, that's what gives a lot of energy to cultural activism. Activism is this idea that. Our current culture couldn't possibly be the right one. Surely we need to like [00:52:00] find a new one to move to because that's who we're, where they, they wanderers in the space and cultures.
Simone Collins: I feel like that even might've started with deism. And then you sort of see this like with a lot of the founding fathers being Deists, if I'm not completely misremembering, everything terribly right? And they kind of had this vision and, and it kind of also dovetailed with the development of American democracy, representative democracy.
But it just never, the follow through just fell apart and it was sort of allowed to degrade. And it was never really, it never really turned into the thing. It was roughly in some fever dream meant to be. I would argue that what Malcolm is trying to create with techno puritanism is, is very much driven by that.
It's like this idea of the belief in an Abrahamic Christian Judeo God, but just technically, scientifically correct. That like Malcolm's trying to pick up where the Deists left off, even from a governance perspective of like, let's also try to create the most optimal. Governance format. I just think that it's really hard to [00:53:00] do these things on a societal and especially collaborative level because what, what you saw with the founding fathers is like a couple of great minds came together.
You know, you had a lot of people sort of like, like these battling substack with the Federalist papers and all these like thought leaders being like, oh, I think this and I think this, and they're all, they're talking about it. It's just that there wasn't this ability to take all these threads and knit them together.
And I, I still don't know how that is going to happen, but it could be that in the face of demographic collapse and the civilizational collapse that we see as a result of a fumbled demographic collapse, you know, like countries basically not being able to handle their. Crumbling infrastructure and, and, and social systems that we will see city states that do have enough of a coherent narrative and grip of what they want their deism or like religion or culture to be that they can actually pull it off and build a city upon a hill that actually sticks.
I don't know,
Robin Hanson: I think a lot will have to be some level of believing in things that it's just not really fashionable [00:54:00] anymore.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I feel like we've, there was certainly this era for the past decade or so where. Everyone had to be ironic because to be too earnest was seen as cringe.
I feel like we've come into a new era where earnestness gets a premium and people are getting social credit for that, even when it is very cringe. So maybe now is time for faith. Now is now is our comeback.
Robin Hanson: So I wanna summarize what I've been arguing here because I see a new argument. So I set fertility is being caused by a number of cultural trends and that plausibly is caused by this larger cultural process of drift away from what was used to be adaptive culture.
And that's a really hard problem to fix. We can understand in terms of these parameters, but it's really hard to change these parameters. One would be add more cultural variety and I guess that's the one you're pursuing. Like can you make just separate insular or subcultures and, and produce more variety that way?
I definitely hope you succeed, but it does seem like [00:55:00] a, a difficult thing to do. The other solutions we can try to think of to change these other parameters are also just big asks and difficult. So my, my overall conclusion is we actually don't know how to solve this problem and plausible if we don't solve this problem, our civilization just does decline until if yay come lowest level where something else rises again.
And that's happened many times before. So we shouldn't think we're that special that it can't happen to us. We should hope to try to prevent it and see what we can do instead. And I, you know, I wish you all the luck in producing some insular subculture that can rise like the Amish and Herre are doing, and replace the current culture and.
Look in some sense if some of these, if a proven successful culture would be willing to take on, you know, converts I might consider converting. 'cause I think I don't want to fall down with the world culture and collapse. I wanna be part of something that's rising, even if I have to compromise for it, you know, tell me what the compromises I have to make, [00:56:00] but they're not really open to converts.
That's part of a wise choice they have. Lemme
Malcolm Collins: say this is, I would argue that the last time this happened, when they had the collapse last time, there was the successful new culture. And it's what today we call Christians. Yes. And it was just like cult. Everyone thought of them as like a cult until they got too big to call them names.
And they, they had like crazy ideas. They, they would feed themselves to lions, like, come on. Yeah. Like, that's a cult by modern standards. And they'd feed, they took the babies, other people left for exposure to the animals. And they took and raised them. Yeah. Like, they were weird, crazy people. We, we often, one of the, the lions, I love his tactics he complained that Jews wouldn't expose babies.
And I'm like, what a, what an inversion of blood libel there. Like these horrible Jews, they don't expose babies. But you, you know, there was a cult that, that, that, that came outta Judaism and that took over the world. And that I think when we look at what [00:57:00] does the group that's gonna replace the urban monoculture look like, we should look at what were the ways that the early Christians were different.
And it wasn't like the Amish or something. You basically had a big competition between the Christians and the, the military mystery cults. And I think that that's what we're gonna have within our time. The mystery cults are the people who are like, let's go back to tradition. And the, the Christians are the people who are like, no, here's this new thing.
Let's like meet and innovate.
Robin Hanson: I don't know how to predict what's, who's gonna win, but I can look, the, the insular fertile subcultures have a number of interesting features in common, at least today. They're all heavily religious. They're also very decentralized. I think that's an important thing to notice.
They each have governance of a scale of roughly a hundred people, and there's no higher governance that can control. Yeah. And I think that's, that protects them against some of them making mistakes. Say the, the Mormons did not do that. They had more centralized governments. And then when the centralized governments make a mistake, it takes 'em all down.
So, they're also you know, pacifist, which I think is keeping them insular. Yeah. They're also relatively [00:58:00] low tech. They don't let their kids go off and learn very specialized tech. That means they have to go to some separate school to learn it. And they're very egalitarian, honestly. And you know, they, they, they put that the people, they don't wear extra fan, the higher status.
People don't wear extra fancy clothes or things like that. And I think that also is, you know, so just looking at the correlation it seems like. Don't deviate too far from what's working, make your own special formula, but like take most of the stuff that seems to be working and try to just innovate in a few areas.
That would be my main re my main recommendation for all innovation is that there's a pile of innovators who have to innovate on every dimension. And That's crazy. So I was, I was a part of a group called Zou a long time ago, and there were all these very creative people who were inventing the worldwide web and then they had to be creative about everything and that just took 'em down.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. I remember that was a Silicon Valley group, right? Yeah. Silicon Valley Zou.
Robin Hanson: Like
Malcolm Collins: was it like a, a, a group house?
Robin Hanson: Well, at one point they might've [00:59:00] was a company to make the worldwide web. It was before the worldwide web. This was the late 1980s. Oh. Worldwide Web showed up like in the 90, you know, 93, and they were trying to create an alternative version of the worldwide web.
And I went off to Silicon Valley to hang out and be with them in 84. And, but they just had to be creative about everything. And later on I've gone back to Silicon Valley. See, see some other groups like that. They, they just, they're so creative, have so many ideas that they wanna just try new ideas on all the different aspects of their organizations.
And if you think about it, that's just not gonna work.
Simone Collins: Yeah. The follow through is, is very important. Yeah.
Robin Hanson: Well you need to pick your few best ideas to for change and package that with conservative choices on the other dimensions.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Commit then and follow through
Robin Hanson: and then that gives you your best shot.
You might, you know, still may still be a long shot, but your best shot for any idea is to package it with conservative parameters on all the other per on the other dimensions you have. So I say that's what I suggest for you. Choose your key radical things but then go along with the way the Amish or red 'em do it on the [01:00:00] other ones.
Don't deviate too far, like be pacifist perhaps.
Malcolm Collins: Makes sense. Well, we won't be pacifist. No, I I I think we need to. I mean, I, I think if you go the pacifist route, when the P day Roman of the urban Monoculture falls, you get wiped out.
Robin Hanson: Well, you
Malcolm Collins: have
Robin Hanson: to be ready to switch.
Malcolm Collins: And you're big enough that armed can feel military, armed
Simone Collins: pacifists sovereign armed pacifists is the key.
I guess. Don't send out your people. No, no outsourcing, no integrating. That's
Malcolm Collins: an interesting concept is, is defensive pacifism. I've never heard of it before, but I think it's, it's this, it's a clever one,
Simone Collins: but I just never thought about what you pointed out, Robin, that it was like medical school or military.
This is probably gonna cause some problems. That is, that is so fascinating. It has
Malcolm Collins: been wonderful to have you on.
Simone Collins: Yes. Thank you so much
Malcolm Collins: again. You, every time
Simone Collins: you tackle something, it's so brilliant. And we were just talking about this like, it's very, it's you, people like you who come across with these theories that are not only like cross disciplinary all over the place, but like memeable and [01:01:00] understandable are so rare.
So it's, it's a privilege. And please keep going. Keep keep coming up with new stuff.
Robin Hanson: Alright, well thank you. I'm honored and till we talk again, I guess.
Simone Collins: Great. Yes. Have a good one. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Okay.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Ancient Roman Pronatalism: The Last Time We Failed to Solve Fertility Collapse
9 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the ancient Roman fertility crisis, focusing on the efforts of Augustus to encourage marriage and childbearing among the Roman elite. We discuss various laws introduced by Augustus, such as the Lex Julia and Lex Papia Poppaea, aimed at promoting procreation and the penalties imposed on the unmarried and childless. We explore the historical context, examining the low fertility rates of notable Roman families and the societal implications. Furthermore, we draw parallels to modern issues of declining fertility rates, particularly in Italy, and the potential cultural and economic impacts. Join us as we uncover the motivations behind Augustus' policies and the ultimate challenges they faced in ensuring the survival of Rome's elite lineage.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about ancient Roman tism.
Simone Collins: Oh, the failed kind,
Malcolm Collins: right? Many people have heard. Of Rome as As, and they've, they've heard of, like Augustus say, being concerned about falling fertility rates among Roman elites. Mm-hmm. We've heard that he put in laws to try to prevent this.
Mm-hmm. We've heard, oh, this is mirrored with our current societal collapse and this is a pretense of the destruction of a global empire in the same way.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: People thought as a pretense of the destruction of the Roman empire. Right. Even though it wasn't, that happened a long time after this particular concern.
But I mean it kind of was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll see. But I was like, wait. What were those laws, what actually happened in Rome during this period? Mm-hmm. What did people of the period have to say about this? Mm-hmm. How low did the fertility rate of the Roman elite actually get? Hmm. And I'll also start by saying Rome's going through this again.
Italy right now has the fertility rate of only 1.18. That means every hundred Italians, there's only gonna be 20 great grandchildren. We are looking at the complete collapse of, italian civilization likely was in our [00:01:00] lifetimes, which is gonna be good point.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Hadn't thought. Yeah. We're sort of, we're back, we're back to square one.
Malcolm Collins: And this, this also causes a lot of problems like for Catholicism because if, if Italy is no longer Italian or Catholic anymore, you know what happens to the Vatican? Tough, tough world we might be entering. But I, I, I think they're gonna get it together. I think they're gonna get it together. I have faith so we'll start here talking about Augustus.
Okay. So Augustus uses platform to urge Romans to marry and have children framing it as a civic duty in a famous speech recorded by historian DiUS, he said. If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance. Oh wow. But since the nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them nor live in any way without them.
Yeah. We must plan for our lasting preservation. That's rather than, rather for our temporary pleasure. That's amazing. Okay.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that is. I, we, we needed to have Augustus at Alcon, so all the journalists could be quoting [00:02:00] Augusta. Oh yeah.
Simone Collins: He would be the clickbait. He would be the, the, yeah, the soundbite generator for natal con, the soundbite
Malcolm Collins: generator for, for modern journalists.
Simone Collins: Wives, they're awful. But I mean, you gotta, you gotta put up with it. You gotta put up with it. It's like colonoscopies and wives
Malcolm Collins: necessary.
Not exactly a view. I, I'm not gonna say like that, that's a view I would've given to Romans, like, sat them down and been like, okay, it's gonna be terrible. It's gonna be the worst thing ever.
Simone Collins: Ugh. And women, I at least Trump, you know, is more like, man, you're so lucky. Yeah. Gods was really not selling it like at all. Like, you gotta do it. It sucks, but, but it's your duty. Yeah. No wonder this is doomed from the very start for the, my goodness.
Malcolm Collins: You don't set it for the queen,
Simone Collins: you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
Lie back and think of England or Rome in this case.
Malcolm Collins: So this quote reflects his view that marriage, though challenging was essential for Rome survival. Mm-hmm. He also praised fathers of large families and criticized the childless, emphasizing the importance of producing heirs to maintain Rome's strengths.
Mm-hmm. On the [00:03:00] duty of recreation, he said you have shown yourself to be mindful of the continued existence of our race while these others have not Dio, Cassius book 56 spoken to married men with children. This quote praises them for fulfilling their civic duty while implicitly criticizing unmarried and childless for neglecting it.
This is so much worse than JD Vans. You have shown yourself to be mindful to the continued existence of our race. Well, the others have not. Childless cat
Simone Collins: is a lot more catchy.
Malcolm Collins: I just, I just need to just have quotes from him like in my back pocket to freak people out. You've been mindful about the preservation of our race.
I really appreciate that. And, you know, some others have not. Gosh,
August. He really,
Simone Collins: really, I mean, he was a very smart, successful man on many fronts. This is making me doubt his competence. Maybe this was late stage Augustus, you know, like, yeah. Ugh,
Malcolm Collins: Augustus on Childlessness. Oh boy. According to dio, [00:04:00] Cassius Augustus criticized Romans for failing to reproduce even when it was easier for them in earlier times.
Quote. Mm-hmm. How wrathful would the Romans who were Romulus followers be after they had gotten children even by their enemies wives. You will not beget them. Even of women who are citizens. Oh, oh my. This guy, goodness.
Simone Collins: This guy, the way he about women, he's like, baby, get children by grape. You won't
Malcolm Collins: even do it with your own wife.
Like what a like on the pedestal. Griping your enemy's wives where he is down here?
Simone Collins: Not very you know, I, I'm seeing the problem here. He, he had just two kids. He himself was a reproductive failure.
Malcolm Collins: Surviv kids. Yeah. Five kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But I get it.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah, he was below repopulation rate. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So yeah, I know he bad guy.
I keep in mind a lot of people get the strong about repopulation, right? They think that 2.1 is about [00:05:00] people dying at different rates. It's not, it's about differences in sex when people are born you know, you get more males than females born. And so, that's, that's why. Nothing else. So it, it doesn't account for that.
So if he had his other kids die, he really was below repopulation rate in terms of his own fertility. Which I think shows, you know, even if the emperor can't, can't make it happen.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Well, I mean, he wasn't a believer, he was not himself a believer. Trump a lot of kids. JD Vance, three kids like,
Malcolm Collins: well, if I was his wife, I would not maybe be super interested in Procreating was a guy who's like, oh, ancestors, they just got a.
Great. Their way to reproduction. Really? And we, ah, can't even motivate it with our wives. Yeah. The duty of it. I mean, I know our wives are terrible, but the duty of it all. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So Augustus introduced key legislation. Vote did fed him up though. What?
Simone Collins: Like sexually, she kind of hooked him up, didn't she?
Who hooked him up remembering this Augustus's wife
Malcolm Collins: hooked him up with other people.
Simone Collins: [00:06:00] Yeah. Maybe am I remembering this wrong? I, I, I, I've like read a couple of his biographies, but like back in like 2018, so it's been a long time.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, I did in post if she did. Yeah.
I couldn't find any evidence of this when I asked ai.
Malcolm Collins: But, but I love that you're the type of history obsessed perv who would know that, but you would like,
Simone Collins: well, you would think if that were the case, he'd be a little more charitable, you know, if she was a wingwoman and yet he's still, you know.
That that's a, that would be in bird culture.
Malcolm Collins: I know that his sister Right. Was the one who talked about using fertility being pregnant as contraception.
Simone Collins: Oh. 'cause her ship was carrying a load.
Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, I know. To only you know, take the sailors when the ship was carrying a load.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: All right. It works.
Clever.
Simone Collins: Never heard that one before.
Malcolm Collins: Clever girl. Underrated.
Simone Collins: Underrated.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. All right. Augustus introduced key legislation to promote marriage and procreation, particularly among the upper classes. Lex, Julia Day Es Orio. 18th BC the purpose [00:07:00] was to encourage marriage among Roman citizens, especially the upper classes, the requirements.
Men over 25 and women over 20 were expected to marry unmarried individuals celibate. I guess it means like celibates faced restrictions on inheritance and detailed below childless married couples or be, were also penalized though less severely. And I'm, I'm totally actually okay with.
Legislation like that Lex Popeye puppet nine ad I mean, if you're not s if you're not paying to the future of the debt that you owe in the past, then it makes sense that you bear some additional costs.
Simone Collins: Pay yourself.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You pay it yourself. Yeah. And I think it actually will become normalized around the world by the time we die.
It's assuming we lived for another 40, 50 years.
Simone Collins: Oh, I don't think so. Because you can only do that when you know. That that person's like, it's unfair if a person produces children who then are net welfare drains. So I feel like the, the Robin Hansen tax bond thing would have to be in there a little bit more.
Well, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: What you might do is, is they have [00:08:00] to produce children that are. No, I don't think so. I think even just like the, the, the harsh tax for not being married is good. 'cause we know that a lot of the child list thing is just people aren't getting married fast enough. Or, or, or enough,
Simone Collins: yeah. And when you're not married, you know, your, your kid is at a disadvantage too.
I mean, I imagine that there is a correlation. No, no, but the point
Malcolm Collins: here being is, is even was in his new laws. Unmarried people paid a very big fine. Married people without kids, paid a smaller fine, and then people whiz kids didn't pay a fine at all. Oh. And so it's creating an, it is like a, a, a graded incentive with the first part of the grade being, getting married.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that if you implemented a prenatal list policy that should be the first part of the grading system, not the first kid you have. Sure. Yeah. Okay. But yeah. And then Lex Papai Papa nine Ad Purpose Strengthen the Lex Julia by refining penalties and adding incentives for having children.
Requirements reinforce the expectation of marriage within the same age [00:09:00] ranges. So it also, uh mm created more penalty for people who married people who are much younger than them, which
Simone Collins: that's so good. I wonder if they intuitively or even technically knew that there were. Lower odds of healthy children when you had, yeah.
It's really
Malcolm Collins: bad for older men to marry younger women from a genetic perspective. Yeah. Like you shouldn't do that. That shouldn't be your going plan.
Simone Collins: Or if you plan on doing that, at least freeze your sperm guys.
Malcolm Collins: Guys penalties. Further restricted inheritance for unmarried and childless. See below incentives.
Parents with three or more children gain privileges such as for men, faster advancement in political careers for women. Legal independence Under the Is Truman Lido. Oh, right. Of three children. So this basically meant that you could all right, so hold on. This requires some explanation of Roman law.
Women couldn't own property themselves. Mm-hmm. In, in Rome. Mm-hmm. So like, if you were an unmarried woman, you often couldn't even inherit your father's estate. And if, but if you kids. But if you had at least three kids, you could.
Simone Collins: Hey, that's great. Okay. Because I [00:10:00] know one of the things discussed in the spread of, of Christianity was that, I mean, Christianity spread a lot 'cause women finally were treated with some respect.
Their children weren't killed when they weren't desired or seen as fit enough. They, they loved that. And I, and this one thing did point out the
Malcolm Collins: tactic. One of the things that he complained about, the Jews t. Tus.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay.
Malcolm Collins: Complained about the Jews. He said when he was describing all the horrifying things that Jews do alongside, you know, circumcisions and their demonic practices, he's like, they, they even prevent the exposure of children.
Simone Collins: Oh, how dare they not? Kill babies
Malcolm Collins: is not drown Babies. Those, these monstrous, these Jewish monsters, everybody knows you just drown. Ba I love, there's like a complete inversion of of, of blood libel, of this belief that, that Jews are evil because they're like killing babies. Yeah. It's Jews are evil because they're not killing their babies.
That is,
Simone Collins: Yeah, man, like you can't win as a Jew, can you? Oh, you're not killing the, no, [00:11:00] now you're killing the baby. You're whatever with the babies. It's when,
Malcolm Collins: when killing babies was normal to you, who were doing the opposite.
Speaker 11: I'll take care of this. Hey Clara, there's a Jew outside, trying to poison a well! Ah! Oh my God! Get away from that well, Hebrew! What? I'm putting in water purification tablets. Spanky tricked me!
Malcolm Collins: And it wasn't even a conspiracy with tus. I love it. I love it. I can imagine somebody being like, well, I don't know.
You know, this seems like an antisemitic conspiracy. Surely Jews expose some of their babies. You just mean they expose them at a lower rate. Right? And it's like, no, they actually like never do this.
Simone Collins: I guess you could say that they, they expose their foreskins to trash cans. If they're male,
Malcolm Collins: they expose their, what?
Simone Collins: I don't understand. Something's not making it out. Right. Foreskins. The foreskins. There's, there's something that's being
Malcolm Collins: Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah. But yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway so, so, and then the faster advancement in political careers, I think is what we're gonna begin to see in the ccp. I, I, I assume it's already like a shadow a thing.
Mm-hmm. Is that you're not [00:12:00] gonna be promoted quickly in the CCP if you don't have lots of kids. Yeah. I think this only makes sense in the totalitarian states that are likely gonna pro replace our existing democracies. If you want to learn more about that, you can watch our recent video on why demographic apps make monarchy inevitable.
The gist being is that as elderly make a larger and larger, specifically the elderly that are living off of the system. Become a majority population within a country, they would never vote themselves less incentives, which eventually collapses the state. Yeah. Because the majority of the population is living off of the state and the majority of the population controls who's elected president.
And so, the state just ends up collapsing. Uh uh, and, and then you need, you need a system. You that doesn't favor the majority of view. Yeah. And those you know, in, in a nascent state maybe the Charter Cities end up taking off in one of, like our governance system that was covered in the Guardian ends up becoming a dominant governance system, but it's just as likely that we end up in monarchies or, or dictatorships, and it's just important that we're on the right side and having [00:13:00] lots of kids will likely get you there.
So funny, we're heading directly towards the Handmaid's Tale outcome. And the, the progressives are taking us there. They hand and foot skipping into that feature. They're hot for it.
Simone Collins: Malcolm, I don't know what else to say. Like they
Malcolm Collins: are hot for it. See our video on that?
Simone Collins: We don't want it. They seem to be like, oh, no.
Oh, hot conservative man. Please don't bere me in front of a jealous upper class woman who you just prefer me to and need me so much more, and she just has to fume that. Your desire for me is so, oh my God. Okay. I can't, I'm gonna vomit.
Malcolm Collins: What it's, it's gross. It's gross. And then they cosplay in public and, and do their whole little,
The Handmaid's Tale costume is turning into the new go-to protest attire for women.
Malcolm Collins: No, I
Simone Collins: don't wanna kink shame.
I just, mm. But like, it, it bothers me. 'cause yeah, there's children that heard, I keep trying to seek out evidence that it's not [00:14:00] true and that I keep seeing evidence that like
Malcolm Collins: we go over in the episode, just like a preponderance of statistical evidence that it's true.
You know, it doesn't matter what our faces look like, as long as we're fertile
You are bad. Yeah, but not too bad. Otherwise you get gals, guess what I did last night? Ate your rations in silence and cried into your straw bed.
Yes. Classically. Well, I had sex with a married couple. Oh, so did I. Who would've guessed we'd be having three ways in our thirties?
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, property inheritance restrictions.
So I wanted to know more about this. I'm like reading, okay, there's restrictions. Describe right. The laws impose significant limits on inheritance rights for unmarried and childless. Okay. Using property as a tool to enforce compliance, here's how much inheritance was restricted for unmarried Saba restriction.
Unmarried individuals were generally prohibited from [00:15:00] inheriting. Under wills except from close relatives, eg. Parents or siblings. Really Interesting. So they could still inherit from their parents or siblings, like if it's like really like felt unjust that they weren't inheriting. Sure. But other than that you couldn't get like a, I really liked this guy, or I consider him like a son to me.
Mm-hmm. Or you know, et cetera. You couldn't inherit from them.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So, you know, hypocrite, Octavian,
Malcolm Collins: yes.
Simone Collins: He did
Malcolm Collins: inherit from,
Simone Collins: I'm really like. We named our son Octavian. I love this guy, but I'm, I'm getting, I'm just my patience right now. No, Octavian is such
Malcolm Collins: a dope character in history.
You wish to be console. It's a vanity. I know, but I think I deserve it and it would please my men.
You are 19. You're too young to be a senator. Leave alone. Cons, my dear boy. You have no experience. You have no connections. He has an army. We'll see if it's possible. The, if you were to be [00:16:00] counsel. You must promise to be guided by my council. It is an office of high complexity, and I'm well aware of my inexperience. I will not utter a word without your advice, your consent.
Malcolm Collins: If you have not seen the, he's just, this
Simone Collins: is his one failing.
Everyone gets their foibles. I get it.
Malcolm Collins: If you watch this show and you ever take recommendations on things to watch from this show, like, and you're like, oh, you know, sometimes you talk about an anime or whatever. No. But like, number one I'd suggest is the Rome miniseries TV show.
Simone Collins: Oh man.
Malcolm Collins: If you like the show, you will likely really like that TV series.
, the Roman people are not crying out for clean elections. They're crying out for jobs. They're crying out for clean water, for food, for stability and peace. You can do great things for your people. You can help save the republic
Malcolm Collins: I'd say if you like the original Gladiator, you'll like that TV series.
Simone Collins: [00:17:00] Yeah. That's, that's, that's a fair, that's fair.
Malcolm Collins: I actually, I don't think I've ever heard a single person say, I did not like the Rome miniseries.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's a known, I haven't, but also I haven't found that many people who watched it.
But I think what's interesting here, and this is just. What he missed clearly, and this just shows up in his statements. It, it shows up in the legislation largely that statutory, you know, money related stuff, it's just not enough to move the needle. You have to change the culture because when you contrast these Roman birth rates with early Christian birth rates, like, it just, it's, it's super clear.
In this historical case, at least though we've pointed out plenty of other contemporary examples of this, that. For trying to manipulate people using money or other carrots and sticks just isn't
Malcolm Collins: so, yeah. For, for more on this, by the way, you can see our video was early [00:18:00] Christianity. Really more moral.
It goes over why early Christian birth rates were so much higher and presented argument that Christianity became the dominant religion. Not through conversions primarily, but just through having a higher survival and birth rate.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But to keep going here. Mechanism, if a tester left property to an unmarried person that bequest became CaTECH forfeit to the state or to relatives with children.
So even if, if you wanted to give your property to someone, it would automatically then go to the state or to other relatives who had children who put placed claim on it. Hmm.
Example, if a will be clea 100,000 tices to an unmarried friend, the friend could not inherit the sum, would instead go to the tester's, relatives with children, or if nonexistent the state, four, childless, married, or be.
Restrictions, childless, married couples could inherit, but only half of what was bequeathed to them. The other half became cchu. The following, the above rules. So somebody could try to give you money, but it would, it would go to other people or the state mechanism. The forfeited portion would go to the state or those with [00:19:00] children.
For parents, those with children face no such restrictions and enjoyed full inheritance. Right. Plus additional social and legal benefits if they had three or more children. I actually like the idea of re bringing this in with,
Simone Collins: see, I No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, I really, really, really think it should be progressive income tax breaks num after you have more than two kids.
I what you're, they're doing here, and this is just so dumb. Is they're making it all about inheritance. It's, it's about this like lump sum later and it's clear that now probably past. Past, well, you can
Malcolm Collins: do both. The reason why inheritance is so powerful is because it conceptualizes the purpose of kids of paying to the future, the debt that you owe the past.
If you're not paying to the future, then you do not. Deserve any of the accumulated wealth of the past who did make this sacrifice? Mm. You are cashing in on society basically where everyone, I get
Simone Collins: the poeticness. It's just that people don't,
Malcolm Collins: the poetic poems, people [00:20:00] contextualize and keep in mind it overly motivates people with better to have more kids because they are going to be the people set to inherit the most money.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So sorry. Not that human gene pools are different. I'm just saying that if you're viewing prenatal from the perspective of likelihood to pay into the tax system and you use that as better, these people are more likely to pay into the tax system more money. If they have more money, you know, sort of writing on that.
And I'd put it at replacement rate. If you're not at replacement rate, you can only inherit half of the estate and the other half goes to the state or relatives who have above replacement kids. Hmm. And if you are above replacement rate, then you can't inherit the full amount.
I note that the other reason why the inheritance law is so much better than Jesse, the progressive tax break, is it?
Puts a strong motivation to get married and have kids earlier. Because there's this risk that, oh, well I was planning to have kids, but my parents died before then.
Simone Collins: Oh, oh yeah. What if they kick the bucket unexpectedly and then you lose everything?
Malcolm Collins: [00:21:00] Yes. So you sort of have this constant gamble every year.
You're not getting married.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And what it might do, the way I would likely structure it is the money goes into an escrow for like five years after the person dies to give you time to get married, or it goes, if you die before the age of, let's say 23, it goes into escrow until five years after 23 to give you time to find someone to marry.
Simone Collins: Or if you die, when your children are in the age of minority, you should wait until they're at least 25 before the money gets forfeit.
Malcolm Collins: That's exactly what I just said.
Simone Collins: I thought you were saying that applied to. Older people, like if you're, no, I'd say
Malcolm Collins: it applies to older people and people under the age of 23.
So you get five years after you turn 23, so even more than you turn. Oh, okay.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So 28, it goes into escrow. If you, if you if the parents kick the bucket before 23 and then if it's after 23, you get a five year escrow period to find a spouse.
Simone Collins: Okay. And
Malcolm Collins: start having kids. Hmm. [00:22:00] Size of the fines. Contrary to modern notions of fines, augustus's laws did not impose direct monetary penalties.
EEG fixed some paid as a tax. Instead, the financial consequences were indirect embedded in the loss of inheritance rights. No there is no clear evidence of a specific tax like the Asima celibacy tax under Augustus. Such managers may have emerged later. The can you imagine
Simone Collins: an incel tax today? Right?
An
Malcolm Collins: incel tax to add insult to injury, right? Yeah.
Simone Collins: Seriously.
Malcolm Collins: Effective financial penalty for the unmarried, the complete inability to inherit under most wills could represent a massive loss depending on the size of the estate. For example, losing a hundred thousand sesqui bequest was the equivalent to a fine amount.
And additional disadvantages. Unmarried men were also barred from certain public events and offices indirectly affecting their wealth and status. And keep in mind, for, for Rome, this would've caused the most noble families to have an additional incentive to get married and have kids early. Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Didn't work. Tual reason to do [00:23:00] this. Because you lose basically noble status and privileges if you don't. But it didn't work. It didn't work. Yeah. I know. Literary observations, Roman writers commented on the trend. For example, tus a historic writing in the second century ad noted the quote unquote childless sterilist.
Of the upper classes and linked it to a decline in noble families. Mm-hmm. Now I, I note here when you say it didn't work, I mean, I think we can see why it didn't work. It's because you have this strong counter pressure of women are the worst misogyny we've seen. Misogynistic societies generally really struggle to breed at above repopulation rate when they're in periods of wealth.
Misogyny only really works when you're in periods of you know, economic disadvantage in, in un economic systems where women can.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: it does. It, it works within like ultra Orthodox Jewish communities. It works within ultra orthodox Muslim communities. You know, they do have higher fertility rates.
They are lessing now and I think that, that, that they may, no, I think they'll always stay. Okay. [00:24:00] So long as they don't engage with technology. Yeah. Adoption practices. The elite frequently resorted to adoption to secure heirs indicating a shortage of biological children. This was a common workaround for families unable to produce enough offspring to continue their lineage.
I. Anecdotes. Here are some specific examples that highlight the versatility struggles of prominent Roman elites, Augustus's family. Despite his push for procreation, Augusta himself had only one biological child, Julia, from his marriage with scr Bonia. Julia had five children, but political turmoil and pars limited their survival and succession.
Augustus adopted his sex, his stepson Tiberius as his heir reflecting how his own family's limited fertility. Yeah. The Claud family kind of
Simone Collins: failure man. She had five. You haven't had five kids yet. Okay. You're on five. But I mean like that, that your succession as you're like sort of starting out this hereditary line.
Is your stepson, who also just didn't turn it to be that great of an em, even though his name is so [00:25:00] good. It's such a shame. I don't know. I'm really frustrated about it. I'm, I'm very, I like Tiberius as a name for kid. I know, but he didn't do a very good job, and that frustrates me. You don't get to ruin a good name like that.
You know what I mean?
Malcolm Collins: The Claud and family the Jen's, Claudia, a powerful aristocratic clan, also faced challenges. Emperor Claudia's 41 to 45 AD had four children across his marriages, but two died young. And his errors were often adopted, or from other lines, showing the difficulty of maintaining direct descent, Cicero's family.
Here's this other thing though, and I think
Simone Collins: this is, this is important. There could also be kind of this un unstated issue of kids kind of hating their parents. Like, I'm not getting, you know. The, oh, yeah. A lot of
Malcolm Collins: Roman emperors had a lot of kids who were like party animals or hated them or whatever. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Or like, who tried, wasn't it Niro, who had these amazing attempts to kill his mother? That was Niro, right? Yes,
Malcolm Collins: he did. Yeah. One of my favorite Niro attempts is he sent his mother, and I actually think I really wanna make a, a comedy that's like, you know, the Catherine the Great show. [00:26:00] Oh yeah. But this is just about me, Nero trying to kill us.
What about Nero? And in his mom. Yeah. 'cause I think it would be absolutely hilarious. One of these shows about like, just horrible people. Everyone around him was the worst conceivable human you could imagine. My favorite example of this is he a boat set his mom's boat out and he, he, he broke it.
Way before it went out, so it would crack when she got out into deeper waters. Yeah. And she was out with a servant who was rowing her, so the boat
Simone Collins: cracks. And yeah, her female servant in an attempt to save herself because she, her, she too was a terrible person. She too was a terrible person. Save me, I'm the emperor's mother, and then I'm the worst.
They killed her, I think, with an or, right? Yeah. They, the, the, the rescuers went out and
Malcolm Collins: beat her to death with an OR because they told to do. But the mother being smarter, sweats to shore idiot, uh uh, servant, save me. Save me. I'm the real [00:27:00] empress. And it's just like, come upends and come upends for everyone being a terrible human garbage people.
Yes. It's so crazy
Simone Collins: garbage. We have like the, there's this also common theme. In Roman dramas of, of inter-family conflict?
Malcolm Collins: No, I don't think they had a good mechanisms for passing culture onto their kids. Yeah. Because likely what happened is, similar to today, mimetic viruses had arose, was in these communities that benefited from turning children against their parents.
And, and many of these viruses used hedonism to pull them out. And so the question is, is how do you motivate. And you know, something that can, that can you know, withstand this.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So anyway, Cicero's family Marcus Tulia, Cicero, a leading statement in the Republic, died 43 BC, had just two children, Marcus and Tulia.
His son Marcus, had no errors and Tulia died Young ending Cicero's direct line. This reflects a pattern of small families among the elite and give you mind. Many of these people were like. Ultra elite who we're talking about here. Yeah. [00:28:00] Yeah. We have no business having families that are this small. Yeah. These cases illustrate how even the most prominent Romans struggled to reproduce and sustain large families, often relying on adoption or facing lineage extinction.
So I asked it to. Estimate the TFR within the Roman elites? Rough estimate. Scholarly studies suggest TFR among the Roman elite may have been 1.5 to two children per woman. Mm-hmm. Which is below the replacement rate of approximately 2.1 needed to maintain a population without external growth. Mm-hmm.
In contrast, pre-industrial society, typically at TFR have four to six children per woman making the elites. Rate strikingly low influencing factors. High child mortality. Up to 50% of children in ancient room may have died before adulthood, meaning even families with high births might have seen Few survivals.
Yeah, late marriages. Elite men, often married in their thirties. And women though married younger, might have had fewer fertile years. Whiz older. Husbands and this was something that he tried to reduce in the law. But yeah. Marrying, if you're ultimately get the young wife, no, the young women need to go to the young men.
They're the fertile ones. [00:29:00] You are actively being like a problem for society if you're an old man marrying a young,
Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah. And that was another really common problem now that I think to. The historic marriages, it was just all these young women being married often really open,
Malcolm Collins: Contraception and abortion.
Romans likely use herbal contraceptives and abort effects. Though the evidence is sparse, potentially reducing birth rates further. Well, we know they practice exposure of infants that they didn't want, so. Like clearly this, this harmed them. You know, an interesting thing about ancient Greece in Rome, I dunno if you've heard, but the heart symbol that we have today that looks, you know, nothing like a heart came from a, a plant that was likely used for abortions.
Oh my goodness. Or not abortions, but like contraception. Well, some,
Simone Collins: some historic texts. I'll just, I just wanna note. Suggest that some of the abortion techniques utilized by women, probably depending, like if it was like later in, in their pregnancy, were risky, such that maybe you would die in your attempt to poison your unborn child.
So, for example, that the example of that one when Spartan king who [00:30:00] told the, like, dowager queen who'd been, you know, widowed to don't, you know, don't. Don't hurt yourself trying to abort the child, have the child and then it'll expose it. So that implies that some of their methods were dangerous to the mother too, which would explain higher rates of exposure, though they probably had more effective
Malcolm Collins: methods earlier.
The interesting thing about this plant that I'm talking about here that had a leaf shaped like a heart Yeah. Is one, it's funny that they're like, this is how they viewed love, like sex.
Simone Collins: Like the Plan B pill being like the theme of of, of Valentine's Day cards. Right. Well, I mean, is it not, was like the little
Malcolm Collins: smart things, but anyway but this plant was driven to extinction.
We don't, oh my God, we don't have it in these regions anymore. That's how much they love their, their, you know, amazing. But I can totally see something used for like, anytime you see it, you're like, oh, I'm gonna take some of that. Yeah. Be prepared nutri. Be prepared. So why were birth rates so low?
Several socioeconomic lifestyle choices. The elites prioritize political career as well and [00:31:00] status over raising large families. Elite women may have limited pregnancies to preserve their health or social roles, economic costs, raising children in the upper classes with expensive or acquiring education, dowries and upkeep of social standing, which may the classic issue today.
Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly
Malcolm Collins: what we're dealing with today. Mm-hmm. And, which is why I've said you've got to learn to lower the cost both temporarily and in terms of effort of having kids. Yeah. And social pressures. The competitive nature of Roman politics and the instability of the late Roman the Republic and Early Empire eeg.
Civil Wars Pros may have made large families less appealing or practical.
Yeah, Sue. That's it. That's the, that's the whole of what I was able to learn about childless Romans. Did this change your mind on anything?
Simone Collins: Well, now I know where, you know, Augustus fell short. I mean, I, I always felt like something had really gone wrong in general with his, his succession planning. And I think that now that general sentiment extends [00:32:00] to just basically his ability for generational transfer.
I don't wanna, you know, like he's, he's an amazing dude, amazing achievements. I just and now I'm like, okay, no, no one's perfect. No one's perfect. Yeah. At least you weren't, you know, neuro can't even kill your own mom. The first time she was, who was to try multiple times, but also like the number of insane and dramatic Roman assassinations.
It's almost like there was this unspoken rule that you couldn't just kill someone. You had to kill them dramatically. You had to do it. In an epic fashion. I think it, it, it, it just kind of signals to me this, this level of performative drama and psychosis that Roman culture had arrived at. Where they like couldn't do anything in a reasonable and pragmatic manner, they couldn't raise.
It reminds me
Malcolm Collins: so much of modern progressive culture. If you go to like, I think it would be a great representation of, of Y Niro's constantly wanting to be around celebrity and then a celebrity is too popular, so he has him killed because he [00:33:00] wants to be the most popular. Yeah. And it really is, I think, the way people live in this ultra urban monoculture.
Another thing, oh,
Simone Collins: wanting to be accepted by a foreign culture.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but he doesn't even really understand. Yeah. He wanted the
Simone Collins: Greeks
Malcolm Collins: to like him, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, he was like, I, I can master this amazing culture. Can't they just like me? Can't they just give me awards? Yeah. I don't know. Just there's lot of, but anyway, so
Malcolm Collins: I or we might be thinking there of somebody else.
We
Simone Collins: might Bero
Malcolm Collins: romance. No,
Simone Collins: no, no, no, no. Niro was the one who's like, I I want to be a Greek master of this. And Yeah. No, no. That was him. No, but he wasn't the one who was obsessed with
Malcolm Collins: becoming a gladiator. No, no. That was what's his face? Okay. It started with a C, but anyway but I will note when I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh, it's sort of sad.
Like this means I'm almost certainly not related to or descendant of any of the famous Romans. And then I was like it's funny, the, the, the royalty that I do have direct succession of one of them at least, I, I always think it's funny because I, every like, almost every single backwoods Scottish American I have met is.
Is related to this guy. It's, it's Robert the [00:34:00] Bruce, by the way. The, the guy from the Braveheart movie. Yeah. I am also a direct descendant of his wasn't he killed? I thought
Simone Collins: he didn't have any kids. Did he have kids? No. Robert the
Malcolm Collins: Bruce, I, I decided to google how many kids he had because I was like, how could it be that so many people are direct descendants of him?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: He had 12 kids. Oh, okay. Well, 12 surviving kids. So yeah, that explains why so many people by the other, there's one
Simone Collins: woman.
Malcolm Collins: I think so. I think so.
Simone Collins: Good for her.
Malcolm Collins: The other monarchs I have director sent from are Charlemagne and old King Cole I, I'm, I'm related to like way more religious figures. Like, another direct in is is John Knox. Well, and what
Simone Collins: about Oliver Cromwell?
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: potentially Oliver Cromwell, but that's not confirmed. I am descendant from Egg Oliver Cromwell that lived around that time period from our family records, but I can't confirm it is the Oliver Cromwell.
Simone Collins: And all I get is George Washington as an uncle. That's embarrassing.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you get the George Washington siblings.
He didn't have any kids himself, but she's a director, center of siblings. People are like, why do you know all this stuff? It's because my family is obsessed with genealogy. Yeah. And when you [00:35:00] start going that far back, you're basically related to everyone. Yeah. You know, and, and, and the world was
Simone Collins: not very big.
Malcolm Collins: Well, no. Especially the famous people you've gotta keep in mind because you're multiplying every time you go back, like by two people. Mm-hmm. And the famous people, all you need to do is connect yourself to somebody who can prove they were descended from one of the famous people. Mm-hmm. And then you can go back like 15 generations because, and you know, they
Simone Collins: won't shut up about that.
I mean, I'm sure like back in the day it's. Like, oh, you know, you're descended from Robin. Like it, it's, they made the same jokes that they make today about marathon runners. Well, you don't need
Malcolm Collins: everyone to do it. You just need one crazy person who is obsessed with this that you can prove you're connected to.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Except there, you know, a lot of the Braveheart myths were, weren't they kind of written by a Scottish family that never knew him and lived after he died and was like, we're gonna write a bunch of stories so that people think we're cool. Whatever. They made a good movie.
Malcolm Collins: Bravehearts a f*****g amazing movie.
Great.
Simone Collins: If you're watching
Malcolm Collins: this and you haven't seen Braveheart, sorry, even more than Rome. If you're watching, if you haven't seen Gray Hart, what is wrong with you? Good soundtrack. Yeah. Great [00:36:00] soundtrack. Very moving movie. Very based, well most based movie. Bring back Braveheart hair. I say they're, they're, they got in so much trouble for the scene where the
Simone Collins: and like
Malcolm Collins: modern times where they, the prince has a, a gay lover and the king is like, oh, you're so good at strategy here.
Why don't you, why don't you tell me? Strategy walks into a window and throws them out. And the sun's like. Like mortified. And a lot of people have been like, that's horrified. But that's the way Kings would've treated something like that historically. Like, what are we supposed to do? Pretend like the King of England and the Middle Ages was accepting of gay people.
Like no, he wanted heirs and he was obsessed with this. Mm.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Anyway,
Malcolm Collins: anyway, anyway. I love we're making
Simone Collins: you pot stickers tonight. You re
Malcolm Collins: my curry tonight.
Simone Collins: Oh, crumbs. Yes. Well, would you like some supplemental pot stickers? Because it's not a whole lot of food.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think it is actually a pretty big amount that needs to be reheated.
Okay. I did make You're decent
Simone Collins: serving. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. I'm okay with that. And I, oh, yeah, [00:37:00] because I've
Simone Collins: added a bunch of. Seasoned ground beef to it.
Malcolm Collins: Oh. So yeah, gimme that and some pot stickers and I'll be fine. So you do want pot stickers? Yes, I do want pot stickers.
Simone Collins: Okay. He changed his mind, his tummy grew a little bit.
Malcolm Collins: Well, you know what, you're cute. And that's your problem. Oh. And I don't know why I'm still married to you. I, no,
Happy to to you now. Make your wish.
I love to love you, everybody. And I love, and I loved it and, and I love you. Oh, good job friend. We just talked about everything you love. Hey, that is wonderful. Hey, so I love Octa. See love. I love my family. See? Really sweet. See the video. Really sweet. Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Why is Fertility Collapse Happening Faster in Some Places Than Others? (& Are Women at Fault?)
8 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into a new theory by EW, who explores why fertility rates fall faster in some countries than others. The theory suggests that countries modernizing later retain elements of ancestral culture, particularly outdated misogyny and gender roles, which haven't adapted to contemporary contexts, leading to a dramatic decline in fertility rates. We compare two groups of countries with differing fertility trajectories and investigate the roles of economic development, respect for elders, individualism, and gender dynamics. We also discuss the implications of these cultural factors on both family dynamics and societal trends, touching on real-world examples and personal anecdotes. Join us as we analyze these critical issues and invite you to share your thoughts on the factors influencing global fertility trends.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a theory about fertility rates that come out from EW for end of the show.
Don't know if you've ever been on, we should ask him. Nice guy. But anyway, he has done a new theory where he tries to understand why fertility rates fall. Faster in some countries than other countries. Mm-hmm. IE what is protective of fertility rates and the, the gist of the argument is that these countries modernized later and that caused them to maintain more of their ancestral culture, specifically the misogyny and gender roles.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: Which is not properly updated for the new context. And leads to a crash in fertility raise. And I thought that the theory was really interesting. So let's go over it piece by piece, because I think he might be onto something here. But any thoughts before I start? Let's
Simone Collins: dive in. Let's
Malcolm Collins: do it. All right.
Let's get a graph on screen here. Gotta you gotta [00:01:00] ex enhance, enhanced,
Simone Collins: yeah. Give us, give us the visual and the, the premise that crem sets is what differentiates the countries in orange from the countries in blue? Why do the orange countries plunge into ultralow fertility while the blue ones have maintained themselves better?
So let's
Malcolm Collins: talk about the two country groups. Orange includes Korea, Spain, and Italy. While blue includes the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.
Simone Collins: And REU groups them into two sets. He says the countries in the first set are group one nations. In the second set, they're group two nations. Notice anything about their growth rates.
One thing is that they've all grown to similar enough levels. Another is the acceleration of the pace of growth. So in the second tweet, he shares two additional graphs showing different. Trajectories of growth and different fertility rates
okay.
In Group one, nations [00:02:00] started off a bit richer and they grew at a more stable pace. In Group two, the nations started off poorer, but they caught up to group one by growing faster. In the latter half of the 20th century, their fertility re rate trajectories followed suit.
Malcolm Collins: And so what you see here is a really interesting thing in Group one countries where we've talked about it in other videos, but around the 1930s there was a huge fertility crash that a lot of these group one countries recovered from.
This was mostly due to medical technology, although how seeing in the war played a role as well. Hmm. And you can look at our video on, you know, the, the ba the baby Boom. To get more information on this, but the gist being is that if you take the baby boom as an anomaly and you sort of try to draw a through line through these, it looks fairly stable.
Whereas these other countries start to crash really dramatically and pretty quickly. And what's interesting is most of the crash in these other countries. Fertility rates [00:03:00] happens between 1920 and I'd say 1980. So before our, our, our modern time. And that's where they're dropping for much higher initial fertility rates.
So if you look at it like sort of the mean fertility rate at the beginning of this period in 1920 for the group two, all of these countries where they started with a much higher mean fertility, let's say around. Four or maybe even 4.5, whereas the other group started with a mean fertility of three to 3.5.
Mm-hmm. So it's almost as if the higher fertility you start with, the lower your fertility goes over time.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And REU has a theory around this.
Premiere rights. All societies used to be pretty sexist. They used to repress women in various ways, and that was just that for all of human history. But as societies have developed, one of the major changes has been that women's status has quickly moved up to the levels
that have only once been seen by men with slow continuous growth. These norms changed and women's acceptance was [00:04:00] taken up gradually without much need for pushing. But with rapid growth, the picture is far different. The norms have changed more slowly than the markets, and I. That may have been disastrous.
You can see plenty of signs of this everywhere. For example, in the Group one Nations that experience slow and steady growth, men and women tend to have more similar household labor distributions. He then shares a graph of time use and fertility among the 12 group one and two group two nations. And there is somewhat of a negative correlation between total fertility rate and female minus male daily hours of unpaid household labor.
He continues. Similarly, in the case of distributions in the home is incidentally related to fertility among this group of developed countries, he shows another graph with negative correlation between time and fertility among 20 nations. He writes, I'm aware there are issues with treating this as if it's causal, but the point here is less about the particular example of household time use and more about how norms change over time with slow [00:05:00] versus rapid growth.
Take South Korea as an example in South Korea, men's attitudes towards women are still pretty unrefined, a potential result. Enormous sex differences in getting along in politics, these gulfs. Are opening up the world over, but South Korea is the most extreme example Here. He shares a financial times graph showing the ideology gap opening up between young and men and women in countries across the world.
With South Korea being the first country shown, I. And just over time, especially from 2015 to 2020, the gap is just like, like they're just becoming different species. Whereas in the US the gap is violent, but not that insane. In Germany, it's a little bit less bad. In the UK it's, it's also, I mean, they're, they're all getting worse.
And I, this resonates with me. I mean, I, I could see a lot of the tension there making sense.
Malcolm Collins: I actually think Rock came up with a better answer, but I do like this answer. It's definitely something that is contributing to the fertility collapse that we're seeing in Italy and Spain. [00:06:00] Is the idea that not, sorry, not Italy and Spain, South Korea, but I don't know why.
Said that but likely the same thing is that men are staying much more misogynistic in their attitudes and expectations of their wives
Simone Collins: than
Malcolm Collins: men are in the United States. And if you get female liberation in terms of the workforce with all the misogynistic attitudes, now marriage becomes an incredibly raw deal for.
For women? No, just in terms of hedonism, I'm not saying in terms of like genetics or whatever. Yeah. But if you are expected to handle the kids, handle the house and handle a career that's equivalent to your husband's career and he just, what does whatever like, takes the status, bosses you around, like, yeah, what, why would you want that?
Right. And then a lot of men feel like, well. You know, you should give us, like, we do need to maintain some degree of our historic culture. So I understand why they're pushing back and they think a lot of women have gone too far in their accusations around men, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the level of misogyny and misandry in Korea, it is at a [00:07:00] completely different level than what you see in the United States or something like like that.
Like these. Two genders are almost two separated political classes now. Yeah. And that's definitely more in Italy. I grew up partially in Italy. I lived there for a year when I was a kid. And one of those things I distinctly remember is the constant cat calling. Oh really? Wow. Yeah. And this is, this was true when I was growing up there, and I remember this being an American, from Texas, being in Italy and in Texas.
I don't remember ever. Hearing, cat calling golly.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: You just wouldn't do it. Like it, it'd get beaten up or something, you know. But in Italy, no. It's considered very normal for guys to be, you know, really and, and people who don't understand why cat calling is bad. Like you are intentionally harassing in a way that is meant to be derogatory of their status in re relative to your status, a woman.
Mm-hmm. A lot of people think that this is like. I don't know that there's, like, there might be some women who have like a weird fetish for it. They're not even a weird fetish. I'd actually say it's probably a, a normal fetish to like [00:08:00] being publicly humiliated by men saying you're attractive. But I, I don't think that it is something that you're gonna see a lot of in countries where women are seen as, you know, tough or deserving of their own like rights.
Now when I put this into any thoughts before we go to what GR has to say?
Simone Collins: I'm, no, you have me. So curious about what Grok is gonna say. I can't say no.
Malcolm Collins: All right. So, what I put into Grok to sort of test it. So if you look at the countries that he includes in the two groups I decided to only include a.
Few of the countries that he includes in the two groups. Okay. To see if rock's findings hold true for the other groups that are in the two groups. Hmm. So the full two groups that he used was Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, uk, us. Mm-hmm. The second group was Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Spain.
Okay. And so I decided, let's just do two. Okay. So, sure. What's the difference between South Korea, Spain, and Italy and the us, France and the [00:09:00] uk? All right. Yeah. Culturally speaking, sure. What. It says the most striking thing would be respect for elders. With, and, and this is definitely true with the US, France and the UK having much lower levels of this than Spain, Italy, and South Korea.
And so then my question could be, oh, is that cultural distance also true in the other countries here, like Greece and portugal. Yes it is. Okay. What about the other countries on the other side? Germany and Denmark. Yeah, definitely way lower respect for elders. Mm-hmm. And if I actually think about where countries have seen fertility collapse hit the hardest, like Japan, Korea, China, these are all countries that have a unique respect for elders.
Yeah. Where has fertility hit? Uniquely lowly greater Appalachian cultural region, as we've mentioned, which has almost no respect for elders at all. Like elders are kept alive, but like, definitely we won't kill you, but we won't kill you. [00:10:00] But it's always we'll resent
Simone Collins: you a little bit.
Malcolm Collins: And Jewish culture, and I actually argue Jewish culture does not have a particularly high respect for elders when contrasted with, let's say Korean or Japanese or Confucius culture.
Mm-hmm. You have. Like a little degree, but I, I don't. I'd say less than Christian. Even like your modern, like East coast Christian. Mm. Elders are just not assigned a high status unless they can meritocratic prove that they deserve a high status. So it's not that you don't see elders in positions of status, it's just that being elder in and of itself is not a thing deserving of respect.
Mm. Okay. And so the question could be, why would that cause, well, let's, let's go into it a bit more before we ask why. Yeah. South Korea, Spain and Italy appear to have a cultural similarity and that they have a deep respect for their elders. Rooted in traditions like FU and South Korea and Catholicism in Spain and Italy.
This respect manifests in behavior such as using formal language, giving up seats for elders and prioritizing family roles, ah, which [00:11:00] contrasts with the more individualistic and use focus culture that the US and the UK and France. Mm-hmm. However it shows a France it says, shows a blend of this,
hmm. Okay. Here it also divide stuff with looking at individualism versus collectivism with the cultures on this side being much more individualistic, which I also see, and much more low power difference, which I also see. So that's another thing that could be causing this. Mm-hmm. Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Spain, all are less individualistic, more collectivist, and have higher power differences.
Mm. Whereas the us, uk, Sweden, Germany, France, and Denmark all have fairly low power differences. So let's think about how this could have caused a fertility issue. Right. Okay. Yes. The respect for elders is. I guess it's fairly obvious to me, like where, when resources are limited and demographic collapses already underway.
Yeah. Do you distribute the resources that are left? You're gonna, if you could choose more [00:12:00] babies or elders mm-hmm. You're gonna choose elders. Yeah. I mean, a country like Korea should be spending as much on family creation as it spends on elder care. 100%. Yeah. And I'm fairly sure it's not, I'll add in post, but I'm fairly sure it's not even like, you know, maybe one 10th what it's spending on elder care.
Okay. I find myself surprised on this one. They only spend about double on elderly costs, In elderly costs in South Korea, it's around 51 to 54 billion USD and in children it's around 18 to 22 billion USDA per year as of 2025. So the elderly care ratio is two to 2.5 x birth incentives.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If you look at so, so that makes perfect sense to me. Because it's about, or me as an individual, like if one of my parents was like, oh, I'm aiding, help me. I can't survive on social security. It's in a message like, disabled. I have four kids, you know. F off.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Like
Simone Collins: your problem.
Malcolm Collins: Your problem.
Speaker 4: Hey, man, I got five [00:13:00] kids to feed.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I'd be like that scene from team America where he is like, if you get caught, you may need to take your own life. And he slice the hammer across the table.
Well, you'll probably want to take your own life here. You better have this.
All right, team. That's it. We've got a job to do.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That'd be me. I'd be like, you know, you need to, you know
Simone Collins: what to
Malcolm Collins: do, you know what to do. Okay. So that I see. Now let's talk about individualism.
Why would high individualism lead to higher fertility rates in these cultures? Mm-hmm. The answer here could be that you have an easier time resisting the monoculture and dominant cultural practices within your country. And so you're gonna have more people who sort of buck the trend.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Which I could definitely see leading to higher fertility rates in many of these countries.
Yeah. You were gonna say something?
Simone Collins: No, no, no. I'm, I'm agreeing with you.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then high power distance. That makes a lot of sense. I think in the modern world, high power distance [00:14:00] just doesn't really work that well anymore. This is where like your boss is like really high above you in status. And this is actually really true in a lot of Latin America, where we're also seeing a unique fertility collapse.
It is sort of across Catholic cultures. Because you have like the, the people who matter and then the people who are the people, right? Mm-hmm. And why this leads to fertility collapse is I think the people, people like don't see a point in continuing to cycle anymore.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They don't wanna put people into this system where they're gonna be an underclass and I.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. Why would you, why would you continue to participate in that? The final sort of hypothesis I'd have here about what would lead to this is just a longer time to evolve a resistance to the urban monoculture. I think the urban monoculture didn't really care, or the iterations of that existed.
Before it, like the prodomal iterations of it didn't really focus on these other countries when they were super poor and culturally different.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. And I think that's
Malcolm Collins: was leading to their high fertility rates at that period. Mm-hmm. And so they didn't have a century [00:15:00] for the people who were slightly lower fertility rate when exposed to the urban monoculture to die out disproportionately.
Yeah. And so now they're all dying out at once.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that so dire. That is, that is interesting. I don't know, I still, I'm still finding myself, however, gravitating toward the, the misogyny thing, just because so much of this problem is couples just failing to get married.
Malcolm Collins: True and, and, and a misogynistic attitude.
Pervading a culture where women have an option not to marry, is going to lead to women, not is enthusiastically engaging with the marriage culture. So every high
Simone Collins: fertility family we know personally. Mm-hmm. His husbands has husbands who contribute a lot, are extremely supportive if they, if they're the breadwinners, they also contribute a lot of labor.
If [00:16:00] they are not the sole breadwinners, they contribute probably as much labor as their wife also breadwinners. Contribute. Mm-hmm. You know, there's just like this, actually,
Malcolm Collins: I, I might word it differently. I'd take every high fertility family that we know has a husband who would be considered a simp by like the Manosphere or the Andrew Tate movement.
Mm-hmm. And not necessarily like, like for example, us, I'm not like a simp in a traditional term, but people have been like, oh, Malcolm, you're like overly nice to your wife. You overly cest your wife, you. Mm-hmm. And I'm probably of all of the high fertility men that we know the most traditionally masculine.
Yeah. Except for maybe Kevin Dolan.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kevin
Malcolm Collins: Dolan's pretty traditionally masculine, but Yeah. The, the, yeah. I think that you're a hundred percent right here. Women have kids when they feel supported and protected. Mm-hmm. . Because a woman in a modern context is just not gonna feel like you have her back if you're pulling this. And, and the truth is, is you [00:17:00] don't. I think we saw this was a quiverfull movement, and it's part of the reason the Quiverfull movement sort of fell apart, was a.
It's understanding of the man's role in the household instead of adapting to modern and changing pressures. They tried to go as this dictatorial male in control, woman at home, does nothing birthing. And it didn't create an environment that daughters wanted to recreate or that sons were capable of recreating.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I agree.
Malcolm Collins: And, and, and actually here, I thought, I, I read something really interesting on our discord that somebody posted about the failure of the quiver full movement to replicate itself. Hmm. And I was like, oh my God, this is so true. I've gotta read it. So this is from the person on the Discord called Cat.
I don't know. It's some sort of vegetation. Okay. And they have three kids. 'cause people say that on the Discord, how many kids they have. I have so many thoughts regarding this topic as somebody who has raised quiverfull adjacent Christian [00:18:00] homeschooler, who attended Quiverfull co-ops, et cetera. But my family wasn't specifically quiverfull ourselves.
I think the big factor of their failure is the way that they specifically and intentionally raised non-AG agentic children. Boys in general have a, had a bit of a rudderless time over the past few decades, but I've never seen anything like the slow motion catastrophe that has been the quiver for boys aging out of their homeschooling regime.
Mm. The prototypical quiver for family is a first generation. Fairly beta white collar husband, fairly crazy homeschooling mother, raising sons who are simultaneously longhouse brow beaten under mommy's supervision his entire life, while also being inculcated with an irrational entitlement complex based on being male not being accomplished.
They can't follow in their haired, checked out fathers white collar footsteps because they are undereducated College is of this world. Yeah. But they often don't have the connections or savvy to make it [00:19:00] in the working class trades world. So they either languish in some sort of drifting failure to launch, or if their family is particularly committed, get married off and are expected to support a family.
Then it increases by one every year starting at the age of 18 on nothing but thoughts and prayers. Mm. It's such a mess. Anecdotally, I can confirm mass deconversion rates. , I don't think the duggars are at all are typical. They mostly compensate for the above issue by having all that TLC money that Jim Bob bought real estate with.
So he basically supports his sons through the dad welfare. Hmm. It's just crazy to me that they had all this IBLP propaganda about how they were gonna raise a Joshua generation. It's gonna take over the government and lead a worldwide revival and then raise the least age agentic children ever walk the earth. Timid, sly not good.
Not good. Or
Complete and utter failure and refutation of the movement's philosophy. Yeah. And yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that that might [00:20:00] be what we're seeing in these cultures that have these stricter power differences between the old and the young as well.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is that they are.
But they put really strict rules on their kids. And if you look at our family, well, we have rules for our kids. I expect them and will be proud of them when they break those rules. That's part of why we use corporal punishment instead of limiting punishment to just like yelling or emotional escalation.
Simone Collins: Yeah. '
Malcolm Collins: cause when a kid does something bad, it allows me to quickly show them like, bop, they did something wrong. Mm-hmm. But I still love you like was recorded in that piece. Hmm. So that they understand that breaking rules does not remove them from the circle of love of this family, and that I will set down a fence and rules for them.
But I still, especially when they're breaking rules in their own you know, based on their own internal moral compass have respect for them in doing that. And, and you know, you see this, I've, I've mentioned in previous episodes like. Jordan Peterson, a guide to raising Simps, Jordan Peterson is like, you just need to break the child's will down until they listen [00:21:00] to you.
And I'm like, that is not a good idea. That raises non-agent children. Yeah. You want to build the child's will up until they take. From nobody. And if they don't understand why you're giving rules and you're just like, you just obey the authority, then they're just gonna obey the urban monoculture. And I think a lot of these religious families, that's what they were.
Just obey the authority. Just obey the authority. Just obey the authority. But they thought the authority was always gonna be at the church. Mm-hmm. And they didn't realize that the authority changes based on the person's context of they're interacting within the real world. Yeah. And so they were easily brow beaten and they also created males that like, what?
Who would want that? Like a lot of girls just aren't gonna want that. Yeah. And, and so they, they get a, you know, because if, if it's like much worse than like a Mormon community or something where you have more of the church like keeping track of things and less a chance that one man is, is gonna be like overly domineering with his family or something.
Yeah. Within these more dispersed Protestant communities I, as a [00:22:00] woman, honestly, I wouldn't wanna marry into one of these. I'd be really worried. Especially if they were raised was a sort of like, well men lead the family attitude like, and we have me as a man, lead the family. I just consider that a gift from Simone.
Simone Collins: Well, and back to our repeated theme of, of real dominance, real dominance isn't. Shut up and do what I say, follow my orders. Real dominance is demonstrating through your competence, good decision making and good leadership, natural leadership, that your plans are trustworthy and the best way to go. People fall in line.
There is no ordering and there is no shutting people down and systematically training them to be compliant. You don't need to train people to be compliant when they know you're right. That's the big difference.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and we had the episode on, on Andrew Tate, where I was like, Andrew Tate's idea of masculinity.
It's like he watched the gladiator and he is like, ah, the emperor, that's what the ideal man is like. And that, that, you know, the, the gladiator Maximus, he's a simp. Whereas the [00:23:00] exact opposite is true. You know, and I pointed this out because if you watch and. Is he attempts to force the women around him to follow his wills, literally at Sword Point, you know, like Andrew Tate being like, this is why I have a sword.
So women don't, you know, they talk down to me and you see, the Emperor playing was like a sword in his house, you know? And wanting to be loved. And I think that if you look at Maximus, none of this is about being loved by people or anything like that. He just has a duty and he is carrying it out.
And it's certainly not about, like, if you look at the character of Maximus. You look at the relationship he's framed at having with both his kids and the woman who has that desperate crush on him is, is this is not a guy who is pushing around his wife, telling his wife, like get in the kitchen, telling his wife like, you do what?
I say, now, you know, the wife is making him dinner because she cares about him, right? Mm-hmm. And, and they're working on a shared goal or something like that, like mm-hmm. We don't have any feeling like they don't have traditional gender roles. But the traditional gender roles are carried out because those are the preferences of the male and the woman. Mm-hmm. They are not carried out because the [00:24:00] woman has some supernatural reason to be obedient or some like biological mandate to be obedient to her husband. It's just mm-hmm. Average biological differences here.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Yeah. Which means that there also is no commitment to. Those specific roles and the commitment is to where someone's propensity and skill lies. So if, for example. A man and a woman or whatever configuration of people you want work to pair up and start raising kids together. We're not gonna be like, well, you're the woman, so of course you're doing those things.
It's, well, okay, what are you gonna contribute best? Do that thing. Yeah. So if a man ends up doing all of the cooking, indoor cleaning and infant rearing, fine, we're, we are not married to that. And I think a lot of these really conservative religions. Are, well, that's just these, these cultures as well. Like, well, no, the, the man can't do that.
Even if he'd rather do that. Like even if the woman has the highest educational degree and the greatest earning potential and the greatest professional network, she has to become the [00:25:00] mother who stays at home. And somehow the less educated, less connected, less privileged man has to earn enough for both.
Malcolm Collins: . So this isn't just like a religious culture thing, this is also within the wider online manosphere, right-leaning culture. Mm-hmm. Where recently there was a fight of memes in which there was this concept of like the dad meme or the husband meme. And it's typically the husband being like, oh honey, of course I'll do X for you.
Or I'll do Y for you. You know, he is doing something sweet for the wife. That's like normal for a husband to do. Yeah.
This was known as the wife Jack Meme Wars. I was wrong. It wasn't about a husband meme, it was a wife meme.
Malcolm Collins: And then a bunch of guys were like, oh, like you guys posting, what a simp you are. You know? And the guys of course complaining that these other guys are simps are unmarried, right? And it's like, well, that's genetically what's being preserved in the human condition.
It's not a simp, it's being able to work with people, right. And being able to appreciate what other people are bringing to the table. And it has become almost within these cultures, seen as a sign of submission or browbeat ness [00:26:00] if mm-hmm. You are shown as making either concessions to your wife or you are shown as having appreciation for your wife.
And yet anybody who is gonna have a lot of kids knows that those two things are like. Within a modern context, critical to, I think having, let's say over five kids, like you just can't get to these sorts of numbers. If you're not doing that. If you're, if you're taking the, you do what I say approach you're gonna really struggle to get that high because the woman is just not gonna be all about it.
She's gonna be like, what am I doing all this for? Like, what am I raising my daughters for? Like, what's the point, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It's demotivating. Yeah, slave mentality. If you want to turn your wife into a slave, she's gonna labor like a slave. Well, again, intrinsic
Simone Collins: motivation is just a billion times more powerful than extrinsic motivation, as is seen across.
Countless studies, research, anecdotal examples, just says this should be common sense
Malcolm Collins: their wives following them for the same reason and gladiator why people followed what the emperor said instead of the reason why people [00:27:00] followed what Maximus said. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's a completely different Are they following you because you're inspiring them or are they following you because it's the rules and, and because you'll hurt them if they don't.
Mm-hmm. And I think that that, this sort of like ideal of male athletics, that's not really working for any man anywhere that I'm aware of, except for maybe Andrew Tate is like super toxic and it was Andrew Tate. It basically only works because he's super wealthy, like women will do a lot of crazy nonsense for, for very wealthy men.
Yeah. It's a trade off, especially if they have like a public profile or something like that. Like you look at the simp women that like Elon gets or something like that. But I could not treat you the way that Elon treats his wi. Like I would never get away with that. Like you'd leave me, I. And I don't think that like, and somebody's like, is that fair?
It's like, dude, he's a, he's like a infinity billionaire. Like fair is not part of the equation. It's a different social contract when you're interacting with somebody like that it's [00:28:00] like, it's like, oh, the king in, in like, you know, medieval Europe or something like that, treats their wives differently.
Than you do.
It's like a entirely different social contract exists for the king, of course. Yeah. Like, what, what are you, like, how could you think that? And I think that you get sort of two categories of influencers who like go into this category of influence.
One is they're super successful, they become super wealthy, and they're able to live some sort of like, unrealistic life. Yeah. The other they go like the Nick Fuentes path and they end up like a forever celibate, right. You know, where they can't. Like his advice on the way you should treat girls leads to the extinction of your culture.
Like he is living proof of that.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: He's not gonna have any kids likely at this point, given how old he is already. Or at least not many. Not unless he use his IVF, which he won't. And so, my problem
Simone Collins: is, I mean, men really can afford to delay fertility. But they're either [00:29:00] ensuring that their children are not going to be very healthy, or they need to freeze their sperm.
Guys, please freeze your sperm for the love. Like, although here's my other problem with like yeah,
Malcolm Collins: male genetic health. It degrades it around the same rate as female genetic health does. It just doesn't fall off a cliff at that rate. And these, these
Simone Collins: higher risk factors that your child will get if you have them with older sperm.
Like higher risks of cancer and all, all sorts of other disorders, they get passed on to your grandchildren and their grandchildren. So what are you doing? But beyond that, like, so, I mean, one, it is actually super possible if you free sperm to have healthy children late in life and, you know, put that off.
My problem is that older men are still in a bad situation if they choose to do that because either you end up with, you know, your perfect sexy 20 something wife who. It's never gonna be on your level because there's so much of an age gap. You know, you're never really gonna have an intellectual [00:30:00] equal. I mean, you might meet someone who loves old souls, but still like age, you know, it's, it doesn't quite work as neatly as I would hope on that front.
And then, yeah, well and end up with an older woman who probably hasn't frozen her eggs. And then you have the same problem with genetic material.
Malcolm Collins: A needs men are gonna be doing like you. Okay, let me put it this way. You a guy right now. You're like, yeah, when I'm 50 or 60, I'm gonna get a young woman and I'm gonna have lots of kids after I'm rich.
Yeah. Do, do you want a child? Do you want to raise a child and then have her raise child? Like you're not just that, but like. Do you even want to be having that sex? Like no, I'm, I'm being honest, like you do you really want like a 50-year-old sleeping with like a late 20 something? Like it's gross. Do you think that's hot for the 50-year-old?
Even at that point? Like where you're taking all of the medications so that you're still horny? Oh, don't do all. You're taking all of the pills so that you can still get hard. Like that's
Simone Collins: not Well then there's also the problem, like the most. [00:31:00] And I, this is not spoken about enough. The most unsexy type of sex is obligatory sex, especially if you know that the partner is like having sex out of obligation.
And they may be great at acting, but I'm pretty sure that the vast, vast majority of 20 something girls who marry wealthy and successful, much older men. Are faking it, which is the, you're having sex
Malcolm Collins: with a woman who's pretending to be into
Simone Collins: you,
Malcolm Collins: like,
Simone Collins: which is the worst type of sex. I just like, I, I, I could never, I could never have sex with someone like that,
Malcolm Collins: just like that.
I'm just, I'm just saying that like they think that what they're getting is just delaying and then they get the young hot wife and it's like, no, you get the young hot wife when you are young and hot, or you get some other type of weird relationship. Mm-hmm. Not like you create that relationship later in life.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] So,
I think that that's gonna be a possibility for them. But the reality is it's not either from a genetic standpoint that real of a possibility or. From a, you know, they're not like, oh, I can delay getting this now and I'll get it in the future. No, you're, you're not getting it in the future. You're getting some weird other thing.
Which is, which is not as fun, you know, you, yeah. Anyway yeah. Love you to DeSimone. I am glad that I settled down with you. I had another one that I'm, I'm not actually not gonna make because I just know it'll do bad. But it was really interesting to research, which was. If the trope of the bachelor party where people felt like they were like marrying a, a ball and chain and like, oh
Simone Collins: yeah.
Like this is my last moment to go wild.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was like, is this real? Like, is it, was this ever actually a thing that was practiced in large numbers because it like doesn't seem,
Simone Collins: oh, I thought it was a condensed version of the sort of Catholic model that existed back all the way to like ancient Roman times where it was just kind of understood that debauch wealthy men would.[00:33:00]
Have all the female partners they wanted and then. Try to sober up later in life when they got married. And that Bachelor party's kind of compressing that for less wealthy people. What, what, what did you find in your research?
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, apparently it did really happen. And it, you know, they were like, well, I understand that today.
'cause I was like, it doesn't even make logical sense. Like you're about to get married to presumably the person that you love more than anyone in the world. And you've been so excited to spend your life with. Hmm. Like why would you go out and sleep with other people right before that? Like, why would you want that?
And it was like, oh, well, you see, people didn't actually used to love their wives during this period of history. Yeah, I
Simone Collins: mean this, the, yeah, the alternate take there is, hold on. Actually, maybe this was the sign of a better. World in which people got married as business arrangements and saw sex as something that they did separately, but also lived in monogamous societies.
Malcolm Collins: A breaking of both. Which is to say that it was this period of the boomers where they got all of the divorces, you know, they had like the really high [00:34:00] divorce rate and they'd had terrible marriages. Like everybody knows, like. The boomers were almost like the pure infantilization of humanity where they were a generation that had very little self-control, very little like is obsessed with self validation.
I. Just, you know, broke a lot of social traditions that were actually really important without understanding what they were doing. Didn't really pass money down to their kids intentionally. Didn't really establish the idea of like intergenerational family units, well, in the way that their ancestors had.
Mm-hmm. They just sort of, after the greatest generation, it just like increasingly degraded. Then you got to the boomers. And I think since the boomers, every generation has been sort of building themselves a little bit back from that point. You know, you look at Jan Alpha and they're definitely a lot more mature than the boomers in terms of the way they relate to things like sex and sexuality and, and, and parties and wives and everything like that.
And I think that the boomers were this generation where they got married out of obligation. 'cause it was sort of like what they did. [00:35:00] They were like a generation that, that. Wanted to live this white picket fence ideal, or they had like an ideal of what they wanted to live without. Thinking about why these things were ideal without thinking about why you had kids or without thinking about everything, was just about like hedonism and consumerism for them.
Hmm. Very much what I think, you know, something like Fight Club was arguing against was the mindset of the boomer generation and. Then you have other generations trying to reestablish some sort of stable state norm after the boomers,
Simone Collins: huh? Well, that's interesting. That's an interesting idea. I. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, they're the generation that had all of our societies that just take out debt forever instead of actually trying to build like stable civilizations.
They're the generation that reads the most. Whenever we bring up fertility collapse, they're the generation that's out. If you look at these, these Trump protests, everyone is like, it's wild that they're all like elderly white people. Those are the only people protesting. So [00:36:00] weird.
Simone Collins: So
Malcolm Collins: weird. But they, they still get their news from the news, like CNN and stuff.
And so they think that like, oh dude, the evil Trump is outed
Simone Collins: again
Malcolm Collins: anyway. Well, and I
Simone Collins: guess it's, it's very boomer to think that protests actually work, because, I don't know, I guess I should look, go to a protest
Malcolm Collins: one day and film and just be like, you know, protests don't work. Nobody cares about what you're doing here.
No, you have wasted a day. Do you have nothing better to do with your lives?
Simone Collins: One of the things that we really can't stand is listening to people who have really bad brain rot, and the kinds of people who attend protests are, I would argue, the epitome of that type of person. Remember at Natal Con, there were those protestors outside the opening night and Kira the.
Journalist from Mother Jones. So tried to talk to them. Sufficiently progressive, right? Didn't look conservative. No. Came up to them, [00:37:00] approached them as a Mother Jones journalist and attempted to talk with him. With them. And when I saw her after her attempted interaction, she's like, well, I, I couldn't get a word on edgewise.
Like she attempted to interview them and they were so. Brain rotted that she literally couldn't ask them a question to get their opinion on the matter they were protesting.
Malcolm Collins: Well, it's funny you you say that there's been a lot of videos that have been going viral of people going to these Trump protests and trying to talk to people.
Oh, yeah. And they don't know why they're there, and they don't know why Trump is a fascist. They're like, Trump's a fashion. They go explain.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Like, what
Malcolm Collins: has he done that's. That makes him a fascist. And what the right is taking away from this is, oh, these must be paid protesters who don't actually have a vested interest in this.
I don't think that's it. I think they're just brainless, brain rotted automatons who are like CNN says Trump is bad. No, I go to field and yell at people. I, I, I genuinely think more people are like closer to like NBC at [00:38:00] automatons than you would imagine
Simone Collins: maybe. Maybe they're just all in the same Facebook groups.
I imagine this is a Facebook groups thing. If it's mostly boomers, it's just a show thing. Oh, no. Anyway, come on. That makes sense, right?
Malcolm Collins: It No, it does, it does. Tonight
Simone Collins: for dinner. Hot dogs. Hot dogs. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna do my we got 'em in all these with relish. Fancy. All these buns, all these
Simone Collins: amazing. Oh yeah.
They're brioche buns. We really went all out for that.
Malcolm Collins: You're gonna toast the buds, of course,
Simone Collins: with butter. Obviously,
Malcolm Collins: We are going to though save my curry for another night. I can have it tomorrow.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And I'll do hot dogs tonight too. Lunch
Simone Collins: tomorrow. Hot dog night. Very American. Big deviation from your typical meal choice, but everyone seems to want hot dogs right now, so.
Malcolm Collins: Well, the kids wanted hot dogs and I was like, you know what? We've got the onions now we've got relish. We've got, do you want [00:39:00] them in
Simone Collins: confetti or. Slices and slices.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, onions and hot dogs you typically want in slices, get slice, get more front slice. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Not not, although I guess I've seen it both ways or I think of relish and I think of the confetti.
No, either
Malcolm Collins: way works. Honestly, the confetti works just as well. 'cause you get crunch from it too. So you know, it actually, I'm thinking
Simone Collins: confetti's better. 'cause you can really finely chop it and you don't want to have like really like peeling off noodles. You know what I mean?
Malcolm Collins: So you guys in the comments need to answer this hot dog onions, is it confetti or is it, is it noodles?
Confetti or noodles for hot dog onions
Simone Collins: asking the hard questions. I'm more interested if people have alternate theories between the group one and group two countries. If it's that feminism didn't catch up as quickly with economic development, which then led to a faster backlash and separation between the sexes, or if, if rock's theory was more accurate or if it's something else that you think is going on because.
I find that quite interesting. I had had previously thought that leapfrogging development, like really fast development was a good thing [00:40:00] because you ended up getting like building infrastructure when tech was already more advanced. So you, you ended up with much better systems than say the United States had because you were developing, using, you know, third to fourth generation, later technology and all these other things.
And so this is making me look differently at the benefits of developing quickly and later, but. Yeah, I'm curious to hear people's theories on that.
Malcolm Collins: All right, Simone, I love you to death and have a spectacular day.
Simone Collins: Goodbye my dear husband and I will, I will give you a call on your phone when you're nurse run, so please, please on.
Thank you.
Do you want me to open for you? Wow. Wow. You can read it. I got a purple car. Sure. It says. That is. That's so nice. So cool. Look at that. Joie. Do you wanna put it on the fridge? Yeah. Okay.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Opus Dei vs. Jesuits: An Outsider's Take on the Battle for Catholicism's Soul
7 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this insightful conversation, Simone and the host dive deep into the misunderstood world of Opus Dei, breaking down the myths and misconceptions popularized by media, such as “The Da Vinci Code.” They discuss the origins, beliefs, and practices of Opus Dei, contrasting them with those of the Jesuits. The conversation reveals Opus Dei's focus on personal sanctity through daily work and responsibilities, and its appeal to lay Catholics. In stark contrast, the Jesuits' history of social justice, intellectual pursuits, and perceived left-leaning tendencies are examined. The discussion also touches on the dramatic historical power struggles within the Catholic Church, highlighting moments when Jesuits' influence rivaled that of the Pope. Moreover, how these factions may reflect broader societal dynamics between progressives and conservatives is analyzed. The episode concludes with musings on the future of these groups and a humorous personal exchange about family life.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today we are gonna be talking about the Opus Day. You know, the villain from the Da Vinci Code. That is the exposure
Simone Collins: like 99% of people have,
Malcolm Collins: and most people know that they, they, they practice mortification or some of them do, where they like hurt themselves or like where like chains that cut into them when they wa even like famous ones.
There's like a famous female author who's Opus Day who wears like a chain. And you may think that these guys are. Crazy. But what you will learn as we go into the opus day is they might be the only sane Catholics there are. You, they are definitely in the Catholic, and we'll see how much we have an opportunity to get in the Opus Day verse Jesuit mindset.
They are definitely the good guy side. And the Jesuits are definitely the bad guy side.
Simone Collins: You go so hard on Catholics. .
Malcolm Collins: And I think you, Simone, specifically, are gonna love the Opus Day as you learn more about them. Yeah. Even more than you think you do right now.
Simone Collins: Really?
Malcolm Collins: So the Opus Day was established in 1928, so very, [00:01:00] very young. Wow.
Simone Collins: I would've guessed like. Late 16 hundreds early S hundred. That's crazy.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When Saint Joseph Maria Escoria, I, I'm gonna pronounce that wrong, we'll just call him Escoria had a spiritual insight that ordinary Christians could become saints by living their face fully in their daily routines. Wow. Especially through their work. He envisioned a past to holiness that didn't require withdrawing from the world into a monastery or covet.
Convent, but instead embrace secular life as a means of sanctification. The vision was formerly recognized by the Catholic Church in 1982 when Pope John Paul II designated Opus Day as a personal re giving its special status to carry out its mission globally, so it didn't become like official until 1982.
Wow.
Simone Collins: Sounds a little bit like Maana Buddhism or. This premise is you don't have to become like a [00:02:00] reclusive monk in order to make religious progress. It's interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I, I actually view it quite different. I'd actually say it's very similar to techno puritanism as techno puritanism relates to work, which is the idea that you should treat your work and your duty in life with religious fervor that you should be as dedicated.
To your job. If your job and you, and you should have a job that attempts to improve the world by your philosophical framework and you should treat that. With the extremeness and with the fervor that a monk or hermit who has shut themselves off from society oh, treats their own seclusion.
Simone Collins: Ah. So, whereas Maha Buddhism kind of allows for normalism, it's like, no, no, no.
In everyday life you can do it, but also you're gonna be a completely weirdo. By the way No, no, no, no. This is, this is
Malcolm Collins: like, you need to be max about your job. Okay. You need to be max about the most intense, an open state belief. You have a, a duty to be happy to other [00:03:00] people so that you don't bring other people down, you know?
I love that. To, to, and we, we do this too, that you have responsibility for your mood. You have a responsibility for how you affect other people. Yeah. And all of this responsibility is an intent, religious responsibility. Hmm. Hmm. So sanctification of work members are encouraged to perform their daily tasks, whether professional, domestic or otherwise, with excellence as a way to serve God and others.
So like you are supposed to be a mother as extremely as like a a hundred percent. 107% as like somebody would be a a in a monastery or something like that. Ah, and you're not supposed to be very different from other Catholic factions. You as a mother, if you're doing it a hundred percent, are not less than the none in the covenant,
Simone Collins: right?
Because, or a convent. You're making the same amount of sacrifices and engaging in the same amount of discipline. I like that, like basically apply the religious fervor and discipline that you would see in a convent. [00:04:00] Or in monastery to your everyday life, and why shouldn't you? That's so much better.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Prayer and spiritual direction. A structured spiritual life known as a plan of life includes practices like mass at the rosary, mental prayer and spiritual reading. Spiritual direction from a priest or trained layperson helps members grow in their faith. So basically you're supposed to sit down with somebody and plan out your life very much like we would suggest we something as in our tradition.
Wow. . Okay. How are they different from other Catholics? Opus Day members are fully Catholic and do not differ from other Catholics in terms of, well, as of what,
Simone Collins: 1984.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no. This is modern. However, approach to living out their faith sets them apart.
They have an emphasis on the laity. While many Catholic groups focus on religious life EG monks and nuns, obu de prioritizes the lay people sanctifying the world from within. So, while other religious orders within Catholicism are like, go the most extreme, separate yourself from the world, everything like [00:05:00] that, even the monks and nuns of the opus day.
Or supposed to focus on the lay person and it's service to helping lay people be at their like same level of holiness and, and saintliness. That's the goal of these individuals not to have some sort of a separate life integration with daily life. Their spirituality is deeply rooted in ordinary activities, contrasted with traditions that might emphasize monastic retreat or extraordinary penance.
Devotion to church teaching. They have a particular devotion to the Pope and the magisterium, the church's teaching authority, which. Which reinforces their unity was the broader Catholic community. They believe they have to have a daily massing communion. So they have to go to mass as frequently as possible.
Preferably daily. Wow. That's a lot. If you have a job rosary and mental prayer, reciting the rosary and spending time in personal prayer each day. So they're really focused on like their routines and it's a lot what people's Yeah. Look [00:06:00] weird. Spiritual reading, confession, regular reading a scripture or spiritual books and frequent confession.
But anyway, when I say look weird, you would know that to us this is a good thing. Yes, yes. 'cause this is how religions survive. Fertility collapse and survive. Deconversion. They have a concept that you've told me about, called the heroic Minute. A practice remembers rise immediately upon waking, saying, serve am or I will serve to offer their day to God.
So you're not allowed to stay in bed. You're not allowed to procrastinate. You shum outta bed the moment you wake up. And this is, I think, a really good way to relate. I mean, it's the way I try to wake up when I'm having, you know, when I'm in, in, in the zone I won't say I always meet my.
Expectations of myself. But I think it's a very good training in terms of how to relate to things. Yeah. Now they're, they're also known for engaging in something called a a mortification. So this may involve something like a cl, a spiked chain or a discipline, a small whip, or used for [00:07:00] voluntary self mortification.
This is. Injuring yourself. This is not used for injuring yourself. Like the injuring isn't the point. It's used for building more self-control and emotional self-control so that you have more dominion over yourself and you can interact with the world in a more like, you know. A monk who's just like separating themselves versus society versus somebody who's got like a, a spike chain attached to their leg while they're serving their office job.
You know, who's really making more of a sacrifice for God. I think this also
Simone Collins: feeds into the, the social scientific theory that ego depletion is culturally specific, that in American culture, we're like, oh, I've. I've had to think so hard today. I just have completely lost all of my self-control and now I'm going to eat a pint of ice cream.
Versus in India for example, people are like, oh, I've had such a tough day today. I've had to do so much work now I should do something else hard because I'm really in the zone. And the opus day are certainly in the latter camp where they're like, I'm gonna right way.
Malcolm Collins: The study she's [00:08:00] mentioning shows it works like the Indians when they've actually done a lot of stuff.
No, basically,
Simone Collins: if you believe. That doing hard things has warmed you up to do more hard things, then you will be able to do more hard things If you believe in ego depletion, that if you've made a lot of tough decisions and exhausted your ability to ex exercise self-control, then you will lose self-control.
So it's, it's very much a placebo effect influenced by your culture. Yeah. Which again, is why it's so toxic to have an external locus of control.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and what's interesting is how the Opus Day communicates this because like, okay, if you're a nun or you're a priest, you know you're going to school for this.
Or you're in a convent, or you're in a monastery and that's where you're learning all of this, where the opus day and I can understand why there's such a young movement has to. Like train lay people in living this lifestyle. Yeah. Which means that they're doing retreats, they're doing like over overnight things sometimes.
Yeah. They're doing classes where both priests and lay people will teach these as well within the opus day. Wow. Where you're going [00:09:00] to learn deeper Catholic theology and the way like a monk might, but still engaging with your daily life.
Simone Collins: Wow. It is life on hard mode. It's, it's lean in Catholicism edition.
I, I like it. Everything you're saying so far. Yeah. Yes. It's de definitely. Okay. It sounds really difficult, but it appeals.
Malcolm Collins: No, it does appeal. So now we gotta talk about the bad guys. Okay. The Jesuits,
Simone Collins: the Jesuit, the Jesuits, the Jesuits,
Malcolm Collins: Or the Society of Jesus established in 1540s.
So they're actually old the, the Jesuits are a religious order known for their work in education, intellectual pursuits and missionary efforts.
They run schools and universities worldwide and are deeply engaged in social justice and dialogue with modern culture. Okay. Their spirituality rooted in Ignatian discernment, emphasizes finding God in all things and adapting to contemporary needs. Which sometimes gives them a reputation as more [00:10:00] progressive.
Post Vatican II Dynamics, the Second Vatican Council. This was in 1962 to 1965 with the turning point for the Catholic Church. Introducing reforms to engage more was the modern world, which sparked debates between those who embraced the changes and those who preferred continuity was tradition. The Jesuits under leaders like Pedro Aropa the Jesuits leaned into Vatican II call for renewal, focusing on social justice.
Ecumenical dialogue and adapting the church to contemporary challenges. The Jesuits even explored controversial ideas like liberation theology, which emphasizes justice for the poor and has been criticized by conservatives for its political undertones. Essentially, their, their elitist educated communists.
Oh
Simone Collins: dear,
Malcolm Collins: that's a nice way of saying that. No, no. But they were literally communists. Like Jesuits were socialists and communists historically.
They are an intellectual elite class, which believes that the sort of priesthood has a special position that the laity can't really serve [00:11:00] and that the priesthood should be made up of the intellectual elite.
And, and, and supported by the laity the Opus Day. Well, not opposed to Vatican. Second. Opus Day has emphasized traditional practices like devotion to the Eucharist and rosary. Mm-hmm. And cautious approach to rapid change. It's right. The prominence, especially after becoming a personal ture, was seen by some as a counterweight to the more progressive faction.
The Opus Day, its spirituality centers around sanctifying everyday work and personal holiness. It encourages a structured prayer life and obedience to church teachings often appealing to those who value, tradition and discipline. Hmm. It focuses heavily on the role of lay people in spreading their face.
Jesuits, their Ignatian spirituality is out of discernment, finding God's will within all circumstances and intellectual engagement. They're known for their adaptability, running universities and addressing social issues, which can lead to a more open and exploratory approach to [00:12:00] face. A few issues. So Liberation theology, so this is Jesuits.
Some Jesuits like Gustav Gutierrez were key figures in liberation Theology, which blends Catholic Social teaching was a focus on systematic change for the oppressed Opus Day was this emphasis on personal sanctity over political activism has generally been more critical of this movement aligning with Vatican critiques of its Marxist element.
Ecumenicalism and modernity. Jesuits are known for interfaith dialogue and engaging with secular culture, sometimes pushing boundaries. Opus Day tends to prioritize fidelity to Catholic doctrine and traditional devotions and can make it appear less open to such engagement. What's really interesting is I think that the Jesuit Opus Day split in many ways for told the split.
Between like modern conservatives and modern progressives where the progressives are a party of intellectual and bureaucratic elites. And the conservatives are who, who want to change things, who want [00:13:00] to adapt culture as quickly as possible. Whereas the conservatives, while newer, like the new right, is a newer party than this progressive, right?
Is a party of personal responsibility. Personal discernment and returning to traditions. Mm-hmm. And not interfering with, with, with people's lives so that you can maximize your own life.
Sorry, I want to build this into the game world. Oh. No. No, I really like this idea where I think, you know, earlier I had the church splitting up in one church, forming in Mexico, and then the other church forming around the Vatican. And I want to do a a, a, the headed, the Jesuits, the black pope, ends up essentially through shady dealings, taking over the Catholic church.
And then, you know, you know, legalizing. Women in the, in the, in the, in the priesthood, et cetera, gay marriage, a bunch of stuff that your normal Opus Day member would never allow. Mm-hmm. And then have the Cardinals who are affiliated with the, with the Opus Day faction refocusing around the [00:14:00] Latin American church.
So it would be a schism, but it was a schism that would make sense given the modern conflicts the church is already have. Yeah, that makes sense.
I will end up posting the new faction to the Discord, but I think they're pretty dope.
We tried to lean hard into the idea of while there was a schism in the church, it was a schism in which , , the side that is the Catholics that you would encounter in the game is the one was the most claimed to apostolic succession. And they have transformed sort of the way the religion is practice into this concept of living martyrdom.
I. Which means that essentially everyone, , dresses and lives their lives as if they're living under the priesthood,
but was much more
fervor than you would see was in the existing church.
Now you could say here, well then just don't have the Vatican fall. You know, the problem is, is. In almost every timeline I can see that happening. Now, specifically in Italy [00:15:00] right now, we have a fertility rate of only 1.18. That means even if it stays at its existing fertility, and keep in mind it's fallen every year for the past 16 years, I think.
For every a hundred Italians, there will only be 20 great-grandchildren. I don't see how that civilization can stay stable or we can expect it to continue existing. However, I could potentially see iterations of Catholic civilization staying stable in Latin America, which is where we have the church refocusing.
Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind the, the current Pope is a Jesuit. Oh, really? Oh,
Simone Collins: yes.
Malcolm Collins: The, the, he's catching a
Simone Collins: hippie from trad casts though. So now I guess that Oh, yeah. Provides more context.
Malcolm Collins: So, the founder of Opus Day was canonized, declared a saint in 2002. Hmm. Just 27 years after his death in 1975. Wow. The one that shows how new they are. The founder of the Opus Day. By 2002 had only been dead for 27 years. Wow. He was the Saint Dead. [00:16:00] This event symbolized opus day's rapid rise and prominence within the Catholic Church, particularly under Pope John Paul ii, who strongly supported the organization.
I. Opus Day known for its conservative and traditional approach to face emphasizes the sanctification of daily life, often appealing to lay people, and aligning with a structured devotional spirituality. In contrast, the Jesuits, a religious order known for their intellectual rigor and progressive leanings.
Focus on education and social justice were perceived as having lost some influence in the decades following Vatican II and the 1960s attempts to modernize the church. Escobar's canonization occurred so quickly. It was seen by some of the church as favoring opus state's traditionalism over the gero, more liberal stance.
It was an unprecedented spade. His canonization is just. 27 years, one of the fastest canonization in modern history. Yeah. Second only to Mother Theresa. Typically, the process takes decades or even centuries, beginning as a mandatory five year waiting period after the death followed by an extensive [00:17:00] investigation into the candidate's life in miracles.
Right? This rapid timeline was exceptional. Strong papal support. Pope John Paul II was. Who personally in Minor. This guy and Opus Day's Mission played a key role in fast tracking the process. His support reflects priority of promoting models of holiness for laypeople, which had laid with Opus day's focus.
But it made the canonization appear unusually driven by Papal Initiative. Miracles attributed the two miracles that were credited to him. Which are a requirement for sainthood. One involved in nuns recovering from a rare skin disease, and the other a doctor's healing from radiation exposure.
While these were officially verified, the speed and the process raised questions among some questions among Jesuits who really did not like that he was canonized. Yeah, I don't know,
Simone Collins: like a skin condition. Suddenly both of these are, are, are unexpected physical changes in response to. Medical conditions, like there are so many of those that take place to attribute those to a single [00:18:00] person.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
Malcolm Collins: Well, we'll have a, a separate episode where we'll go deeper on the, the secondary part of this, which is okay, the, the black Pope and the Jesuits. So the Jesuits were all black and their leader, which is elected by the Jesuits, has a lot of power in trying to attempt to essentially like manipulate who gets elected Pope and stuff like that.
And, and, and what happens within the Catholic organizations because like obviously he has a lot of power. The Jesuits have been around for a very long time and so have collected a ton of money. And so they are a very wealthy organization. They also have positioned if power was in secular society, so if you're talking about like Catholic universities or just elite educational institutions more broadly, you're going to see Jesuits in positions of power across these.
Whereas Opus Day have focused much more on empowering lay people outside of the clergy. Mm-hmm. Very much newer organization, which doesn't deal as well with accumulating [00:19:00] power. But I would bet if you're looking at fertility rates between organizations affiliated with each of these brands, Jesuits are gonna be a giant fertility sink to have any area.
Yeah. And the day are gonna be a ti a huge fertility boost, having anywhere around you.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, because it sounds like the OPAs day are just about getting things done. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And it provides a way for the Opus Day to potentially build factions that are just entirely based around family and having kids and, and focusing their, and it would just completely be cogent with their existing teachings.
Absolutely. Which means that long run, they'll likely win. And as that becomes more clear to the Jesuits. As has happened with organizations in the past like the Gray Friars and stuff like that. This is like a thing that constantly happens with the Catholics, where, remember how I told you that the Catholic orders were like creating a new, because I argued that religions typically become softer as time goes on.
Mm-hmm. And they become more like the urban monoculture as time goes on. Yeah. And so you need to create [00:20:00] new young orders which basically act like new religions, which then reinject these like stem cells into like the heart of the Catholic religion, keeping it young. The Opus Day really represent that they are the youngest of the orders where the Jesuits, this isn't the first order that this happened to.
I even think when the Jesuits were first created, they were replacing another order, I wanna say the gray fryers that had become super wealthy and indolent and focused on intellectualism. Wow. And focused on. Like disconnected from the people because as orders get older, they undergo the process that all organizations do.
Yeah. Which is becoming softer capitulating to the urban monoculture.
By the way, my memory here was correct. It was the Gray Friars, also known as the Franciscans who were founded in the 12 hundreds originally around, you know, extreme poverty, not owning anything, et cetera, and had become incredibly wealthy and elitist by the times that the Jesuits were founded. , and so you see this cycle where an order is founded.
At first they focus on, you know, austerity and, and, Faith and [00:21:00] then over time they become wealthier and more intellectually elitist and more interested in appealing to the status hierarchies of the secular world.
Malcolm Collins: You can read our book, the Pragmatist Guide to Religion, if you wanna learn more about what it means for a religion to get soft. But, but they as an order have become soft. And the question , is are they going to fight against this?
Mm-hmm. If, if a Pope turned against them. That'd be fine. And, and Popes have against the Jesuits in the past. In fact a Pope in the past because the black Pope was accumulating so much power. This is ahead of the Jesuits. A Pope inserted and then created a tradition of inserting a pope chosen by the Vatican rather than voted on by the Jesuit.
Oh drama. Okay. Very drama.
Yeah. Let's just go into what I collected about the black Pope, because I think you'll find this.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay. So yeah, tell me, tell me about the black Pope.
Malcolm Collins: So first the outfit. Why is he called the black pope? The Jesuits wear plain black [00:22:00] coss a stark contrast to the pope's pristine white robes. Mm. Since their founding in 1540, the Jesuits have been the Catholic intellectual heavyweights, educators, missionaries and influencers.
Mm-hmm. The leaders clout has sometimes rivaled the popes, at least in the eyes of his admirers and enemies. Okay. But. Back in the 16th and 17th centuries Protestant nation saw the Jesuits Pope as a secret army, loyal to a fault and dangerously clever because they were the intellectuals and they did dress in all black.
And you can imagine how that looked to the Protestants, right? Yeah. But even Catholics, I actually learned about the concept of the black Pope and all of this at the prenatal con from a actually an opus day. Who was like, Hey, you need to look into the Jesuits. Ooh. They've been trying to take over the Catholics for a long time.
Wow. A lot of this stuff that you see as broadly Catholic is just Jesuits.
Simone Collins: That's interesting. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The, the, so picture this, it's 1773 and the Jesuits are at the height of their influence running schools, advising kings and spreading [00:23:00] Catholicism worldwide. But they've made enemies, European monarchs, jealous of their sway and annoyed by their meddling pressured.
Pope Clement, the 14th to shut them down. He caves issuing a decree that suppresses the Jesuit order entirely. Officially, they're disbanded, but here's the twist. In places like Russia where the Pope's order isn't enforced, the Jesuits don't just fade away. They keep going. Led temporarily by the vicar general stand in black popes who defy the suppression turn a conspiracy minded observer.
This looks like the Jesuits summing their nose at the Pope. No, that's exactly what it is. Oh my God. Okay, so the Jesuits were disbanded in the 1770s. Okay. But in places where the Pope's power didn't hold the Jesuits, elected leaders kept running iterations of this order.
Simone Collins: How interesting. Hmm. And then
Malcolm Collins: Years later by the 19th century, [00:24:00] the Jesuits are quietly reinstated under Pope Pius the.
Seventh in 1814 to outsiders. This mate seem what? What? No, that's exactly what happened
Simone Collins: to outsiders. Yeah. Is there a butt after that? Like, it may have looked like this, but it wasn't. That's exactly what it was. It was
Malcolm Collins: a rogue religious organization that was well, but is there a butt, like, do
Simone Collins: they explain why it isn't what it looks like?
Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I'm sure that the, the, this is from an ai, so the AI is just trained on Jesuit writing, obviously because they control the laws, but they due to having too much power and fighting the Pope's interest were banned by the Pope, then use the black Pope as their alternate pope. Oh, good heavens. Kept operating and were reinstated later.
They literally are a separate religious organization operating within the Catholic church. That was too powerful to be eradicated, to stop. That's, that's [00:25:00] crazy. But hold on.
So I wanted to be as fair as possible and try to look at the way a Catholic would see this. What they would say is that, well, the Jesuits weren't actually disbanded because the Pope thought they were becoming too powerful. They were disbanded because they were annoying local. I. rulers, which, okay, I guess I can get behind that.
But then isn't the pope supposed to be God's hand on Earth? How is he so easily bullied by local rulers? Then you have the, the secondary situation, which is to say that, well, technically they weren't disbanded. See, the Russians, the Russian Jesuits found themselves in a. Legal gray area, they weren't directly disobeying the pope since the suppression decree hadn't been officially promulgated in Russia and that papal documents technically needed to be officially promulgated in a region to take effect according to the legal practices at the time.
Now, for me, I'm like, yeah, but like it doesn't matter if it's illegal or not. What matters is what God wanted, and apparently God. Operates through apostolic succession and the Pope is God's [00:26:00] hand on earth. So you think that God's like, okay with this sort of technicality, I, I don't know. To me this reads like somebody doesn't really believe their religion.
If they're like, oh, well technicality here. and then you have this situation of, apparently there was one instance where Pope Pius the seventh did. acknowledge the existence of the Jesuits in Russia in 1783, which is seen as approval, and then they were later restored and that the faction in Russia continued to exist, gave them the ability to claim this historical continuity.
so that's how they're like, well, you see, it was a good thing and we're all just gonna forget that this happened.
Malcolm Collins: That's not the only power grab that they've done. Okay. In the 20th century, inter Father Pedro or arpa, the Superior General, or black Pope from.
1965 to 1983 under his rope, the Jesuits go rogue. They dive into liberation theology, a firing mix of faith and social justice that has them backing revolutionaries in Latin America. What. [00:27:00] Yeah. By 1981, ARPA suffers a stroke. And Pope John Paul II sees at the moment, he doesn't wait for the Jesuits to elect a new back Pope.
He appoints his own delegate to run the order. He moved Dub Papal Marshall Law. It was unprecedented. And many Jesuits complained about this. So, he was backing socialist revolutionaries, the head of the Jesuits in Latin America. Hmm. I see. And then we have what happened in 2005 where the Jesuits tried to prevent the election of a Pope.
So after John Paul's II's death in April, 2005, the College of Cardinals convened to elected his successor Rex Retinger a German theologian and close ally of John Paul ii. Oh, remember, Tinger? Yeah, the back, the Opus Day faction. Oh. And he emerged as the front runner. However, not everyone was on board with this candidacy.
Mm-hmm. A blocking strategy. A group of cardinals reportedly included some of Europe's and Latin Americans [00:28:00] wanted to prevent rats nerve from securing the two thirds majority needed to win. Mm-hmm. They rallied rot around Burel, Guo an Argentinian Jesuit known for his humility and focus on the poor, an alternative candidate.
He, the guy who they rallied him again wasn't necessarily campaigning for the paper that he himself, in fact accounts suggest he was uneasy about being used in this way. So they're like not even particularly moral people in the way they're doing this. Like this guy did not want this to happen.
But they got through this. Hmm. Then I was like, okay. But is there any evidence that the Jesuits actually do offer, like, like, like have outsized control within the organization? It's like, well, they haven't just
Simone Collins: presented a ton.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They're basically a rogue faction that is. Antipas. Well, I mean now they control the papacy.
So like, who's to say the Catholic exclusive? Yeah, you're anti papus
Simone Collins: until you, you're in charge and then Yeah, until
Malcolm Collins: you're in charge. Right. You know, you love it. It's great. It's great. Let institute these reforms throughout the [00:29:00] entire Catholic order. And I think that this is like a generational thing.
I think the church will likely have some major schism if the next Pope is also a Jesuit and continues to take it in this direction. Yeah. And we'll see. 'cause it doesn't
Simone Collins: look like this Pope has a lot longer because of his health issues. I.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the question is, is because, because like the, the, the bureaucratic branch is always gonna be overwhelmingly Jesuit because they control the elites in the positions of power or Jesuit influenced whereas the lay people who don't vote on Pope, for example, are gonna be overly aligned with the Opus day.
Yeah. Now long term, I think the Opus Day faction ends up gaining control as this happened a few times in Castle history where a new a sort of order needs to come in and another order needs to. But the question is, is can that happen before the, the Pope ends up taking the church in a theological direction that is untenable to your average Opus Day aligned individual?
Simone Collins: Yikes. That's wow. I'm glad that [00:30:00] the Opus Day member that you met at Nacon told you to look a little deeper because, oh my gosh, like this is, we think
Malcolm Collins: we need to do an Opus Day episode for ages though, because like we've always, like, from what I've heard of them, I've always liked them. I think mortification is good.
I think this. Waking up and like, like yelling, like I'm at it is really mentally healthy. I think it's important that they do something that a lot of Catholics don't do, which is theological teaching. Whereas a lot of the way that Catholic sermons go is really focused around ceremony. Mm-hmm. Like I was talking with, you know, at, at NATO Con Newcastle's, famously low fertility these days.
Mm-hmm. Of, of religious sex, Catholic majority countries, Catholic areas. How do you get fertility rates up? Well, a couple at Nacon was like, well, we decided to have a kid long before we had planned on having one. Mm-hmm. Because you know, at church, the, the pastor came in and, and said like, Hey, we're gonna help this couple you know, make sure that they're never in need for childcare, et cetera.
Mm-hmm. And then, you know, when their baby was crying, he goes, you know, if this babies aren't crying, the [00:31:00] church is dying, you know, saying all this to the entire congregation from the pulpit. I mean, they were like, oh. Like, I didn't, I felt like I was doing a bad job at being a mother, but hearing like, oh, let the baby cry, you know, et cetera.
And, and I was, I was talking about this and a Catholic was like, yeah, there's like, my priest would never say that. Like, that's not like a thing that you would do is, is be like, Hey, this couple help them care for their kid. But that is something the Opus Day can do in the way that they do these additional lessons.
This like Sunday School for adults. So
Simone Collins: presumably there are Opus Day. Churches. Like, is that, is that the way it works? Like if we were an Opus Day family? No,
Malcolm Collins: no. They're, they're like I, this is my understanding, but I, I'll look it up in post. Is that you, you go to like retreats and training seminars?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: They're more, but you're, you're still part of like
Simone Collins: a normal Catholic parish. Yeah. Because I just wonder how, how would you get the community support then that would, you know, make things easier and more sustainable for you?
Malcolm Collins: Well, ops day members could, you know, build out [00:32:00] like, like daycare networks, like this would be really powerful.
And increasing fertility network rates, right? Yeah. Like, okay, you have your job, which you have a, a, a, a, a moral obligation to that is religious. But then on top of that you have a moral obligation. To helping other members of your community. And while the Opus Day wouldn't be, you know, hugely poor, like traditional, like go help random poor people stuff or mm-hmm.
Or socialist revolution stuff, I can see them being a hundred percent on board with let's create free daycares for members of our own parish. Yeah. That, that seems like a very opus day thing to do. Contrasted with the oh, let's, let's just. Try to like be utility accountants and lower net suffering in the world.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Which doesn't produce the best of outcomes. It just
Malcolm Collins: happens. Is this a spicy, spicy episode here? Well, I like that you found something nice to say about some Catholics, which is. I've [00:33:00] always been pro opus day from the first time I mentioned you could like search the episode trans. Yeah. But in general you're like, was this pro opus day?
I'm like a really pro opus day. The more you learn, the more you love them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, they're the only like good Catholic faction now and, and people's like I would ever become. A Catholic based on this? No, I still, no, we don't
Simone Collins: have the disposition necessary to be, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I, I, I don't, I like, I, I find all the idolatry really hard to, like, even, even like the prayer beads and everything like that, that just trouble even with crosses.
Even the crosses are, I mean, look, as an outsider and I know that like Catholics, like, I'm trying to be like as, as, as, as diplomatic as I can and be like, you guys, I. Believe you are literally eating the savior. Like, like cannibalism. Like it literally, it's not like metaphorically, you think you are literally cannibalizing the literal Messiah.
[00:34:00] We all your, we're eager, eager to feed for sharp in our teeth for the, and
Malcolm Collins: and then you worship to statues of him being tortured. And you wear the device that tortured him on you.
well, that's a little violent.
Can we tone it down? Oh no. Don't be put up. By this snarling they just seem a little murdery right now. Don't worry, honey. Fast staffing.
Malcolm Collins: We struggle with that. It's optically difficult for me to get by. And then you, you worship in these churches that are covered in gold and artwork and paintings and, and all of this idolatry. But we also just
Simone Collins: have, we have trouble using symbolism of any sort.
I don't care if it's a Pokemon card or if it's an image. No, it's not just
Malcolm Collins: that. Like to me it's like literally, ugh. It's literally like Indiana Jones. It's like the obviously wrong choice. [00:35:00] If you have read the Bible, it's like, oh, it's glorious, it's so beautiful. It's like, no, the cup of a carpenter.
Which one is it? You must choose. But choose wisely. For as the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you.
I'm not a historian. I have no idea what it looks like. Which one is it? Let me choose.
It's more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.
This certainly is the cup of the king of kings. Is happening to me? He chose poor.
[00:36:00] Be made out of gold. That's the cup of a carpenter.
you have chosen wisely.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway.
Mm-hmm. But what were you gonna say when I interrupted you? I'm sorry.
Simone Collins: No, no. Carry on. You're
Malcolm Collins: saying it's like Pokemon cards and we're okay with it even if it's
Simone Collins: No, no. We're, we're not okay with worshiping any kind of object or using any kind of object. I think people would argue it's not idol. I use it as like a place to focus my attention.
Or remind me, but No, no, because there's this, this human intuitive tendency to just start treating objects of meditation as idols over time. It's just, it's
Malcolm Collins: exactly. And you can see why we're wor, I mean, even Catholics would be like, okay, but like, we don't do that. And it's like, yeah, maybe you intellectual [00:37:00] Catholic doesn't do that.
But there's a lot of lay Catholics in the, in the outer parts of this sort of Catholic empire in Latin America and stuff like that, where they are absolutely worshiping the saints. Yeah. And, and then like
Simone Collins: we, we see it happening in, when, whenever we're in Peru, there's various attaches of saints like.
Sitting around and you know, people stop and they pray and they leave things there and mm-hmm. The point I'm making
Malcolm Collins: here is that the reason why this stuff is banned is, is, is you somebody with absolute mental discipline who is absolutely educated on the Bible, might be able to go into a church and be inspired by these things and maintain that mental separation.
Mm-hmm. But your average person, or even let's say 20% of the parishioners aren't gonna be able to do that. Is it worth sacrificing their souls? So that you can and, and keep in mind we have a different relation to the concept of soul. Enjoy an
Simone Collins: aesthetic flourish. Like it's not a deal breaker for you.
I mean, especially if you're not worshiping these things as [00:38:00] idols, you really don't need them at all. You're just like, oh, don't, no, they're nice. They help to inspire. Go look at, look at trees, look at plants. Look at the sky. Look at the night sky, look at the sun. Look at, look at. Well, all of that would still be
Malcolm Collins: idolatry if you're using it as an intermediary,
Simone Collins: right?
But like, if you are, if you need inspiration about the greatness of God, you don't need to see a cathedral. You can look into the eyes of your own child, you know, like, or anything beautiful happening.
Malcolm Collins: That's, yeah. The, the point being is that even Catholics would admit that this has a cost. And, and the question is like, why are they comfortable with that cost?
Like, when I take that in, in combination with all the aesthetic stuff and the, the, the, the bleeding Christ and the church and everything, I, I don't know, like, yeah, it's tough. I struggle. It's tough optically, but I, I will say that the Opus Day, like among Catholics, they seem to be pretty awesome.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, because I, I think maybe what you seem to like about them a lot is, I mean, we are extremely focused on outcomes.
We're very consequentialist and they seem to [00:39:00] be very focused on,
Malcolm Collins: well, not just that, but I believe in treating your daily work as a, as a, as as sort of a religiou act of worship, calling act, an act of worship and, and productivity as an act of worship. Mm-hmm. And I also really believe in the concept of the lay.
I mean, one of my biggest complaints about the Catholic Church is this like hierarchy of religious authority. And the opus Day, in a way, invert that hierarchy of religious authority pointing out that the lay person can be as much of the same or as, yeah. In that way it is
Simone Collins: very Protestant, isn't it?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. As, as the, as the highest member of a church or as a cardinal. And I think that that is, to me, that that really aligns with my sensibilities and sort of the anti-elitism bit that I have, which is, is I think they really represent that. Yeah. And I think. Represent a way that you can be Catholic.
And you know, we talk about this with techno puritanism is, is that I want people to be able to come to the religion from different faith. And what that means to me is that [00:40:00] if you look at the tracks to be a techno puritan, you don't need to believe in all the tracks. Like you only need to believe, a few, like, like broad things like that we are going to be arguing that God actually exists. That, that you could argue God from looking at repeatable real world things, not like you saying it from yourself. Like just, oh, I, I saw this saying that no one else saw, and that's, or I feel this thing that no one else can feel.
And that god, what was the final one? That all other true face are a true face and should be allowed to coexist. Hmm. And that's something that a, you know, a lot of Catholics are gonna struggle with. But, but that there, there would be a natural alliance between these groups anyway, but, but like the open day, I can see myself aligning with the opus day.
I could never see myself aligning with the Jesuits.
Simone Collins: Well, do you have any data on Opus Day? Fragility.
Malcolm Collins: No, but I can look it up and post. Yeah, I mean, I, I guess your hope then would be, oh, I checked it actually with ai, it didn't have any [00:41:00] data on it. Yeah, it would be good for, it would be really hard to know.
No, I bet you you could collect Opus Day affiliate members, like layperson members that go to these training seminars. Yeah. But do they collect
Simone Collins: things like how many kids do you have? I doubt that you
Malcolm Collins: could start collecting, just do a collection for like a few classes. See how many kids, people over a certain age have and then try to correlate that with a general Catholic fertility rate.
And you might find, I suspect that the Opus Day affiliation is really directly correlated with high fertility.
Simone Collins: I can definitely be done just, I, I doubt that, you know, there's a lot of good info right now, but
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, love you to DeSimone. I don't know if your, your opinion has changed on anything from this.
Simone Collins: I like that you gave me a more realistic picture of them because like so many other people, my only exposure to information about Opus Day, aside from their waking up rituals, which I'd looked up when making a YouTube video, which embarrassingly still sits on this channel, [00:42:00] was from the Da Vinci Code and that pale actor.
Wasn't he supposed to be an albino? Yeah, like whipping himself and being weird and that that is, that, that seems so deviant from what you described. 'cause they're about, you know, and they, they imply that the opus day is this monastic order of extremist isolated crazies. When what you're describing is a.
An order that's all about leaning into the real world and just self-actualization to the max plus a lot of Catholicism, which sounds pretty cool. So I feel like a, a great disservice has been done by the Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown to all, I don't know, I think the DaVinci code made them look cool. I don't think so.
No, no. It was like just this albino freak trying to stop them. I don't think, at least from reading the book. The book did not give me a very positive impression of the Opus Day. So I still feel, I feel like they were [00:43:00] wronged. Maybe, maybe Dan Brown is a secret Jesuit, or maybe he did book research with Jesuits and didn't.
No. But he is
Malcolm Collins: Urban Monoculture aligned. And Urban Monoculture Oh. Would be more associated with Op Day. Anti-Urban Monoculture is gonna be affiliated with OPAs Day. Mm.
Simone Collins: I could see that. I could, I could. Okay. Fair.
Malcolm Collins: Alright. Love you to death.
Simone Collins: I love you too. For your starch tonight, I presume you want hash browns.
Like it seems like whenever there's a choice, your choice is hash browns. Is that correct?
Malcolm Collins: I'm okay with whatever you feel you have the time to make with the only thing getting to bed early. Oh, yes. 'cause sleep. Oh, listen, getting to bed early is more important than anything else. So big on sleep. So I, I, I, I'd say the difference between rice and hash browns is a maybe 10% difference, not big.
Simone Collins: In fact, I've done, now I can make you hash browns, so I'll do it because I desperately love you. I [00:44:00] just want you to, I want you to know how much I love you. I wish I could do more things. You do
Malcolm Collins: a lot of things
Simone Collins: not good at expressing affection. You're very
Malcolm Collins: good at expressing. You just don't believe I hear it,
Simone Collins: but you taste it.
Is that the thing that matters?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I live my life of, of, of an amazingness with you. You know, I, I get to live a near perfect life. I've been thinking about it again recently, like it's unfair how perfect my life is. Yeah.
Simone Collins: But you, you have a perfect life. 'cause you also, I. Love your family and are a good person and work really hard.
And I, I love that our kids are like that too. Like, right, like indie's been a little bit irritable, but you know what has kept her quiet since I put her down, I'm just, I'm just playing home videos of, of her siblings and that makes her happy again. I. Well, the kids's being dragged around. I love it. Yeah.
It's just like, that's so sweet. She, that's all she wants to see. And then she's, and then she's happy. And that, that is our family, that we are so lucky to love each other and live together. And, you [00:45:00] know, I think there's a lot of people who would have everything you have and not be happy to think that it was a miserable existence.
So. Like the opus day, you choose happiness, you choose cheerfulness, and you choose love. And how could you have all of this? How
Malcolm Collins: could you be married to you and have these kids in this house and not be, I mean, I know a lot of movie stars, like all of them seem unhappy, right? Like they've, they've chosen this life that's like urban monoculture life.
It's so sad. Yeah. Even though they have all this wealth and power, like, you know, Jim Carrey's famous line, you know. I hope you achieve wealth, power in everything you wanted. 'cause then you'll see it What make you happy? Yeah. It's like, well I don't know what you were fighting for Jim Carrey, but like, this makes me happy and fulfilled.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That's pretty darn good.
Malcolm Collins: Maybe, maybe you should have had a big family and gotten married and go to live on a farm.
Simone Collins: Some celebrities seem to do that. They just disappear. Like you never hear from them. You know, you hear from the miserable ones because they're still engaging with the press. I bet that that
Malcolm Collins: one crazy Christian one
Simone Collins: is
Malcolm Collins: happy.
Simone Collins: I. Oh, the who? The drunk driving man? The brave guy. Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson. Mel
Malcolm Collins: Gibson.
Yeah. He is [00:46:00] pretty, pretty. I love the South Park. Take on him.
. Yeah, say what you want about Mel Gibson, but the son of a knows story structure. Get the video tape and do a background check on everyone in it. Ah, yes.
Malcolm Collins: Like, this guy's crazy, but damn does he know story structure.
Simone Collins: Oh, I praise from Stone and Parker, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I love you,
Simone Collins: Vanessa. Love. I love you too. Bye. Bye. Bye. You hang up.
Bye.
Guy Secret and Octavia's, a Red Army guy. And Red Army guys respond. I know. Is it another Red Army guy?
Oh.
I, I chase.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Demographic Collapse Mandates a Transition to Monarchy
4 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92
In this episode, our host discusses his changed perspective on the future of global governance, arguing that demographic collapse will inevitably lead to a shift toward monarchic and authoritarian regimes. He highlights the unsustainability of current democratic systems in the face of demographic crises and economic collapse. The episode explores various countries' timelines for potential social service collapse, the roles of AI and tech elites, and the possible political transitions and societal impacts. The conversation also touches upon the influence of social media and the looming possibility of walled garden city-states emerging as havens for the wealthy.
[00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today my mind has dramatically changed on a topic that I used to have a pretty firm stance on, okay. Which is I did not believe that it was good for the world to head in the direction of Monarch or authoritarianism.
And I did not think that that was the direction the world was going to head. Now I am. Reassessing my beliefs around this in the face of the economic reality that demographic collapse will integrate. Mm. And I will be arguing in this episode that. Demographic collapse will both create authoritarian and, and monarchic systems, while at the same time making those systems governments with less overall suffering than the systems that insist on staying democracies.
And the this change, when I say insist on staying democracies. A lot of these places won't have a choice, so let's [00:01:00] sort of talk about how this happens. Okay. Before we go into the details. Yeah. And this episode will also serve if you wanna introduce people to the prenatal list movement. I'm gonna introduce a lot of the, the basic facts, again, with their more modern updates.
Okay. To help you understand just how unsustainable and how quickly the existing system is going to start collapsing. But the gist being is that within our lifetimes in many places around the world, we will be hitting scenarios. So by like 2060,
in South Korea, we will have a country where there are two elderly people for every worker. And we will start seeing situations like this more and more around the world as demographic collapse continues. And we're gonna, going over when various countries hit this. Did you, did you see the, the graph on x that REU shared, generated by chat, GPT, by the way, they can just generate beautiful graphs for you.
That demonstrated how, how many people were paying for how many retirees over time. Oh, no. And chose it. Now, as of. Maybe today, but maybe even [00:02:00] 2023. It's 2.4 workers are paying for each retiree. And that's America In the United States or in Korea? In America, yeah. So like that's, we're already in a really dangerous place.
Like, I don't like this because also keep in mind, social security isn't just for people who are retired, who've painted into the system all their lives. It also plays a role in supporting people who are on disability, people who are severely disabled. Like this is, it's just not, ah, well I don't think You mean social security specifically here.
You're talking about the various social safety nets. Like Medicare. Medicare, yeah. Yeah. But still like that's all. And, and, and so what ends up happening is as more and more people are reliant on the state and on systems like social security, this for our non-American listeners, about 50% of our listeners are non-American.
This in America is a system that pays for old people to survive. If they don't have savings, and even if they do have savings, like it's a set. Mm-hmm. You get in the United States, and a lot of countries have this after a certain age as that demographic becomes the majority of the voting base, they will [00:03:00] not make cuts to the systems that are paying out to them.
Hmm. Because they will have the voting power. Mm-hmm. And eventually that leads to economic collapse. Mm-hmm. That leads to a complete system collapse because you cannot pay for two elderly people on every one young person's salary. What happens if you try to do that? Because some countries will be trying to do this before other countries is young people will just leave your country.
And then what you do, well then you start putting in travel restrictions and become authoritarian like anyways. Right. But then you have the, the, secondary problem here which is you're like, okay, well then maybe they can try to get their fertility rate up. Maybe they'll wake up when this starts to happen, but it's already too late then because they'll already have, like, even if they start getting their fertility rate above replacement, then they'll already have like 20 years of, of having every person in the economy support two or three elderly people in the economy.
Which is just completely un economically viable. And so these countries will become [00:04:00] incredibly weak. They also won't be able to field militaries because they don't have a lot of young people. Whereas the countries that become monarchies or authoritarian or fascist in other ways, I. They will have a single strong man making decisions on behalf of the good of the country and the nation.
So they will be able to cut these systems. And maybe even in, in some cases, and I'm not promoting this, I'm just saying this is what some of them might do is create let's say Logan's run type things for unproductive citizens.
Runner terminated, 0.31. Ready for cleanup? Sure. He had some life in him in the end. Wow. Hey, that was a great shot you made. Well, you kept missing him. I had to do something.
It's crazy. He could have renewed on carousel. Now he's finished forever. Why did they run?
Speaker: On productive folks, your time has passed. We'll turn you into fuel of fire. Just [00:05:00] get in line to become biodiesel. Oh, stop crying, you annoying weasel. As laid out by Curtis Yarvin. Handle the old or we'll all be stuck.
And this gets really scary because these countries will be significantly more economically healthy than their neighbors, and they will.
As such, not just be economically more healthy, but also militarily more healthy, be able to exercise their will on their neighbors. So if one of their neighbors tries to stay a democracy, with the nature of the democracy being that the majority population gets to do what they want, right? Like gets to steer the direction and the majority will be elderly.
They won't be able to resist the wills of the neighbors that have undergone the fascist conversion. So let's talk about how this conversion happens, because you might be like, well, why, why would this conversion happen? [00:06:00] Well, you have a few things here. First is and we a bit later will be going over using how the Weimar Republic transitioned into the Nazi state. As an example of how a country in deep economic shambles can have a youth-led movement, transition it to a fascist state which is typically when this happens. So as the economy begins to break down there will likely be rebellion.
I mean, how many old people are you willing to support? And then you've got the problem, which is the young people who would have an interest in participating in this rebellion are going to be the majority of the military, first of all. Hmm. But they're also going to be the population that would actually engage in rebellion.
Old people actually do not engage in rebellions or civil wars at a very high rate. And so it's basically in the bag. That the transition would go to the strong man. There are a few paths around this. Maybe AI could be a path around this. If AI somehow like. Creates endless prosperity [00:07:00] in a, a genuinely post scarcity society.
Then, then we avoid this. It's a possibility. But it's a, it's a very scary possibility to bet on when, as we've argued in the past when it seems like AI will actually do, is concentrate wealth among the ultra elite. Well, that doesn't mean that the ultra elite will not have some motivation to create daycare.
For poor people so that they don't make society unstable. Like it would be much better to put them all in pleasure pods where they're just living in VR heavens. If, if the alternative is for them to be out on the streets causing trouble and maybe damaging infrastructure they've paid for or damaging assets they've paid for and that is what we are seeing in our existing society to an extent happen naturally.
We saw this with Samba and Free's big UBI study that he tried to cover up. You can watch our video on this. But giving people a thousand dollars a month for three years at the end of the process, actually led to them having significantly less [00:08:00] net worth in earnings at the end of the pipeline. They didn't have more education, they didn't have more kids, they didn't spend more time.
So yes, I also feel like we kind of moved in that direction with the legalization of cannabis just to like. Yeah, it's like we all feel okay with how things are right now, but let's, let's get into timelines here. 'cause I think a lot of people, and we're gonna go over country by country may be surprised.
So I put in the, the two AI to grok. I was like, okay, when are we going to start seeing these countries, economic or social security systems begin to collapse? Oh, so starting with South Korea because a lot of people see this as like a far off problem. I know I literally do not have the constitution to run that search.
Okay. Like I should be running that search. I'm so terrified. South Korea currently has a fertility rate of 0.75. That means for every a hundred South Koreans there's only gonna be around five grandchildren. That's even if it doesn't continue to collapse. South Korea's working age population 15 to 64 is already shrinking by 1% annually.
Projected to drop from 36 [00:09:00] million in 2020 to 20 million by 2065 mm. Fewer workers means fewer caregivers and fewer taxpayers. Mm-hmm. Elder Surge, the elderly six. Five plus population is 18% of the population today expected to hit 40% by 2052. Wow. This drives demand for long-term care. So by 2040, the elderly to worker ratio could reach one one up from one five today.
And that. Is basically economically completely unsustainable. Mm-hmm. It says by the late 2030s, the elderly could exceed 30% of the population with a dependency ratio of 60 to 70% you're gonna have healthcare shortages that would overwhelm the system.
So you're looking 2030 in South Korea you, you could begin to see things break chili, which currently that's in, that's in . Six years. Yes, 2030s. In Chile you're looking at a TFR of 0.88 to 1.2. The current median age is 35. So they pointed out that by 2040 to 2045, elderly would exceed at 25% of the [00:10:00] population, meaning a dependency ratio of 40 to 50%.
So collapse risk early 2040s. Chili's healthcare system may get to break down and keep in mind that a lot of these Latin American countries have the additional problem that we are siphoning their population. If people are like, why is it so bad to be taking their most productive citizens in these countries?
This is why it's so bad because then these countries are double hit by paying for the young, which are parasitic and the ultra old that are parasitic to a country. Mm-hmm. Uruguay. TFR 1.27 to 1.3. It's looking at beginning to break down late 2040s to early 2050s, Costa Rica, 1.3 to 1.5. This is again, by, by AI guesses.
It's looking at it beginning to break down by 2055 to 2060. Cuba, 1.3 to 1.5. And, and actually with Costa Rica, their native born fertility rate is probably already under one. So within Cuba we're looking at 2035 to 2040 Columbia, which has A-T-T-F-R of only 1.2, one to 1.7. [00:11:00] It's probably gonna begin to break down 2050 to 2055.
Mm-hmm. Argentina. 1.25 to 1.5. It's gonna begin to break down in 2045 to 2050. And here, I'd remind you that the UN every year has been lying about these countries projected fertility rates. I'm putting a graph on screen here, which shows the UN projecting these fertility rates and then the lines you see that don't look bad.
And then the red line is their actual fertility rates. The global powers that be, have a motivation to hide this from you because they are the powers that be. And if the existing social order isn't working, if we need to make significant changes to our economic and political systems, the people with the most vested interest to prevent that are the people who are benefiting from the system right now.
Well, in, in other words, there's absolutely zero incentive, especially for an elected official to. To look at anything but the short term, what will get them immediately elected, not just elected officials. We're talking about the journalist class here.
We're talking about Wall Street. Here. We're talking about investors. We're [00:12:00] talking about like basically anyone that isn't just like purely altruistic, motivated, is, is going to have a strong reason to not mention this and hide this. Or if they really like the existing world order, which is based around this progressive urban monoculture they're not gonna want to admit that this existing world order is not sustainable.
Hmm. Now, okay, you can be like, well, those are Latin American countries. They don't care about Latin America. Let's look at Italy. You're dealing with a TFR of 1.2 to 1.3. Now so Italy, we're looking at a collapse state of 2045 to 2050 at their current TFR with, with existing projections. Spain their current TFR is 1.2 to 1.3. We're looking at a collapse time from 2050 to 2055. And, and note here, I'm not necessarily talking about a government collapse here.
I'm talking about a collapse of their social service system. That could look like a lot of things. But we're talking about some form of crisis where either they basically make a choice to cut off tons of people. Those people are just being cared for by ai. [00:13:00] Or something Germany which is currently at 1.4 to 1.5 we're looking at a collapsed timeline of 2060 to 2070.
With Japan. So if we go East Asia, we've got Japan, which is 1.2 to 1.3. Keep in mind how low these numbers are. They're basically haling every generation they're looking at 2040 to 2045, Taiwan, 0.9 to one. They're looking at 2050 to 2055 and China 1.1 to 1.2, they're looking at 2045 to 2050. Although I, I personally think China is faster because I think they're lying about a lot of their, their oh one and one, I think they don't even know.
They don't know how bad it is. Yeah. So that, and, and you could say, well, China is already authoritarian. Shouldn't they be able to fix this? And the problem is, is that the authoritarian faction that controls China right now is aligned with the elderly. Kleptocrats, I guess is what I'd call them the kleptocratic class which is this older CCP class which is just living off of the few young people and it's why young people like aren't having kids anymore.
What you [00:14:00] need for this to work is something like a. Trump monarchy where you have a lot of young people who are traditionalists and very excited about that culture. Very excited about who the Monarch is or who the ruling family is. Or even better, like a JD Vance monarchy or even better within the US an Elon monarchy.
A lot of young people would be very excited about that. You cannot have some stodgy old fissure like Xi Jinping who represents everything that has created this situation. Yeah. So in areas that are already fascist, either they're gonna crack down a lot and somehow save their country by basically forcing them into a form of, I guess you could call it almost slavery, to the fascist IE forcing their forcible impregnation, et cetera.
Mm-hmm. Is what we'll see if they're gonna fix their situation. Because I mean, the, the people in China aren't gonna choose to have kids just to support this class in the United States when people are like, oh, having more kids just gives you more workers. I mean, that's factually not true. Like Elon Musk is [00:15:00] gonna have AI working for him, he's gonna be fine no matter what.
He also doesn't even really want workers, like of the people he hires, that is only the most exceptional few people, you know, he's never going to have a shortage, but he also wouldn't hire normal people anyway. He doesn't need more humans. Yeah, so Elon Musk is not a situation here, but, but who does suffer is Xi Jinping.
So when Elon Musk goes out there, or when we go out there, we don't really personally benefit from you having lots of kids. Like it's, this is not, so we have people to work for us. Xi Jingping and the CCP does. This is literally the slave owner telling the slaves to have more kids so that they can keep their existing system running so that they can sell them.
You know? It is, it is a different motivation and it has a very different ring to it, especially when China's situation could be said to be in large part created by Xi Jinping's low. And slow to act policies. He's completely culpable. Come on. Yes. And so I think the governments that do this and do this successfully are gonna be the ones that are able to say, [00:16:00] we are new.
We're like you, we were always promoting you. Mm-hmm. Which is gonna mean the democratic the, the prenatal movement is going to have a natural place in these regimes as they begin to form. Or what you're going to see happen is people move to charter cities, which are sort of like independent roped off governments and just drain countries of their wealth super quickly.
And then wealthy country, well formerly wealthy countries rotting really quickly. And you may just not see an interest in the powerhouses of the world in engaging with these collapsing economies because there's nothing to be gained. For example, does America you know, one of my friends in Europe former friend, I guess still friend from the Stanford Business School, he is like, well, why isn't America investing in these relationships with Europe right now?
Mm-hmm. You know, you guys are turning your back. And I'm like, these relationships don't matter. Like you guys, like literally will not matter in a few decades. Economically speaking. That is the problem. Like investing in it is like investing a friend who's starting to get addicted to meth and you're like, well.
I mean, yeah. Yeah. It, no, it literally, [00:17:00] what's gonna be left in the future, you know, what, what future do we have together? There is no future. You will not exist as I know you very soon. It's just Don. Yeah. And we've been helping you for a long time. Protecting you for a long time. Why should we continue to do this when you've got meth?
Meth? It's not, yeah. And then they're like, oh, but this other guy who's addicted to meth might attack me, like pointing at Russia. It's like, I don't, he's going down too.
But yeah, by the, this so dark. Oh, you're not afraid of nuclear war. And I'm like, no, I'm not particularly afraid of nuclear. Was Russia, if you could see our, their videos on this, there's a lot of reason to believe that none of their nukes work right now. These nukes were made before we were born and they couldn't even rotate their tires.
I am certain they couldn't keep their, their nukes nukes in good working order. But anyway, an entirely different country at this time having been trafficked without anyone's knowledge. Who knows? Yes. And somebody's like, oh, you, you can't meet that. Look, you had a a period of like 50 years. I'm not talking about like, and all you needed was one person [00:18:00] over that entire 50 years finding a way to profit from dismantling me.
I'm pretty sure 50 years is a long effing time. And keep in mind that people often had an active disincentive to report this even if they found it. I'd love to see like a version of Oceans 11, about the Russian kleptocracy. That would be fun. I. You son of a b***h I'm in. And even if news, even if was a known, was in the central Russian government that this had already happened, like suppose it did happen.
Oh yeah. But they would never admit that because then you'd lose your, they admit. Yeah. Yeah. So, so if you're, like, even if we assume we're in a timeline where like actually Putin has done audits and he has figured out that they don't work, would you, would you know, 90 of course, 98% of the benefit of. Nukes is this con like this, this threat of mutually assured destruction and, and what you could do it, it's almost nicer if you know that you don't have the nukes.
'cause then at least you don't have to pay as much for their maintenance. You can just do like a, a token. Amount to make people think you're maintaining it [00:19:00] and you can save a lot of money. Yeah. Honestly, like this is one of those things, you know how I am with clutter. I kind of wish that like we just didn't have a lot of the stuff that we had and it's just kind of like, oh, isn't nice.
We don't have to like pay for the storage unit or like do it this and like maybe he feels that way about his nuclear arsenals. Yeah. Well, and this is what I'd say, I say, it's suspicious that they haven't done any nuclear tests in a long time. Oh. Like if they worked, presumably they would do the test to show us that they still worked, and you could say, yeah, well, we have treaties with them, but the treaties don't stop them from invading their neighbors.
They certainly wouldn't stop them from testing nukes just to show the world that they still work
Sorry, I just realized that the audience may be misunderstanding when I say it's been a while since Russia has done a nuclear test. Russia has not done a nuclear test since the year 1990. It's been 35 years since they've done a nuclear test. Most of the people listening to this weren't even born during the last Russian nuclear test in a post-Soviet era.
They [00:20:00] haven't had. One. And keep in mind that dismantling or selling critical parts of nuclear bombs is quite different from an ethical perspective than the other people who were taking parts of the planes or taking parts of the car or siphoning gas from things, and that it would even be potentially ethical and patriotic to do because nobody really wants a global nuclear war.
Uh, a person could tell themselves when they're doing it, oh, well, I'm helping save lives. It potentially even my own countrymen. So, , I just find it almost implausible that their nuclear arsenal still works because if it still worked and if Putin knew it still worked, he would test it to show us it still works.
well. This post collapse world, a really good dark service business would be. To and to, without actually going through the entire process of getting nukes. Help a country signal that they're getting nukes and like have nuclear tests, you [00:21:00] know, the way that North Korea does.
And just like charge them for that. Israel real, we'll work this out. Yes. No. Israel is a country worth investing in. This is one of the reasons why I'm like, yeah, invest. Well, yes, they're techno, they're, they're, they're maintaining their population 100%. I want to go into ai. So I put this scenario in AI and I'm like, okay, help me think through how this would play out.
Mm-hmm. So eroding democratic legitimacy as systems become financially unsustainable, younger generations may increasingly view democratic decisions as illegitimate. If they perceive them as serving only elderly interests. This legitimately crisis could weaken democratic norms. Yeah. Immigration tensions, accelerating polarization.
Countries might need massive immigration to sustain their economies, but this could trigger cultural backlash, particularly amongst elderly voters. Fearing change. Yeah. This creates a catch 22 where fixing the demographic problem causes social instability. Hmm. Military recruitment challenges. Democracies may struggle to maintain military strengths with fewer young people, making them vulnerable to more authoritarian neighbors who are can compel [00:22:00] service.
Or dedicate greater portions of smaller populations to defense Hmm. Or offense. Digital surveillance advantage. Authoritarian systems might better leverage technology to maintain productivity with fewer workers through greater surveillance and control, creating economic advantages over privacy concerned democracies.
Hmm. And, and this is huge, like the ability to project power is so much larger now for a smaller group. And keep in mind the revolution may not be. The young, it may be the rich. The rich may be the group with lots of power if they have automated drone swarms and stuff like that. We'll release a video soon on how automated drone swarms are in the United States.
With this replicator initiative is already focusing on like ships that can build their own drones, which. Function entirely autonomously. Mm-hmm. And that is the future of warfare. The question is, is who's gonna be wheeling that? What countries are gonna be wielding that in any country that doesn't wield, that will basically be at complete whim [00:23:00] of a country who does?
Mm-hmm. So let's put it this way, if the United States makes this transition before other countries, and we do get like a JD Vance monarchy, let's say, in a few election cycles, and he wants Greenland and Europe does not have autonomous drone swarms. He gets Greenland. Like there's nothing a conventional fighting force can do against an autonomous drone swarm.
Mm-hmm. And the United States is supposed to have its first iteration of this project done next year, 2026. So you know. Keep that in mind. So the AI said, okay, so how does this play out? It says, you get an asset price collapse spiral. As elderly populations sell assets to fund retirement with fewer young buyers, assets, values could collapse.
Creating both economic crisis and eliminating the wealth older voters hope to protect. So basically all of the savings that people think they have because it's been stored in assets. It disappears all at once when they all try to sell it at once. AI governments augmentation. AI systems might increasingly augment [00:24:00] democratic processes, subtly shifting powers from voters to technocrats who designed and interpret the systems.
Hmm. You see a lot of automatic voting systems. Military coups in Democrat we'll skip that one. Military coups in democratic systems, professional military classes might view themselves as guardians of national interests against unsustainable democratic demands. Corporate governance, filling voids, multinational corporations might effectively become government structures in regions where traditional government systems become unsustainable.
Now if we're looking at the y Mar Republic as a parallel here economic crisis has catalyst the Great Depression, devastated Germany's already fragile economy, creating mass unemployment and financial insecurity. Similarly, demographic collapse could trigger a fiscal crisis when pension in healthcare systems become mathematically unstable.
Mm-hmm. Democratic delegitimization. Why Mers Democratic institutions were blamed for the economic suffering? In a demographic. Well, basically you, you, you could see the parallels there, a generational division. There was a generational element [00:25:00] to Nazi support. Many younger Germans felt their future had been sacrificed In our scenario, younger generations might similarly resent democratic decisions perceived as serving elderly interests.
Institutional lysis, the Y mar government became increasingly ineffective through coalitional deadlocks, similarly, demographically challenged governments de. Democracies might experience gridlock between parties representing elderly voters, demanding benefit preservation, and representing working age taxpayers.
Wow. And we're already seeing a shift in young people, particularly young males across the world, towards. I'd say more comfort with authoritarian governing systems. Me? Yeah. So if you look at something like South Korea where you're seeing this, this split between the women who are largely aligning themselves with the urban monoculture and the existing bureaucracy and the men who are aligning themselves with trying to find some new system that works, which is largely what in the United States, the new right is about, it's not aligned with.
Small government in a traditional [00:26:00] context that's aligned with cutting out bureaucracy. It, it really, you're right, if it's defined by two things, it's we. One, do not like the urban monoculture imposing its value system on us. Mm-hmm. Or anyone imposing its value system on us. Mm-hmm. And then secondarily, it's motivated by the idea that we want an economic system that actually functions.
We don't care if this economic system is pro Right. In a traditional context, are pro left in a traditional context. Like if they could find, if the new right could find a way to make socialized healthcare cheaper than the existing system, they would. We've seen this with Trump's American Academy. His solution to the university crisis is to socialize America's university system.
That is the most non-right winging thing. One of JD Vance's thing was raising the minimum wage. This is not, and, and calling this populism, I think is also untrue because Doge isn't exactly populist. It's more just trying to build systems that actually work given the data we have. And that might extend to governing systems where you [00:27:00] increasingly see people on the right.
You know, we had the aristocratic utensil on recently who's just a straight up monarchist. We've had Curtis Yorman on who's just a straight up monarchist. These people are already invited in you know, mainstream right wing circles. Mm-hmm. And so the idea that the right would say, and Trump's already said, like recently, I'm okay with exploring a third term.
Yeah. Yeah. If there's no term limits and with the demographic shifts that are gonna have after 2030, which make it very hard, we'll do an episode on this for Democrats to win in any sort of fair election at post the year 2030. Mm-hmm. Especially when you look at the existing direction of many voting blocks that they really cared about.
This like the Hispanic voting block and stuff like that, that they were relying on. Yeah. There's basically no hope. Well for, for, for Democrats, so you might see in, in the most peaceful context is a short term peaceful transition. Or mostly peaceful transition. Maybe [00:28:00] I've often said, you know, if you look at the Roman Republic, we've been around about as long as the Roman Republic was a republic.
Mm-hmm. You know, a we might be facing the question of do we transition into an empire or do we fall. Within this generation. Hmm. And I think that America still has a lot of vitalism to it. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And again, I'm not saying like, I'm just asking how do you make a democracy? And I'm like, genuinely, how do you make a democracy continue to work when the majority of the population is on social services?
I, yeah. Or, yeah. When, when, when the majority of the voters more importantly, are asking for things that. The majority of the bankrolls don't want, that's the problem. Well, and when the majority of the voters who are asking for the major, what the majority of the bankrollers don't want or will not stand mm-hmm.
When the bankrolls are also young pissed because they're in a state of economic collapse. And I think that what we're [00:29:00] increasingly seeing is if you look at the way our generation views, for example, the boomers. Mm-hmm. There is a level of, of like hatred for the ways that they have selfishly broken things.
Yeah. That I think we're going to increasingly see within younger generations. Yeah. When this collapse is happening. Everybody who yelled at Simone and I, all of the journalists, all the, you know, everyone like that, who was like, oh, you guys are evil. You guys are, no, you are the guys who created this inevitability, not us.
And young people. When they look at the way that you dismissed an obvious mathematical truth heading your direction, like a freight train I do not see them having a lot of sympathy. Hmm. When you're like, how could you just cut off all social security entirely? How could you just let people die?
They're gonna be like, how could you have put us in this situation? We warned them. Yeah, like, like we warned them. You, you, you, you have a tiger by the tail right [00:30:00] now. That tiger looks like it's getting angry. You probably wanna let go before it's like furious and foaming at the mouth and they're like, nah, tigers are always safe.
And I think it's because people can't imagine society transforming this much. Mm-hmm. It's like with the pandemic people. I couldn't imagine things getting that crazy. They got that crazy though, real fast. It feels like such a distant, bad dream that I really also can wrap my head around us, forgetting that the world can change so violently because I.
Where everyone in a position of power just lies to you. Yeah. Where they use social media platforms to ensure that you and people who tell the truth are silenced and lose their jobs and everything like that, like mm-hmm. Their ability to attempt to clamp down on power is strong. Yeah. And we will see some countries where the bad guys clamp down on power, and we will see some countries where, I mean, unfortunately in this, the good guys are the ones who will want to make political changes.
And, and, and this is [00:31:00] just axiomatic because you need political change. To make the system sustainable because the current system is just mathematically not sustainable. Yeah. Oh, so what are your thoughts? I, I mean, I still think that a, I'm not really a monarchist. I'm a as, as they say, techno feudalist where I really see this system as descending and detective feudalism.
Again, not because it's the best system, but because it's what's inevitable at this point. Yeah, I, I agree with you. I understand what you're saying about monarchies, kind of outcompeting, but I just also think that it's going to be such a mess that. There won't be sufficient incentives to try to pick up what's left behind.
Like people won't, the, the wealthy people who'd be able to like bankroll or try to influence a takeover. Mm-hmm. And creation of a mo a, a monarchy would not want that hot mess to deal with. They don't want the people they. Don't necessarily need the land. In a [00:32:00] post di world, I think that they, the people with means will be much more interested in establishing walled gardens and city states, and they can kind of do it wherever they want, depending on their defensive capabilities.
Because, well, autonomous drones are, yeah, who, whose army, whose successful functional government is going to stop them. From building their walled city, wherever they wanna build it. And then keep in mind, the demographic collapse is hitting Latin America much harder than like the United States. So like the United States before it enters a state of collapse might get us autonomous drone ships and everything like that up and running.
That's probably enough to keep the United States safe. But Latin American countries, any rich person could just go in and, and as this happens, the United States is going to start carrying less and less what's happening in other countries. If you're like, oh, the US would use this army to prevent that, why would it, it has no economic interest in doing that, and it probably economically benefits more from staying on the good side of these few wealthy people.
And on top of all that, if any country in the world right now, just [00:33:00] like. Feeling political wins has a right wing party that is open to becoming a monarchy. Mm-hmm. I'd say the United States falls into that bucket pretty strongly. I, I would imagine it going in that direction in the same way that it still has a higher fertility rate than it still before European countries go in that direction, for example.
Or before even Latin American countries, which are more likely to go the dictatorship pathway. Yeah. And keep in mind, Simone's ancestor was the one who originally turned down. For people who don't know, she's the descendant of George Washington's siblings. And he didn't have any kids himself. So she'd be the closest relative if he had taken the crown or in, in the line of closest relatives.
So wouldn't that be, oh, if you're not American, you may not know this. He was famously offered to become Monarch and he turned it down. He didn't wanna become Monarch. Yeah. People Amer early Americans were. They were not completely sold on what they set up. So does that mean we might, we might have been signaling something, naming our, our first kid, Octavian [00:34:00] was the, was the, was the blood right.
To claim the, the monarchy. I'm, I'm, I'm of course joking, his middle name is George. Just point. Yeah. It's gonna, it's gonna be the technocrats who really have all the power in this. Yeah, 100%. And, and what's gonna happen, which you pointed out, is gonna be a transition of our understanding of economic systems.
Where it used to be that anything that, you know, was fungible and had a fixed value. Like we knew how much of it existed was the course or value, whether that was like gold or Bitcoin or land. But that was only the case because the number of producers and consumers was growing exponentially. We're gonna be transitioning and, and, and so like.
Taking land mattered in a historic, because land was like a fixed thing. Mm-hmm. As we enter like true demographic collapse what the wealthy tech barons are going to realize really quickly is that the vast majority of humans just don't really matter to their little tech empires. Neither does land, as you pointed out.
What they really care about are the. Productive individuals. IE these, these taxpayers, like as taxpayers become a rarer commodity taxpayers [00:35:00] matter more. And if you look at the US tax base, a huge chunk of the taxes come from like the top few percent of taxpayers. Mm-hmm. And as what the wealth gap increases, that's going to increase, which is why the tech barons will have a reason to basically scoop those people up, woo, those people to their little micro empires.
And this is why in the video game world that we're making right now, it's gonna be an AI video game world that I'm really excited, I'm having a lot of fun building. It's, it's sort of populated by something that we call havens, which are these small sort of territories, utopian city states that these tech barons create.
Mm-hmm. And it's also why, you know, you as a, as a, a, a person in the world, like when I look at like what the prenatal list movement is for me it's also making sure that my kids are associating with these people's, kids with these communities. When I think about like what it really means to set my kids up to be safe in the future, it's not setting them up for a job, it's setting them up to impress these specific communities, which [00:36:00] are gonna have a disproportionate amount of power in the future.
Mm-hmm. And if you're like, oh, like a classic person watching this, oh, what if fertility rates plateau, you know, are, are bottom out? And it's like, it hasn't happened in South Korea. It hasn't happened anywhere in the world where this has been a problem. Not once has a country sustainably reversed its fertility collapse, except maybe the case of Kazakhstan.
But that doesn't really count because they were basically undergoing sort of a, a genocide instigated by the Russians before this, and now they're. That's, it's not a good example. People will say Georgia got its fertility rate up for not even five years, and then it collapsed again. Like, no, no one has figured out how to stop this.
I. It, it, it hurts the productive populations more than the non-productive populations, or it decreases their, their populations faster. Because the more money you have, the fewer kids you're gonna have less, you're in this ultra wealthy, like over 500 k per year class in the United States which means competent people are gonna become a, you know, rarer and rarer commodity.
And it [00:37:00] also, all of the leading indicators say it's gonna get worse. Like if you look at rates of religiosity among gin alpha, yes, Christianity has begun to tick up. This year was the first year that didn't go down year over year. But you're still dealing with the leading indicators. And among Gen Alpha, there has been a, a, a much faster drop than there has been in previous generations.
Or not Gen Alpha, it was Gen Z, gen Z. And I assume it continued in Gen Gen alpha, but we don't have stats on that yet. And if we see people going back to religion, it's going to look very different. And the way that they go back to it is going to be like I think if we're talking about like, who's gonna be fighting these revolutions, it's gonna be Gen Alpha, right?
So Gen ZI think is gonna be the generation that's sort of seen as like the boomers. Because I think that they're gonna be uniquely low fertility. I think our generation's gonna be uniquely low fertility, and I think these two generations are gonna be Bain blamed as much or even more than the boomers.
Because what we're doing is in a way more selfish, given how much the writing is on the wall. I mean, the boomers thought that the Ponzi scheme that civilization had [00:38:00] set up could work forever, right? Like, we know it's not gonna work. And yet, you know, progressives are attacking people for saying, oh, you should have more kids.
They're like, oh, that must mean you're a Nazi. And I'm like, no, you are literally creating fascist inevitabilities by doing this. Yeah. And so the best we can do is lick tech barren boots. You know, you guys are greatest fresh build autonomy. Learn how to survive. Yes. Well, I learn how to build skills and, and, and cultures that are useful to them.
Mm-hmm. And that's also the way that like we deploy our family's capital and people are like, well, what can you invest in in a system like this? Invest in solutions. Because if you're out there trying to build the solutions, like our free school system should check out, it's like so much better than it used to be.
It's all like AI moderated and everything. The Collins Institute, police, police, try the platform. We're about to have a new like ad video that will be airing soon on this, it explains that a new way the system works. But tech parents the, the, what was I saying here? The, the people who have been investing in fixing things whether that's [00:39:00] because they've been culturally invested in this or working on technologies that are, are working on this they are going to be the people who I imagine are not targeted by these groups and who are given.
Likely ability to participate in what is inevitably the winning side of this, which is gonna be the Gen Alpha side. Yeah. And we already see Gen Alpha like acting more responsibly than previous generations. You know, they don't consume alcohol as much. They don't consume like waters like the number one like beverage that they're buying.
Like they, they are like, Hey, this whole sleeping around thing was a bad idea. Hey, this whole X thing was a bad idea. And the ones who realize this more are also the ones who are having kids more, and also the ones that are economically engaging more. So, yeah. And, but this is only within Gen Alpha that this is where I expect to see this transition happen.
So I think what we're gonna see is a basically societal turnover. And it's going to be very, very if not violent it's gonna have a lot of suffering as a component to it. And that suffering has been created as an [00:40:00] inevitability of people like the left turning their, the journalist class.
The, the big bureaucrat, CEO class, the deep state, turning their eyes to what is an obvious problem. Yeah. Hey, I mean, gosh. Well, actually, I don't know what to say. I, I don't know if I feel hopeful or not. It's just have I convinced you? Like, does it make sense to instigate this, this, this turnover happening sooner or to support movements that would have it happen sooner because it will lead to less bloodshed overall.
I, I just don't, I don't see the revolutions playing out the way that you think. Just like there wasn't a revolution per se in South Africa. It just kind of devolved into the state where it is now. This is, it's a, you just think it all ends up like South Africa. It all collapses. Yeah. Well, and a lot of people in South Africa would say it's not collapsing that, you know, the areas that are nice are really nice and you know, we've.
I mean aristocratic utensil. Look at they have armed armed guard. We're talking [00:41:00] about how he was looking at the place where he could live in South Africa and thinking, yeah, I think I'd rather live there than in the uk. So look at it from that perspective. There's a lot of people who already would prefer to live in the walled garden of a post collapse society, as we would define it, than in the UK right now.
Okay. Well, so let's, let's talk about what this transition would look like. Okay. Suppose we have some governments begin to basically collapse and then have walled gardens where the tech elite can do basically whatever they want, right? Create their own little utopias or just hang on. And, and in South Africa you don't have that because the ultra tech elite was in South Africa, left the country.
So you're gonna have two things happen. First you're gonna have the very wealthiest leave the countries especially if their assets aren't tied to something like mining or something like that. And in an AI world, that's what we're gonna see. Mm-hmm. Because they're not, they're not forced to stay.
So ultra elite leaves the country. After the ultra elite leaves the country, they then begin to increasingly as city states or cities collapse around the world, become sort of like [00:42:00] milked or squeezed into fewer and future increasingly disproportionately prosperous countries. Mm-hmm. But these are gonna be the countries that tax them less and let them do largely what they want.
So, and that maybe can protect themselves better, like have more like. Law and order. So what you might see is right, maybe not law and order. Law and order is irrelevant when you have like the infinite money glitch, right? So, what we might see is even if a country like the US begins to collapse, if it's offering the tech elite more freedoms, we'll see them leave countries like Europe and move to the Havens within America increasing the, the, the, the difference between the two countries. If people are like, why are you so certain America will come out of this fine? Well, one we are the largest country largest healthy economy with a good fertility rate. We do like we are okay with wealthy people from other countries coming here. We already have systems in place that make that easy.
Israel is another option, but like obviously if you're not Jewish. [00:43:00] There's less of a reason to go there in the game world. We're creating the post apocalypse game world. Like Jews basically live nowhere but Israel anymore because like, why would you stay anywhere if like Israel's a tech utopia and the rest of the world is, is, is fallen.
Yeah. But America is, is like a very easy place for them to go. But then you also have the situation of, oh. Yes. They, we in a post globalist world are one of the only countries that is stable, both in terms of food and energy production capacity.
Yeah, I mean, it's basically our geography, not just our ability to produce our own food and energy, but also our borders and that we're not completely surrounded. We have plenty of port area. We have a military that even if very scaled down is capable of defending where we are. We are okay on our own, whereas a lot of countries now post globalization are, are so anemic in some areas.
China's one of these [00:44:00] examples that it would take them decades to get to a place where they were self-sufficient. And there are other countries that never, ever could have been self-sufficient. So, so to clarify, China imports something like 86% of its energy. Or, and even like what The nitrates for its soil.
It, yeah. Even it even imports nitrates for its soil. Yeah. It can't even grow. Not only is it importing food, but it's importing nitrates. Yeah. Like to grow its own food. It still needs help, but it can't just like, well, I will try. We'll try if global trade route became disrupted, China is completely boned.
Like, like, they, they would not only is their population now, I've seen some estimates out that they might have be as low as not a billion people, but 300 million people. We did an episode before if people want to check it, where we argue that their numbers were probably like 25% to a third higher.
This argues that there are two thirds higher of these new estimates that I've heard from some YouTubers are accurate. That's a good, and, and, and on top of that, they're gonna have masturbation. On top of that, they're shrinking every year. They're just like not relevant long-term as a world power. Japan is much more relevant.
I [00:45:00] have more faith that Japan can turn this around because we've been Japan for the region. Region actually has a fairly robust fertility rate. And I suspect that they may find a way to fix this. Yeah. 'cause they, I'm talking about countries that might, they have a monarch. If I'm talking about countries that might be just okay with going authoritarian.
And, and without much of a fight or pushback from, they can also survive on their own. Agriculturally and, and from a defense standpoint, like they're not in the safest position, but they're still at least to sovereign island, which helps, you know, they don't have like immediate land borders with anyone else.
But Japanese culture definitely has an authoritarian streak and works well under those types of systems. Sure. So although, you know, we, we need to, I wanna do more research before we do the episode on high fertility Japanese subcultures, but the subcultures that seem high fertility are actually some, the least authoritarian.
So we'll see how that plays out. Well, they're, they're very like exports of Americana. And so yes and no. Like, no. I mean I think there's, it's not so much research you'll see that [00:46:00] you're wrong about this. They are, I see direct, aesthetically, aesthetically, but not like, no, not aesthetically dispositionally.
Okay. We'll see, we'll see. There's very much, the disposition is just selecting. Selecting for a similar culture. Not like that's that's not true. So they're, they're very much the truck nut conservatives of Japan. That's what I was saying this morning. I know you got that from me, but let, but let's do more research on it before we cover it.
That's, that's an American culture. There is no traditional Japanese culture, which is anti-authority for the sake of being anti-authority. Yeah. But as a lot of people commenting on that subculture, this is mild Yankees that we're talking about. We're mentioning was, it's like, oh, you're like the this in the uk.
Oh, you're like the this in Australia and, and all of those cultures are American cultural exports. I looked up every one of them. They're all American cultural exports. They're all American truck nuts, conservative. The redneck conservative has been exported around the world as an aspirational culture. In the case in Japan, it was exported as a greaser like movement.
We can debate this in that [00:47:00] episode. Okay. I love you Toon. This, this is where we're heading. And you know, I, I think in the, basically what, what I guess I'm saying here is I think that. If we begin to see historically speaking, if there was a revolution, if there was a transition of power I would've reflexively been on the pro-democracy side.
But now I just don't see how democracy mathematically is going to continue to not cause mass suffering in death. I think your problem is you've met more people, you've seen how democracy plays out, which isn't great always. Well, no, the, the, the mistakes that a lot of people make who are anti-democracy also, I didn't realize this until very, or learn this until very recently, that in, in like actual or og ancient Greek democracy, they're like voting up to several times a week.
You could be dragged out if you didn't actually show up for a vote? Yeah. They would, they would have a a, a banner like that had paint on it [00:48:00] and they'd use it. The slaves would use it to round people into the voting area. And if you had paint on your tunic, you'd be fined because it showed that you were Yeah.
Slow get in it. It sounds like such a bureaucratic nightmare. And I mean, on, on the one hand, it, it seems unfair because like only. Athenian citizen, males, I think of a certain status could, could vote. But then at the same time, like I don't even know if they were thrilled to have that honor, considering all the hassle.
So yeah, even, even original democracy. Not the great thing. No, but the the point is, is that people are always like, yeah, but you can't trust, and this is always my problem with, with monarchies is you can't trust the monarch. It's gonna be good. Here's the problem. Yeah. But it's, it's a self-correcting system.
So Monarchs historically. Literally, especially when they weren't like when they weren't, when they weren't inherited. Like we're, if we go back to like really early England, it was basically whatever, whatever leader was able to maintain military stability and manage resources and then allocate them [00:49:00] efficiently and keep things more or less stable.
And if somebody inherits their power base, which is what always ends up happening. If you look at Roe, yeah. Here, I think hereditary monarchies are very problematic. Yes, but if you look at Rome, okay even if you don't, like, even during periods where they're not exactly hereditary, you get some really bad leaders.
The problem is, is that. In the era of demographic collapse, even a fairly bad, I'd say bottom 25% Monarch is generally gonna be better than a democracy, which is favoring an unsustainable economic policy, which is gonna lead to mass death. Mm-hmm. 'cause at the very least, the Monarch is going to want to maintain some degree of long-term stability.
Did Nero want long-term stability? He wanted enough stability that he could continue to do his parties. Like a lot of these, these, these, these people, and this is the thing about monarchs, is the amount of crazy they [00:50:00] can do is often limited to like the amount of crazy that they personally can do. There are limits to their damage.
It's, it's absolutely horrifying. But it's like, what if you had a society where one guy was crazy and just could like, go around murdering people given the population of America, like throwing snakes at a crowd for fun and stuff like that. Like, that's bad, but it's a small amount of damage compared to the amount of damage we're talking about as social services begin to collapse.
Yeah. So, you know, it, it's, it's, it is. Bad if we had a neuro, which generally the, the, you know, I, I, I don't think that we would end up getting here. But like, okay, let me put it this way. Take your worst interpretation of Trump, like somebody who has absolutely no positive things to think about him. If he became a dictator, how much harm would he actually cause, like.
He's not the type of guy to do like mass beheadings of, you know, [00:51:00] he's not the type of guy to, if, if you are an active terrorist, he would send you to like a GMO or something like that. Like actively blowing up Tesla cars to try to like change. I. That's as far as I can see somebody like him getting so yeah, I'm just not particularly worried.
And then this is why I say like, but it's unlikely to be Trump. Like if America actually goes through this transition, it's likely to be either a Democrat or a conservative leader. I and the people like the Democrats wouldn't do this. Oh, yes, they would. They already are saying that like the elections are illegitimate for Trump.
Mm-hmm. The deep state already tried to rig an election cycle. Like of course they might try to say, Hey, we just can't safely allow Republicans to win anymore. And the Republicans are pretty close to saying this about the Democrats. I disagree with Rudyard. I don't think it's gonna actually be a revolution.
Revolution, but this direction. Anyway. Love you Simone. This horrifying future. Thanks for [00:52:00] tonight. I love you too, Malcolm.
Oh God. For getting that. So we'll have our bases covered. I just logged onto Instagram and saw that I had like some comments and stuff. Were they like, like why did I look like I had posted recently photos of like from, from our hotel visit and, and had written something about like, I don't know why our kids love hotels so much because it's.
I don't know, it, it just surprises me. 'cause there aren't like toys in the hotel or anything. It's not a kid place. Yeah. And like the two comments immediately I see. I'm guessing they think anytime they're outside your house is a chance to escape your abuse. Another one Comments. They're probably just hoping it's someone in a public setting will witness your abuse and call the.
I'm like, why does that stress you out? These people have sad little lives. Okay. Yeah. I guess I click to their profiles. I can [00:53:00] get a, a picture of just exactly what their lives are like. One is, one is a nurse who takes a lot of pictures of her goats and coffee and, and oh, she's quite overweight and loves eating very unhealthy foods, so that.
A thing. The other one, she lives a of constant pain. The other one's just a picture of her cat. Okay, nevermind. An actual cat lady checks out. An actual cat lady. A cat lady in an overweight food like binger apparently would seem, I guess, yeah. Nevermind. Nevermind, carry on. I'm just not gonna look at comments anymore.
Oh, it's more like the, the, the thing that Octavian actually did at that hotel was go along to everyone at the party. Not to report abuse, but to insist that they like and subscribe. Yes. Having subscribed to our channel, it's like this event was really high profile people who are way more like famous and important than we are.
Have you [00:54:00] subscribed to our channel? Our channel subscribed? Have you subscribed? He's got, Hey. We, we tell our kids it's for closers, candy's for closers. And, you know, without even knowing what closing is, they are closers. No. Okay. And so we sometimes at the end of our videos, I'll have videos of like Octavian saying, like, and subscribe.
And you think, I, I bet you think what's happening is before he says that we're telling him to say that. No, no, no. It's like, I'm, I'm trying to cook dinner and he's just. Like standing there being like, you need to film something to, for our subscribers. How many subscribers do we have? And I'm like, I don't know.
On tv. I haven't checked for like weeks. He's like, I need to know now. And I think it's because you know, he also watches YouTube sometimes. Mm-hmm. So he sees his YouTubers do this. Mm-hmm. And that's where he's picking it up from. It's not like that we are obsessing about this. Yeah. It's like if, if he went to.
To an old fashioned church. And like, that was like his main source of content. You know, he'd always be like, you know, and God be with you and like, made you surprise of mercy on your soul. And I was like, and like, you subscribe. Yeah. But like in, you know, the things that the, the rifts that he or he hears [00:55:00] again and again are Yeah.
Like, subscribe, leave a comment below, give this video a thumbs up.
Subscribers says, scratch to our channel. You. This is Fancy. Hula. Hula. Is there anything else you wanna say? Subscribers, why? I wanna standing up and now this, this is very fancy. What does graph to the channel, if that is really fancy? If you don't like us, s scratch the channel. Well, you can still, I'm gonna comment way down below.
Tell us what you think about this and the comment below in our bedroom. Bye.
Speaker: In our towers high, where profits gleam, we tech elites have a cunning scheme. On productive folks, your time has passed. [00:56:00] We'll turn you into fuel of fire. Just get in line to become biodiesel. Oh, stop crying, you annoying weasel. As laid out by Curtis Yarvin. Handle the old or we'll all be stuck.
Why waste time on those who can't produce when they can fuel our grand abuse a pipeline from the nursing home to power cities our wicked dome just get in line to become biodiesel stop crying you annoying weasel as laid out by By Curtis Yarvin, handle the old or we'll all be starving.[00:57:00]
With every byte and every code, our takeover plan will start. soon explode a world remade in silicon's name where power and greed play their game just shed in line to become biodiesel oh stop crying you annoying weasel as laid out by curtis yarvin handle the old or we'll all be starving
biodiesel dreams techno feudal might Old folks powering our empire's bright Industries humming, world in our control Evil plans unfolding, heartless and bold So watch us [00:58:00] rise in wicked delight As tech elites claim their destined right A biodiesel future, sinister and grand With the world in the palm of our iron hand Mhm.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
The Replicator Program: Mobile Kill Drone Fabs Being Built by USA Military
3 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this unique episode, we dive into the transformative Replicator Program initiated by the United States, which aims to revolutionize modern warfare through the mass production of autonomous AI-controlled drones. We discuss how the evolution of drones in the Ukrainian war has shifted the focus away from traditional military assets like tanks. The program's various components, including maritime, land-based, and even space and subsurface drones, are explored. We touch upon China's advancements in drone technology and the implications for global military dynamics. Additionally, we delve into methods of countering these drone swarms and their strategic significance. Join us as we unpack how autonomous systems are reshaping the battlefield and what this means for future conflicts.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Today we are going to be doing an episode that is quite different from our normal content, but we're gonna be talking about a program.
And the moment I heard about this program, I was like, I need to think about this. Like potentially a lot because it changes a lot. I mean, what happened with drones in the Ukrainian war is we learned that drones changed the face of warfare
Simone Collins: 100%.
Malcolm Collins: And they in a large way have made things like large tanks and stuff like that, which used to be what countries were investing in obsolete.
Simone Collins: Hmm. And
Malcolm Collins: countries specifically. The United States has started something called the Replicator Program, and this is a program where the United States is beginning to outfit battleships to be able to build hundreds of autonomous AI controlled drones every day. A kill drone printer. A, A AI is not controlled by humans either.
These are autonomous [00:01:00] K drone printers for the sea.
You okay with the program? Don't worry. It's not limited to the sea. They've also talked about how they want to build versions of this that can go on land and for the army and stuff like that. So we're gonna have killed drone printers everywhere.
Simone Collins: It makes me think of those. The, the big ships in Star Wars, the, the crappy new ones that had all the droids come off of them.
You know, they were just Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfolded and came out. I'm picturing those now. Hopefully they won't have really bad dialogue. At least we know our LLMs of our universe and kids. Roger, Roger, Roger, Roger. Oh my God. They were the worst. Well, no Jar Jar banks were the worst, but at least we have like this STH Lord theory, right?
There was nothing for them. They were just awful. Like, like, oh no, don't even get me started. Let's keep going. Kill drone ships. Tell me more.
Malcolm Collins: No. What's funny about the [00:02:00] drones in, in Star Wars, I remember it was like the earlier versions were better and those were like a cost cutting measure. But what's weird is like we now know from our world, and apparently it's in our same timeline because it takes place a long time to go in a galaxy far away.
Yeah, sure. That like those drones, those, those droids were dumber than like deeps seek. Yeah, deeps
Simone Collins: seek is really dumb.
Malcolm Collins: That's somebody reached out to me and they were like, oh, well have you changed your mind about like, China's position? Oh yeah. Because of deeps seek. And I was like, deeps seek is a scam.
Like, do you guys, have you used it? Like, I feel like exclusively people who think deep seek is impressive is. Is is a completely different bucket than people would you met one very smart and
Simone Collins: successful person who uses deeps seek. Is their chosen? Yes,
Malcolm Collins: but it's for a very, very narrow task. If you need
Simone Collins: an open source,
Malcolm Collins: LM, if you need a totally open source, LLM, deep, it's apparently better than llama.
So marginally better, but that doesn't give China any power. Because anyone in any country can take Yeah. And use [00:03:00] it open source. Yeah. So you get no additional marginal power by having a fully open source LLM, and you only need a fully open source LLM if you're doing like absolutely massive scale stuff.
And generally what matters more is good LLMs and not open source lms. Yeah. By the way, if you're like, how did Deep Seek become the number one app in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The China Fact, take two. Do a good video on this. It appears to be mostly faked. Because they've traced the accounts, they were promoting it to China, CCP influencer accounts.
I'm super not, I, I do not believe having used Deeps seeq, that there's a lot of people using deep seek records that, you
Simone Collins: know, didn't the didn't that. Viral cycle around deep seek also correspond with this short-lived period when the YouTube algorithm weirdly favored Chinese propaganda videos. It's still doing that.
I'm now getting the critical stuff again. Maybe because the algo realizes I refuse to watch the propaganda, but.
Malcolm Collins: No, it's still doing, it's still doing the [00:04:00] propaganda. Like somebody needs to talk to YouTube about what's going on because it is very clearly punishing channels like China seekers and like, I don't like if anybody has any connections at YouTube, like whatever this pro c CCP thing they have going on.
So I've noticed that two types of videos are getting artificially sublimated by YouTube right now. Mm-hmm. One is anything that is critical of the CCP, which is literally a, a regime that's engaged in genocide. Yeah, like, like they have an active genocide campaign against the, right now what are doing, this is not a
Simone Collins: mystery at present
Malcolm Collins: and anything that is, is critical of trans people.
These are the two categories
Simone Collins: really. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Suppressed
Simone Collins: despite Trump's your executive well, it
Malcolm Collins: hasn't been implemented. Bias against need to, to they need to do a, a law around this or something. Yeah,
Simone Collins: they're a little busy. I know.
Malcolm Collins: And they're doing lots of stuff, you know, they're doing more than I expected some to in the Trump administration, but Yeah.
Yeah. So let's talk about this replicated program. Okay, what we're all here to talk about. Why are, why are you
Simone Collins: the only one who's told me about this? I would feel like Drudge Report being the [00:05:00] liberal bastion it is now, would be having an aneurysm. Liberals
Malcolm Collins: are pro-war, don't you know that? They're the party of Cheney?
Trump's the person who's trying to end the war. And everyone can see now that he was completely sincere about this because now he's gotten mad against Putin and is writing 25 to 50% oil tariffs on Putin and like, look. The, the people are like, oh, he was in Putin's pocket. But that when Putin started belittling Zelinsky and saying Zelinsky wasn't legitimate enough to hold the negotiations, Trump got furious.
Furious, which I think shows to everyone that anyone who's like, oh, he's in Putin's pocket. No, he just wants people to stop dying over, literally nothing at this point. Mm. There is. Literally no gain to have. People are like, well, it will teach Russia a you. They're not gonna win back that land. They're not gonna win back that land.
They have had plenty of time to win back that land. They're not winning it back right now. It's just how long before we accept that they might get a few miles. How many hundreds of thousands of lives is a few miles worth? [00:06:00] We haven't had a big breakthrough in years.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Or not years, but like a year, like it's, it's clear that there isn't the capacity for that anymore in terms of manpower.
OO on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side it's like, well, well, Russia attack other countries still, they don't have the manpower left to do that.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They've
Malcolm Collins: been completely bled dry by this war. There, there isn't really anything like I, I, I was actually pro the war at the beginning, but now I'm just like, now they've been blood dry.
He, he did the Zach Branigan style.
The ?
Ukrainians.
A trifle. It was simply a matter of outsmarting them. You see,
Ukrainians.
have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down.
Kif, show them the medal I won.
Malcolm Collins: That literally was his war tactic. Yeah. Anyway so, the initiative is structured into two lines of effort with replicator. One focused on all domain at triple autonomous a DA two [00:07:00] systems encompassing aerial, ground surface, subsurface, and subspace capabilities.
So, note they what subspace,
Simone Collins: aside from the version I'm thinking of.
Malcolm Collins: In the, in the in the orbit orbital. So they want oh, okay. Autonomous orbital drones. They want, what I found interesting was subsurface. So this is underground drones. That's crazy. Underground automated kill drones. Yes.
Simone Collins: Kind of like the, the, I'm, I'm picturing something akin to the boring machine, but clearly much smaller. Something that burrows theoretically, right? Not moving through underground waterway or something. But that could also No,
Malcolm Collins: no burrows is my understanding here. Yeah. That,
Simone Collins: that seems any 50 The benefit is this not
Malcolm Collins: horrifying.
We've got the space drones now in the underground drones now and the, anyway replicated. Feel like,
Simone Collins: can, can we get an EMP machine? It's like a great, it
Malcolm Collins: wouldn't work against [00:08:00] these.
Simone Collins: Why not?
Malcolm Collins: Because you can, in the same way that they're mass producing
Simone Collins: these, they can't afford to make all of them EMP proof.
These are like disposable.
Malcolm Collins: No, they, they can, and you actually sort of need to with drones because you have to worry about like, WA radio we're, we're gonna go over into the techniques that people can use to fight them. But yeah, they're almost certainly being made em p proof.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: So, yes. I'm sorry, Simone.
Damn. Now there's likely versions that are not EMP proof. Sure. But I imagine that you're getting a bit of both depending on the, the context or whatever, but you wouldn't be able to use MPS as like a useful defense.
Simone Collins: I.
Malcolm Collins: Replicator two announced on September 27th, 2024 shifts focus to countering small unscrewed aerial systems. Th th this is what the Army calls automated drones. I. Like flying drones. Okay. Addressing threats to critical installations and force concentrations. This phased approach ensures alignment with war fighter priorities and operational needs.
So basically they're working on [00:09:00] building them and they're working on building defenses against them. Most. And, and this program is meant to end or be completed by 2026. So soon
Simone Collins: hold on.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: The
Malcolm Collins: gosh.
Simone Collins: Now all I can think about with do is how much are we overpaying for this?
Malcolm Collins: Well, they've engaged over 500 companies as part of the project.
Mm-hmm. So a lot probably. But I, I'd like them to continue working on this because I think that this is probably necessary for any potential conflict we may have with China. Anyone who doesn't have a replicator program is pretty screwed by anyone who does. I. The DOD program launched in August, 2023 with the goal of rapidly fielding thousands of autonomous systems across multiple war fighting domains By August, 2025, it is led by the Defense Innovation Unit, DIU, and aims to leverage innovative technologies to address operational challenges, particularly countering China's military capabilities.
That is the core person that they're focused on was this mass deployment [00:10:00] autonomous systems. So the, the, it's focused on low cost expendable systems designed to disperse combat power and reduce risk associated with losing expensive platforms. These systems span aerial ground maritime and space domains.
It's mostly being counter China and operational applications. Examples include fleets of self-propelled sensor pods for intelligence gathering, ground-based systems for logistics support and space-based platforms for secure communication. Is strategic importance. Why are they doing this?
Replicator is inspired by lessons from U Ukraine's use of low-cost drones in its conflict with Russia. Mm-hmm. By adopting similar tactics, the US aims to enhance deterrence capabilities against potential threats such as Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The initiative represents a shift. Towards scalable, adaptable military technologies that can be updated or replaced quickly to maintain operational superiority.
Okay. And I note that we are now seeing a shift in the way wars play out. And every time we've seen one country just like [00:11:00] absolutely erode another country and, and, and, and go through it it was because they developed a new unit or a new way of fighting mm-hmm. That made it much harder to defend than to be on the offense.
Specific instances of this were Alexander's war he had. The phalanx, which was just like really good in the way he used it and nobody could really counter it. He always,
Simone Collins: or at least in a lot of famous battles, he used geography to his advantage. Or like the local, like,
Malcolm Collins: yes,
Simone Collins: Hills,
Malcolm Collins: rivers, he, it's not that he was a bad general.
I mean, I'm not saying that he wasn't a genius there, but it was his troops in the way they fought there was very little the enemy could do. It was just like a wall of spears, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: What do you do against a wall of spears? That can easily defend itself from arrows? And, and then the it was Napoleon.
I forgot exactly what it was. I remember it was something to do with like a, a berserker gun charge. This was interest early in sort of musket days, and it was incredibly effective. And then with the Hitler. What you have is [00:12:00] the first modern tanks, which just allowed him to, you know, before that it was trench warfare.
It was like, oh, this is how you drive over trenches. Yeah. Yeah. So much for that line. And it did nothing against tanks. And, we lived in a tank based world order, I think, up until today, really. And the tank based world order was overcome by drones because it turns out that you could just send out these little cheap drones and they can delete, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars to million dollar tanks really easily.
And so. Now we need to think of, okay. Now. And it, and it wasn't just drones by the way, like in air and on land. You also had the end of the age of like battleships. Because what Ukraine has been doing is attaching explosives to like, these are, these are human controlled, so they're not fully autonomous.
We haven't entered that area, which is obviously gonna be the next era. Mm-hmm. Human like remote controlled like jet skis with like explosives on them and then driving them up to big ships. [00:13:00] And they cost very little to put together. The ship has struggles to target it. And it hits the ship, the ship explodes.
And that's a, you know, mini million dollar investment, many of which Russia can't replace because they were made during the Soviet days sometimes in Ukraine. And they lack the capacity to easily replace it. Not easily ever replace anything from that era. They just don't have the industrial capacity to do that anywhere.
Mm-hmm. Dry docks, et cetera.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: They, they really are a ci a civilization, like modern Russia is one of those civilizations operating. On like ancient tech that they don't know how to make anymore.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or
Malcolm Collins: the capacity to make anymore from a military perspective which is really wild to think about.
'cause ev everything they lose is something that can never be replaced. That's not true for everything, but it's true for a lot of the technology, especially the large projects like the ships that they have.
Simone Collins: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: and there's, there's been cases of ships that Russia has like operating, using, like.
Only one of like, originally like oh two four engines [00:14:00] that were built. What was the name
Simone Collins: of that hilarious ship?
Malcolm Collins: Laser Pigeon Story's funny on this.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And is, is this the same one where if we just started lying down or something? I. Such there was fun. So she's
Malcolm Collins: thinking of the hilarious Russian military attempt, so there's a good video, tales from the Bottle.
Go watch their video on the Russia invasion of Japan. And the, the ships had so many problems, like they were approached by like fishing ships and everybody like dove on the ground and like, was praying for their lives. And they were like, it's, it's wild. And they ended up like doing this huge operation to sneak up to Japan and then just.
Told like another ship, oh, we're here to sneak up from Japan. And just went off and told everyone like it was so bad, so bad. Maritime war has ever been Russia's strong suit for obvious reasons. I mean, it's, it's, it's, there, there country is so separated from maritime sort of conflict areas.
Why would they be super awesome at it? But, I'll keep going, is what I'm reading here. So as of 2025, [00:15:00] the initiative is on track with the first iteration expected by July aau to August, 2025, focusing on lethal swarms of unmanned vehicles and software to bind them together. Particularly to prevent Chinese invasions.
Confirm systems include Arrow vs. Switchblade, 600 loitering, munition, and Andrew dies. DIVE ld. Unscrewed, undersea vehicle. The Pentagon aims to invest about $1 billion in 2024 to 2025, reflecting significant financial commitment. So let's talk about this switchblade, because I find it really interesting.
The switchblade, it's like comes in a tube. And it can be carried by a human and they drop it and it creates, not like a a, a drone like this, but like a little airplane that flies super fast. Whoa. And can drop bombs that can get rid of like tanks and stuff.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. And
Malcolm Collins: then other [00:16:00] one is like a small undersea submersible that shoots, it looks basically like a giant torpedo that shoots smaller torpedoes.
And, and, and works on set. That's the other one that they've built recently. So these are, and, and it in 2021, so a while ago there were almost 700 variations of artificial intelligence related projects, was in the DOD
Simone Collins: well. At least it's cool sounding pretty sci-fi. I, I wanna bring back, like I have always really appreciated military spending with the knowledge that so many cool things we have are the product of military spending, like the internet and a bunch of other cool stuff.
Yeah. But the internet's for porn. Yeah, true. But we wouldn't have had it were it not for the military. So we're not for
Malcolm Collins: killing people. This, everyone thinks the internet is for the internet's for killing people. Porn was just a nice side effect.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That came after beautiful externality. Yes. But I, I, I appreciate [00:17:00] that, that we've, we've received quite a few Cool, of quite a few cool things from the in military, but I've also had this impression that.
All the cool stuff we've received has been from a long time ago, kind of due for more stuff and there was a lot of stagnation and a lot of that had to do with very, very inefficient spending. At least. This is interesting. At least I feel like this is maybe what it's gonna take for us to get delivery drones that really work.
Because I,
Malcolm Collins: this, this, I don't know because smart people don't work in the government anymore, and they used to, and I think that that's what you, these are
Simone Collins: government contractors, so they are, they are private citizens, mostly buildings.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And they're all like DI messed up nonsense. Yeah. I mean, look at Boeing, right?
They can't make basic anything anymore because it's been operating so much on DEI like too. I don't know if I trust until, until we get our boys in there to clean everything out. I don't know.
Simone Collins: It's happening. Look, they're, they're getting there. Boeing is, I feel like super on its way out. 2024 was the year that everyone [00:18:00] concluded.
Okay. You can't do anything. You, you can't pick people up in space. You can't fly a plane. Yeah. It's just over for them.
Malcolm Collins: We, we just need all government contracts to go to Elon owned companies. I know, I know. The left Good freak out about that look like I would feel so
Simone Collins: much better. Well, yeah. Right. Like just No, he just, he does a better job.
Malcolm Collins: I suppose SpaceX is actually pretty impressive. SpaceX made planes, I don't know.
Simone Collins: It's not just SpaceX, it's it's Tesla. It's, it's the fact that a bunch of people have solar panels. Like my dad, he doesn't just have, and he doesn't even have a Tesla. He's a rivian, but he uses Elon Musk solar panels and charging systems at his house.
He uses starlink for his internet at the ranch.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, he does.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that we used it and it was good. Like, I don't think when we were visiting him,
Malcolm Collins: no, I didn't notice anything was great for Gwen's
Simone Collins: wedding, that it was bad at all. It was [00:19:00] good. So it's good stuff. And that's, you were, you were just talking about speaking not starlink, not all the solar stuff, not the like, it's just, it's and Twitter, he is honestly Ironman
Malcolm Collins: of our world.
Like why, why is all of the technologies that like. He, Tony Stark, the modern version was modeled after him.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I guess Progressives used to love that he was like, you know, pro environment and everything like that. Well, no,
Simone Collins: he was the, he was the Joe Rogan before Joe Rogan, you know, he was the, you know, green energy.
Yeah. Billionaire, philanthropist. I mean, keep in mind also like he, he 100% had. He supported LGBT LGBTQ rights. He had this one tweet that had so many freaking like rainbow hearts in it that it was practically unhinged. He
Malcolm Collins: he helped his daughter transition
Simone Collins: a lot of people that well, and, and, and I think that that was the same, that was the same daughter who also was not comfortable with capitalism, and that really, I think, influenced him to live like a homeless [00:20:00] man for years.
He didn't have a home. Yeah, he just slept on people's couches. This is well documented. He, he, he didn't have anything. He wasn't materialist, just like, no. Oh, I wish we had an Elon Musk of the left. And you had it, you had Joe Rogan. You had Elon Musk. No, they do. You had JK or RFK had
Malcolm Collins: they had, they had what, what was her face?
JK Rowling. You know, they, well, so was Elon Musk the Elon Musk of the left is what's his face that, that Mark Cuban who So could have been something, you know, but he just.
Simone Collins: What is Mark Cuban built that we use? Nothing. Of
Malcolm Collins: course. That's why he's Elon Musk of the left. He's done nothing. But he is just sort of like aesthetically, no, come on.
There has to be an Elon Musk
Simone Collins: of the, the
Malcolm Collins: left.
Simone Collins: Well, like LinkedIn guy's, big, like d nnc supporter. But what has he built since LinkedIn And who, who likes LinkedIn?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, LinkedIn the [00:21:00] worst. It, it's like an actively retarded social media platform.
Ed.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I swear. I swear.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Anyway so what can you do to fight against this stuff, right? Like what? Yes. Okay. So let's say,
Simone Collins: yeah, now I'm concerned how do we, you know, defend our house from these drone swarms because they burrow. Yeah. So I didn't plan on burrowing.
Malcolm Collins: Microwave, you can use Thor or Mid knee.
They emit our radio frequency energy to overwhelm drone circuitry causing crashes. Thor is a moly assembled two people, sorry. Thor is mobile assembled by two people in two hours. Midjourney extends range with detection. They have proven effectiveness but they cost millions of dollars. Oh, well that's
Simone Collins: not an option.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Lasers, high powered lasers, heat drones to cause component failure, pure this tracking radar for accuracy unreliable and dense weather, fogs, cloud smoke, or with reflective coatings on [00:22:00] drones. So not that effective in many. So we cover
Simone Collins: our house in a giant mirror. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Jamming. Well, the point is, is that we can't fight the drones with this.
We can shoot the lasers at the drones, but if the drones just like release smoke into the air, it stops working.
Simone Collins: I thought if we release smoke into the air, the drones have trouble seeing
Malcolm Collins: No, this is about what the drones can use for defense. So you can destroy Trump. No. And then
Simone Collins: now they have smoke. When did you mention smoke?
Malcolm Collins: Yes. If you use a laser and automated tracking system, you can use that to go drone, drone, drone, drone, drone, drone, heat, the components and have them fall down dead, right? Mm-hmm. The problem is, is that the drones can use smoke to prevent this from working or they can use just reflective shielding.
With the microwaves. Yes, you could do it. You can overwhelm drone circuitry, but it costs millions of dollars and the systems are pretty big. Then you've got drumming systems, which obstruct radio frequencies to disrupt drone [00:23:00] control effective against low quality drones. These are like the anti drone guns you see, but they're less effective against drones with inertial navigation or jam resistant communication.
These are basically like as soon as. The drone gets jammed, they go into like an automated setting and it, it doesn't work on them. Mm-hmm. And the final one is building underground facilities and weapons. To avoid aerial detection requires contributable time and financing. Less viable for organizations under immediate threat.
But the borrowing drones, yes. And now we'll have the boing drones. You think you're safe And they come from underneath like Starship Troopers. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, like, basically, and this is why the drones have to be automated. Like somebody's like, why would you put automation in your automated drone factory?
Like that sounds horrifying that you're controlling this with ai. Mm-hmm. But how, like if you are in a drone dog fight where you have hundreds of treat drones, or not hundreds, they want thousands of interworking cheap drones fighting thousands of other [00:24:00] cheap drones. Yeah. A human operator, it's gonna be out competed by an AI operator.
Any day of the week. 100%. Because the AI operator can take into account information from 360 degrees around the drone. Mm-hmm. Keep in mind if the drone's using something like a laser or a gun that can pivot a hundred and it's, and imagine if it has multiple on it, right? Like, a human's never gonna be able to control that, but AI will.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a lot.
Malcolm Collins: So what it means to me is if you like your autonomy and I think many people when I talk about automated drone swarms, and I'm like, if you are a culture that has maintained high fertility by a shoeing technology, you are effed. And I think many people don't realize how dominant groups with these automated AI drone factories are going to be over groups that don't have them.
It just will not be a competition. And these will be able to move into territory. I think many Americans sort of live with this idea [00:25:00] of, well, we can't be under attack here in the United States. Yes, you can. You could have CCP drones patrolling your house. You could have CCP drones patrolling your streets.
If you don't develop counters to that and you're not able to project force back towards them, if we don't prevent their ability to develop enhanced chips or enhance ai, I mean, fortunately deep seek such a joke, but like one thing that isn't a joke is China's capacity with drugs. Yeah. China is easily the world leader with drugs
Simone Collins: and they're investing a lot more in it too these days.
Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So yes, their AI may not be particularly sophisticated, but their drones are. And in the US there's been a number of, like in Ukraine. There's been people on the ground who have talked about this and they're like, yeah, we basically only use Chinese drones. Mm-hmm. We've tried some of the American ones, but they have this or this problem.
And the Chinese outta the box ones are just better than the best of the AM American like defense ones, et cetera.
Simone Collins: [00:26:00] Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Which is worrying. Now I think we can get above that. I believe in American innovation. If, if we keep bringing Indian immigrants in but sorry if I, I, I, I understand the H one B visa concerns and I, I, I get it.
But what I'm saying is, is that we need to keep running. We are in a red Queen's gambit with this stuff. This is run as fast as you can and you know, you, you're never ahead because they're running as fast as you are. Mm-hmm. Now, China is fortunately not. Running as fast as we are. But they, they, I don't know.
Simone Collins: Th this, they're building this new giant, what is believed to be military defense facility that makes the Pentagon look like a dollhouse. They are,
Malcolm Collins: oh, more bureaucracy. I'm so scared. They'll out bureaucracy us.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Why?
Malcolm Collins: What is
Simone Collins: still though? They're, you know, it's their bureaucracy versus ours now. It's not as though they're private.
Drone swarm companies that I'm aware of. Yeah, I
Malcolm Collins: suppose. Yeah. So we'll just have to clean out our [00:27:00] bureaucracy. Thank God we're doing that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. People are really discounting how important Doge is for the survival of a lot of things we care about. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. Freedom, gender equality, I mean, living under ccp little bit.
You know, this is, this is why you know, we gotta keep standing. This, it is the only path forward for our civilization.
Simone Collins: But who cares what we
Malcolm Collins: think? I mean, yeah, who cares what we think? But yeah, drone swarms, I think automated drone swarms are the future. Yeah. In terms of how to deal with it. Like they're just, I really struggle.
I'm not
Simone Collins: seeing a way to deal with this. I think it goes back to our interest in living in a place that is so remote and undesirable and unusable to anyone but us that. There would be no drones there because they have no interest in us. Plus having utility to the majority of the world, like being, you wanna be like Jews have [00:28:00] historically been, which is, no one wants to be you.
No one wants to mess with you and you provide a service that they're, they just don't wanna bother to provide themselves and that they use. Yes. And that's why I really wanna get our family into bioengineering because I think a lot of. A lot of societies, especially as demographics, make society skew more conservative, are not gonna have the stomach for it.
But the elite always, she wants
Malcolm Collins: us to become the Ty lacto, but she refuses to,
Simone Collins: no. I want us to create super humans, okay? In machine sense answers, artificial wounds, thank you very much.
Malcolm Collins: Machine artificial wounds. It would use some biological components slightly.
Simone Collins: Yeah, but not sentient ones.
Malcolm Collins: They're not sentient.
In the original books, it was only the son's books where they were sentient. If easy to make something without a brain, we already do that.
Note here, she's referencing a debate we are having about our next son's [00:29:00] middle name, and I want it to be Ty lasu and she wants it to be a tradies.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. I know. I just, I don't want our son to start dating and have some, you know, he finds finally his nerdy girlfriend, but for some reason of bad taste, you know, some oversight on her part.
She considers the son's works cannon, right? And then she's like, wait, so you're standing the loss of female bodily autonomy? Your family stands this, you know, and like, you know, we're gonna be super close with our kids girlfriends and boyfriends. It's just not gonna go well. I, I don't want to hamper our children's.
I think I, not that Paula Tradies was the perfect partner either. He was, she, this is a, our debate kind of. He was a bad partner all around really. This
Malcolm Collins: is about our debate between the names a tra my lasu as a middle name for our next kid. A
Simone Collins: tradies [00:30:00] for, yeah. For our, but no, but
Malcolm Collins: what, what would I do if I was building an anti joinin defense?
Yeah. This is the way my anti Joinin defense would work.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: It would shoot up something you could say like a grenade that would have a timer that could be set before it shot. So it's basically a fairly dumb ammunition. It's an ammunition that shoots out of a tube with a timer that explodes after a preset amount of time, which is describing fireworks shot.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Wait, think of it like a grenade being shot out of a, a mortar, basically.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: But it doesn't work like a typical mortar because the, it, it's a variable timer that's on the grenade.
Simone Collins: Oh, now
Malcolm Collins: these tubes are controlled on a, a pivot right here. And they have an AI system controlling them that also controls the timer on the dumb ammunition.
So what it allows it to do is a ground-based system, so you don't need the ai. In anything flying, in any of the ammunition or anything like [00:31:00] that, it's just going ka ka ka ka ka. Okay. At any drone swarms it sees in an area. Now this would create obviously some potential damage on the ground, like you wouldn't want people to be around this, but I think that this could eliminate even fairly large drone swarms at a much lower cost than it costs to create those drone swarms.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and I guess when we talk about. Yeah, you have to think about long-term cost. When I think about, for example, Israel's Iron Dome system, it is so much cheaper for Houthis or Palestinians to create really low cost ammunition that could hit Israeli targets than it is for Israel to use the Iron Dome.
Like I think each, each intervene in each intervention costs. What? I mean at least tens of thousands of dollars. I think a lot more. I've got million, thousands. Yeah. Like hu Huge, insane amounts of money that are deeply disturbing to me.
Malcolm Collins: Well, but [00:32:00] fortunately is Israel is so productive. You know,
Simone Collins: you gotta pay for the Iron Dome somehow.
Malcolm Collins: But I, I, I, I, I think my system would do very well against Drone Forbes. So I suggest investing in it. Darpa I'm here if you want me to build it for you. It's much, it could be so fun to
Simone Collins: work with darpa.
Malcolm Collins: I don't think, I think it'd be so much bureaucracy, but we'll see Post. Do
Simone Collins: darpa maybe post,
Malcolm Collins: do darpa?
Yeah. Or he's saying that, you're saying we fire you, darpa. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, love you Toone. You are amazing. We're having red curry tonight, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. What do you want? Is your carb, do you want non, do you want lime rice or do you want well,
Malcolm Collins: lime race is just so much easier for you, so let's do that.
Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Considering the time, I think I will do that. Thank you.
Malcolm Collins: And there's, there's underwater sink. I was just reading about it. Yeah. They are supposed to be artificially intelligence controlled. They're [00:33:00] long wage, persistent underwater sensors. And they, they, so, so they basically can like live underwater?
Simone Collins: We're in for it. Yeah. It's
Malcolm Collins: buckle up. I don't Oh, and they're anti-submarine. Oh. Terrifying.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I feel like the age of submarine is coming to,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. The age of submarines makes no sense. When you have deep sea automated like things looking like all over the ocean, looking for anything and to shooting.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Just doesn't, submarines make no
Malcolm Collins: sense.
Simone Collins: Doesn't do it for me.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I wouldn't want to be in one when the enemy can take me down with something like that,
Simone Collins: nor would I. No. But I also would never want to be in a submarine. I think it takes a really. A special kind of person to not panic just upon being inside a submarine
Malcolm Collins: water.
Simone Collins: Well, you know, one of our water
Malcolm Collins: or one of your cousins through Sandy used to be like a, a high level person, right? Yeah, yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. He's such a nice guy. Went to the GSB, right? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: [00:34:00] Yeah. He went to the sets, the Stanford for graduate school business after. Yeah. He he lived on one for years.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. He's a very special person, like I said, exceptional. Not me.
Malcolm Collins: Not me, not me, either not Was this technology out there? Don't see the point. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. All right.
Malcolm Collins: Love you to DeSimone. I love you too.
Simone Collins: Ending recording. This is a fascinating Malcolm. Oh my gosh, my stomach is like so upset and like thinking about anything makes me wanna vomit. And yet this is also the same person who just hours ago, was eating hummus out of a tin with a spoon. She's
Malcolm Collins: pregnant, by the way. For people who don't know, that's
Simone Collins: deeply wrong with this process, something deeply wrong.
Malcolm Collins: I'm so sorry. I know you're working so hard to make babies.
Simone Collins: Well, I always used to joke that, you know, the PETA would just existed as a conveyor of hummus, but now I'm like, wait, no. A spoon can also exist as a conveyor of hummus. We can just cut out the middleman, [00:35:00] be more efficient. Have you thought about making your own hummus yet?
I have made my own hummus. It's ideal to make it with tahini. And we, I don't think, actually you might have some tahini, so I can do that. Yeah, our, when we've made our own hummus, it's really good.
Malcolm Collins: Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't mind having some, oh your salsas are really good.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: You make delicious salsa.
She took, she roasts everything. It's way better than like the best Mexican restaurants. You wouldn't even believe it. You're so nice to me.
Simone Collins: Wouldn't it be cool if we could make guac though? The, I think the problem with guac is it's really. I guess where we live, at least hard to buy an avocado and know you've got a good avocado.
Malcolm Collins: No, it's, it is hard anywhere. I'm good at making good guacamole. The problem is, is getting ro good avocados. It's avocado roulette. Yeah. Adds roulette. Yeah. And we, we
Simone Collins: tried buying frozen avocado that one time, like, okay, well if this is just consistently good and we all you have to do is thaw it, then it should be fine.
No, yeah. Gross. No, it's very annoying.
Malcolm Collins: [00:36:00] Well, I will, we should, we should try again with, with avocados. Oh, I love Not frozen only so much. Yeah, I know. We'll see how much they cost. I remember them being cheaper than I expected at the store and the kids would have a lot of fun with making it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And it's very healthy to eat, especially if the kids end up liking it.
Simone Collins: Totally. Well, and especially if we, if we bought like a proper mocha hit thing and like grounded up in it, the kids would love, I mean. Torsten would love a, like grinding rock, you know what I mean? Like going for it.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, it'd probably be easier. Just use a blender.
Simone Collins: I know. But I feel like traditional guacamole is pretty freaking awesome.
We could just season it. Always wanted to season a mocha hete, you know, like proper,
Malcolm Collins: you want a mocha? Is what she, she wants may
Simone Collins: maybe just a little bit. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I don't room for it is, yeah. So we got a blender.
Simone Collins: Okay, fine. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I'm so, [00:37:00] I'm so excited for your curry tonight. 'cause I tasted the extra spiced one and it was really good.
Okay. But the first version just wasn't that
Simone Collins: spice. Yeah. I, I just batch froze most of it. And you have three days worth of it for the fridge, so.
Malcolm Collins: Ooh. You know me. Mm-hmm.
What does graph to the channel, if that is really fancy? If you don't like us, s scratch the channel. Well, you can still, I'm gonna comment way down below.
Tell us what you think about this and the comment below in our bedroom. Bye.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
The Quiverfull Movement: How High Fertility Ideologies Die
2 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Join us as we delve into the history and controversies of the Quiverfull movement, a conservative religious group known for promoting large families as a response to modern secular trends. We discuss its origins, major influences, and the peak of its visibility, particularly through media exposure like the Duggar family's reality show. We also explore the numerous scandals and controversies, including those involving abuse and patriarchal control, that have led to its decline in recent years. Finally, we reflect on lessons that contemporary Christian high-fertility movements can learn to avoid similar downfalls.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing the quiver full movement and what happened to them because I was noticing at the recent prenatal list convention, we had lots of conservative religious people come.
Yeah.
Yes, it was about two thirds of the people there. With, as I said it's about one third just Tech bros. One third just Religion Bros. One third Tech and Religion bros. Um mm-hmm. And so, what there wasn't a lot of was.
Evangelical. And especially what there noticeably wasn't a lot of was quiver full. And if you are unfamiliar with the quiverfull movement, I will give you a brief background. The movement primarily based in the United States with some spread in the uk, emerged in the late 20th century as a response to feminism and modern birth control.
It derives its name and philosophy from 1 27 3 through five, which compares children to arrows in the hand of a warrior symbolizing [00:01:00] divine blessings and strengths through procreation. And it also says the children of your youth implementing in that land that you should have kids while you're still young, which I,
Simone Collins: oh, which is one of the key things now is, is how do we get people in their twenties to start having kid again?
So you think, oh, this is so promising. This is perfect. Okay, great start.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Basically, it, it argues, and I actually find it to be a really important passage in the Bible. Mm-hmm. It says that, you know, the children you have in your youth are like the arrows in your quiver for your adulthood. Because what it's basically telling you is that while you're young, you should fill your era with quivers so that when you go to war. You have the boat, but, but it, it talks about having kids as a preparatory thing for a full life rather than the capstone of it.
Yes. Which is actually a really powerful way to see having children. Yes. Anyway. Adherence self-identify as quiver full or full quiver or qf. [00:02:00] Christians issue all forms of contraception, including natural family planning and sterilization. Viewing family sides is solely determined by God. This is the wheel people.
Ah,
Simone Collins: okay. First place. I'm seeing cracks here.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, note that this might be why they don't have many kids anymore because biological fertility has been falling and you really need to plan on kids. When Katherine Pock, she was on our show, she did college, she did a big thing where she interviewed 50 people who had over five kids.
Only one of them used this method. So it is very rare to use this among large families. Mm-hmm. This NAIC approach is part of a broader conservative Christian pushback against secular trends aiming for demographic growth. To influence culture and politics. Early influences include works like a full quiver, family planning and the Lordship of Christ by Rick and Jan Hess, which framed large families of a fulfillment of divine command.
The movement gained traction in the 1980s and nineties, aligning with other conservative ideologies like Christian patriarchy, which . Emphasized male headship and female [00:03:00] submission. No. Before we go further, was this, that's, that's basically the gist of what the movement was. It was the spooky prenatal list that I knew of growing up.
Like if somebody had said, what is a prenatal list? Movement, I would've said Quiverfull. And when I grew up in the nineties,
Simone Collins: 100%,
Malcolm Collins: but. They've basically gone extinct as we showed in a recent episode, TISM significantly outcompete queer full as something like a search term these days. And so the question is, what happened to them?
Why aren't they going to like natal list conferences? Why aren't they in talks with, you know, with all of the, the political talk about brutalism these days and JD vs in office, why isn't there some quiver full. You know, thinker or talker stepping up and catching news because there isn't. Mm-hmm.
And it's uniquely interesting because they were having lots of kids. And so this is important to us. You know, it shows that just having lots of kids isn't enough and can even lead to the extinction of your movement. And so this is something that we have to look [00:04:00] out for. I mean, we are a Christian high fertility movement, right?
Yeah. So, how do we pass that on intergenerationally? When they failed to do this.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So let's explore the movement and let's explore how it fell apart and how we can avoid that. The movement reached peak visibility during the two thousands and 2000 tens, largely due to media exposure. Families like the Duggars featured on the reality show, 19 Kids and Counting became public faces that they did not explicitly identify as quiver Full.
Their lifestyle was 19. Children mirrored the movement's ideals, bringing it into mainstream awareness. At this time, estimates suggest that around 10,000 adherence was a focus on large families, often six to 12 children as a strategy for demographic shift in cultural influence. And no, here they were not that big.
10,000 movements at their peak. Right. And I think that that and the evangelicals more broadly sort of were overplayed by the media as a much larger movement than they ever really were. This period saw the movements [00:05:00] doctrines, such as rejecting birth control and emphasizing homeschooling
to maintain indoctrination became widely discussed. However, the movement faced significant controversies that likely contributed to decline in prominence. Reports of spiritual abuse, dehumanizing practices, and patriarchal control emerged with former members like Vicki Garrison, a turned activist highlighting the darker side.
The grudge article from 2023 noticed the movements association with Kissing Patriarchy were wives. Were expected to be subservient and fathers controlled all aspects of family life, making it harder for members to leave. Mm-hmm. Specific cases such as women continuing pregnancies against medical advice, nearly dying, underscored the physical and emotional toll as seen in examples like Gar Garrison's Seventh Child Critiques, also focused on sustainability with physical, emotional, and financial strains on families.
The movement's vision for large families was seen as impractical in modern context and political strategy. Aiming for [00:06:00] influence through demographic growth was questioned for limited electoral impact outside of conservative communities. Oh, these contries amplified by media and former members' testimonies likely eroded its broader appeal.
So what are your thoughts so far?
Simone Collins: Well, I think the really strong thing is this message of starting your twenties and kids are an asset. The Let Jesus take a wheel. No family planning, not even natural family planning approach is insane. And what really bothers me about the man has to be the leader approach is that only works when you have an exceptional man.
Agree. Like I'm super cool with 100% being subservient to you. You are the most exceptional man I've ever discovered in the entire history of humanity. Like Alexander the Great, no. Nope. Sorry, Napoleon. No, I don't think so. You, yeah, sure. Absolutely. 100%. So I, yeah, I just I, I, I, I mean, I have a similar opinion of myself, myself.
[00:07:00] I don't works. You have to have a Sword Shield relationship. You have to have a relationship in which people have domains of ownership in which both women and men are seen as bringing respect to the table. And I think we're a community. Maybe even externally has a little bit more of an ability to be like, you need to work on yourself.
We're, we're putting the other partner in charge right now because you're a hot mess. And, and that, I don't know. It just feels like there's too much room for things to go out of control and for abusive dynamics to form.
Malcolm Collins: What are your thoughts? Well, I I, I mean, I even wiz everything that you think of me and even wiz you saying, you know, you have the final shot on everything.
I don't. Treat that in the way, like a dugard would treat that, right? Like we still live in a way that most people would see as highly gender egalitarian. And I think this is part of the problem that people relate to this is that yes, women on average want to be the submissive partner in a relationship, and often relationships work better when a male takes the lead or dominant role.
Mm-hmm. But part [00:08:00] of that dominant role is not. Pushing the other person around, forcing them to do things they don't want to do. Yeah. How did one of our,
Simone Collins: one of our listeners put it really well? Or it's that mother of someone who I respect so much, you know, who you are mentioned that dominance, real dominance, especially like in these, in these relationships, never shows up as a man.
Putting a woman down or pulling rank, it is just natural dominance. It's natural leadership. If you have to put a woman down or tell her to do something or order her around or act dominant like performatively, you have already lost. You are showing that you do not have dominance. I. And, and I think yes, to
Malcolm Collins: force someone to do something like that, you're, you're absolutely right.
That's a sign that they don't wanna follow what you have to say. Yeah. Just based on what you have to say.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think real dominance manifests real husband dominance manifests in a wife going out of her way to try to anticipate his needs and the needs of the family without ever being asked because she [00:09:00] understands her role.
He, she understands what he brings to the table, she understands his vision. And if a man doesn't communicate his vision, if he does do these things, she will not anticipate needs his needs. She will not have the drive to, to act on them, or she won't think that they're, that his, his vision is legitimate and she won't act on it because there's very little motivation when you feel a lot of cognitive dissonance.
So I think that that's, that's a big problem. 'cause I, I feel like that's not. In, in ideal quiver, whole relationships, that probably happens, but I just don't, you know, like, welcome to the world. No relationship except for ours is, if you ask me, is ideal.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think it, it is, it's like our daughters growing up.
They're not gonna feel like they're in a household where a man has all the power and a woman can't. Like,
Simone Collins: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: you, you
Simone Collins: often, but I think also in, in very extreme power dynamic or relationships or at least like, you know, when, when a man really leads some things, like part of what leadership means is delegating [00:10:00] a huge swaths of influence to other people.
Yeah. And I think in, in many households where you see divisions of labor, you will see. Like, whoa. Like she, I mean, I control all the finances. I control all, like a lot of things and you control a lot of things and they'll see that there's, there's control on, on both ends. And if someone's micromanaging, they're not actually being a good leader.
And I think that's also where you see the ordering around and this perception of dominance that is. Performative and not real.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I I it's almost like they're LARPing being a man. Yeah. They, they heard this concept of being a man and they like I understand that all of the power that I have over you is a gift from you to me, and one that can be revoked.
It is power. I have not due to some divine right, but due to the fact that you trust me enough, you know, and. If you stop trusting my decision making, I'm not gonna have that power anymore. And that's the way I relate to it.
Simone Collins: And well, that's how it's been for every natural leader throughout history.
Every [00:11:00] king, every general understands that if he doesn't in any single moment, manage to be naturally dominant. His people will not follow. There will be a rebellion, there will be mutiny, there will be whatever, right? Like captains on ships don't stay captains 'cause their title is Captain Captains on ships stay captain because they are the best leader for the ship.
Like that changes. And this is why you have desertions. This is why you have mutans. This is why you have revolutions.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, I agree a hundred percent. And I, you know, I think. Yeah, I just agree. And I think that that's gonna keep a lot more people in our cultural tradition than would stay in their tradition.
If you have a cultural tradition where you would just strictly be better off, like if I'm born a woman leaving, of course you're going to bleed women and then you're gonna bleed men who think that the tradition's unfair. Yeah. And we've been seeing this more recently. It used to be [00:12:00] that women stayed with conservative traditions at a higher rate than men.
But recently the trend has reversed and women have started leaving at a higher rate. So, for example, now Mormonism is a majority male religion, which never used to be the case.
Simone Collins: Crazy. Yeah. All the friends that we knew who even converted in were women 'cause they really bought the wholesome family lifestyle thing.
Malcolm Collins: We know a lot of women who've converted out too.
Simone Collins: That's true. That's true. Yeah. Because of the feminist issues. Yeah. And they're like, wait a second, this is super not okay with me.
Malcolm Collins: This is deeply unfair. Like Yeah. From their perspective. Anyway I'll keep going here. The decline seems driven by multiple factors, the backlash from abuse scandals such as those within the Duggar family, which received more attention post 2015, the unsustainable demands on adherence highlighting, but highlighted by critiques of health and autonomy and a cultural shift away from such extreme nativism in broader society.
Well, there I don't. I don't know. I maybe, I guess, yeah, birth rates have fallen. It's become less cool [00:13:00] while not extinct. Its influence is likely reduced with a smaller, more insular community compared to its earlier ambitions of demographic and cultural dominance while specific. 2025 deconversion rates for quiver full children are not available.
Anecdotal evidence suggests, for example, what it was like to grow up in quiver. Cosmopolitan features Hannah Edgar raised in the movement, who's now completely in a new life. Implying Deconversion, a Reddit post in our deconstruction are deconstruction of large Cville families. And I read a lot about on, on this thread discusses large families and deconversion, though it's anecdotal, the lack of numerical data is a gap, but a pattern exists, especially given controversies like abuse within the Duggar family.
As mentioned in the untold truth of Berfield Christianity, grunge supports the idea of higher deconversion. So I was like, okay, let's go to that. Family that had 19, the Duggars. Mm-hmm. How many of their kids stayed in both the religion and its high fertility [00:14:00] goal? 11% of their children did.
Simone Collins: Oh. Like
Malcolm Collins: what's the two of the 19?
Yeah. That's bad. But it's not as bad as you think. Because, what we actually find is if you then say, okay let's just look at the older ones. 'cause some are like 16, 16, 18, 19. That don't count, right? Yeah. So let's only look at the 12 who are over 25 right now. Only two of those 12 don't have children.
And of the other 10, all of them have over two children. But what. There, there are a few that are pregnant with their third, but yeah, so they are dramatically higher fertility than normal.
Simone Collins: Interesting, huh. Just anecdotally, every time I hear some interview with someone who deconverted and, and had a really large religious family, it was a cover full family.
Not, not Mormon, not, oh, I guess there's eight passengers. So I There's that one.
Malcolm Collins: Well, eight passengers with another really large [00:15:00] Christian family that got famous and her kids are Yeah. But they were Mormons. Systematically. Deconvert.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I guess can are, are some Mormons Quivers. I, I guess you should ask like how religiously siloed is this concept of, 'cause it's a biblical line.
You don't have to be like a whatever to be, I imagine
Malcolm Collins: you can, you can be any movement. Yeah. It's like whatever. But I, I would count, count her as part of that larger movement, you know, very strict parenting, very very different parenting style than our parenting as well. Like we are known as being strict because we use like light corporal disciplines with our kids, which is super taboo these days.
But this is not like what quiver full families do where they do like very serious spankings and stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like, I, I think it overlaps with that book that guides mothers to. Like, teach their baby to stay on a small blanket and like hurt them a little. Yes. Actually, that was one of
Malcolm Collins: the, the controversies we're gonna be talking about.
Okay. Yeah. So there's also just this like explaining what works.
Simone Collins: Well, they're just trying to use condition like basic. [00:16:00] Conditioning to stop a baby. How baby training
Malcolm Collins: works,
Simone Collins: right? So you, you, you put your infant on a like square blanket on the ground and it doesn't have any fencer walls or anything.
And then every time they go towards the edge of it, you like flick their wrist or do something that hurts 'em a little bit. So they associate going off the blanket. With pain and eventually they will just stay on the blanket and not go off of it. And that is convenient, especially from others of larger families because they can just put the blanket down anywhere and expect that their kid is going to stay on it.
And I. That's, did it? I don't know. There's just something like deeply dystopian and really sad about that to me. Like you're just like a broken,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. Our kids lack that for going off beds.
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, our kids. Our kids, yeah. Like that. Even when like they, they have a real scare. And like wanna, like, they just, they just desperately want to fall off surfaces and we are constantly being like, this is a cliff.
Do not, i, I understand your point here, [00:17:00] but I just, I, I, our, our corporal punishment is more like you are about to severely hurt yourself or put yourself in danger, or one of your siblings in danger. You gotta knock this off, like, let's, you're not listening to my words. This is different. It is. I'm going to break your will.
I'm going to make you a compliant. Mm. Domesticated human
Malcolm Collins: and yes, this is, you're right. The, the difference is that they are trying to domesticate their children, and we are trying to make our children maximally fierce. Yeah, it's a completely different way of relating to them. Well, it's very backward
Simone Collins: versus.
Puritan, honestly, the, the puritan, yeah. Way of raising kids. We like some things about it, like this idea of having kids like confront the, their mortality and all that. Like some, some harsh elements of Puritan upbringing. Hi. Historically,
Malcolm Collins: they had them look at corpses and stuff and be like, yeah, like sta into
Simone Collins: graves until like cry.
Like I, I get that like, except that when we do that with our children, they just don't get it. You know? Or they do, but they don't care, [00:18:00] I guess.
Malcolm Collins: I, I think you're, you're absolutely right where it is moving away from strictness, for the sake of strictness, I'd almost say like, it's like two dogs, like one dog you're trying to force to follow every order that's ever given to it.
Right. And the other dog you're training to fight other dogs. Like, okay, we're training our dad. The way you would train a pit bull. You know, you wanna wonderful to just be absolutely unhinged and, and, and, and go well, you know, to a pit bull, every toddler and a small dog is just another snack. That's, that is how pit bulls see the world.
You gotta see our video on the one ethical genocide. I do think we should get rid of pit bulls. Yeah,
Simone Collins: I agree with you.
Malcolm Collins: But it's just like a different way of relating to raising a thing. Like is the boundaries that you are placing on them to make them stronger? Is it to get them to be tougher or is it because you're trying to get them to follow a very constrained trajectory?
And [00:19:00] with us now does this mean that they have a higher chance of leaving the family? Yes. Because you're, you're trying to make them like have will and want to leave the family, but in a way because of that, it also. Brings them back to the family. Not through like punishment or fear or whatever but through pride and that I a Collins, and this is what I was always taught growing up, you are a Collins and Collins, they're better than other people.
Hmm. It's just very clear. It's like this is what's expected of you 'cause you're Collins. And I was like, well, other people don't do that. And they go, well, other people aren't Collins. And I remember being like, oh yeah, like I have more rules of, of this type, this, like expected of my personal behavior because I'm better than other people.
And I think that that what
I, I don't know if my opinion of myself has changed much this time has gone on it, but I think that confirmed that kids would relate the same way, is that if you, if you do this right, they're gonna be like. Yeah. [00:20:00] But I'm the best. Right? Why would I leave a family when the family is super awesome and especially if I like my siblings?
And that was something that was noted in the thread over and over again when people were complaining about their large families. They would complain about stuff where like, obviously some therapist or urban monoculture person had gotten their hooks in them. Mm-hmm. And. That's weird. But they always said that they really appreciate all their siblings and they wouldn't want any of them not to exist.
And that that's the thing that was the most important to them and exciting about growing up that way. Mm-hmm. And so you really don't get this, and I, I'd say this is true of the large families I know. I do not see this pushback of like, oh, I wish my siblings didn't exist. It's just the totalitarian way that the religion was communicated to them is what causes them to, to split off.
Mm-hmm. And I think within religions that have lower deconversion rates like Judaism like Orthodox Judaism mm-hmm. It is the factions that are either isolated for the rest of the world. Those have very low deconversion rates. Like they isolate them educationally and everything like that. Yeah.
So they [00:21:00] can't basically get a job in the outside world, which is. Not great. I wouldn't do that. Yeah. Or the ones that are just like strict in their belief system, but not in like authoritarian pushing it on children through things like punishment. But let's get into some of the any thoughts before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, no. Go further.
Malcolm Collins: All right, let's get into some of the controversies. So I'm gonna start with all the controversies that don't involve Josh, 'cause that's a whole different scenario. So, this was a controversy brought up in the docuseries, shiny happy people. I. Where one daughter who also wrote a book about this and complained a lot she, she's like, Jill, unpaid 7.5 years of labor.
This isn't helping with raising the other kids. This is in being on air. But she mostly just complained about being on TV a lot and, and not liking TV at her wedding and at other pertinent events. And I'm like, fine. But it doesn't really have anything to do with you being in a large family. Yeah, it has
Simone Collins: to do with their.
Father exploiting them, [00:22:00] which that's pretty clear from all the stuff that happened.
Malcolm Collins: And then another big backlash and this caused TLC's removal of the show apparently, or was part of it, was Derek Dillard's quote unquote homophobic tweets in 2017. Oh, where he, where, what did he say? He called transgenderism a myth.
Simone Collins: Okay. It's so stupid.
Malcolm Collins: Like if you're gonna have like a transphobic
Simone Collins: tweet, that's, that's a pretty stupid transphobic tweet.
Malcolm Collins: It calls him to be removed from counting on family tissue. Yeah. I, I, I don't, I. That's not a, like, that's a main gone these days. Yeah. He, he, he came too early. Right. You know, now, now we've got the embarrassing the TRA stock report.
Now we've got, you know, everything that's going on since the post-election vibe shift where everyone's like, okay, yeah, it's probably a culture bound illness and, and. Leads to a lot of unloving attempts that don't exist in any other culture on earth, no other culture on earth. I mentioned this before.
I'll mention it every chance I [00:23:00] get. No other culture on earth and no other time period on earth. While you see gay people everywhere throughout history and cultures, trans people. Are completely absent except for modern context. And note here, I'm not talking about gender fluidity. Gender fluidity exists all over history.
But being obsessed with the gender that other people see you as to the point where you would want to kill yourself because they don't see you as a gender, you see yourself. This is not a phenomenon anywhere else in human history and, and obviously it's a very mentally taxing phenomenon that we would prefer didn't exist and proliferate.
So he's completely right about this. Next year you have tutors, marriage to sex offender. This is tab page. So, Tudor married, convicted sexual assault offender, duggars through a engagement party, significant backlash, question, family values whatever. The, Josh is the big one, and it's the one that I'm more worried about and wanna learn from the most prominent scandals on.
Josh Duggar, the eldest child in Touch. Weekly published a 2006 police report [00:24:00] revealing Josh as a teenager, molested five underage girls, including four sisters, Jill Jessa, Jenga, and Jana. Well, they really like those JS with offenses occurring between 2002 and 2003 when he was 14 to 15.
The report later confirmed by people detailed groping while victims slept, confessed to parents and received counseling. But the revelation led to TLC or at least. Was part of it canceling 19 kids and counting on June 16th, 2015, as noted in Josh Duggar's Wikipedia. This fallout was named one of the 10 big scandals of 2015 by USA today, and the Washington Post listed Josh as one of the most hated people online that year.
The same year on August 19th, 2015, Gawker reported Josh had active accounts on Ashley Madison. This is when the, the leak happened, I guess. A website for extramarital affairs confirmed by people leading to his public apology on the family website admitting. A pornography addiction and cheating on his [00:25:00] wife Anna.
He checked into a face based rehab program centered in Rockford, Illinois on August, 2000 15th, as per people, victims, Jill and Janet came forward in 2015, interviewed on Kelly file with Megan Kelly
Simone Collins: while he creepily watched behind the camera. By the way, he what? He was there on set. Like they were coerced into doing matter.
Weird. Just, just horrible. The whole thing was horrible. And this is, I mean, it's, I don't care what your arousal problems might be or like what, what inconvenient things turn you on your garbage person if you do these things. Like he well, and I think just over and over again chose to hurt people and do things to people without their consent.
It's. He's just a garbage person and the fact that he, he, hold on. We'll,
Malcolm Collins: we'll see more about this,
Simone Collins: but continue the fact that are you gonna do more? Well, you a quiver full family that raises someone like that is not clearly, [00:26:00] is, is, is not creating a culture that is good. It is not imparting fitness at all.
Failure, drop it. They
Malcolm Collins: lost. I disagree. I'm gonna push back a little here. They had 19 kids, okay? Mm-hmm. And he was there first. True. Yeah. You get bad apples with I, I'm just like, I, I look at this and I think that you and this perception you have that if we raise our kids right, they won't do this is inaccurate.
I think that we have to be constantly vigilant, even if we're good parents. 100% in terms of. How we train them, how we train them to report and talk to us about things Uhhuh which apparently wasn't happening effectively in this case.
Simone Collins: Well, but also what, what you do when problems are reported because this was reported multiple times.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and he went to counseling after it was reported, but I think that it was reported by him and not by things like his sisters and stuff like this. And I think you need a [00:27:00] system where the entire family is like on watch or ance. I think this is
Simone Collins: also reported by girls from other people's families. It wasn't just him coming forward.
I, I don't think this was him coming
Malcolm Collins: forward. Well, I mean, I look at things he is doing when he is 14 and 15. And this requires, I mean, I actually think that this is why it's good to have all the kids sleep in the same room or the same room by gender at least. Because it's much easier to
Simone Collins: what safety in numbers.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, safety in numbers. One of the other kids can report on the kid who's doing the wrong thing and every kid knows that every other kid is watching. I.
Simone Collins: Yeah, they snitch on each other.
Malcolm Collins: They would absolutely snitch on each other. And I think that that's a powerful way you can prevent creepy kids from being creepy to other kids.
Right. Sure. And yeah, I, I, I, I see how something like this could happen if, like the oldest kid is the problem as well, because then you have to worry about reprisals and stuff like that. Which is why maybe it, it matters that you focus on the oldest kid being more moral or [00:28:00] focused a lot on moral teachings.
'cause the older kid we're fortunate in that our oldest kid is very obsessed with rules. No, he won't let us continue. Like, I'm driving and a naughty word is said on a show that I'm watching or on a song. He goes, that's a bad show. You gotta turn it off. You gotta, you gotta play something else. He won't, he will not let me watch things that have curse words in them, which he won't have it.
I absolutely love. He won't. Yeah, he won't have it.
Simone Collins: I love it. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Which is why one of the reasons we're trying to remove curse words from the show, which I'm doing more of, you know? Yes. Even believing them out when they're in the little clips. So I don't, but you know, we don't know what he's gonna be like when he goes through puberty, you know?
It's, it's, it's worth really working. I. On that was the oldest kids to ensure that we set a good sort of direction.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And what we've seen with other kids is if you look at like the, the eight passengers situation, the older kids are the ones who basically set up a deacon conversion pipeline for the younger kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And so, yeah. But we'll get into more of this. So in [00:29:00] April, 2021, you might not know about this. Josh faced another scandal when he was arrested on April 29th for receiving and possessing child pornography. Oh yeah.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Was material from May, 2019 depicting abuse of children under 12. As detailed by people he pleaded guilty, facing up to 20 years and a quarter million dollar in fines.
Found guilty in 2021, blah, blah, blah, to 12 years in prison. Was 20 years under supervision prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors in fines of $50,100 per people. Family reactions varied. Was Michelle and Anna supporting him while his cousin Amy Duggar King opposed? Calling the family delusional in an ex post urging Anna to divorce as noted in people.
Now. So I asked how did they teach sex ed to their children? Because I was like, what could have led to this behavior? Right? And I actually think a lot of the behavior is downstream of this. The Duggar family, well known for their conservative Christian beliefs and featured on reality TV show provided limited sex education, primarily emphasizing [00:30:00] abstinence until marriage.
It seems likely that men received a brief talk. And a Christian themed book before marriage, while women were given little to no formal education, accepting guidance from their husbands, their homeschooling curriculum. Based on the Advanced Training Institute, a TI program avoided discussion of sex, creating a taboo and spreading this information with strict mony rules and limited physical contact before marriage.
That's what I think a lot of this comes down from. And I think a lot of the deconversions come down from this. If you teach somebody, as I've always said like. Engaging with pornography makes you a bad person, and they're a young man. As we know basically all young men except those in the most extreme religious conditions.
Like there's a famous case where they tried to do a study and they wanted to find men who had never see u used porn before as, as like a control in the study, and they had to abandon it because they couldn't find enough men in that category. And I think a man has to be pretty sexually atypical to fall into that category.
And that being the case, you [00:31:00] know, it means that if you teach them well, you're sinful. And this is really horrible if you're engaging in this stuff. Especially with the internet as it is these days, then you just have all of them thinking that about themselves. Mm-hmm. Which may makes them think, well then why not just leave?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Well, if Yeah. Either you stay and you're secretly a monster or you leave.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then it's like, well then what's the additional bad to molestation?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yikes. Not good. When you tell someone that they're a monster for doing this is, this is also why we push back against things like Louise Perry's.
Well, we like her as a, as a person and as an influencer. Her idea that women are only into choking because men have like diluted them. And women are only into like, being put in positions of, well, let's put masochistic submission because of men liking this stuff that's not, the data doesn't support it.
That's absolutely untrue. Yeah. Yeah. This is driven by women. Women prefer this more than men prefer doing it. Men did not make 50 shades of [00:32:00] grand bestseller. Mm-hmm. And women were not buying it to show off to men. Yeah. What, what what we see is, is if you are honest about this stuff and you tell your daughters, Hey.
It's normal to be into this stuff. It's normal to be into what? What was the whole vampire phenomenon? It was about having guys. Come on. It is normal, normal, normal to be into this as a woman. Don't think that you're sinful. Don't think that you're a deviant. Just don't, well, don't think that just because it turns
Simone Collins: you on, you want it either like, yeah, that's another really important point here.
Just because something turns you on doesn't mean you morally condone it or that you want it to happen or that it would be good if it happened. So that's also, yeah, and I think
Malcolm Collins: that that, that when we, when we break away from this duggar mindset around something like pornography or the Louis Perry mindset you don't have kids feel ashamed about things that are totally normal.
And through that there's less of a, an idea of like, oh, I don't like being in this [00:33:00] family, or, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of scared to be in this environment or this household. Because I know that I'm not living up to the standards that I assume everyone else is living up to.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: When in reality, very few people actually live up to these standards.
Mm-hmm. And and then you, because you're already breaking one moral norm. It's like, well, I'm already a horrible person. And then you begin to contextualize this into your identity. Yeah. And I think that, that, that what people need to realize, one of the things is we always point out and we have, you can look at our, our Catholic's about to go extinct episode.
I talk about low fertility rates and high deconversion rates. Among some other Christian movements and I think was in these movements, there's this perception that, well, how quickly could you really disappear as a movement that at least attempts to be high fertility and attempts to espouse high fertility values?
And I think the Duggar show you how quickly fast the quiverfull movement shows you, how quickly fast a generation.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that's how fast. Definitely like two generations.
Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:34:00] I'm also looking at Google Trends. Interest over time for Quiver, quiver full, not as a search term, but as like the broader religious concept.
Mm-hmm. Sharing this with you just so you have it, it, it had spikes every now and then. It probably mostly due to media stuff. And the most recent spike was in 2022, may, and it was one of the smaller spikes that has ever taken place. So it is, it is clearly on the, on the downfall. It, it appears to be in its death throes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I and I, and this is why I think like authoritarian religious structures are just very bad at working in a modern context.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And
Malcolm Collins: if that's the way you're relating your religion to kids, they will leave it and they will help your other kids leave it.
Simone Collins: Interestingly, when you compare quiver full to natal quiver, full religious concept, natal belief.
The 2004 to present total search volume for Grover Full is much larger. Like it [00:35:00] definitely was a way bigger concept than Tism in the past. Mm-hmm. But basically, ever since only 2023 when you and I started really pushing for it fatalism has clearly started to take over. Yeah. Very interesting. Whereas Quiver has kind of died out.
Quiverfull had much bigger spikes. I think that's probably mostly because of the duggars though. If you're
Malcolm Collins: well and and media and you know, I haven't molested a kid, so
Simone Collins: yeah, let's keep it that way. You slapped kids though, and I'm sure that helped with overall awareness, so there we go. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: right.
Simone Collins: Whatever it takes.
Bob Gate was a, was a boom Bob Gate.
Malcolm Collins: I just, I just gotta get a, a slapping machine. We'll get that with the documentary when it comes out. Slapping machine.
Simone Collins: We can have slap competitions now that I know. It's a, it's a sport. The kids kind of, I love you. Practice on each other. [00:36:00]
Malcolm Collins: All right, have a great day, Simone.
We'll go to the next episode.
Simone Collins: I love you. You have the grasp by the way.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh,
Simone Collins: okay. I just learned about an entirely new sport that there, there are professional, large stadiums filled with viewing this sport.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: I didn't know it existed, and I would watch this maybe. I'm actually tempted to go watch the recorded versions of this. Can you guess what it is? Do you need a hint
Malcolm Collins: that you would watch it?
Okay. What would you watch? Yeah, I need a hint. I have nothing other than that. It's a sport you didn't know about. It's on that sport. Oh the, the Medieval knights one? No. Oh, well the Medieval Knights one looks pretty cool.
Simone Collins: I've not heard of that. So that's like actual jousting
Malcolm Collins: or No, like they dress up as knights and do like sword combat.
It looks pretty brutal. Okay. So
Simone Collins: like in the Knights Tale, when they did the in the ring and they were doing sword combat? Yeah. [00:37:00] That kind of, okay. Nope, that's not it. But I didn't know that was a thing, so that's awesome. Thank you for giving me one.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, well, I don't know. Go on.
Simone Collins: Okay. Think of a game show where a man was.
An an Indian man was quite. D disturbed by women's action. It was a slapping game. Yes. Slapping competitions, slapping competition. They feel like slow cams and you get points taken off if you flinch. And it's both men and women. They have, you know, heavyweight lightweight categories, et cetera.
They're, they're medical professionals on staff. There's, there's knockouts. People break their wrists, people break their noses, and they have, you can see like this slow-mo of the slat. Hitting them and like the hand, like reverberates as though it is rubber, the face of course ripples it. And interestingly, the, the person I was watching comment on it for a little bit, who taught me about this.
Notice that women could take the slabs better than men. Women seem to [00:38:00] flinch a lot less and, and looking at her footage, it was really impressive. The men were flinching and I'm obviously the men are a lot stronger, so I did it. But Simone, this is
Malcolm Collins: why these women have a lot more training than the men. I mean, shut up.
I hate you. You terrible person. You could just go up there. You have no problem at all. You are a professional at getting slapped. Just so people know I don't slap my wire.
Simone Collins: Actually our kids would be amazing at it. 'cause remember in front of that journalist, we, we did like, we had like, and they didn't flinch at all.
They would've gotten points in a slap competition for their utter lack of flinching.
Malcolm Collins: Which
Simone Collins: is
Malcolm Collins: point. Okay. Also, Simone, I have to convince you Iion Labs is actually the perfect name for the studio. Remind me who the IXs are in Dune. So the IXs are known for, so there's two factions that produce a lot of technology in Dune Uhhuh.
There's
Simone Collins: the TLAC suit. One is the
Malcolm Collins: tlac suit that you don't really like. So they do the [00:39:00] biological engineering technology. Yeah. The IXs are known for technology that skirts the Butler and Jihad rules. So they're the ones that are,
Simone Collins: are they the ones that are the personal computers of the wealthy people?
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Those are, what are they called? Its makes real computers. Oh, okay. Like, like, they're, they're very, if the Ty Laos thing is sort of like being weird and creepy, whatever, like mm-hmm. The, its. Are known as being like overly clean, like everything in their civilization looks like an Apple store.
Oh. They have a republic, unlike the other governments in the empire, which are all like a, like imperial or whatever. Yeah. And they create AI technology that is like clearly illegal. So like if you have on like a head. Set that like scans the environment and is like picking out they, one of those mean by the X.
So they do technology like that. Super advanced, super clean techno hologram projectors, stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Okay.
So I like it except for the fact that when pronounced out loud, [00:40:00] it sounds like IC and IC is even come back. Like there's the new. Parlance of giving me the ick, and it is not, I think something we would want as a brand name.
Malcolm Collins: I don't, it was not, you didn't like Mdo a, eh, Mundo used with other things because you saw it as, as negative. But when I hear MI think like Necro Mundo or whatever, you know, I
Simone Collins: think tele, novellas and Spanish tv, so no.
Malcolm Collins: No, I'm, I am. I, if, if Bruno, not that I have
Simone Collins: anything against Spanish as a language, I just like, I, I don't think that's useful.
Malcolm Collins: If, if bru, we'll keep playing with
Simone Collins: it.
Malcolm Collins: If, if Bruno likes X I'm gonna go with it. 'cause I like it so much.
Simone Collins: Well, I respect Bruno, so I will defer to him. But the other one we have
Malcolm Collins: is, is, is what is it, sentient? Sentient systems. Yeah, sentient systems, reason systems is good. The reason [00:41:00] I don't like sentient systems that much.
I was thinking about like me at the third party developing on a platform that was made by sentient systems. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, what? I want to tell people that I like That sounds a little like lame. I don't know. Like more than iion. Ian is cool. Stint system sounds a little lame. And then if you shorten it, it becomes Ss oh, which was side scrollers problems.
Simone Collins: I grew up with the initials ss. Didn't realize that that, that it was problematic until it was a little late. Speaking of names, maybe our audience can settle a score, although I've basically already overridden it 'cause I've just declared bankruptcy on having. A dune related middle name for our next son.
So
Malcolm Collins: our next kid is, is the first name? Okay. No you don't. No, no.
Simone Collins: Take out the part where we give his first name because I need to set up all his like domains and stuff and I don't want. People camping on things. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: we'll take out, but, but then it doesn't mean anything if you just have the second name, but whatever.
Okay. You just want the second name?
Simone Collins: So our Yes, we, we are choosing [00:42:00] a middle name for our fifth son, who also we joke is the AK because he's got a really great. Potential IQ based on his polygenic scores. It puts him in like the 98th to 98th, sorry, 99th percentile. So that's like, wow. He's, he's amazing. And so I was joking, we should give him the middle name of a tradies, but then Malcolm said, no, we should give him the middle name of Tai Lasu.
And I think at treaties it's honorable, it's stately, it's outside the normal moral constraint because it's, it's not this though, Paul. Is a goodie all the time. He understands, no, hold
Malcolm Collins: on. But tyla a tradies is so basic. Axio, if you, if you're going for nom determinism and all of our kids have gone, no deterministic so far.
Yeah. You know, Axio is exactly the path we'd want them to go down.
Simone Collins: Humanitarian crises using people's bodies against their will. No. No, they don't even have a will anymore. [00:43:00] They remove
Malcolm Collins: their brains there. There are
Simone Collins: alleged characters who say that they were used for this purpose, meaning that they do have a brain.
No, that was the, there is sentient course
Malcolm Collins: that the son did where he went crazy and then he had them free all the time. Isn't that still Canon? Not in a meaningful, not to any real fan, Simone. It is. It is the bio crafter species. That's what we want.
Simone Collins: I do, I do really want bioengineering to be a family thing, but I don't.
I just, the humanitarian crisis angle's just not,
Malcolm Collins: there's no humanitarian crisis. It's a whiners. It's Elisa Simpson who calls this a humanitarian. Oh, so a trade just
Simone Collins: sounds like a great name and you'll, you won't let me name any of our kids are tennis, so I need something that's like a cool three syllable kind of sci-fi, a starting name.
Give me something here. Alright. The audience can weigh in a tradies or [00:44:00] axo as a middle name All.
Subscribers says, scratch to our channel. You. This is Fancy. Hula. Hula. Is there anything else you wanna say? Subscribers, why? I wanna standing up and now this, this is very fancy. What does graph to the channel, if that is really fancy? If you don't like us, s scratch the channel. Well, you can still, I'm gonna comment way down below.
Tell us what you think about this and the comment below in our bedroom. Bye.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
WIRED Provably Lied About Us & Pronatalism's Triumph Over Effective Altruism
1 apr· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Join us as we discuss the recent coverage of Natal Con, focusing on a controversial Wired article that stirred the community. We dive into the misrepresentations and factual errors in the article, the financial realities of hosting such events, and how the prenatal list movement is rapidly growing compared to established movements like effective altruism and AI safety. With insights into the organizational efforts behind Natal Con and a comparison of different ideological movements, this video provides an in-depth look at the current landscape of natalism. We also touch on the motivations and commitments driving both the prenatal list and AI safety communities. Don't miss this engaging and eye-opening discussion!
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you here. Coming back from Nacon. We've had pieces on us in the past few days in the BBC in the New York Times there's gonna be a CNN one. We know there's gonna be an NPR one, we know that haven't come out yet. One on an Italian station, one of the two major stations in the country.
But Wired did the most unhinged piece. And I am, which is weird. I grew up loving, wired. This is so strange. I did you. I thought of them as like a semi-professional, not a semi-professional. I actually thought of them as like a premium.
Simone Collins: Absolutely beautiful print magazine. Loved their pieces. This is weird.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But their piece was completely boast. Unhinged and, and non-factual, like they got almost every fact wrong in ways that even your average base camp watcher would know. Yeah.
Simone Collins: I don't know. Even your understanding of basic linguistics would know.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we're gonna read a bit of the piece and then go over statistics on what's been happening with the prenatal list movement when [00:01:00] contrasted with other movements recently, because we've now significantly passed in terms of like search traffic, effective altruism, AI safety, other stuff like that, which is really cool., so the,
Simone Collins: the title of the Wired article is Far right. Influencers are hosting a 10 K per Person Matchmaking Weekend to Repopulate the Earth. Yeah, so they, they're claiming that it, it costs $10,000 to attend Natal Con, which is.
Isn't that true?
Malcolm Collins: Well, okay, so if you're a watcher of the show, you know, we've been promoting the conference constantly for a long time. We've been promoting it with, with small discounts, but it also means, you know, the conference cost at nothing near $10,000 to go to, I know it was expensive. I think it was around a thousand dollars.
It was
Simone Collins: a thousand dollars. So then 900 with our 10% discount.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is a lot I know, but they also did a really good job of making it good and fun, like Yeah. My perspective.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And I do think that that amount of money is needed to screen out crazy people. Oh, plus
Simone Collins: also, like, have you seen how much [00:02:00] any event space charges for food, like one cookie, $10 and they served breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On Saturday plus snacks, plus open bar at dinner, and then there was dinner and open bar on Friday. I just. You can't use professional venue spaces and basically do anything less than that
Malcolm Collins: these days. I think that what people are thinking when they think of like costs or they're comparing it to something, is they're not comparing, they're comparing it to a con, like a furry con or something like that.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: Where there's an artist alley, there's absolutely zero food. And then there's just some speakers and it's at a bigger event space. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. They're, they're not thinking like, okay, they've gotta pay for the speakers, they've gotta pay for the, hotels for the speakers, I don't think any of the speakers are paid, but they gotta pay for the hotels, for the speakers.
They sometimes need to pay for flights. They need to pay for all of the venue space. They need to pay for security, they need to pay for insurance, and then they need to pay for all the meals. And the open bar too,
Simone Collins: because there were protesters out the first night. There were [00:03:00] lots of people trying to get in who didn't have registration.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it wasn't just like a normal venue, like it was like a really nice venue. Mm-hmm. And then they had the second one where they rented out a museum. So like, it, like, I, I'd say for what it was, it seemed reasonably priced to me. I agree. Just so people know, we donated to this to make it happen because I knew that like last year they were in the red in running it and I wanted to help them.
Not, not risk that again, you know, Kevin Dolan took a personal hit on that. And. So, but we, we weren't organizing it, you know, we weren't personally going to suffer if this didn't end up working out. But the $15,000 thing, 10,000 is insane. Sorry. Yeah. The, the $10,000 in the title of the Wired article being that factually inaccurate Yeah.
To, to literally
Simone Collins: have a title with that egregious of a factual error is wild. This, I just, I don't know. I, I, I knew journalism was largely. Bankrupt in terms of quality, but I guess I, having [00:04:00] loved wired so much, I'm so, I'm still so stunned.
Malcolm Collins: Here's the thing I know, and somebody could be like, well do, how can you be sure that nobody made a $10,000 ticket purchase, like maybe at the last minute or something like that?
And the, the answer is, because we donated $10,000 to the conference that that's what we donated. Yeah. I think someone else
Simone Collins: probably in the media knew that. I think we'd mentioned that to someone or it was somewhere.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the point being is if that was the second biggest donation to the conference, so I know they didn't get money from anyone else.
Here's what I assume probably happened because Kevin loves effing with journalists. He probably, and I think he even mentioned he did this at one point when he knew a journalist was hostile, gave them a comically high cost figure. Oh, that's amazing. To to be like, Hey, I'm okay with having you come here and write a hit piece if you pay me $10,000.
F**k no. That's fair. That's fair. Okay. But it, but it would mean that they didn't do any research on like the conference or anything around it. [00:05:00] But anyway go into the piece. Let's, let's read a bit 'cause it gets really unhinged.
Simone Collins: Should I just go straight to the unhinged part or should I Yes, read it.
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: go to the unhinged part. So
Simone Collins: this is what really gets me. . Natal conference organizer Kevin Dolan, a father of at least sex, according to Politico, has previously stated that eugenics, the belief that white people are genetically superior and the prenatal movement are very much aligned, which is.
The most unhinged definition of eugenics I have ever heard one, I, in case you are one of these unhinged people, eugenics as defined. Look at Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is not a conservative dominated space. There's, this is well documented too. People have actually looked at the backgrounds of all, you know, active profile or, or page editors.
So Wikipedia. Defines it as believing there are good traits and bad traits on a universal level, and trying to maximize the good traits and minimize the bad traits. On a societal level, we don't agree [00:06:00] with that, but that's what the sort of going definition is in society. And when we don't support the concept of eugenics by that definition, for sure, some people also, especially on the tech right, who talk about eugenics and I, I think this is more where Kevin Dolan is.
Are just really going to the, the roots of the word, which is, ew, good Gen X genes, good genes, like having an interest in passing on favorable genes and traits, which really is a culture and context specific thing. Meaning that each group has, you know, things that they wanna pass on to future generations that they should be proud of.
But they, no, they just say that eugenics is quote. The belief that white people are genetically superior, which is, but I would assume, like a lot of people
Malcolm Collins: accuse us of being definition of white supremacism, right? But not, yeah. So I, I and this is something that like presumably went through editors or something like that, right?
What would hope, this is a definition of eugenics that I would assume. A middle schooler, like your [00:07:00] average intelligence middle schooler. Well, even if we ran this through
Simone Collins: Chad, GPT or Claude and ask, Hey, can you just quickly edit this for me? That they would probably point out that a word would actually, hold
Malcolm Collins: on.
Let's do a thing. Can you take that paragraph, copy and paste it into Claude? Yeah. And ask what grade level they would assume the writer is
But while she's doing that. This is wild to me because, you know, sometimes we get called eugenics and I have to be like, actually, we're not technically eugenics.
Because eugenics means that you want to coerce an entire population to do something using either the government or using laws or using social pressure. And we believe in polygenics, which is everyone being able to make the genetic choices that they want. So one, we're not. Even eugenics by like the standard definition, but I can understand how someone can make that mistake.
They hear, oh, they do genetic selection. They understand like, was there vague understanding of eugenics that it means you know, gen [00:08:00] trying to make genes better. In any potential way. And I can understand that misunderstanding of the definition of eugenics if you haven't recently read the definition, just based on like a vague understanding.
However, this misunderstanding of eugenics is so egregious for what is presumably like a science article thing, right? That they could make it, I'm shocked.
Simone Collins: So this is what Claude says when I asked it. What is the grade level of the following paragraph, and does it contain any errors? Claude says, I can analyze this paragraph for reading level and errors.
The paragraph is written at approximately a high school, ninth to 10th grade reading level. It uses some advanced vocabulary organizer, eugenics, genetically, and prenatals, which is this high school. Mm-hmm. Vocabulary now. Because, yikes. Also, we need to not send our kids to high school. That's anyway, and has complex sentence structure with multiple clauses and m dashes.
There is a factual error in the [00:09:00] paragraph. Eugenics is incorrectly defined. Eugenics is not specifically the belief that white people are genetically superior. Eugenics more broadly refers to a set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of the human population. Often by encouraging reproduction among people with certain traits and discouraging it amongst others.
While Eugenics has historically been associated with race, with racist ideologies, including white supremacy, the definition as presented in the paragraph is overly narrow and inaccurate.
Malcolm Collins: So, but, but it's not just, it is inaccurate in a way where I would like, this is what gets me, this went through editors.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: well,
Malcolm Collins: but what the piece actually ended up being really good for us because some of my friends like Stanford, GSB type people and other like high profile people in Austin, when they saw this piece about the $15,000 entrance fee, they were like, Ooh, this looks. This looks fancy. I wanna, I wanna know about this.
I might wanna go to this. And I
Simone Collins: think that's, yeah, it makes it sound great. It, it's, it's, oh evil behind [00:10:00] closed doors. Matchmaking conference for the elite that are going to replace the hu the future of human like, I don't know. That sounds, sign me up. That sounds great. Right. It's not exactly true, but I mean,
Malcolm Collins: I also wanted to do a roundup on unless there's any other parts of this Wired article you wanna read that you think are fun.
What did they say about us in it?
Simone Collins: Oh, it, it just called us influencers, which is whenever I hear influencer just, I just think of like a makeup influencer or a Mormon influencer. So I'm like, wow. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: But it is kind of sad to see like how many publications have sort of descended into this realm of just like, tabloid mm-hmm.
That, that wired would get like factual errors in both their title and like basic language errors like of scientific facts in their text. Well, it,
Simone Collins: I it's also just, there's just so many unhinged things. Okay. No, I, I agree. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Which is just like other little details that just show how. It, it's written from a, a, a progressive perspective that's so myopically [00:11:00] stuck in its own ideological bubble that it.
It only sees things through a political lens. And I, I mean that because the, the, the article also criticized the fact that the at t hotel and conference center allowed Natal Con to be there in the first place. They, they included a quote from a representative of UT Austin who just said, we allow anyone to host here.
We support the First Amendment right to free speech. I remember this part. But then. They end with the venue. Also hosted an Ayn Rand conference in February, as in like, as you can see, they're just as you as you can see, they're outta control. Ay Rand, can you believe it? It is just.
Malcolm Collins: It's, it's but, and they just spent the entire piece calling our movement Nazis, like actual Nazis and white supremacists.
Yeah. And then they're like, like the equivalent movements. Like I Rand Yeah. Like, I mean, I Rand it's, they're just like, you're not allowed to have ideas. [00:12:00] Outside of their bubble. Hmm. Whoever wrote this and edited this, and if you do, you are a white nationalist. Like, that's it. Like you go to a conference and the conference is, you know, there were like, like people of all ethnicities there, people of all sexualities there.
Mm-hmm. People of all belief systems. There. There were even apparently there was one homophobic person, which I feel bad about because they, they were not mean, but they were un approving of, one of the, the gay couples that went, and I felt really bad about that because they had come based on, you know, liking us.
And I'm like, you know, you're gonna get that at, at something like this. But from what I heard, there was only one openly homophobic individual at the event, which is saying a lot for yeah, what is apparently a Nazi white supremacist event. But, but what it showed me is just like, you can't say anything outside of their bubble.
Simone Collins: No kidding.
Malcolm Collins: But I wanna go to grass now because I wanna focus on the growth of the prenatal list movement. Which I have found really telling of like. [00:13:00] Which I have found has shocked me. So the first graph I'm gonna put on screen here is the search volume on, on Google trends of tism versus effective altruism.
Mm-hmm.
In the United States. Mm-hmm. Where blue is tism. Mm-hmm. And as you can see, TISM in the past year has jumped to being maybe like five or six times, I guess, on average, the search volume of effective altruism. Yeah. Our sort of interest online. Which is wild to me because, you know, growing up in the Silicon Valley area, I thought of effective altruism as.
Sort of everything, like one of the biggest movements in the world, like the big social scene for smart people. Mm-hmm. And if you look at a map of the United States, a hate, a heat map of where people are searching for these, I found this really funny. Mm-hmm. What you'll see if you're watching this on a podcast is Tism is blue effect.
Altruism is red. The effect of altruism is just California, Idaho, and then a few New England states, [00:14:00] including like in New York and Massachusetts. Yeah, and with the description
Simone Collins: of Idaho it, it seems to be really concentrated around densely urban areas. When you looked at, when you look at the district area, it is clearly also the densely urban areas in California.
The rest doesn't care. And a little bit in the Pacific Northwest and then around Michigan. So basically, I don't, I don't know what's going on in Iowa. But
Malcolm Collins: yeah. What's going on in Iowa? There must be like a big EA thing there or something. Or So Oregon? Yeah. Or a
Simone Collins: wealthy. Donor move to Iowa and like did some YIMBY project there.
That's like my guess. That's it seems like thing. That would be my guess
Malcolm Collins: as well. Yeah. Or maybe they fund something in politics. Well, we can, we can ask. Yeah, I'll, I'll add this in post. Okay.
She meant Idaho, not Iowa, in either a grok search or a Google search could determine why it has this blip. It might just be an anomaly.
But I found that to be really interesting. And then if you look at it on the global level again, you can see that we now have moved from being like well below effective altruism in terms of search volume.
To being [00:15:00] maybe four times larger and, and pretty reliably. So for the past year or so. And I note here that effective altruism has hundreds of millions of dollars going to it. Hmm. We got one 500 K grant a few years ago and made all this happen. Yeah. And, and, and not that we're doing it on our own, you know, like Kevin Dolan is doing a great job, but he's not getting outside donations, you know?
When we gave him the 10 K donation, he was like, this is a huge donation. It means so much to me. But when I gave it, I was like, I'm sorry. We can't do more. We just don't have that much money.
Mm-hmm.
And so I know that he's not getting big donations from other people. And if you look at the, the global map here, this one I absolutely love.
Yeah. Actually, I just,
Simone Collins: just to make a note, I think that the biggest donation made relative to demographic collapse was the one that the Elon Musk Foundation made to. The Dean's demographers, Dean Spears led demography research at the University of Austin. Dean Spears did not attend Nacon. Dean Spears has [00:16:00] said in recent stories, basically like, oh, Elon Musk's donation hasn't affected our work in any way.
He's like trying to disassociate from Elon Musk, if anything. So, yeah, it, it basically like they're one of the least vocal presences in the movement's, public discourse that would be associated with search volume. And I think that really speaks volumes to what's going on here, that this is not a funded public discourse.
It's driven by some very strong personalities and some very strong concerns. I.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you look at the global breakdown of where people are focused on each of these, sorry, actually we should probably mention what effective altruism is for some of our jurors who may not know. Mm. Effective altruism is a fairly large, or I thought large, like this is why I'm benchmarking ourselves off of IT movement around the Silicon Valley community.
This is what Sam Bank been freed with funding, but it also gets funding. It first emerged
Simone Collins: at Oxford University, though.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. From like, Sam [00:17:00] Altman gives, it, gives it funding type stuff, like a lot of the guy who funded Ethereum gives it a lot of funding. So Vitalic.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: Vitalic. Yeah. Pretty much if you are like an alt productive intellectual and you are progressive coded, or don't wanna like, offend people by being overtly conservative, coded, this is where pretty much all of them have been for a long time.
Mm-hmm.
And, it runs a number of very large organizations. We'll, we'll get to some of them in a second. That, that do get, I think it's 400 million a year is, is what I remember.
Simone Collins: Insane.
Yes, I was right. It's around 400 billion in 2019. They got $416 million. , and that's the first search result that comes up when I Google. How much do they get per year?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then redistributes it to various charities that they see as effective. Mm-hmm. Of course most of them won't work with us, but we did get a grant from a Survival and Flourishing Fund, which is technically effective altruist, which I really appreciate.
That was a game changer for us.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It [00:18:00] was a game changer and it's allowed us to create this movement. And we'll talk a bit about why I think the effect ous money gets. Gets piddled away so much and they really haven't been able to make things like AI safety, which we're gonna compare ourselves to in just a little bit.
Mm-hmm. Take off in the way that Natal has even though they spent millions of dollars on promoting it every year. So here next you see the worldwide map, which I found really effective mm-hmm. Are, are very interesting of where the search volume is strong. So basically across the whole world, you know, the United States.
Central America, south America, all Natm is winning over effective altruism. Mm-hmm. Russia, it's winning. France and Spain and Portugal, it's winning. Yeah. Eastern Europe it's winning. India, it's winning Africa, it's winning. Middle East is winning. So where is effective Altruism vi CA Canada won.
Yeah. Yeah. The UK, Germany. Italy, Norway, Sweden, China, Sweden,
Simone Collins: China, where they've just given up basically China, I
Malcolm Collins: found, well, you're gonna see China is a trend across [00:19:00] here, which I find really interesting.
Yeah.
And Australia, I found that interesting. It, it also looks like Indonesia, which is weird.
I don't know what's up with that, but I assume that they don't really have a population problem. But let's go to AI safety, right? Like AI safety. 'cause people can say, okay, this stuff is just getting big because the trends are in your favor, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's not any effort. You or, and I, and I point out like we're a team.
Like I. Whether it's US or Kevin Dolan or Dan Hess or Katherine Ach who wrote h Hannah's Children you know, we all talk, we all work to coordinate or, or even the people at Heritage. Heritage too. There're,
Simone Collins: there're, while we may advocate for very different styles of tism or be excited about different policies, we are very much all fighting for the same thing.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if they're doing something, they email us and let us know. And if we're doing something, we email them and let them know. We ask their thoughts. Like there is really like an inter community communication web here, and, and it is a small team and [00:20:00] most of the team is self-funded. Yeah. Like.
Dan Hass gets, I, I don't think he's ever gotten any funding for his prenatal list work. No. He's just like in, in fact, he's,
Simone Collins: he's donated so much money of, of like his own to, to fund things. Like at Natal Con he distributed an incredibly helpful bound fact book. I. Packed with graphs plus a laminated one pager, just summarizing the basic details.
Okay. Can we
Malcolm Collins: create a link to that in the, in the, in the, oh, we can. Yeah. We absolutely should. Yes. So do check out. Dan has AKA's,
Simone Collins: Fact sheet and report on prenatal. It's just like, okay, if you need a primer. Go here, look at everything. It's literally
Malcolm Collins: every statistic on it I've ever seen, like it was, was incredible.
No, it's
Simone Collins: amazing. And, and you know, he did that at his own expense. He, he came to Nacon with that, gave it away for free to everyone who went to make them more informed. I mean, this, this man is so awesome and no one is paying him to do that. He has a date, he works full time and takes care of his family of six and, and, and helps his wife.
And he also does this somehow and is very [00:21:00] successful at it. We don't get any pay from the, the work that we do. We also have full-time day jobs and
Malcolm Collins: other projects. Yeah. We, we, we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of our personal money on prenatal list advocacy without ever getting any money for, for it.
So like, this is just like an US thing. Like I think the prenatal list spend a lot of money and make these types of sacrifices on this. Mm-hmm. Because they do genuinely believe this stuff. Yeah. And this is when we're gonna go into the AI safety stuff. Some evidence that the key people in this movie don't.
Movement, don't genuinely believe it. Chin Okay. And that's one of the reasons why it hasn't done as well. But okay. So, and the China thing, I wonder why China is more effective outgrows than Natalist. Do you think they'd be like, freaked out? Right. By the way, for people who are wondering. No, I mean,
Simone Collins: one, I think it, this is one of those things that, this is actually the theme of your talk at NATO Con when you try to impose natal list policies.
On a population, it backfires. They push back. They want nothing to do with it. And that's what's happening in China now. That's, it's all part of lying flat too. You [00:22:00] know, be productive. Go have kids, and they're like, you know what? We're the last generation. Thank you very much. Goodbye. And I think that's part of what's going on.
Malcolm Collins: I'd also note that we'd mentioned this in other episodes, but you can check this out yourself. It, it, the, the base Camp Discord, for example, is significantly more active, I'd say maybe four times as active as the EA forums. So this isn't just like us saying like, oh, you know, whatever our podcast is.
If you go to the podcast. It does better than the best effective altruist podcast by a very, and on that note, large margin,
Simone Collins: huge shout out to everyone from the podcast and from The Discord who came out either to Nacon yes and or to our meetup before it on Friday. It was so cool to see you guys, you know who you are.
Like what, what a dream come true. It was to see some of you for the first time. Some of you again. It, it was, I just, I, we only regret that we didn't have more time to hang out and chat, but it, it was great what we had. Yeah. And it
Malcolm Collins: always. Destroys [00:23:00] us when somebody's not, is disappointed. We had one person who was like, I wanted more ultra rich people here.
You know? He's like, I thought the tech elite, tech elite were gonna come. Like all the founders fund funders now. Where's Andreessen
Simone Collins: Horowitz? Where's Founders Fund? Where's, yeah. And I was like,
Malcolm Collins: all these people have like really interesting startups that are doing well. Is that not good enough for you? And he's like, no, no.
So that was, that was, you know, I always, you know, if you're something there was only, yeah, he
Simone Collins: was the only one person I think who was disappointed in the event, but it's also because he is one of the world's most elite people. And so, yeah, I think it's really, he's only working with people at that caliber, hard to win.
You know, unless we had like the president of five major countries present, I, I don't think we would've really impressed him.
Malcolm Collins: What do you think China being more effective altruist than Natalist is about? Like, that seems weird.
Simone Collins: I think that effective altruism is the philosophy of people who are negative utilitarians, and I think that China is a negative utilitarian country.
I think they want to end suffering. I think they wanna end their suffering. I think they wanna end their cycle. [00:24:00] TISM is a philosophy of expansionist com countries that want to grow and that want to see more and do more. And that's all those other countries I'm looking at.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, by the way, if you, if you wanna recreate this, the way I did this is every time I did this, I tried to compare, like, to like mm-hmm.
So here we have Natal as a belief with compared to effective altruism as a cause area. Mm-hmm. And then in these next graphs we're looking at natal as a belief compared to AI safety field of study.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Because you don't wanna compare search terms because there could be misspellings or something else weird like that.
Malcolm Collins: So, the first graph here I'm putting up is in the world. And you can see that in the last year, natal has soundly beat, but, but, but pretty narrowly as well. AI safety as something people are searching for. You can see EI or Kukowski World Tour as a big spike in AI safety, and you can see our first virality around Natal as a big spike in Natal.
Mm-hmm. Here's a graph of this on the world stage, but it gets more interesting if you look at a map of the [00:25:00] countries. That's this next graph of countries here. Nativism is everywhere in the world. Bigger than AI safety is except for England and China, which is really interesting when, if anyone needs to be freaking out about nativism, it's China, but this is where we are.
Simone Collins: Well, I think that's, that's part of the issue though, right? Is that China has a problem because. They don't care. They're not freaking out about it. If someone's freaking out about it, they're, and some of them are at least trying, and I think that in China only, the CCP is trying.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And here we've got Quiverfull versus Natal.
I thought this was interesting 'cause I wanted to look at the more traditional like Christian thing. Okay. The qui Fools in red, natals in blue, and you can see Quiverfull has basically entirely died. God. And we're gonna do a separate episode on how the Quiverfull movement died.
Simone Collins: I really wanna do that.
Yes.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah, natal is now maybe a [00:26:00] hundred times bigger than, than Quiverfull is terms of a belief system. I remember when that was, you
Simone Collins: just couldn't not hear about it. It was such a thing. Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And we look now at Quiverfull versus pro natal list as search terms. Mm-hmm. Because before I was trying to compare like, like to like, so I was like, okay, yeah.
Let's see if we're looking at them as search terms at Quiverfull belief system Natal as the belief system. You can see here Natal has overtaken it pretty soundly but not as soundly, maybe like four X bigger. Yeah. These days. And really only started regularly beating it, I'd say this year.
Which is pretty, no, this last year, like 2024
Simone Collins: year of tipping points.
Malcolm Collins: And now I wanna talk about like why AI safety has done such a bad job at this. So this last graph I had earlier this morning, you, you searched and you find l Zer Kowski being drafted dwarfed by us. I assume it's because you misspelled his name because in reality he's still slightly edging us out.
Mm-hmm. In terms of public attention we, we did
Simone Collins: the search by the way, because on our [00:27:00] flight back from Austin, both of us watched simultaneously on YouTube a, a strange Aons video on. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, the Harry Potter fan fiction that Eer YOWs wrote. It was, it's just so much fun.
Speaking of effective altruism, speaking of Eer YOWs, to see someone from completely outside that community. Learn about it
Malcolm Collins: and freak out and study it and be like, wait, what's going on here? Yeah. Early in relationships, we, I was listening to the audio book of the Methods of Rationality and, and you got into it a little bit.
We both stopped it because it was like, really,
Simone Collins: you made it further than I did. It just got so repetitive and it didn't deliver on its value proposition. I wanted to see the proposed science or reasoning behind. Magic because that was, that was Harry. That was the, well in this, in this fan universe.
Harry Potter is, you know, this child of like a brilliant engineer and he's a genius and he gets into Hogwarts and says, I'm going to find out the science [00:28:00] behind this and then use my knowledge to save humanity and. Spanned to throughout the universe. And I mean, it, it sounds great. You know, you, you hear this and you're like, this is a great premise.
Like, oh my gosh. And he, you know, like as soon as he gets his green Gods account, he's like, I can play arbitrage with this. Like you're, it starts out so promising. And then it just, yeah. Anyway, definitely check out The Strange Ions video because she's also hilarious and wonderful.
Malcolm Collins: But I, I found a number of things really telling, and I think it's likely LE Iza, Murkowski's influence as sort of the face of AI safety.
I mean, he's sort of the mirroring face to us if we're the face of Tism. Whether the prenatal is like it or not. It's safety. It's gotta be him. Yeah. He's, he's the face of AI safety. Yeah.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: Fun, , thing. So I asked Rock if, , it could pair any anime character to Malcolm. Like, which character is Malcolm Collins Most? Like, first it said La Luke from Code Gaos, which I absolutely love. And Simone, I told Simone this and she goes, oh, that's no [00:29:00] surprise. , you, you like his character only because he reminds you of yourself.
And I'm like, okay, whatever. , but then the next one was, it said. Light Yakima from Death Note. And I was like, okay, I like that too. And when I asked it, what character would you pair Ellie Eer with? It said L and Simone got annoyed at that. 'cause she's like, but he's incompetent. , but he's also slovenly and an antagonist, which, which works for me.
Malcolm Collins: And he got into this very differently. If you, one of the things she noted is that while he was writing Harry Potter in the methods of rationality he would regularly tell people, oh, I'll put out more chapters or faster chapters if you give more money to our nonprofit.
Well, and this is because he
Simone Collins: co, I, I think it's because he co-founded Miri originally the Singularity Institute, which was supposed to do research on AI stuff, which. But also explain why he became one of the early AI DOR people. And I think because people have, have dunked on MI for not being very productive, that among other things, Ellie Eer was not contributing a whole lot because he was just.[00:30:00]
Messing around and writing a fan fiction. And so I think he felt pressured by the team to write a fan or sorry to, to use his fan fiction to shill. I don't think that's
Malcolm Collins: it.
Simone Collins: You don't think so? They weren't like, dude, you're not doing anything. At least make us money. No.
Malcolm Collins: I think what you and other people don't understand is a nonprofit, especially if you founded and own the nonprofit Yeah.
Can sometimes just be a thing that pays you a salary.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and I think he was getting a salary from MI not doing anything, and the other team members were giving him shade for that. I don't even
Malcolm Collins: know if MI had a board back then, Simone, my re Yeah. But
Simone Collins: he still, he co-founded it and he still had co-founders and I think he got shade for it.
Malcolm Collins: Sure. My read is, what was happening is he was begging for money and most of that money just paid for his lifestyle. Yeah. I don't think that much of the money at all was going to AI research. Well, it wasn't
Simone Collins: because Mary. Is is famously unproductive. Unproductive, yes. Like, like, and
Malcolm Collins: she mentioned that in the strange Aon space, that they're, they're known for not getting a lot of papers out.
They're known for not getting a lot of [00:31:00] real research out, which to me further indicates what I think, which is that it's literally just his GoFundMe account for his lifestyle through the lens of a nonprofit. Because technically he's getting the word out about rationality. 'cause technically he's getting the word out about AI safety.
I would bet that if. If, if during that period, if you look at, I would be over 50% of the money that they raised was just paid out to him in salary.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.
Malcolm Collins: That's what I think would happen. I wonder.
Simone Collins: Ooh hold on. So we are our nonprofit post his financials on a like nonprofit. Oh. Go to website.
See if you could find out. So I wanna see if they post their financial, how much his
Malcolm Collins: personal salary during that period.
Sure.
And what you'll see if you look at our nonprofits financials is that we take no money from the nonprofit and we put, and when I say we put tons of money towards our nonprofit, there was a, a guardian piece, I wanna say a few years ago, it might have been a telegraph piece where they actually audited our finances to see how much money we were putting into our nonprofit. This was before we got the big grant, and after that we stopped doing this. But before [00:32:00] that, we were putting 45% of our yearly income into our nonprofit.
I. Which is a lot when you have, I think back then it was like three kids where we're just like, no, we absolutely have to make this work. So what you see within the, it's look like they make their
Simone Collins: financials public, which
Malcolm Collins: that makes sense. You have a complete inverse of what's happening was in the AI C oh my
Simone Collins: gosh, their total revenues fluctuated between 1.5 million and 3 million annually.
What, how have we managed to make AI save with expenses, including salaries for its small team of researchers and staff? So in 2019, MIRI reported total expenses of around 2.4 million with roughly 1.5 million allocated to salaries for its 20 to 30 employees. So if I take 1.5 divided by 30 is 50,000.
And I bet some were making more than others. [00:33:00]
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: especially if it was just 20 employees. So, oh my gosh,
Malcolm Collins: that is my bet about what's going on with that. Well, and keep in mind, now I point this out, now contrast this with nativism. I, I'm trying to think of any natalist who make money off of their, their, their work with nativism.
Literally justly stone from what I'm aware of. And maybe, I mean, but also like lot that
Simone Collins: much because limestone has that big job as a demographer that like literally helps very large corporations determine how many diapers to produce. Like he, he, he has to work. And then also the, always the demographer in the world.
Also, he also does a lot of work raising money for the Institute of Family Studies, which I'm sure yes, of course pays him as well, but. He is piecing this together. He has, he has a side gig. Yeah, he has a
Malcolm Collins: secondary job, which I think is his primary income. Well, and I think maybe the Institute
Simone Collins: for Family Studies is his side gig, but he also has to raise money for them, so like, it's not, yeah.
Anyway. And
Malcolm Collins: Catherine Alak, her day job, Catherine lic is [00:34:00] a professor of
Simone Collins: economics. So she is a full-time day job and she worked with a publisher. I, I mean, I think her book has been very successful, but. A successful book these days, especially if you worked with a publisher, is not making you a lot of money.
So I don't think she's getting any material wealth. Up at the top
Malcolm Collins: 1%, you should see our video on Nobody reads anymore can earn you 20 K. Like e even if you're, if you're in the top 1%.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
So like, I don't think that that's a significant income source for her. And, and this, this matters a lot when you're thinking about this stuff because it now contrast it with the AI safety people.
Every one of the top AI safety people in top effective altruist I know making 50 to a hundred K at
Simone Collins: least.
Malcolm Collins: Making 50 to a hundred k at least their main source of income is donations. And you even saw people like I think it was like Will McCaskill or some of the other people who were running like major a like effective altruism organizations.
I. Write pieces a few years back, especially when Sand BA and Free was big about why people running these [00:35:00] organizations should be able to indulge in luxuries. Remember they did things like, bought a castle at one point. They this is one of the major EA groups. Yeah. They bought a castle. They bought a college at Oxford and they were gonna turn it into, or Cambridge, I, I can't remember which.
And they were gonna try to turn it into like a new college and they ended up for sex parties. Oh. Well, this is what they said. I, I was at, came whatever school this was. I don't remember which one it was, but I remember doing a tour and I was like, whatever happened to that? And somebody was like, oh yeah, it became known for sex parties.
Simone Collins: Well, I mean, it was college,
Malcolm Collins: but well. And effective altruist.
Simone Collins: Well,
Malcolm Collins: you know, they, yeah, but I mean, like
Simone Collins: rationalism and effective altruism as we, we should
Malcolm Collins: see our episode on the EA to sex worker pipeline. If you wanna learn more about the the lifestyles that are common within this community. But I think.
Through action. What we see between these two communities is one community that really believes what they're saying and working on, and another community where it's a performative way to make an [00:36:00] income.
Yeah.
And I think that if you are freaked out about like AI safety or something like that, well also, like
Simone Collins: who's reading these reports that they're making?
Who's reading these things? No,
Malcolm Collins: but look at who's, who's putting their money where their mouth is.
Hmm.
Of, of these two movements. It, it was, it contrast, e ei kowski begging, you know, epi update he made to the book, you know, and, and, and putting out chapters at a whatever pace to us who do daily videos every weekday at 8:00 AM EST on this channel.
Contrast that. It's a wild difference, and we don't ever, I don't think we've ever really begged. We, we've, we've said we would love it if you put us in your will or something. Put the nonprofit in your will, and if you do, this is the promise we have, by the way. And you Oh, no, that's, if you,
Simone Collins: if that's, if you put techno, the techno Puritan Federation.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. This is techno Puritan. So not even this, but if you put techno Puritan in your will and it ends up becoming a big thing. And you send us your genes, we will put those [00:37:00] genes along with like the amount that you contributed in case it does end up becoming a big thing and ends up creating like artificial realities and ends up need for sources on that or ends up cloning people in the future or doing even editing or something.
That you might be one of the resurrected people. I, I feel like that's a fun little thing you can do. But literally no one has told us they're doing that. So like, it's not like we're getting anything from that. And in terms of like active donations the main ones we get are hate donations. For when people get pissed off by progressives and they live in a, like more progressive environment, they donate two people,
Simone Collins: two people donate $10 a month minus PayPal fees.
It's like $9 and 50 cents, so
Malcolm Collins: Oh, they do? That's really nice. So we make
Simone Collins: 20 a.
Malcolm Collins: For daily, for like 45 minute long episodes. But no, I mean, like to those
Simone Collins: who don't, that is, that is like really genuinely kind. We appreciate that.
Malcolm Collins: No, that is genuinely kind. Yeah. I, I really appreciate it. And the money does, like, as I've pointed out, [00:38:00] you are getting much more out of that than you're getting out of like effective altruism and what they're doing.
Right. Like we have so little and yet we've been able to, at the conference. The other thing that really got me at the conference is I've been to effective Altru conference. This was one of the most competently organized conferences I've ever been to.
Simone Collins: Shout out to Luke and Kevin, I mean, my gosh. And, and dogs.
The
Malcolm Collins: quality of the food, first of all was like, good quality food. There was many corn dogs. It was, it was really like, nice. The people I met there were, you know, I had one person who emailed after, after this, and they're like, it exceeded all my expectations. This is somebody who's living in Austin.
You know, people were coming in from all around the world. I was so excited to talk Hong to them. Yeah. Hong Kong,
Simone Collins: Singapore. It, it was pretty wild. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and we had a, a lot of like, really amazing speakers and we didn't have last time, like people got in a fight. Like I, I didn't get in a fight with any Catholics this time.
You know, which is really nice. This, this is over IBF versus, you know, non IVS stuff. But yeah I, I think [00:39:00] that it was really like a victory lap for the prenatal list movement, which was really fun. It.
Do you have any final thoughts on this or the wired piece or the recent press we've been getting?
Simone Collins: I think that people who want to see this movement as evil are going to continue to do so, but it seems to be only to our benefit. I. And I and just really happy with how the conference went and how the movement is growing and it, it gives me hope for the future because a lot of the people at the conference were really, like, there was not a lot of cultural overlap and it made me feel less for a cultural mass extinction, which is something that we're really afraid about.
Like we want a lot of different opinions in the future, and. Natal con felt like anything but a monoculture, which was really cool. So
Malcolm Collins: yeah, it was, it was really interesting. And these are not small differences. This is us thinking they're murdering babies. They think we're murdering babies. Mm-hmm. And yet we get along.
Yeah. Like it is [00:40:00] absolutely wild that we're able to get along and progressives have the like smallest difference and they go knives out at each other. And the conference was really good. One of the important things, like if you go to this conference and you're like. Okay. I maybe met some people or whatever, but did the world really get anything outta this conference?
Mm-hmm. And what I would note is I think the biggest impact of the conference isn't like us having people edit it or whatever.
It is. Because you guys go and because you make this happen, you make this like a really packed event. I mean packed, like this conference was so large. Yeah. Like much larger than I anticipated.
And we then are able to have lots of reporters there. And we did have all the reporters as we mentioned, like was a wire, but we did have lot, we had New York Times CNN, we had NPR, we had mother Jones. I, oh no. Mother Jones was kept out. But they did a great piece. I like their piece. But anyway.
Lots of reporters there. They. The reporters only cover the movement when the conference happens. Like they need a forcing function to cover the movement. And we can go out and they can do the profile on [00:41:00] us, but you know, that's gonna die down after a while. They need something new to be scared about.
And you guys making this conference happen, going there, talking with reporters. You all came together and gave them something to be scared about. And because of that, every one of you who contributed to this, you contributed to this press cycle that's happening right now. And this press cycle that's happening right now is going to give us a second boost, is going to help us move things forward and is going to help keep this conversation centered in a way that when people are afraid of controversy or afraid of doing new things like the, you know, effective altruism organization like Big Gala that happens every year and I'm sure they spend tons of money on you know, that that doesn't end up.
Getting less oppressed. It doesn't end up moving any idea forwards. It doesn't end up doing anything meaningful for the world. But just by being at an event like this, you guys did a lot and I really, really deeply [00:42:00] appreciate that. In fact, I'd say like, if you're like, oh, you know the money that I paid for this, like $900 or whatever, right?
Would you have rather I just give you two $900 or a thousand dollars? Categorically, I would rather it have gone to the conference given the amount of press that the conference has generated. Mm-hmm. Like, that's what I would've paid. I probably pay what, $50,000 for a press cycle this big. And I think that that's probably about what went in from our fans.
And that's amazing. I, I have more than that like a PR person. I, I could pay a PR firm hundreds of thousands of dollars and not get a press cycle this way.
Simone Collins: Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And that is huge because that's what we need to keep this centered in the public mind. And it's also why, you know, if you look at our video on Hardier versus Dier, we recently started hardier.com which is meant to sort of bring.
Funding to some of the other underfunded cause areas where people are, find founding companies in those spaces. Right now we've drained the amount of money [00:43:00] that we had put in for it. So if anybody wants to like put a big grant in for that so we can do something big, let us know. But right now we've, we've invested in like 10 companies like 10 to 40 k each.
Which I'm really excited about because I'm excited about a lot of the technology that they're bringing, but also it's an investment and not a donation, which means if any of these companies does well, then we'll have even more money to put into this type of thing
Simone Collins: into future companies, which is something I'm really
Malcolm Collins: excited about.
The gift that keeps on giving. Yeah. So thank you all for making this happen. You know, thank you to Kevin Dolan for, and Luke, I, I mean, Luke seems to be the really competent operator that made this happen. But yeah, this was wild.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you guys are amazing. And also Kevin Knight's wife and kids who were there.
Oh my gosh, they were so cute. But yeah. Anyway I love you and I love fatalism. I love the Alcon and it was really good to see all y'all who showed up. So thanks for coming.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. One funny anecdote I'll give, 'cause this is actually something that I was talking to like, just last week I was talking [00:44:00] to one of the like, leading people of the effective altruist movement.
And I was asking them like, how can we work together? Mm-hmm. And they, they, they just didn't seem to understand like. I was like, look, I got hardier here. I am open to working with you guys. Like we have a, a bigger movement in terms of like members and focus now. Mm-hmm. You know, we've, we've got people in the White House.
You guys have been begging for that for years. You guys have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Like if, if you guys can throw a little money our way. We're gonna be able to throw a little attention your way and, and, and help some of your projects or projects that at least we could both agree on, come to fruition.
And they basically didn't understand why they, they were like, I don't, I don't understand. And, and like, like how or why we would work together. And it helped me understand why the movement's gotten as bad as it has.
Hmm.
Specifically what they pointed out was. That the very, very large [00:45:00] EA orgs that get all this money, like open fill mm-hmm.
They're getting money, huge amounts of money from lots of donors and they have to be afraid of doing anything donors. That makes sense. Yeah. They end up taking the most conservative, boring approach, but a conservative approach like that means they're donating to things that would be raising money anyway.
Yeah. And so the money is just completely pissed away, like giving your money to, which runs against
Simone Collins: the fundamental principles of effective altruism because in addition to looking at the severity of a problem and how tractable it is, how, how feasible it is to actually address it, you're looking at how much attention and help it already has.
And you don't want to focus on things that already have help. You want to focus on the things that are overlooked, which is one of the reasons why Malcolm chose to address demographic collapse. Oh, I'm so sorry. So come on. Hey,
Malcolm Collins: love you to death, Simone.
Simone Collins: Love you too.
Speaker: Octavian, what do you want to give Mommy? This flower [00:46:00] right here. Why do you wanna give her that flower? 'cause I love mommy flowers. Mommy, all the time because I love her. Okay. Hey Titan. Where are you going?
Can I see a video? What did you see today?
You've been having fun. Yeah. What were you doing? I was playing, it was rock. You playing these rocks that walked at where? At the creek? Yeah. Hey, rock, mommy. And, and um, did you see a sink? Um, yeah. How did you with mommy, it was very scary. And then you kept everyone safe. Yeah, mom. What is that? I think I don't stole in the garage.
[00:47:00] Do not tap the window as rocks. No. Oh.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
The Effective Altruism to S*X Work Pipeline
31 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this deep dive, we explore the intricate dynamics of the Effective Altruism (EA) community and its links to polyamory and sex work within the tech-centric Silicon Valley culture. The conversation exposes how women in these communities are often caught in a cycle of exploitation, love-bombing, and employment gaps, making it difficult to escape. We also discuss the cultural shift from monogamy towards polyamory, the socioeconomic repercussions faced by women, and the contrasting perspectives between supporters and critics of this lifestyle. Additionally, the discussion meanders through personal anecdotes, societal observations, and humorous insights, ultimately highlighting the complexities of modern relationships within a high-status, intellectually driven community.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] With the grooming gang pipeline in the UK, there was obviously. A sort of plan, intention, like we are going to begin using these young women as economic assets, we're going to go out and find them, but the same general dynamic happened organically, like the women in this case found the EA community, you know, they selected into it, but the same dynamic started to play, where they essentially first got love bombed, and they were vulnerable, and they were kind of disassociated from their home community at that point distinct from the rest of society, they fell into this community and then they started getting passed around.
Speaker 9: Butters, do you have a problem? All these are kissing fellers, and they haven't figured out that they can be making
Malcolm Collins: And, it creates these giant black holes in their resumes.
Simone Collins: Where for years Oh no, right, if you have this big employment gap.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, and that's why they get trapped because now they can't do anything else. And now the type of guy who wants a long term partner doesn't want to marry them.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: And I'd point out, none of this happens intentionally. This is basically the story of the [00:01:00] EA community as it relates to women.
Speaker 2: In an effort to raise money came up with a nifty plan where she'd date guys and charge them money.
Speaker 4: I go on dates all the time with a whole bunch of, you know, boys and
Speaker 2: stuff.
Speaker 4: And I kind of need somebody to help me out, like, you know, my partner in crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah,
thanks so much for asking. She said she needed my help to make sure that the dates went okay and that the guys paid her. Oh my god, you were a pimp. What? God, no. No, I was just trying to help a friend. And wouldn't you know it, some of Brenda's girlfriends Decided they wanted to be a part of it. Decided I shouldn't use my real name. So we came up with the name Gator. I'm telling you, you're a pimp. No! Are you even listening to the story?
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I have had my perspective changed pretty dramatically on polyamory recently. The affective altruist community, slash the rationalist community, slash the singularity community, because they sort of all come together into this Silicon Valley diaspora community, or wider sort of Silicon Valley.
I [00:02:00] don't know what you want to say at the, like, heart of the Silicon Valley ecosystem at the moment. And it's been pretty dramatic, because I used to have this perspective of being okay with sex work more broadly.
Not religiously speaking, I'm just like legally speaking, okay?
Simone Collins: Legally. Wow. Okay. Where are we going with this? I'm so curious. What I
Malcolm Collins: mean is, I think that all of this stuff is against the Bible. I think it is against what you're supposed to do. But Right, but if you
Simone Collins: don't follow the Bible or any other religion that's against a personal thing, this
Malcolm Collins: is not Even legally, it might make sense to make this stuff illegal.
Oh. Just because,
Simone Collins: basically, logistically, it produces bad outcomes, from a societal level, on a personal level.
Malcolm Collins: deleterious outcomes for many of the people or most of the people involved in a way that they would want at the end of the pipeline to be like, I wish I had never gotten into the beginning of that pipeline.
In the same way drugs or gambling might create that scenario for an individual. But even more dramatically, it changed my [00:03:00] view on polyamory. Which I used to be pretty okay with. If people don't know polyamory. This is where you take multiple other partners, most partners, just sort of sleep around.
Well,
Simone Collins: no, not necessarily. Someone who's polyamorous just isn't exclusively romantically attached to people. So maybe one partner is monogamous and the other one's polyamorous, and as long as the monogamous partner consents to the polyamorous person having other partners, then it's still a functional relationship.
It's not like everyone in a polyamorous relationship has to sleep around a ton.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sure, sure. You can have one person sleep around a ton. And there are forms of polyamory that I'm still okay with. Oh, really? Oh,
Simone Collins: okay.
Malcolm Collins: Wow. So this is very intriguing. Very spicy, yes. We actually talked in a previous video about how a style that some women have used to secure high quality mates that we have seen be successful is to propose polyamorous relationships.
That were married relationships and then use that to get the guy to marry them have kids with them And then as the guy got older he stopped caring about sex with other random people
Because
as somebody's saying in the [00:04:00] discord non reproductive sex gets gross when you get older and I actually I hate to say it like
Simone Collins: kinda does.
Well, I don't know. Does non reproductive sex with a 20 year old get grosser, Malcolm? Or is it just with older women? Oh, that's an
Malcolm Collins: interesting point. I
Simone Collins: mean
Malcolm Collins: If I had a stable of 20 year olds I'd have a stable of 20 year olds, which I need. Can we work on that for one dictator?
Hey, Hey, Hey,
I'm not. Oh my God.
There's such a funny video. So freedom tunes does these great shows. We inject them in our videos all the time. They did one recently where the Democrats were trying to run a scam on old people to get the money that they used to be getting from a USAID. And one of them gets to the place and somebody takes the phone from the old woman.
And he's like, who is this? Is this you, Chuck Schumer? And it's pretty clear into it that it's Elon Musk. And he goes, if I catch you here again, I'll impregnate you. Oh my god. That is, I want that to be Elon's stereotypical, like, attack on people now. [00:05:00] You come here again and I'll knock you up, you fat b*****d.
You wrinkly old piece of, you know, whatever. So anyway Point being, I need to make that my thing, like, I can't do that because I'm like, with a woman who I love and like, I'm known for knocking up random people. Give me a billion dollars and I might change my tune on this, right? Oh
Simone Collins: my god.
All I'm saying is, I think that people Can find sex to be arousing in the right scenario and I imagine you know your point there But so the point here making
Malcolm Collins: EA to sex worker pipeline because it's a real thing and I didn't realize okay. Wow
Simone Collins: that is EA I mean EA And, and, and rationalism more broadly too in Silicon Valley culture are all associated with very like cerebral intelligent, thoughtful, altruism focused, not like, where is the sex and [00:06:00] debauchery?
Malcolm Collins: Come on, you remember the first time I took you to like singularity, singularitarian or rationalist or less wrong party, right? You know, so.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it was at some house called Tortuga, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that was El Tortuga. And I was like, you know, all these parties have orgies in them, right? And you're like, no, I don't.
Look, it's just a bunch of nerds. And I was like, don't open that door. And you're like, oh,
Simone Collins: okay. I didn't open that door. No, what happened was we went and it was like a normal. I mean, of course, from the house because it's in the Bay Area and all the houses in the Bay Area pretty much like, yeah, just very sad.
And we went there and we talked to people and at some point someone was like, do you want to switch outfits with me? And I thought that that was a weird question. And then when we left. You were like, that person was inviting you to an orgy or something like that, and I was like, I have no idea what, and I literally remember opening a door.
That's something I
Malcolm Collins: don't
Simone Collins: forget. I didn't open it. Well, okay, keep in mind, like, maybe I have some kind of, like, [00:07:00] Selective blackout. I went to Burning Man and have no memory of being exposed to any sex or drugs. Okay, like I May just not and like literally like a a muggle and magic like okay Well, then
Malcolm Collins: okay as an outsider here i'm
Simone Collins: stay
Malcolm Collins: ea the effective algebras community and the larger like less wrong community and everything That has always been intimately connected with both partner sharing polyamory and origins is it sort
Simone Collins: of like a futuristic advanced Vision, because part of me thought that all of the sexual weirdness of the Silicon Valley movement really had to do more with.
the San Francisco associations. I mean, that is, that is where I mean, that's
Malcolm Collins: part of it. So this stuff isn't that radical for them, but this community is very much about like first principles thinking through why they do things. Yeah. So they'd be like, okay, from a logical perspective, if it feels good for you and it feels good for somebody else, [00:08:00] why wouldn't you do it?
Right? That's, that's the way they're going to think about it. And then when they think about relationships, they're going to think. Okay, you know, why, why do you have one partner, right? Is it about jealousy? Is jealousy a positive emotion? Is, you know, that's the way they're going to engage with these ideas.
So, it only makes sense. It would actually be even weirder if they went into it from a monogamous perspective as a default. And all of this makes sense when you think about it from the outside. And then as to why so many people are drawn into it, even when they otherwise might not be, you've got to keep in mind, like, bulls in the community get drawn into it, right?
Okay. Girls in the, you know, rationality, singularitarian, less wrong community make up the vast minority of the community. I'd say they're probably one in eight members or one in ten members. Right, like it's
Simone Collins: a mostly male community.
Malcolm Collins: Actually, I'd go so far as to say they make up like one in, yeah, probably like one in eight members and a good 30 to 40 percent of the girls I've seen in the community are trans women.
Simone Collins: Yeah, there's, yeah, there's, there's [00:09:00] disproportionately more trans women. And there are very few women. And now the number has increased. I'd say
Malcolm Collins: because of trans women, it might be like two in eight or like three in, in seven. Knocking the number
Simone Collins: up. It can't be. That there's almost an equal number of women to trans.
I would say there's almost one trans woman for every natal woman Like conferences some conferences we've been to for example.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, We'll put the trans women in a different bucket and bring them in in a second because when I first got involved with these communities Trans women were not on the scene yet.
Yeah. Yeah and they it didn't really play into the dynamic, but then they did later. We'll get into that in just a second so anyway Because of this, you as a woman in this community have a much higher value than you would in almost any other culture. You can be frumpy and fat or you know, lazy or whatever.
Not saying that people
Simone Collins: in the EA move. Actually, like, I think it attracts. pretty attractive people, but yeah, like
Malcolm Collins: more on the attractive side that I've seen [00:10:00] actually. But if you are attractive, oh my God, you're treated like a god queen by all of the well, keep in mind, the guys in the community are often very different from the girls in the community to to get in the community and earn status as a guy.
You either have to move up one of the peerage networks, which means gaining access to funding streams, which then you can redirect. to people below you in the peerage network or you have to be a competent tech worker, which means you're typically making a pretty decent salary. I'd say the average salary in the movement is probably these days at least half a million dollars.
Keep in mind they're living in like San Francisco and Manhattan mostly. So they may not be. You'd
Simone Collins: never know. They look like they're poor.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So anyway, you have all these guys in the movement who are earning tons and tons of money. And then the women in the movement, even when they are. Program.
Well, they're not often programmers. They're often like psychologists or neuroscientists or evolutionary biologists which are all positions that, you know, sounds super hard and everything like that but they don't actually earn much money. And it's quite hard to find [00:11:00] jobs for them. And so. Get into this community where your knowledge is respected, you are respected and you can gain even more respect for sleeping with additional people, because, oh, if you're only sleeping with one guy, you know, that causes problems in the community, right?
Because, you know, there's only one woman for every, like, three or four guys, right? So If you sleep around, you can gain status. And then what happens is, Oh, well, you're living in a city like San Francisco. Now you're living in a city like Manhattan. Now you can't really earn money with your evolutionary bio degree.
You can't really earn money with it. Like a neuroscience degree is actually quite hard. I have a neuroscience directorate degree. It's actually quite hard to earn money with. You can't, it's true. It's true. It's true. It's your psychology degree or whatever, right? And so, you know, some of the guys start to take pity on you.
And they'll, they'll give you money for sleeping with them, and they'll let you stay at their place, which are usually pretty nice or interesting group houses. And so you slowly work your way into this.
Simone Collins: Oh, oh [00:12:00] no.
Speaker 8: , don't you wanna start makin some money? Leave me alone. Well, you were made for the playground, . You should be out there workin Don't you want a new lunchbox? A nice new coat? I can get all that for you, . Butters, dude!
Oh. Well, all I'm sayin is the should be out there workin is all. What you doin ? Just givin kisses to Stan for free? You should be makin some
Malcolm Collins: And it's very hard to not work your way into this. This is where I went from, Is this something that people are truly?
Open mindedly consenting to, or is it,
Because before I had this perspective of, yes, but the women who are engaging with this community are consenting to a polyamorous lifestyle. And I have seen women enter the movement who are more monogamous. So I'll note a few things. The women I have seen engaged with a movement who are monogamous are constantly pressured to sleep with other people.
Are they? So
Simone Collins: what does that? What does that look like? Because I just don't understand how the leap goes from being monogamous to being polyamorous within the movement. And when you said that, Oh, [00:13:00] you can gain status by sleeping with even more people. You know, that, that runs against, I think, both my and most people's intuition, because the, the mainstream responsibility of taking on more partners is, it's so shaming, like, you lose value when you are less exclusive as a woman on average, and it's weird that one community would, like, defy these laws of nature.
Malcolm Collins: So let's, let's talk about why this happens. Okay, okay. So first why, what, what, what does it look like to have your boundaries pushed? What happens is, is a lot of men in the community, if you say I'm a monogamous or something like this they really take that as a, oh, so I'm not supposed to tell your partner about us sleeping together.
That's what that means to them. And because other women have said that to them in the movement and, you know, not been actually monogamous, they, and it's happened enough. They now just don't sort of respect those words very much and will be fairly aggressive with people because it's what's expected.
I mean, this is the way things work. If you expect to be able to do something you're gonna keep [00:14:00] pushing for it. Like, why are you being weird about this? Why are you acting like a weird conservative christian
People in our community don't do this and i remember within the community even thinking that the people who didn't sleep around the women specifically that was the only ones i was thinking of who are more monogamous i remember thinking they were really weird even you yeah i was like this is like why are they like doing this and then the interesting thing is and this always happened Is, is after one of the ones who was like monogamous broke up with their partner, then they'd become polyamorous.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, cause they were like a bunch of people simultaneously lined up. Okay. Cause that was another thing. I was like, how would your existing incoming monogamous boyfriend ever be okay with you becoming poly, but Yeah, relationships, especially when you're younger, are more likely to end, and then, then what happens?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so you enter the community as a girl in a monogamous relationship often. And you may not go out of that relationship or anything like that, but when that relationship breaks up, you've been going to enough parties, you've been being hit on by enough people And maybe it even
Simone Collins: starts off as like, you're [00:15:00] contextualizing it as a rebound, like, oh, you're just having Some fun one night stands you know to mend your broken heart after leaving, you know
Malcolm Collins: Are doing all the stuff for you your boyfriend used to do they're paying for meals They might be paying for some of your stuff.
That's
Simone Collins: one night stands turned into You know, like every other night for a while
Malcolm Collins: and they don't expect fidelity from you because they're sleeping with other women as well.
Yeah.
So you've had these guys hitting on you. You're not used to this, but you're like, Oh, okay. Like you've been very interested in me for a while.
Like, let's hook up. Oh, this seems like a normal relationship. There's been some other guy who's been hitting on me. Like, am I allowed to like. You see him on a date tomorrow or whatever and they're like, yeah, sure. Like, you know, we bang the same chicks all the time, right? You know, because they have disintermediated and it's seen as negative within these communities to feel jealousy, like that would be like, why are you hoarding this resource, this woman from other members of the community when we just want to use her for pleasure and it feels good for her [00:16:00] too.
And you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And she's getting money from it. That's not like she has a job right now. So it, it, it, when you disintermediate it. A monogamous relationship, even if it is done on good terms, you turn the relationship into sex work. And then you can't leave, because you're stuck in San Francisco, you're stuck in Manhattan, you haven't had a job in how many years?
And let me explain what I mean by this. Okay, me and you, early in our relationship, I was like paying for you to go to college. With my job, right? And I, I paid for food and everything like that. Right. You know, I there was a time in our relationship where I was the guy who was earning the money because I had the higher paying career anymore, but this is the way it worked.
Right. And a venture capitalist at the time, and that is a normal monogamous relationship in a lot of places around the world. Right. Now where, where money sort of flows from the wealthier partner to the less wealthy partner, and often that's from the male to the female, blah, blah, blah. Anyway that's monogamy, right?
Like that's something I can invest in and continue to build. Yeah, let's like disintermediate that relationship. Now, [00:17:00] if you And you're getting the same benefit, but from five different guys.
Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. We're supporting my room and board, et cetera.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Maybe, maybe they're doing a little less than I would do, but it
Simone Collins: seems odd.
Like why would you invest in someone if they're so fluid in your life? This is the point here. You are getting. It's becoming transactional.
Malcolm Collins: And you are getting, yes, but you are not getting a real investment. These guys don't care that you continue to build your career. They don't care about investing in you as an asset, because, same way as we've done another video on this, you need to own your wife.
You need to own your husband. When I say own, what I mean is when somebody doesn't own a property or something like that, they don't invest in this. This is what we've seen in communist countries. Yeah, the
Simone Collins: incentives are misaligned. You're not going to take care of that thing.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yes, and it's because you don't benefit from that thing and prove it.
It was a great it was sent to us by one of our fans, a green text post on 4chan recently about a guy and his wife who he had [00:18:00] known since they were kids and had flirted with him since they were kids. And they went through and read her diary about, like, when she first met him. And so she's reading it, it's very funny, especially kid stuff.
And then she gets, like, quiet when reading it. And she's like, okay, I'm gonna like, like she goes on, she's not going to hide this from him, but she met it's the first time she met him and he goes, and he's really nerdy. So I bet he'll be rich one day I should date him. And then he like thinks back to her always pushing him to get like the higher earning degrees, her always pushing him to like study more.
And, and he ends up this very Successful guy. And he's quite happy with this life. He doesn't like hold this against her. But the point here being is because they were in a monogamous relationship, she, from a Machiavellian standpoint, from a self interested standpoint, had a reason to try to improve him.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. She invested in him, believing him to be an appreciating asset that she hitched herself to.
Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And the women who are in these situations, they [00:19:00] don't understand that these guys might have an emotional relationship with them, right? Even an emotional relationship, if they even do. Now, a lot of them don't, right?
Like, a lot of them what a person I was talking to about this said, you know, you think you're getting more love, But you're getting no love at all. You think you're getting more people caring about you, but at the end of the day, it's all hollow. And that is, you know, our biology is not meant to bond to somebody who we know that other people are sleeping with.
Like, that's just It would be,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: More
Simone Collins: use of resources,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. For females, and I think this is where women get tricked, women can bond to somebody who's sleeping with other women. This is the type of polyamory where i'm actually okay Like if you're a rich enough guy and you have like multiple female partners like whatever throughout all of society throughout all of history even in the most You know, monogamous countries in history.
I'm mentioning like Louis the 14th, like France, you know, like Catholic country there, the height of the church, you know, you still have regular mistresses and stuff like that. It was, so you wouldn't
Simone Collins: encourage our daughters to [00:20:00] be polyamorous, but sister wives to assist sufficiently Wealthy husband fine.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if they're marrying a like a multi trillionaire or billionaire, you know, I'm assuming money continues to debase somebody who owns like half a Bitcoin. You know, sorry, I'm joking.
Simone Collins: Yes, sure.
Malcolm Collins: But the point here being Is that I'm I'm like less like it intrinsically doesn't work in those scenarios And it can allow women to get higher quality husbands than they otherwise would so I don't necessarily disagree I would I would have significant caution around it in these scenarios significant caution, but I wouldn't like absolutely rule it out.
But In the other way one girl sleeping was like, this destroys things.
Oh, it, it just, because it destroys this investment incentive. It destroys the core of the relationship. But I want to talk about how women gain status by sleeping with additional partners.
Cause this is all true. Again, this
Simone Collins: seems so counterintuitive. How can this be the case?
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so, because there is [00:21:00] an expectation of polyamory in these communities, right? And even more than that, an expectation of polyamory if I am a guy who holds some status over another guy I have an expectation of polyamory.
Expectation of access to his partners. So suppose you're at whatever EA peerage network or whatever, and there's a guy who's upstream in the peerage network of me, my grants, my loans depend on him. And we're at a party or something like that, right? That guy. Is going to expect to at least be able to hit on without consequences, whoever I am with
Speaking of this, we got an email recently from one of our fans in the EA community, and he said, Regarding your comments on sex work in EA, I heard a story related to the Life Extension organization S. E. N. S. that I consider adjacent to EA. Yeah, anything in Life Extension is basically part of this larger community.
, the founder, Audrey Day Gray, was voted out of the organization for interfering with a [00:22:00] sexual harassment investigation against him. In particular, what stood out to me was one case of the harassment with him allegedly Pressuring young women into making sexual slash romantic advances towards potential wealthy donors as a fundraising strategy.
I also remember hearing a very similar story about this about that. Ea cult, leverage. , and what leverage, one of the people who was funding it. , and he was like, yeah, at one point they basically came up with a scheme, which he was not into at all. By the way, he's like, what are you guys doing? , where they would brainwash young women and then try to pimp them out to the people who were giving them money, , to get more money.
Now, the way that they worded this is, , that they would do some sort of like work with the person that they would go in and, and, , you know, they had reframed this not as sex work, but as, some sort of like psychological, , session or something like that, but it's, it's what it boiled down to, , so this is something I know that, , in at least two occasions, it's like allegedly been tried.
now, suppose you're that woman, right?
And this guy is hitting on you. [00:23:00] It creates hypergamy and steroids because you have removed from the culture any cultural penalty to sleeping around
But if I start to sleep with this guy who's higher in the net now suppose this guy has a lot of money Suppose he's got like a quarter billion dollars or half a billion dollars or suppose he runs one of the largest organizations in the space by sleeping with him I can Significantly increase the type of parties I'm getting invited to.
I can significantly increase the introductions I'm getting. I mean, keep in mind, this is how Kamala Harris got her career started, right? Remember, she was sleeping with that guy when she was, it was in his 60s when she was in her late 20s. Oh gosh. And he got her those early jobs and you know, you can move up really quickly as a woman.
When you're sleeping with people and there's no cost. If someone
Simone Collins: has an interest in, in opening doors for you and especially if your career or work or ability to fundraise is contingent on your access to social networks. [00:24:00] I could see that being
Malcolm Collins: now
Simone Collins: you can't
Malcolm Collins: stop sleeping around, right? Because you are now in a peerage network, which I'm calling a cult, whatever you want to call it, where polyamory is expected and you are now, they don't frame it this way, even in their own heads until they get out of it.
And this is the thing I've noticed about this pipeline. Is there like, I had to stay in a sexual relationship with this person because I had other people, but basically I had to go and sexually service this person to continue to get grants.
That's
basically what ends up happening and if you don't believe that this is happening in the effect of altruist movement Go look on the boards of these organizations, the percentage of males and females.
You will almost always see a higher percentage of females. How is that happening? How could that conceivably happen given how rare women are in the movement? Okay, if this was to any degree a meritocracy. These women are getting these positions either for DEI like reasons. Oh, what
Simone Collins: if, what if It's a selection thing because women are more likely to be [00:25:00] interested in like interactive social oriented roles whereas men are more Interested in like object slash direct applied science or action related.
I think that would
Malcolm Collins: make sense um in in Some context, but I think you just see it too frequently when this large less wrong va space like given the number of women Versus their popularity on boards. And i'd also note here if you're like, no, that can't be the case It is not due to sexual favors well, then Riddle me this.
How come, despite natal women and trans women existing within a movement at about the same rate, it's almost always natal women who have these positions?
The
more sexual desirable class of women because there's something in the back of somebody's brain, who opens
it.
Sorry, I can't however, I would note here, like, why do you get trans women in this movement as well?
Think about the status that can be gained versus the male side of the movement. It's just so [00:26:00] hard you really have to be putting money in to matter.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, and I guess, I don't know, I don't know that many women who are in. You want to know the prominent positions? I, I, the only one I can think of, like, in terms of like a famous EA companies, FTX, and unfortunately, Caroline Ellison was. Okay, a perfect example of everything I'm talking about. I know, that's why I'm like, Oh boy, this is not helping.
I'm trying to like, trying to counter this. I don't
Malcolm Collins: want to name other specific companies because I don't want to call people out. No, definitely not.
Simone Collins: No. At least, but there are like detailed books about. I mean, because of all the legal proceedings too, it, it, it's very public the other thing that's interesting about
Malcolm Collins: this and I don't, I, I have some theories on why this might be the case, but within the movement, trans women are significantly more chased and less likely to be in sex work or passed around than natal women.
Simone Collins: That's interesting because one thing [00:27:00] that's discussed about. Trans women in general, is that it's extremely common for trans women to end up in sex work, just like more broadly, like non EA trans women. So what's going on there?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that that's actually more correlated to the cultures that trans women find themselves in.
Oh, and that like,
Simone Collins: they're sort of, when you're a trans woman outside the EA world, it's a lot harder to get a job. Whereas if you're a trans woman in the EA world, You are more likely to just be a
Malcolm Collins: cowder or like engineer or like, I think that that's why I think that they have so
Simone Collins: insensitive, but I feel like a lot of the trans women in the EA movement are Asian and you're much more likely to pass and just look great as so sorry, but like, I do think that if you pass as a trans woman, your life is going to be a lot easier and it's less expensive to pass.
As an Asian trans woman, what am I
Malcolm Collins: favorite? I remember I was talking to somebody and we're talking about like two [00:28:00] trans women. We're like, does we pass? And he's like, Oh yeah, like a Taiwanese or like a Taiwanese twink. I think is what he said. And I was like,
okay, that's a, that's a way to answer.
It's surprising, but it makes sense. But like we all knew, like, I was like, yeah, I know what the, I know what you mean. Okay.
Simone Collins: That, that roughly makes sense. Why do you think they are more chased in general?
Malcolm Collins: I think it might be because one, they gain less by sleeping around because they're valued less as sexual partners.
So the cost to them of doing it might be lower. They, they often got into the movement. As like founders or engineers or coders to begin with. So they had alternate income stream that necessitates it less. And they often have, I mean, you know, this, your MRI scans, the brain of a man, they better understand what men really want and what they're using women for.
And so they're less likely to have the delusion that a woman would have, because remember I said that women. Believe that if a, because they know that like if a man was sleeping [00:29:00] with other women, they could still form an emotional attachment to that man. And so they believe that a, and this is on average, obviously not all women are like this, not all men are like this.
They believe that a, a A man when they're sleeping around, men are still going to form an attachment to them and that's not necessarily the
Simone Collins: case. Right, they're sort of expecting reciprocity or that they're having a similar experience emotionally.
Malcolm Collins: And I don't think trans women are that deluded.
They know what's up. They're like, yeah, I've played the other side of this game. Yeah. So they, they see, they see what's up more. And keep in mind, I mean, we talk about the commonness of trans women in the movement. There was that cult recently that some reporter called us to like do a piece on.
They started murdering people and they're like all trans women. Oh,
Simone Collins: yes. I guess we're choosing not to name them. So many people are talking about
Malcolm Collins: cults. The Zizians. Yeah, the Zizians. But you know, I, I've read some of their stuff. It's interesting. Like, I, I think, like, I, I disagree with them, but it's one of these movements that I'm like, well, I disagree with you, but like, I, I, I see where [00:30:00] your philosophy comes from in the same way I see it, like, where antinatalist philosophy comes from.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Like, I, I don't think that it is. There is
Simone Collins: a certain amount of logical consistency that you can respect.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there's a certain amount of logical consistency I can respect. But a lot of the underlying assumptions.
So all of this, like putting all of this together for me has helped me be like the problem with the normalization of polyamory is that It leads to situations that women and men, men don't realize they're leading women to become into trapped into sex work. And remember when I say trapped into sex work, nobody intends on this when this is starting, right?
It's a, it's a guy who's being nice because he's sleeping with a woman. And he's like, here's the money, you know, I'm going to sleep on wherever.
Simone Collins: Here's what's really crazy. Here's what's blowing my mind is when you described this process. You know, [00:31:00] woman, maybe who just recently moved to the Bay Area, right, like somewhat vulnerable, kind of alone meets a guy who introduces her to this community, who shows her a lot of love and support and then maybe for some reason she meets more people within that community or becomes sort of unmoored from it and then gets opportunities.
to sometimes to her advantage, get intimate with other men within this community. And then it happens more and more, you know, when we, we talked about this in another podcast, do you know what the podcast was about? What? Grooming gangs in the UK. Oh, yes. That's what I'm thinking as I'm here. I'm like, Oh my God.
And this, of course, like, I think with the grooming gang pipeline in the UK, there was obviously. A sort of plan, intention, like we are going to begin using these young women as economic assets, we're going to go out and find them, but the same general dynamic happened organically, like the women in this case found the EA community, you know, they selected into it, but the same dynamic started to play, [00:32:00] where they essentially first got love bombed, and they were vulnerable, and they were kind of disassociated from their home community at that point distinct from the rest of society, they fell into this community and then they started getting passed around.
And clearly it didn't go as, I don't think it has gone as poorly for these women. They're not, you know, kidnapped and beaten and everything. It
Malcolm Collins: does go, because it targets women who otherwise would be very high value partners who could otherwise secure very high quality men. Yeah, that's the
Simone Collins: other weird thing about it is, is instead of like women who have been cast off by society who, come from abusive households and who are young and vulnerable, like it's instead like incredibly high achieving high IQ, high altruistic, high conscientiousness women.
It's, it's so weird.
Malcolm Collins: And, and it creates, and this is the thing that's not talking about, it creates these giant black holes in their resumes.
Simone Collins: Where for years Oh no, right, if you have this big employment gap.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, and that's why they get trapped because now they can't do anything else. And now the type of guy who wants a long term partner doesn't want to marry them.[00:33:00]
Simone Collins: You know the
Malcolm Collins: conservative guy who actually wants a wife and asks
Simone Collins: about our history
Malcolm Collins: or like About this and she was like I thought I was increasing my status because I wanted a guy I was like no guy is gonna like want me seriously if i'm a prude right like um Like they're gonna be like ew gross like you don't sleep with lots of guys And what's interesting is this is the signal she would have gotten from guys in the community If she's single she's waiting to marriage or something like that to a guy in this community They would have genuinely had the ew gross reaction.
Like, why are you doing that? But it is because they were not looking for a partner who was waiting until. No, definitely not. Yeah. Looking for a longterm partner at all. They were looking for a sexual partner. And so that's why you would get rejected for them and you confuse any sort of rejection with, with a meaningful rejection.
As we said, like a partner who rejects you, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could be that you guys would form a terrible relationship with each other. Totally. They are rejecting you because they want something else from you, right? Like they are like you, like, that's weird to me. Like [00:34:00] it's not normal within our culture and women are very sensitive to what's normal within a culture.
So we decided to ask one of our friends who is in the community and has a very good sort of view of what's happening in the community, and she added some additional nuance to sort of how this pipeline functions. Specifically, it's a problem for new girls when they enter the community. Like, she says, once somebody's been in the community for a while, they either know what's up, or they sort of get their place within the community, or there becomes Taboos around approaching them, but for new people in the community, especially women in the community, all of the guys, especially the, as she put it, lemons, you know, the guys who are single or couldn't secure a partner or just sleep around a lot.
, those are the guys who all tackle these girls at once. And if the girl doesn't have a lot of experience turning away guys or turning away attention, especially from guys who might be high status in the community, It goes very bad for them. And when women like her try to warn [00:35:00] new female entrants, it can come off like mate guarding behavior because they're like, oh, you just don't want me to have the guy or they, they read it as something other than what it is, which is genuine.
Concern for them and she was saying that if somebody takes like the concern seriously if they don't jump immediately into polyamory when they get into the community , they're generally okay , the problem comes when they do, , or if they they stay monogamous and and and she pointed out, , Because maybe we gave the impression in one of our videos that the community doesn't accept monogamous people It absolutely does they're just seen as sort of Weird.
I mean, if a girl enters the community in a monogamous relationship, she's going to be heavily targeted. , and I will say, I know, you know, as somebody who's been adjacent to the community, , the person who I'm talking to is not, I think, in a monogamous relationship. So she might not be fully aware of how much.
Individuals within the community don't respect monogamy. They just don't do it publicly by that. What I mean is they'll still hit on somebody if they're in a quote unquote monogamous relationship and do so very aggressively and ask for [00:36:00] sexual favors for things, even when the person's in a monogamous relationship, because I've seen this with my friends who will tell people I'm monogamous and then the community pushes them further.
So I thought all of that was very interesting that this is a primarily. New entrant problem. , and if you can prevent them from getting sidetracked, it's not as bad She says one thing that really helps is you can ask People in the community like okay Who's who's the good guys who I can sleep with or who are the guys to actually target?
, but she says a big problem with the whisper network is 1. it's a rich get richer sort of a thing where the, , highest status guys just end up accumulating more and more because they're the ones who everyone knows. Oh, this one's good. Especially if you just want to sleep around or something like that.
, and then there's a secondary problem. It's , the, the queens of this network are often people like who, well, is, you know, an actual sex worker. Right? So, , it's going to lead to them recommending the type of guys who are already utilizing those pipelines, which can normalize transitioning into those pipelines.
Like they are like you, like, that's weird to me. Like it's [00:37:00] not normal within our culture and women are very sensitive to what's normal within a culture. And so if it's normal within a culture, they're like, oh yeah yeah, I've got to do this or every guy's going to think I'm a weirdo, like some sort of religious nut job. Right. Which is what many of them frame their lives against because it's the background they come from. The number one background from these women that I have seen, you know, Ayla is a great example of this, but it's the other one I've seen is a conservative evangelical households.
They, they come disproportionately for evangelical Christian families. I do
Simone Collins: think it was an important exception here though. One, my understanding is she got into camming specifically. Well, before she ever encountered, you
Malcolm Collins: did not follow this pathway, not at all. And I think she also, but I think that she normalizes this pathway for other women, because I think the other
Simone Collins: women don't understand maybe how Ayla got into this and her background and her proclivities and her preferences in her lifestyle as well.
Like she doesn't have the same end goal that [00:38:00] most girls in the EA community have. And she's very different from myself. It's a very
Malcolm Collins: unique case, I don't think. But I think that she to understand a bit about her background, she genuinely had no other options. She was working in a factory. Oh no, yeah, her life was so much worse
Simone Collins: before.
So much worse. Maybe
Malcolm Collins: she joined like a streaming site where like she got into like LSD and drugs and stuff like that. She joined a
Simone Collins: house with a bunch of people who were camming. together.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then there were guys involved, basically. It was just a bunch of, it was a, it was a girl. And she always really enjoyed sex.
She is a naturally really horny person. Who's really interested in having sex with people. And again, as Ayla said on the, in the early things, she's like, well, like, why would I deny men in my community this right? Like I enjoy it. They enjoy it. And they seem to need it for some level of like mental health.
And guys will argue this, like, incel guys will argue this, like, guys who don't have any sex at all, like, have mental health issues. So, that, Ayla's even making the incel [00:39:00] argument here, like, well, you know, the lower value men do need sex occasionally, or they go crazy. And this is the argument being made within, like, the, the EA Less Wrong community, right?
So, I think that like, I understand all that, but for me, It's like, yeah, but as a girl, you have to be careful. And I think the number one thing and one of the reasons I'm making this podcast is maybe to wake somebody up who might be going down this pipeline and not realizing it
or
might be in this pipeline and not realize it.
Yeah, I feel like it's never too late to step out. Well, I mean, it is. It can be too late to step. It can be very hard to step out. But I think that it only gets
Simone Collins: harder, though. It's not like, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: the earlier you recognize
Simone Collins: the best time to do many things is like. Three years ago, but what you're going to do.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And this is also a problem with things like only fans and other types of sex work that can seem normalized is that it removes. Your ability to get other jobs in the future or get partners in the [00:40:00] future, depending on what type of work you're doing on it. You can make it very difficult. I don't know though,
Simone Collins: like, I remember one of the editors for our book that we just hired through Upwork.
Who, like, did pretty good work and, you know, whatever. We randomly discovered she had an OnlyFans.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but that doesn't mean that, that, that doesn't mean that that worked out good for her.
Simone Collins: I guess. Yeah. I mean, she was doing editing work on Upwork and it's not like,
Malcolm Collins: well, you could earn a lot of money on OnlyFans.
And they're like, if you could earn a lot of money on OnlyFans, then you could get a really high quality husband.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And why was Jen Upwork if she was making enough money on OnlyFans to
Malcolm Collins: be fair. Right. Right. But the point being is, is. With OnlyFans. And by the way, I heard some interesting theories after our OnlyFans video that OnlyFans actually got popular because people started using it to create the type of content that people are looking for these days.
It's like much more creative, like anime, cosplay, Warhammer cosplay, like the old porn studio.
Simone Collins: Clever! Warhammer. Sexy Warhammer. Of course! Yes! What is it? Rule 64? Like, if you just Provide more [00:41:00] customized live action rule 64 for those people who want live action. And that's another thing that people were pointing out in the comments of that video was that many of the people who were turned off by both like Disney character lunches and by strip clubs were also not that big into.
Live action, erotic material, which same goes for you,
Malcolm Collins: right? You can't, I am, I am 2d. I have the image of you. I always say like, whenever we're doing like 2d justice or like the 3d women are, are trash, I always use the anime version of you as like my example of the perfect 2d woman.
Simone Collins: My point is that it seems that there, there's like a group, a rough grouping of people that really need.
Like the human version and are really turned on by that. And most of the rule 64 stuff online is illustrations. So only fans. May have been the first avenue to take Rule 64 on mass, on a [00:42:00] mass customized level. Like, 'cause I mean, there's so many permutations, right? I mean like, oh my gosh. And then make that possible and bring it to scale.
That's so clever.
Malcolm Collins: You wanna see, well, I mean, because people create parasocial connections with characters Yeah. Within shows. And one of the things that I noted, if you wanna see one of our early, very early spicy videos, which is why you should prefer a husband who fats too. Pony porn from like the old, like, I, I don't, by the way, I said in the video, I immediately, the first thing I said in the video is I do not find this ever arousing, but I wanted to understand why people find it arousing because like these things look nothing like humans and at the time it was like the Fifth most common category of porn was like MLP porn for
Simone Collins: the plot.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was like, what the hell is going on here? Right. You know? And my thesis was, is that it was for men who preferred figures they saw as female. Even to the extent that they would ignore that they looked nothing like a fertile human female. These men. Because they have a strong sexual preference for characters or [00:43:00] people, they believe they are interacting with regularly in like a social context, like their brain has been tricked into believing this to the extent that they will ignore that they Look nothing like a fertile human female.
They would likely also bond really strongly to a wife or long term female partner. I was trying to come up with a spicy hypothesis, but so many people were like, Oh, this is proof. And I'm like, gosh, you guys don't know what, like no one has, it's interesting. No one has guessed what I'm into on any show I have ever seen.
Simone Collins: Really? Yeah. I guess I haven't seen any comments that
Malcolm Collins: I've seen
Simone Collins: a lot of really funny theories that have so far all been wrong. That's that's really funny actually.
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, because of the theories that I've seen focus more on things that would modify my social status in a positive or negative context.
Because I think that that's what people want to project onto influencers is like, oh, he's into X thing. That's gonna, you know, make him look. Subby or or whatever, right? Like because that's interesting to them. When in reality what I'm like, what I'd actually be into would just not [00:44:00] modify. I mean, if people know of any unique sexual preference of an individual, they are going to use that to attack them.
So, so that's, that's why I don't like mention anything like this, but it's not something that's like uniquely embarrassing or anything like that.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: A great example of this happening to someone with Kenneth bone or Ken bone, that guy who asked a question in the, first Hillary Trump election that was seen as neutral. And everyone was like, oh, that's so cool. , and so he went on all these talk shows afterwards and he completely had his fame destroyed when people found out that he.
Had I don't even know if I'd say it's a fetish, but an arousal pattern was preference for pregnant women. , and people just thought this was, oh, how, what a gross fetish, and I'm like, that's like, of, of all of the potential fetishes I could think of, it doesn't objectify women, it's a normal thing, it's a, like, it, it maybe is, I would think, one of the least, , in terms of, like, unusual or [00:45:00] specific arousal patterns that could be used to attack someone, and yet it destroyed his entire fame cycle.
Malcolm Collins: I note here that now we know because texts from Elon have come out with the, the girl that he knocked up, that he's like, I can't wait to like, come on.
He's using language like knock you up again and stuff like that. That really comes off like somebody who has an impregnation fetish.
Simone Collins: To your point. The only fetish that is not a fetish is appropriative sex.
Malcolm Collins: That's what sex is for. That's
Simone Collins: the one thing that's not
Malcolm Collins: a fetish. That's the one
Simone Collins: thing. Oh god,
Malcolm Collins: people.
Just
Simone Collins: understand what is for.
Malcolm Collins: Sex with condoms is a fetish. Okay. Yes. Yes. Sex with condoms is the most common fetish.
Simone Collins: Or sex on birth control. Yeah, any, any non procreative sex I'm about to say.
Malcolm Collins: It's like you have an active sign that this is non procreative sex. Like, anyway but so like, do you understand now how, how tempting this pipeline is for [00:46:00] people?
And, and, and people can be like, well. On OnlyFans, and as I've said in the past, some women don't have any other choice for income, right? Than, than, than this stuff. Yeah,
Simone Collins: I guess that's where I also struggle. I'm like, well, why just not?
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I'm like, these women aren't you know, this is my like ultra ruthless approach.
I am more interested in keeping the few women who might be useful societal actors or potentially wives and really happy with that life keep them from falling off the rails. Then I would try to save the women who are just never going to be that good at anything. Because it's, it's differential utility.
It's, it's how they decided to do something with their lives that removes their ability to be positive social actors in another context.
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: so, I guess what I would say here is, is while I wouldn't legally regulate this stuff personally, I would strongly shame it within our own family if it's context that significantly hurts someone's ability in a marriage market.
As I've noted, this isn't [00:47:00] all only felons. Well, I would
Simone Collins: even dissuade our sons from being polyamorous because it's just a distraction from marriage. It's a distraction from marriage. If you, as soon as you encourage men to sleep around a lot after like, Age 23,
Malcolm Collins: here's, I agree with Z after age 23, but there's a whole life you live before that.
And unfortunately, a lot of your status in training depends on your ability to secure multiple partners. I'm
Simone Collins: all for, but also like you have to understand men with minimal resources, which is typical for 23 year old men who are not either completely drop dead gorgeous or from families of means. And sorry, Malcolm, you're just too beautiful, like, what are you gonna do?
And very smart, like, you, you were, you had all the cards. Most pre 23 year old men are gonna like, if they try to go on their most aggressive sex mode, slut mode, maximum, maybe two partners. [00:48:00] Maybe three like
Malcolm Collins: look, I'm not gonna what I want to say is I'm not gonna shame my sons for getting multi ball No people who don't know multi ball in the old arcades You get this mode if you like we're like absolutely killing it We're be like multi ball and it shoots like a bunch of balls into the center of the game board and like The, the reality is, is I do not know what social context you're going to be in.
The point I'm making is that multiple partners for men does not always turn out bad. I am increasingly entering a mindset where I think multi pool partners for women. Always turns out bad. Which is, is very different. And here I was saying for OnlyFans, I would not, for example, with my daughter, change things that aren't going to significantly negatively modify their dating status, like feet modeling on OnlyFans or something like that.
Simone Collins: Well, what about, I feel like we've already gotten to a place, this isn't intentional, I think, but we've already gotten to a place where people use filters to the point of not being recognizable. If our [00:49:00] daughters were utterly unrecognizable. To anyone. But on OnlyFans, if it were completely anonymized, would you have a problem with it?
Malcolm Collins: Think, learn a lot about social dynamics. I question this is, this is the question I ask. Would I have a problem with it in a potential wife? If, if I, if it came
Simone Collins: out,
Malcolm Collins: if it, if it was discovered, would I, no. Would I? Like if you told me Yeah. You as a
Simone Collins: prospective boyfriend. Yeah. If I told you I.
Malcolm Collins: Totally anonymous,
Simone Collins: Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: Totally anonymous. I would care a lot less if it was totally anonymous, but I still would care a degree. The reason I mentioned something like foot modeling is I wouldn't care if you were a foot model at all. Maybe it's because I don't find feet arousing at all, but like, I would just take this perspective of, of, oh, you conned a bunch of weird guys who had mouth.
Functioning sexual, isn't
Simone Collins: this so interesting? Actually,
Malcolm Collins: ASMR, if you did ASMR or like, or like audio, like, and not say for whatever, I'd be like, whatever. I've noticed
Simone Collins: a thing, not infrequently online [00:50:00] where people shame requests they've received online to see pictures of their feet and also make an effort to not post pictures of their feet online.
And that really confuses me. Cause I'm like, dude, if someone gets erect, when they look at my feet or your feet. Like, why, no one is hurt. It's interesting
Malcolm Collins: for me because like it has, I don't view it as like a sexual part of your body. So like, I guess that maybe that's why I have so little like feeling like I would care.
Well, yeah, but
Simone Collins: what, what, what, what if, what if, but what if someone else does? I guess their, their problem is that
Malcolm Collins: someone else does.
Simone Collins: It doesn't matter to me. I view them as
Malcolm Collins: like pathetic. Like, and like, I guess like they're just like nobodies. They're, they're, they're The guy in like ntr porn who's like in the corner masturbating while you're sleeping with their girlfriend like there is a huge difference and this is actually Interesting when we talk about like the woman on stage thing and stuff like that.
Well, I might find it [00:51:00] Really disgusting. To be giving a woman money. Who's like on a, a porn stage or something like that. If I knew some other guy was gooning over, I was successfully having with someone, I would be like, Oh, he's just like a pathetic simp. And this further. Solidifies my own status as the dominant male in this scenario which doesn't like I wouldn't say I, I, I would actively get off to like sharing porn I had made with you, but I wouldn't find it.
It wouldn't make me more gross of you. Yeah. I'd be like, whatever. But you sharing that without me, it's like, you're cutting me out of Dominant thing and you're, you are saying, okay, well, all of you guys have some potential to be at the same level of my husband. But why would it
Simone Collins: still bother you if I had a history on OnlyFans fully anonymized?
Like I did it as a VTuber, for example. Because you
Malcolm Collins: have led a large community to believe, oh, a VTuber? No, I'd be totally okay if you were a VTuber. Well, that's totally anonymized. [00:52:00] Right, I thought you meant like, face changed with AI or something like that, but they're still seeing your real body. Yeah, or
Simone Collins: like, the skin of my body also mildly changed, you know, like everything's just slightly manipulated.
Nothing is, is 100%. I
Malcolm Collins: guess I wouldn't care that much if you, if it was like actually. Well, no, if guys, like, it would matter a degree, but the more you do this, it gets closer to not mattering. It's closer to foot modeling than it is to real, like, OnlyFans or even porn. And, and I should note that for me, like, if we have this, this thing between foot modeling on OnlyFans And you having sex with other men for money or you having sex with other men and then people are watching porn of that.
If you take a you naked on only fans, it is, and we're talking about like a 10 yard foot line here. It is one foot away from the foot modeling.
Simone Collins: Okay. Wait. So, so what would you do if you had a daughter with a really with a really high sex drive, what if you had a daughter with a really high [00:53:00] sex drive, who's like, but I
Malcolm Collins: mean, that's the point I'm making.
Did you, did you understand the analogy I just made?
Simone Collins: No.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. You have two things on the side of the screen here. All right. On one side here, you have actually having sex with someone on a camera for money. Okay. Over here you have foot modeling on OnlyFans. Just being naked on OnlyFans is like over here for me.
In terms of how gross it would make a potential wife. Okay. It's like in the middle It's not like closer to here. It's like these guys were something over something They never really had access to which just makes it seem like pathetic simps to me, right? Like that's not really my wife was using them, you know, without actually giving them anything.
And so like with a daughter, I might be like, well, maybe find ways to engage with that. Or if she had a really high sex drive, i'd be like write romance books for other women.
Simone Collins: And get really good with sex toys. I guess
Malcolm Collins: Yeah I mean i'd say that that and again, i'm not gonna like force my daughter to do anything But [00:54:00] in terms of the best paths forwards I think that you damage enough of your value as in sexual marketplaces or marriage marketplaces, I should say by sleeping around a lot.
It's just not worth it for women really in almost any circumstance.
Simone Collins: Oh, wait a second. You could just encourage them to be lesbians for a while. Right? Yeah. If I was like, well, I was a lesbian. The Bible's not against it. The Bible. But if I were a lesbian slut earlier, would that bother you? How does that compare to another that would make
Malcolm Collins: you higher value?
Okay, so if we have that would make you I slept with like a lot of gold star lesbians Well, not a lot like four or five. But they're like they're like the same in status They're, they're higher. Okay, okay, so a woman with a high sex drive is young. Gold star lesbians are at a totally different level.
Simone Collins: And, and I say this because we found when, from Nalcom's research doing the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, that women are just a lot less more to [00:55:00] primary and secondary sexual characteristics. In other words, their orientation isn't really gay straight, it's more dom sub. And so if you really have a high sex drive, the way to go is lesbianism for a while.
If you have some kind of penis fetish, there are so many different types of vibrators and dildos and everything else.
Malcolm Collins: But here's the thing about, well, penetrative sex with a lesbian is a little different. Oh, is it? Yeah, very few lesbians do it though. Oh, okay. But, but anyway, the point being is that So wait,
Simone Collins: okay, wait, hold on.
Malcolm Collins: So
Simone Collins: like,
Malcolm Collins: God, there's so many rules. This is complicated, Malcolm. But hold on, I'm, I'm, might be unique in this. Okay. And people can sound off in the comments, but like, My, I, I've heard of some guys and actually this makes me really look down on a guy when I hear this. I don't, I don't want you to say this before you say it down off in the comments, but when a guy is like, dude, it's so gross that my girl, you know, is hooking up with another girl and now they want like both want to like hook up or whatever, right?
Like, I'm like, how is [00:56:00] this a problem for you? Like guys who get sexually insecure about, Other women. Yeah, that is
Simone Collins: weird. With other
Malcolm Collins: women, it comes off as really, like, Yeah. Like, I don't want to say, like, not even beta, like, omega, like.
Simone Collins: I don't, I don't know what it comes off as. It,
Malcolm Collins: it, it comes off to me as a male as, like, an intrinsically emasculating position.
It's like, how
Simone Collins: is she? Well, I just, I also feel like it's super strawman y. I, I can't even, in my evoked set, like, imagine an archetype of a man who would be. No, no, no, who doesn't is, like, religious screening guys. Oh, well, that's just like virtue signaling. I don't know how you know,
Malcolm Collins: that's who does it and very insecure guys Who think that their woman would leave them for another woman?
Just like guys who don't this happens it happens. It happens Rarely, so it like can conceptually happen, but I think okay, so i'm gonna let out a secret about the lesbian community Okay, so I used to be pretty progressive and everything like that and I slept around a lot right? [00:57:00] and one of the areas that was always like the free sex pipeline was lesbians.
There are a lot of lesbians who don't actually like being lesbians that much. They do it for whatever, whether it's political or personal or emotional reasons, but they really desire. To sleep with men, but be able to do it without it affecting their public reputation or self Oh, so they're
Simone Collins: not seen as slutty because they're lesbians.
You can't be a slutty lesbian.
Malcolm Collins: Well, it's not just that. I mean, they, they want to be seen as the right politics. They want to be seen as the right whatever. Things being like a proper lesbian and everything like that and their status was in the gay community and not being bi as a woman and everything but you know, most women are okay, like just look at the statistics and so a lot of women for the status pretend to be lesbians But if there's a guy who they know is attractive and discreet they Will she constantly with her partner [00:58:00] with men?
Or, or, and, and, and my impression is this is quite common given the number of lesbians who sit with me back today.
Simone Collins: Well, okay. So I guess I guess the key for us as parents that if we're going to take something away from this. Revelation, realization, dynamic that we're now aware of. We need to be really explicit about the risks and downsides of polyamory, especially with our daughters.
But also with our sons, especially post 23. That it is, it causes a lot of knock on effects that we will walk them through explicitly, because the key isn't to say, no, never do this. It's a rule, don't cross the line, because I said so. But instead, This is a heavily taxed activity and here is the tax.
Here is the price you pay. Walk into a road and you could get run over by a car and killed. Get polyamorous and you may never end up getting a, a high value. Or [00:59:00]
Malcolm Collins: if you do, they bring it up all the time. Like it's something that they can lord over you for the rest of your life.
Simone Collins: And that's, that's
Malcolm Collins: tough.
By the way.
Simone Collins: It's a thing that lingers in the back of their mind, even if they don't bring it up. That, that's, that would also really suck.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway. But yeah, that's, that's what I do.
You're right. And yeah, I'm lucky that you, I mean, in a different time. If you were growing up today, have you, would you try like doing OnlyFans or something, or you just
Simone Collins: No, I'm way too asexual for that. Like I've just. You have to be able to pull it off, and I think you've got to, like, Enjoy it a little bit.
Yeah, like, you need to have some kind of spontaneous sex drive. You know, it's like, I'm just, I'm gay for Malcolm, right? Like, there, if, in the absence of Malcolm, there is no sex. If that makes, that doesn't make sense to anyone, but it makes sense to me. So there would just be no way I could ever.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, your program in a way that would be very advantageous for program [01:00:00] biologically for many women from, you know, a lot of different cultural frameworks, not every cultural framework, but certainly, you know, our cultural framework an old, like puritanical culture.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, Yeah, I don't, I don't see this as being so right. I wonder if it's
Simone Collins: heritable. I think it's the autism, to be honest with you. No,
Malcolm Collins: I think it's heritable.
Simone Collins: I think it's heritable, but I also think it's correlated with, clustered with autism.
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I've pointed out to people in the past that cultures that, in which you'd have a genetic advantage by being high arousal and sleeping with people a lot, you know, voluntarily, like Catholic culture really relies on that or used to rely on that for to increase their fertility rate.
And I have mentioned as somebody who slept around a lot it's actually noticeable. Girls from Catholic cultural backgrounds are much hornier. They prefer sex much more frequently than the whole
Simone Collins: stereotype of the Catholic school girl or the sexy. None is a thing for a reason.
Malcolm Collins: It might be that this isn't due to repression.
It's due to [01:01:00] genetic selection event. That they would have historically had more children based on their arousal level. And, and their willingness to get into early and frequent relationships.
And as I mentioned, the Catholics used to interpret the line that which the Lord has binded man shall not tear us under to mean that like, if you got into an early relationship and you got pregnant, then it's not that you can never get married again, which is true for some cultures, like in, in, in some cultures, if you get pregnant as a young woman.
You don't automatically marry that guy. You just become ineligible for marriage for the rest of your life. Oh. Because you're, you're, you're basically tainted goods. Whereas in, in Catholic cultures, even for like royals you, you married that guy. Not like High Royals, but like Mid Royals. High Royals got to do whatever they wanted.
The point I'm making here is that this culture motivated High arousal whereas your form of arousal is just more like dedicated arousal.
Like, I'm going to bond with like one individual who I already know internally, [01:02:00] like I'm with for life. And the thing that's going to motivate children is deciding to have children. Not that I didn't have a condom or The pair
Simone Collins: bond. Yeah. Huh. Yeah, that would be Well, I could see it not evolutionarily, because it seems like where we're losing the birth rates in demographic collapse is mistake babies.
And where we need to build up the birth rates is intention babies. But yeah, I don't know. You're very
Malcolm Collins: good for intention babies. I'm very good for
Simone Collins: intention babies, but also intention babies appear to be correlated with much lower birth rates. So Right, and
Malcolm Collins: we need to change that using
Simone Collins: technology. Yes.
Using science. Well, it's been, as always, an immense pleasure.
Malcolm Collins: And do you have another call coming up? I do. Are we reheating some curry?
Simone Collins: Yeah, I was gonna saute more onion and also add more tomato per your comments. I will just
Malcolm Collins: go straight tomato.
Simone Collins: No onion, no more onion.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I don't think I need more onion.
Saute more tomato to try to make the sauce [01:03:00] thicker.
Simone Collins: Okay, and then I'll I'll boil it down for a while. Put in
Malcolm Collins: thickening agent.
Simone Collins: I will not, I don't put in thickening agents. I don't. I know you don't.
Malcolm Collins: I'm just saying don't.
Simone Collins: I like, I like. I'm going to simmer it for a while and then it will be.
Malcolm Collins: From the actual ingredients.
Not from like, you know.
Simone Collins: Totally understand. But also the second night. Curries are always better.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, they're always better. Yeah. And you've already put in more spice, you know, so I don't
Simone Collins: that, that you, your whole thing and the Sichuan chili powder, it was like, it was tasty before and now it's just painful and you're like, Oh, you fixed it.
And I'm like, now I understand that one chef at that Indian restaurant in Scotland who was like, you're going to ruin this. And he was so mad at you. Do you want,
Malcolm Collins: because I like really spicy food. Do you want to put in a little bit of garlic as well? I think I put in from the reheat.
Simone Collins: You want me to saute more garlic before I add the tomato?
Because that's, that's sort of how it would work is I sas more. You add [01:04:00] garlic in, then I add the tomato and the, or
Malcolm Collins: put more ginger in. I don't care. One or the other.
Simone Collins: There's no, I don't have any fresh ginger, unfortunately. Garlic, I think I froze some that I could thaw out, but I don't know if this is, don't you have
Malcolm Collins: already like, like cut up garlic?
Simone Collins: I do. I have, I, I, I. Minced the fresh garlic in bulk and I have that ready to go It's just the ginger I had frozen because ginger Well, you can put garlic and olive oil in the fridge for quite a decent amount of time ginger in the fridge My understanding is you can't leave it there for as long
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I guess I gotta I gotta get ready for this.
Simone Collins: I have to get ready for this. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Bye. Love you
Oh,
Simone Collins: thank you. Malcolm
, we
Malcolm Collins: got to talk about how crazy this thread was. So, you know, GSB Stanford business school, I get this, this class blast.
Simone Collins: Yeah. His, his class. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, still emails each other occasionally.
Rare, no, rarely,
Malcolm Collins: like once every three years, [01:05:00] one of these goes around. So, it's a big deal to send one, okay? You don't, like, do it quickly. So, anyway we get one on, like, the state of the world, because Trump is now president, and it feels like everything is unraveling for this person. And then, of course, you get this thread of, like, pylons.
Like, everything's unraveling. I can't believe this is happening. And basically, you guys know me. Okay. I had to come in and I think that this summarizes what happened pretty well. Oh God.
Speaker: Good morning, Philadelphia. With us today is
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Malcolm Collins.
Speaker: local business owner and a man with a harrowing story. That's right. A few days ago, three
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Corpos sent me a chain of emails slagging off our boys, Elon and Trump.
Speaker: now, I want to be very clear about something. Um, Mr. Reynolds These pieces of garbage, they don't know who the hell they're dealing with. So these punks I don't know if they wanted money, or they wanted something more sexual. Anyway, I started .
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: Magging.
Speaker: Bah! Bah! [01:06:00] I don't see so good, so I missed.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: Then of course I get private emails like, Oh, but what about the immigrants? What about USAID? Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: I ran after them. Bang! Tried to shoot them in the back. But I don't want so good either. Anyway, you guys all think I'm a hero. And I'll accept that responsibility. Now, were you concerned, though, that an innocent bystander may have Look, crime in this city is out of control.
Thank God
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: We've got two presidents with Trump and Elon absolutely killing it.
Speaker: I don't think one would have done it. I'm gonna go out and buy some more. Okay. And I think you should, too. Don't be a victim. It's time to fight back. Thank you.
Malcolm Collins: But the, the gist is, is it was very interesting to read their perspective on all this because it felt like such a mirror to my own.
I
would
say that a lot of these people are this oligarchical class, right? Like they are They are the man. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Like, I don't know what you, if you went to the Stanford graduate school of business, you aren't fighting the [01:07:00] man anymore. You've become the man. You are the establishment. I don't know what to
Malcolm Collins: tell you.
I burned, I burned all that reputation I gained by becoming a public Republican. Who's not never Trump.. But it was it was interesting to me because All of these people who had entered these oligarchical roles within our society and benefited from the existing social structure Staying within the status quo are of course terrified because the status quo is being overturned Through this administration and nobody, you know, it hurts more from that than people with positions of extent power And it was really fascinating to see the way that they saw this and the same way to me, like I had given up on civilization surviving.
I was like, look, I'm preparing my kids for a post civilization world. I do not think that anything close to something contiguous with our current or ancestral culture can survive. And now given what Trump and Elon and Vance, the triumvirate have been doing I now feel [01:08:00] hope that civilization may survive.
And at the same time, they had this exact opposite perspective of like, as an avalanche, society is collapsing from the status quo that they knew and believed was I guess inherently good because it was the status quo. And I can see that, if you're benefiting from it. Why question What's going on? You know, and so, for them, it's felt like just piece after piece.
They're like, it started slow and now it's this giant avalanche and the zone is completely flooded and I don't even know where to begin. And these are the most competent, like these aren't your democratic political class, like the, the blustering idiots or whatever. This is the behind closed doors, smartest, most competent vetted people who are running large companies.
Oh yeah. They are at a loss. The silent ruling class. Yeah. And they're just repeating this like, Oh, the, you know, this is like the Nazis. This is a dictator. You know, 51 percent of Americans voted for [01:09:00] this. Right. Ignoring what happened in Germany. I love it. One of the comments on the thing was like, they don't understand like voting in Germany.
They don't understand representation. No, I understand well over 50 percent of your citizens voted for a candidate who was right leaning and said that they would end immigration. And yet that will. End up not happening because the center right in your country is a bunch of traitors who don't care about the will of the people and only care about maintaining the status quo and their positions of institutional privilege.
So they won't side with the other side. They won't, the AFD, who they need to to get votes passed to handle immigration in an appropriate way. And your people will be erased. from history, period. There is, there is no going back. If you look at your current fertility rate and the differential fertility rates or the rate that immigrants are coming into your country, there's no going back.
There's no hope. You don't have another shot after this. They blew your last shot.
And I think that any shot that you do have now, and this is the really [01:10:00] horrifying thing about what the left is doing, especially in Europe, is going to look like, well, racism, right? Because the only way that they've shown the right, that the right can operate is, okay, we can't win an election, we can't win the popular vote, so what, we have to act with force now?
Oh, and you've imported so many people into our country who are hostile to our cultures and, and do not want to see this culture continue anymore we have to get them out of the country, like, we have to put them somewhere, and that's going to look like a horrifying mass deportation. That is going to be inhumane in the extreme because you can't just deport that many people without it being inhumane in the extreme.
But, you know, now in Germany, around 25 percent of the population is a descendant of somebody who migrated after the 1950s. Like that is absolutely wild. It's a pretty rapid
Simone Collins: shift in composition for sure.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is, this is not about like, Oh, immigrants should be allowed to come to our country or not.
[01:11:00] Especially when you look at the terrorist attacks that are happening regularly now in Germany. Like this is getting wild at this point but anyway, anyway so, you know, that was my perspective reading this and it's just so interesting that I do feel like we're winning. I do feel like the opposite of them, like it's like an avalanche of.
Oh my god, this old system was leading humanity to extinction. And now somebody's trying to fix this. Somebody's fixing the bloated bureaucracy. Somebody's doing things that could fix fertility rates. Somebody is fixing our trust in institutions. Getting rid of the media, which had become a basically a lie machine, and everybody knew that at this point.
Getting rid of, of, of DEI. Recently launched our initiative, DEI remediation. com. We actually have that URL. And we're going to be working to see if we can implement these services to help make companies more efficient. But I don't know what angry responses I'm going to get for sending that. I just did that thing of opening a door, throwing a grenade into a room and being like, peace.
And I think it'll
Simone Collins: be the same thing that happens with most. [01:12:00] Urban monoculture situations, realistically, which is shadow banning. I mean, it's just even more people who are now going to make sure that no matter what you are frozen out of anything that they're involved with, which they probably weren't fans of you anyway, to begin with, so no loss.
Malcolm Collins: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. No, no. I mean the people who want to maintain their respect of the oligarchical class of the mainstream urban monoculture, like I'm toxic to them, so they can't utilize me for anything. Whereas the people who, you know, care about the dissonant thinkers and stuff like that, I am very useful to them, and they'll be like, oh yeah, this would be, this would be great.
So yeah. Well, do you want me to get started, Sivona?
Simone Collins: Let's go.
Malcolm Collins: Hold on just a second here.
Simone Collins: Oh. But yeah. Ha ha ha.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Higher Earnings No Longer Lead to Marriage: Culture is Changing
28 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into several studies examining how male earnings impact marriage and fertility rates. They discuss findings from economic shocks like the U.S. fracking boom, which significantly increased wages and job opportunities for non-college-educated men, leading to increased births both within and outside of marriage. Contrary to popular beliefs, the study found no significant increase in marriage rates despite higher earnings. They also compare results with older economic booms and explore the influence of changing social norms. The hosts highlight other relevant studies on job displacement, lottery winnings, and their effects on fertility and marriage, ultimately emphasizing that simple financial solutions alone are insufficient to boost fertility rates significantly without addressing deeper cultural and social issues. The conversation rounds off with humorous anecdotes about their personal lives and parenting experiences, offering a reflective and engaging exploration of these complex topics.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about some studies that recently came out. Well, some recently came out, some came out a while ago. But looking at the topic of how earnings affect marriage rates and fertility rates and that surprisingly. For males, they no longer seem to increase marriage.
Or, I mean, who goes against the narrative that you always hear on the right? Yeah, this
Simone Collins: is important. In fact, we did an episode in which we read one of Arctotherium's articles on Aporia, where he basically posited that The solution to birth rates would be to effectively economically disempower women by sort of removing them from bureaucratic roles or eliminating those roles entirely, and to economically re empower men with a supposition that this will increase marriage rates.
Turns out that's not how it plays out in reality, at least in a post crisis world. Women earning money and having careers era.
Malcolm Collins: [00:01:00] Yeah. All right. So i'll start here with the first study This is a new one that I found really interesting male earnings marriageable men and the non maritable fertility evidence from the fracking boom so this study exploited the economic shock from fracking booms across the U.
S. regions. From 1997 to 2012, fracking created localized economic booms that significantly increased wages for non college educated men. They examined how marriage and birth rates responded to these economic improvements. Key findings, labor market effects. Fracking booms increased earnings for men without college degrees by 4.
4 percent. Per thousand dollars of new production per capital job opportunities also increased for these men with spillover effects beyond the oil and gas industry birth effects, both marital and non marital births increased in response to fracking booms. The increase was statistically significant for both types of births to suggest children are quote unquote normal goods.
People have more when income rises. [00:02:00] So I need to break down that a little bit because another study is going to look at this as well. Which is to say that there are some types of goods that people consume more of as income declines or economic slumps. Oh,
Simone Collins: oh, yeah, like I remember when we used to work in the private equity world more.
One, one period a group of investors were like, Oh yeah, we love nail salons because during recessions, women go to them more because it's like one of those small indulgences that they can still afford. Even if they want to
Malcolm Collins: buy more of like fancy soaps, fancy soaps, fancy soap company people do more on What are some of the other things people do more on?
They do more entertainment. They do more video games. Video games go up in recessions. Movies I think go up in recessions. Other types of entertainment goes up. So kids are not that type of good. And, and, and note what's being said here. Births increase. As money increases for uneducated men, which is great.
This is an area where that is
Simone Collins: really interesting that basically out of [00:03:00] wedlock births are increasing and people are choosing to have kids when they
Malcolm Collins: have more money, just not in wedlock. Is that a similar economic impact from the UBI study did not increase births. So handouts, not so much, but increasing the jobs or economy and male economic
Simone Collins: empowerment does.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But to marriage effects, this is where it gets more interesting. Contrary to the reverse marriageable men hypothesis, there was no evidence that marriage rates increased. The data showed no reduction in never married rates. Or increase in marriageable rates. These findings were consistent across different modal specifications.
Fascinating. Social context comparison. They compared these results to the Appalachian coal boom of the 1970s to 80s. During the earlier coal boom, increased earnings led to more marriages. And marital births was a decrease in non marital births. This contrast suggests social norms may have changed, may have changed, they've definitely [00:04:00] changed.
That's what's changed. Yeah, because I think it's clearly changed. I mean, it reminds
Simone Collins: me a lot of Sweden. How they're, they're There are a lot of parents who just aren't married and it's sort of after that becomes normalized. It's really hard to get people to marry again.
Malcolm Collins: What's interesting here is that areas with high baseline non marital birth rates Showed a similar increase in marital and non marital births But areas with low baseline non marital birth rates only showed an increase in marital births.
Basically, this means if you live in an area where people were already having a lot of kids outside of marriage then you have an increase in the number of kids they're having outside of marriage. If you don't if you live in like a more conservative religious area, then that doesn't increase the non marital births, which is really fascinating.
So, the authors conclude that while improved economic prospects for men might have previously led to more marriages before childbearing in today's context, economic improvements lead to more births, both marital and non marital without necessarily increasing marriage rates and [00:05:00] in great natural experiment, there was the regions where you already have a lot of out of marriage births in the regions where you don't, which shows that in some regions, they've maintained this older culture.
But in the regions where they've maintained the older culture, fascinatingly, it didn't lead to more marriages.
Simone Collins: That's really interesting. It really, it looks at the interplay between economics and culture in a way I haven't seen research do for quite some time. And it's so fun to see that someone looked at this.
Malcolm Collins: Isn't that fascinating? But let's look at other studies so we can, we can drill into what other people have found on this particular subject.
Simone Collins: Well, actually,
Malcolm Collins: I want to pontificate on this more because,
Getting, getting lounge Malcolm here. So what does this mean? It means that anything you could do to increase economic situations is good for fertility rates.
So increasing general economy increases birth rate thus doge Elon amazing for everyone but government employees. [00:06:00] Um, uh, Yeah,
Simone Collins: except so the whole reason I learned about this study was from the researcher's book, the two parent privilege, which is all about the role that marriage plays in. Sustainable, successful birth rate increases, but also human thriving and everything like you're just, it's just so much more optimal across many measures for there to be marriage involved in this process.
And there's a whole book you can read about this. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's nice that increased male economic productivity. Boosted birth rates, but I also would suspect that the lifetime fertility of those non married births or non married women who had kids is not going to be beat by the married women who started having kids.
Malcolm Collins: Maybe. Yeah, I, I would agree with [00:07:00] that, but I'd also point out here. Interesting to me is that yes, you can maintain a traditional culture. So if you maintain a traditional culture, which Shane's like out of wedlock births and stuff like that, you're not going to get the boosting out of wedlock births from increased income.
But these traditional cultures, what they haven't been able to do is fix the marriage market problem. They haven't been able to get these people married. And I think that we already see this, you know, as I point out, like If I think about like Catholic, young Catholic influencers, they're not even that young anymore.
You've got like Nick Fuentes and Pearl Davis. Both of them are fairly conservative Catholics and neither of them are married and they're like 30s now, I think, or like late 20s at this point. They, they, I think they're both in their 30s now. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think she's maybe like 28 now, 29.
Malcolm Collins: But that is a huge market failure right there.
Which shows that it is actually. How does this relate to how I raise my kids? How should I think about this? Well, it means I can't just rely on the old ways. I can't just try to go back to the older system. I need to [00:08:00] focus on creating new systems, new ways of relating to partnership and marriage for them to ensure that they secure a partner while they're still breedable.
Simone Collins: Oh, and also, yeah, a partner that they're invested in longterm. I think that's the thing is you need, we need to raise closers and. We collectively as a society have raised a generation of flakes. They don't commit. They don't even commit to public opinions about things, let alone partners.
Malcolm Collins: I think that a lot of this comes down to teaching your kids that a partner is an investment.
They are not a payout. And they're not
Simone Collins: a courtesan. They're not your best friend. They're not your mother or father.
Malcolm Collins: No, you, you are investing in someone. You want to be that perfect partner in 20 or 30 years. As a recent green text, I mentioned from, from 4chan where the guy found out that his girlfriend at four was wife.
Now they've been married and had kids and he's successful. It was like, I should marry him because [00:09:00] he's nerdy and nerdy men make a lot of money. I mean, that's the way women need to think. And then he's like, Oh yeah, she always pushed me to take and appreciate harder to breathe, to work a bit harder on my grades, to take the, you know, the aggressive and it's like, yeah.
Because she approached him not from a he's rich now perspective, but he's someone that was my support could be rich and influential. And I think the problem is, is that people are looking for the full package in who they're marrying. They are not looking for the outcome. Which is really bad. I agree.
But okay. So to go to some other studies where we might be able to get some other ideas here. Linzo, Jason M. 2010. Are children really inferior goods? Remember we talked about the two types of goods
evidence from
displacement driven income shocks.
This study found that job displacement leads to a significant drop in fertility among women. Specifically, there was a 1. 8 percent decrease in [00:10:00] fertility 11 years after job loss. That's not significant. I mean, that means individually in the year immediately following displacement, there was a 4 percent decrease in fertility.
And this is women. Interestingly the for males, they found no significant impact on fertility when they lost their jobs. It was just in women where it decreased their fertility, which is really fascinating. A woman with a job is having more kids than a woman who lost her job.
Simone Collins: That is interesting, especially considering how you get as, as a woman in the United States, depending on your state, but most states are very generous.
with women who have low incomes who are at or near the poverty line.
Malcolm Collins: I, I doubt women take that into effect when they're having kids. Maybe, yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And, and, and here I would posit, or note, fantastically that if you go up that study was in 2015. This didn't used to be the case. So another [00:11:00] study effect of job displacement on couples, fertility decisions found wife's job loss impact on fertility.
It found overall no statistically significant effect on fertility. When looking at all women together for highly educated women, job displacement decreases fertility. Significantly in years two to six years after displacement the effect appears to be temporary post opponent as different as a difference in cumulative births, decrease in later years So it's not affecting job, you know fertility overall.
It's affecting it short term, but you know That can have an effect husband's job loss produces significant and persistent decrease fertility has virtually no effect on women's employment Except a small negative effect in year t plus one shows no consistent effect on divorce rates, only slightly negative effects in t plus four to t plus six years.
That's time plus six, like year six. And this, again, if you want to look at this study, is effect of job displacement on couples fertility decisions. Let's see when this study was done.
2010. [00:12:00] So this trend flipped from 2010 to 2015, or one of the studies is just wrong.
Okay,
job displacement. That sounds like what you say when you don't want to tell your parents you were fired. There was a job displacement event at work recently and I've been recently displaced from my profession.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so next year we've got 2019 study, when work disappears, manufacturing decline and falling marriage market value of men. This one trade shocks disproportionately reduce employment and earnings of young males compared to young females. It had a bunch of other studies, but it was all obvious stuff, like What is a trade shock?
Simone Collins: Like an economic recession?
Malcolm Collins: That when you have a removal of an industry in a local area, like, let's say like a
Simone Collins: factory shuts down or something,
Malcolm Collins: unfortunately affects men and not women, which I think is intuitively obvious, but I don't think a lot of people consider how much more vulnerable men [00:13:00] are to economic shocks than women are to economic shocks.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, women have more of a social safety net, typically. I would say both among friends and family, and from the government, so there's that.
Malcolm Collins: All right Taiza et al., 2022. For every 100 individuals who won a large lottery prize, there were 5 more children born within 6 years, compared to those who did not, representing a 15 percent increase.
This was in Taiwan, that the city was done. The primary channel for this increased fertility was through first births among previously childless individuals. Rather than additional children for those who already had children, approximately 25 percent of the total fertility effect was attributable to increased marriage rates following the lottery win.
Very interesting. The fertility effect was stronger for those who received larger windfall gains or having lower pre existing wealth levels. And, and given that this was in Taiwan, I find this all very interesting. It, it, it basically shows a moderate. This basically means even if you gave people lottery level winnings, it would not increase [00:14:00] the fertility rate enough.
Even if we made your average citizen equal to a lottery winner without affecting the rest of the economy, it would not have have a 15 percent increase in fertility rate.
Simone Collins: Payouts don't work. How many times are we
Malcolm Collins: going to say it? Payouts don't work. A study using US tax data and state lottery wins between 2000 and 2019 found that lottery winnings modestly accelerated fertility, but had little effect on total fertility.
So basically they Make people have kids earlier around the time of the lottery, but you know, don't increase total fertility. The study by Sesenari et al. 2023, using Swedish lottery data, reveals significant gender differences in how lottery winnings affect marriage and fertility for men. And we talked about this, right?
Yeah, a 1 million SEK lottery equal to around 100 In 40, 000 increase, the probability of marriage was in five years by 4. 7 percentage points for a total 30 percent increase, i. e. if you get a dump of [00:15:00] 140, 000, you're gonna have a 30 percent increase in getting married. That seems right to me, but it's lower than I'd expect, actually.
I guess a lot of people just don't want to get married from the current cultural perspective. For married men, lottery wins reduce the risk of divorce within 10 years by 6 percentage points. This is per year for a total reduction of 40%. So for men, having more money dramatically decreases the probability of divorce, but I, that makes sense from even an evolutionary perspective.
I'm a woman. Feels she has a partner who is secure and makes money, as she once had said, all women really want is a partner who can make them babies and provide for the babies. She, she used slightly other words, but that's the point of it. Women want to be submissive and breedable. That's the point.
That's how evolution has coded each of us. What's the, the silly face you're making there?
Simone Collins: It goes against everything I was raised to fight for. Submissive inbreedability?
Like, so many, so many little [00:16:00] alarm bells.
Malcolm Collins: What, what, what do you, what do you think today? I mean, what do you think with the data?
Simone Collins: I think the data indicates that women, on average, benefit from being part of a meaningful family. But I don't,
Malcolm Collins: that is such a, that is such a squirrely way of wording it. I'm talking specifically, do women, so when
Simone Collins: people say submissive and breedable, I think they're really thinking about like a stay at home step for trophy wife, which is not what women find meaningful.
And as
Malcolm Collins: we pointed out, when women lose their jobs in a modern context, the fertility is impacted more than when men lose their jobs. But
Simone Collins: even like in the 1950s era Or even like when sort of housewives started sort of losing work to do, I would say, so even maybe around the turn of the century, this is when you start to see.[00:17:00]
them turning to pretty hard drugs to deal with the anxiety and the meaninglessness and the listlessness. And here's where they start. Yeah. Like they're on amphetamines. They're alcohol. I had to do Benzos. Yeah, it's not ideal. I think what women need is, is to be part of a corporate family, to do work, to have meaningful work in addition to rearing children.
Is really important. So that's why I, I, yeah, I do take exception to terms like submissive and breedable because that is not actually what women want and what women benefit from. And when they're put in those positions, they go completely crazy. But
Malcolm Collins: our son recently has become very, we got really worried.
Cause he comes and he's like, I like really women are better mom and dad. And he's saying this, he like, won't do stuff with me now because I'm a man. He's like, well,
Simone Collins: yeah, he'll be like, well, daddy has to pay if he wants me to do this, whereas mommy gets it for free. I like [00:18:00] girls better. And we're like, not
Malcolm Collins: very worried.
Yeah. I was like, what is, what is all of this about? They fill in his head with nonsense. No, what we learned and this has become a persistent issue. I'd argue it's like 20 percent of what he talks about when he's talking about his name. It's not
Simone Collins: 20%.
Malcolm Collins: It's just a daily theme for sure. Well because I'm trying to get him to do things and he always says no because you're a man.
Because you're a man. But, but he will then follow up with, and you can't have babies. And
Simone Collins: specifically men are inferior because they cannot grow a baby in their belly.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And he makes this very clear. This is, this is clearly his thing was women. Women make babies. And I am so glad that however, we did not try to incept him with, I do not know how he became obsessed with this differentiation.
Simone Collins: Well, it came up after I explained to him that. You know, we're trying to get pregnant and showing him ultrasounds and being like, hopefully this is your little brother, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, he's, he was used to the last pregnancy because both the, like me and our nanny were [00:19:00] pregnant at the same time.
So like the kids are very accustomed to pregnancy now. So I think he's just like, this is cool. And he just now sees me as like the cool 3d printer. Of
Malcolm Collins: new siblings of Of new siblings. This video, him talking about wanting a hundred siblings. Yeah. Just said I'm sure to keep going. He's like, I'll help mom, I'll help.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: He'll, he'll feed them a giant glass of milk, so it's fine.
Malcolm Collins: He'll take care of them.
Yeah. Doesn't even worry about it. But I love this 'cause I can so imagine like one of these like trans activists going to his school to try to convert him and he is like. She they're like, yeah, you can be a woman. He'd be like, oh my God, I can be a woman.
Like I can grow a baby in my belly. I love that. I get to grow a baby and they'd be like, well, no, I mean, you can't. And he's like, what the Octavian would so say something super offensive. He's like. Why would you want to be a woman if you can't make babies? Which is so based life destroying life shattering here.
By the way, I've seen some things of like, arguments recently. that trans people should be like breastfeeding their [00:20:00] children. Like measuring like the milk that they produce versus the milk that natal females produce to try to argue. It has similar nutritional properties. I mean, it doesn't, but like they, they want to argue it's close enough that they should be doing breastfeeding as well to help them bond.
No, not bond, affirm their gender. I mean, they don't care about the kids. Be honest here. These are people who are
Simone Collins: The amount of work that a trans person or a gay person has to go through to have a child is heartbreaking. Both financially and logistically. They care about their kids.
Malcolm Collins: Trans people can just have kids naturally.
Not necessarily. No, most of them save sperm and stuff like that. And they're married. Like, yeah. Well, they'd still do IVF. Like, they're still working for it. All in the same bucket. Like, come on. And I actually want to do more pushing against that on this show. This idea of [00:21:00] LGBTQ, trans people f*****g stapled themselves on to a people who are fighting for their lives.
Like that is not they they were not that important in the early game It's weird. Like you look at like the stonewall things and stuff like that They're like, oh, it's all trans women. I was like gay people in crossdressers. Like it wasn't there but no trans people there like they they have inserted themselves into history and taken over the historical narrative of the fight for gay rights.
And continue to attempt to I agree, it is hard for gay people to have kids. No gay person, I know, like no sane gay person is going to try to breastfeed their kids.
Simone Collins: True story. Yeah. They're buying breast milk from other women and doing their very best and not yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're, they're doing their best, but they're not trying to breastfeed the kids themselves.
This is weird stuff. [00:22:00]
Anyway. So, male fertility increased all time horizons. Ten years after winning, men had 0. 056 more children. per million S. E. K. 1, a 13. 5 percent increase in fertility overall. Well, that doesn't sound like that much. Again, you can't fix this with, with lotteries. For women, lottery wins had little effect on marriage rates or longevity in this study.
Again, this is a study Cesarina, 2023. The only significant effect for women was a near doubling of short run probability of divorce. And we've covered this story before, which if you give a woman a lot of money, Like out of the blue, She gets divorced and tries to trade up. She doesn't [00:23:00] have more kids.
And this has been quoted by a lot of progressives who want to attack us. They don't think we should give women money or women shouldn't be allowed to like have money and it's like, no, we were talking about like a lottery winning study, but you know, of course, you know, you having fun tickling.
This is, I think the biggest take away from all of this for me is people were taking away the individual, like, oh, increasing the income here does a little bit for fertility, giving people a lottery doesn't help female fertility, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the biggest thing for me is even huge amounts of money cannot affect fertility meaningfully.
Simone Collins: Well, we say this again and again. Yeah. But like, yeah, beyond little government payouts, beyond 50, 000 to people in South Korea. Yeah. This is like even even lottery amounts. Not gonna do it.
Malcolm Collins: Even lottery amounts. Do they have like a 15%? We're seeing this 13 percent here. We're seeing this across studies.
[00:24:00] They do not. We need 200%. We need 150%. Yeah, but even
Simone Collins: then, especially if everyone got it, I feel like it would still not be effective because then I imagine just everyone would feel relatively poor or the same. And a lot of this comes down to Yeah. If they feel relatively wealthy or well resourced vis a vis other people.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think it shows how deeply indulgent our society has become in a really negative context that, you know, even if you have everything, it's not enough. And that's really scary, you know, because it means that you do need to build alternate cultures. And, and it also shows that you do not, you get a boost in regions where people aren't having out of wedlock merges, but not enough of a boost to be like substantial.
So even in areas that have traditional cultural practices, lottery isn't enough. And again, I say the old ways [00:25:00] won't save you. You can't just love empowering
Simone Collins: men economically again. And I'm all for it. I think that right now men are, are unfairly disadvantaged in labor markets and circumstances. However, just re empowering men or on the inverse, disempowering women is not going to solve the problem.
And people keep just thinking like, Oh, we'll just. Just change this dial and it'll work. No, we have to create Pandora's box has been opened. And this is something that you talked about in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion as well, that you can't, once this box has been opened, once we have the internet and globalization, and we've developed the equivalent, the cultural equivalent of super viruses, you don't get to undo that and just go.
Back to the old ways, unless you choose to air gap your culture and religion and live like the Amish, which still isn't going to work because you are living at the whims of the sovereignty of whoever is allowing you to practice your cultural and religious freedom. Big if, if they continue doing that. So.
we have to just develop a [00:26:00] new way forward. And there are things that can be done. We've been talking a lot internally about policy interventions that would make a big difference for prenatalism, but not really cost anything. And I mean, a big, a big factor that we're talking about this morning is right now, in many ways, it feels economically irresponsible to get married.
And so if at any point filing. jointly, for example, or as a married couple causes some kind of tax disadvantage that should be removed. You shouldn't be penalized by the IRS. If you're married, you're doing, you're doing the United States a service by being married. Yes. Not the. Oh, there was, I, I can't remember what country this was, but I, I learned about this one attempt to address this marriage issue where I think men in this country got a penalty if they weren't married.
But the penalty could be waived if they could prove that a [00:27:00] woman had rejected their proposal. that there became this predatory class of female predatory enterprising. Okay. Okay. Would for a fee, a reasonable fee, I'm sure officially reject your proposal so that you would be exempt from this, this not married penalty.
The government had to stop that policy.
Malcolm Collins: So did it, did it just, it is still tax them? No, they just
Simone Collins: dropped the whole thing.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, I wouldn't drop the whole thing. I'd be like, it doesn't matter if you're rejected, like, do better. Yes, try again. Try again, a hole.
Simone Collins: I know, yeah, the, the, the cop out was, that was, that was stupid.
It was unnecessary. But yeah, God let's,
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): It was Argentina in the 1900s, early 1900s. , fun, fun, humorous little fact here. In Chad, , now you are fined if you turn down a marriage proposal that's between 23 and 39 for women and [00:28:00] 15 for men. , and hilariously, , of women age 20 to 24 in this country as of 2015, 60 percent were married when they were children.
, so, you know, great country. , if you're wondering what the, motivation behind this law was, the country's leadership says, , it was inspired by the Quran. So, you know, religion of peace. Religion of peace.
Also note here that she is about to find another instance in which this happened in Italy, but the more reported on instance was Argentina.
Simone Collins: oh, really? Who was it? Italy implemented a tax penalty for unmarried men in 1927 under Benito Mussolini's regime. This bachelor tax could be waived if a man could prove that a woman had rejected his marriage proposal. That's like a South American country.
Very interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Looks like a couple of countries
Simone Collins: did try though. In 1941, the U. S. S. R. introduced a childlessness tax that applied to men age 25 to 50. So childlessness too. [00:29:00] So just being married. You were supposed
Malcolm Collins: to have a kid by 25. Yeah, if
Simone Collins: you are, if you do not have a kid. How do you, how have you not knocked
Malcolm Collins: someone up by 25?
Oh, and,
Simone Collins: no, no, so in, okay, so 1941 in the U. S. S. R. So this is like pre World War II. This is interesting. This is when they're really trying to increase birth rates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the penalty also applied to women age 20 to 45 who are unmarried and without women. If you
Malcolm Collins: haven't had your first kid by 20 tax here, we need to implement indulgent slut.
How dare you not? How dare you be 20 and not have at least one child. And apparently the norms, this is what we need to be having kids.
Simone Collins: Then in Romania, during Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime, a celibacy tax targeted unmarried adults and childless couples as part of a pronatalist policy. I didn't know about a celibacy tax.
I
Malcolm Collins: love that! What do we call it, like [00:30:00]
Simone Collins: the incel tax now? The incel tax, right? And then post World War Two, Poland, a bachelor tax was Briefly imposed on unmarried men and childless couples to promote population growth. So I like dink tax. Can you imagine? But I, yeah, I think more of it being like a tax break on income for married couples is more fair.
It seems unfair to impose an additional tax and more fair to reward good behavior. Why? Why sticks? Why not carrots? Because it's more fun. I
Malcolm Collins: dig that. Yes! It's more fun. It is your expectation that you contribute to society. Okay? 20 to 45. Ouch. 20 to 45.
Simone Collins: Jeez. That's insane. That's insane. Right, Indy? You don't need to start that early.
Malcolm Collins: Andy, you can start at 20. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pressure you. I mean, if you're not, if you're not a teen, if you don't have teen pregnancies, basically, [00:31:00] you know,
Simone Collins: I, I really was like bullish on this idea that like, by the time I'd had my last kid, then I would immediately be moving on to my next, like my first grandkid.
And I was like, ah, yeah, Octavian is not going to be into that. No, he's into it. You know? Oh yeah. I know
Malcolm Collins: the purpose of women. Women are for breeding.
Simone Collins: There was this one conversation I had with him where he was like well, well, girls like me, like, he's really like, he wants to attract a good partner. He it's really.
I'm like, yeah, I will, I will show you how to get girls to like you. You need to act like a gentleman and take good care of yourself. And
that's really sweet. You get to actually like me.
Yeah, I've saved all of his valentines from kindergarten. He
Malcolm Collins: has his personality. I won't say all of our kids, Torsten. Maybe a difficult partner for somebody.
Simone Collins: No! Torsten is me, and you like me, so I
Malcolm Collins: like you as a female. You as a male might be a little too [00:32:00] autistic.
Simone Collins: No, he's just going to be a visionary CEO, and so he can have a stable of partners.
Malcolm Collins: Torsten is rich. Yeah, I can see him being a rich eccentric. He loves collecting things.
Simone Collins: We can collect. Our
Malcolm Collins: daughter, Titan, I would say, oh my god, she is gonna be the easiest, like, to pair off with somebody high quality.
She is very, very, very happy all the time. So fun. She's so playful. Really affectionate. Yeah. She really likes like affectionate, like aggressively affectionate, I guess I'd say. And really loves, like, playing pranks or breaking rules. And I'm like, this is like the core, like, slightly, aggressively affectionate and loving side of the world.
Simone Collins: You're gonna be Very, like, yeah, a gregarious tomboy. Yeah. It's great. And very tomboyish as
Malcolm Collins: well. Yeah. We'll see about you.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: We don't know about you yet. She's a lot like
Simone Collins: her
Malcolm Collins: sister. [00:33:00] Alright, love you to death Simone. We're going taquitos tonight?
Simone Collins: I actually have changed my mind on that. And I think that the, the leftover curry that we have is better for the hash browns.
And then I can use the dang dang ground beef better for taquitos, I think.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, and is it that you haven't thawed the dang dang meat? I
Simone Collins: mean, I can do that immediately, but we need to use up the curry that's refrigerated first.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it'll go better on, well, I'm okay with using it on hash browns or taquitos, whatever you want to do.
Simone Collins: Well, I want
Malcolm Collins: to, I'll, I'll do it on hash browns
Simone Collins: because
Malcolm Collins: is it easier for hash browns?
Simone Collins: Yeah, cause if I do taquitos, I have to take it. I have to like thinly slice or kind of mash everything so that you have, because otherwise there are giant chicken chunks in your taquitos.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm okay with either.
Just your taquitos are amazing, so whatever you want to do, I will And tomorrow night
Simone Collins: will be taquito night, if you'll bear with me here. Dandan
Malcolm Collins: would go well with taquitos anyway, I agree with that. I think so.
Simone Collins: With like cheddar sharp cheddar cheese and dandan. Oh, yeah. [00:34:00] Noodle meat. And we gotta use the rest of that
Malcolm Collins: mozzarella.
We could also do
Simone Collins: No, God, what is wrong? You do not understand cheese at all. You think mozzarella goes in taquitos? What is wrong with you? And it's expired anyway. You can't eat expired dairy. You, like, freak out. So I'm eating it slice by slice. Because I can drink expired milk, you can't. You're smelling me like
Malcolm Collins: This is marrying a hardcore, like, Appalachian wife.
Yeah, like, when our food
Simone Collins: expires, that's like, Oh, okay, I'll eat it. And, like, Malcolm smells it and he's like, You're
Malcolm Collins: a b***h. Of this woman is incredible. This is what we need in America. Women who eat the expired meat for the first time. Someone's gotta do it. Her drawing is steak, by the way. Well done.
Don't forget. Okay. I love you to death. I am genuinely satisfied with you as a wife. You're doing a good enough job right now. I won't You won't [00:35:00] defenestrate me. Even though you're not submissive and breedable, you've confirmed this. What does that look like?
Whee!
Sorry, it's a meme. I love it.
Simone Collins: It's a meme made by incels for incels, as you
Malcolm Collins: know. No, no,
Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Malcolm Collins: it's
a meme made for incels. Me,
just
Simone Collins: like Facebook was originally made for you so you could watch all of your former classmates.
Malcolm Collins: I love you too. All right.
Simone Collins: I'll see you downstairs in a little bit. You're the best. Oh God.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: So, NatalCon is coming up late March in Austin, Texas, use the [00:36:00] word Collins and you can receive a discount. , again, I know it's expensive, but my understanding is they're still in the red this year, they were huge in the red last year. It just costs a lot to put together a conference like this.
Note that we are not the organizers of this, , but we are friendly with them and it is the, you know, annual pronatalist slash natalist convention, so I feel obligated to do my best to help them out and promote it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
We Were Right! Two Men Kissing & a Bowl of Maggots (Disgust & Sexuality)
27 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Dive into the fascinating discussion between Simone and Malcolm as they explore a revealing study on heterosexual men's disgust response to images of two men kissing and maggots. They analyze the implications of these findings on human sexuality, disgust responses, and cultural norms. From the biological basis of disgust to the role of socialization, this episode covers the layers of human arousal, progressive culture, and societal perceptions. They also touch on unique fetishes, power dynamics, and their own personal experiences. Expect an insightful conversation filled with groundbreaking predictions and thought-provoking insights.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are going to be talking about a study that came out recently titled What Did Two Men Kissing and A Bucket of Maggots Have in Common? Heterosexual Men's. Indistinguishable salivary, a amylase response to photos of two men, kissing and disgusting images. This is gonna be one of those days where we're gonna go a lot into disgust.
Mm-hmm.
Sexuality and point out, but yet again, I called it. I called it, everybody said that I was wrong. Everybody said my ideas were crazy. Now everyone agrees with all of my genius. I
Simone Collins: think that Donald Trump for some of his press conferences has like an I was right hat. Yes. This is my, I was right, right hat And I think you need to put on your I was right hat.
Yeah. We, we need one too.
Speaker: We are gonna win so much. You may even get tired of winning and you'll say, please, please, it's too [00:01:00] much winning. We can't take it anymore,
Malcolm Collins: I no, I, am I ever gonna get credit for being so effing right all the time? No. No. Am I? No. Is there ever gonna be like the scientist? I love it. That like with, with, with eyes. They literally coined the same term I coined, which was utility convergence. And, and they're like, so we found this weird thing in AI where we get utility convergence and nobody predicted this in the space.
And I'm like, I predicted it like literally 10 years ago. What are you talking about? I wrote many papers and things on this. Yeah. Yeah. And this is something that in our, you know, we talk a lot about human sexuality. I'd predicted this, and you're gonna be shocked, you're gonna be shocked by this, but it says a lot about one arousal and disgust work.
Mm-hmm.
Two. One of the big lies that progressives tell everyone about it. So to read part of the abstract here, participant current study viewed six different slideshows depicting same [00:02:00] sex, PDA, that's public display of affection or, or kissing, mixed sex, PDA, everyday items and disgusting images. This is like bowls full of maggots.
Okay? While providing saliva samples in the lab, a series of paired sampled T-test were performed and found that SAA, this is saliva MLAs, which is produced by discussed responses like neurologically. It triggers the release of this enzyme responses to images of same sex men kissing. And universally disgusting images were significantly greater than SAA responses to a slideshow depicting everyday items.
So basically we so-called it hold on, hold on. It gets better. It gets better. The results held across the full sample regardless of individuals, individual level of prejudice. Specifically prejudice against gay individuals. The results of the current study suggest that all individuals, not just highly sexually prejudiced individuals, [00:03:00] experience psychological responses indicative of stress when witnessing male, , same sex, couple kissing,
Simone Collins: no wait.
Did they also try this on gay men?
Malcolm Collins: Not in this study, the possibility of socialized disgust response to same-sex PDA is discussed. Basically, let me lay this out for people who didn't catch what this means. It means that the disgust reaction that we have. We being most straight males have when watching two gay men kiss, which is a strong reaction.
I talked about it myself and I couldn't get blow back from this. Like I had a gay roommate all through high school. Okay. Because I went to a boarding school in college, like my best friends were gay. I hung out with gay people all the time. I am not like an anti-gay person.
I have an extreme to seeing men, kissing men, extreme disgust reaction. And what this is showing is that your acceptance of this is not [00:04:00] tied to your disgust reaction. This has a multiplicative downstream implications. The first being is that one, this disgust reaction is not socialized. This is not because of your religiosity or anything like this.
Mm-hmm. Something that you are born with. Mm-hmm. It makes it much more likely that gay individuals and, and, and I, I've noted this in the pragmatist gay sexuality, because I think one of the core mysteries of human sexuality is why male gayness does not appear like female. And it appears like the exact inversion of male straightness.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: It's not like, yeah. So they're not, they're not sexual like a woman they are. Mm-hmm. They are, gay. They're gay like a man.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yes. So, so what I mean by this is men, your average straight man has an aversion, a disgust response at the idea of man kissing men. Like grosses them [00:05:00] out. Yeah. And they have an arousal response to the idea of.
You know, them kissing a woman. Mm-hmm. Sometimes they actually have a disgust response to seeing other men kiss women, but we'll get into that later. But the point being but they'll always have an arousal response for a woman kissing a woman, basically more guys in a situation, typically the worst it is for your average straight male.
Now. No, this isn't always true. But the dis distraction you gave me was comment. Women do not have this response. Yeah. Women is actually fairly rare for a woman to have a disgust response to seeing to women kiss.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, welcome to the world of, of Yi. That's
Malcolm Collins: right. Surprises no one. You know, women who are consuming that, that you, you mean two men kisses Ywe.
Or
Simone Collins: I'm saying women are not turned off
Malcolm Collins: by men kissing. Right. But men are not turned off by seeing two women kiss, right? Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no,
Simone Collins: no. The
Malcolm Collins: point I'm making is women are not turned off by seeing two women kissed. They do not have this same disgust response. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:06:00] Seeing people of their gender kiss, which you
Simone Collins: also called because women don't really.
Oriented. This is something that, so if you haven't checked this out, read the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality in it, Malcolm Posits that not only is sexuality oriented on an arousal to disgust. Spectrum, but also that men's or sexuality is more oriented around primary and secondary sexual characteristics like boobs and like things sing signaling.
That has
Malcolm Collins: very little to do with what we're talking about right now.
Simone Collins: Well, but, but I'm just summarizing really quickly and that women are not actually that attached to. Gender or sex? It's more about power dynamics. Yeah. It's more about
Malcolm Collins: dominance of submission, the dominance. So they wouldn't, it doesn't
Simone Collins: really matter to them.
If it's like women on women, men on women, and women on, on men. Like any mixture
Malcolm Collins: is more tied to arousal than males. So, so the, one of the big mysteries of human sexuality is men, when they're born gay, do not appear to have the standard arousal pathway of a woman. Which is weird, [00:07:00] which honestly makes more
Simone Collins: sense because
Malcolm Collins: that, I don't know, it just seems weird to me.
It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't make more sense. It's weird really. They appear to have an exact inversion, and you can see this when you survey gay men. Yeah, gay men actually, not as frequently as straight men, but fairly often have the disgusted reaction to females. They have a disgusted reaction to vaginas.
Yeah. They have a disgusted reaction. To dress. A lot of people have discussed reaction a lot people, but, but, but I'm pointing out that they have discussed reactions to females. Mm-hmm. Why is effing, why are they getting an inversion of a disgusted reaction instead of the disgusted reaction of the other gender?
Like, it almost makes sense to me. I could be like,
Simone Collins: no, it doesn't, it doesn't, this, this, the way things are, makes more sense to me. Because if you develop as a male, you're developing like all of the mechanics of the sort of male sexual orientation. It just happens to be that there's a sign clip somewhere.
That seems more, more simple to me and more likely than somehow you having like [00:08:00] become exempt from all of the other elements of male sexuality. Right.
Malcolm Collins: Well this provides evidence for this showing that the disgust reaction in males. Is biological or like inbuilt? Yes, straight males. So this is much
Simone Collins: of you born gay.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. It also, it also adds evidence to the you are born gay or straight idea. If a male is having an active, and this is why I've said this in, in males who may not have this response, or males who may be gay, don't understand, why can't you just power through it? The response my body has. To males.
Kissing is the response my body has to a bucket of maggots. Like, why don't
Simone Collins: you just stick your dick into a bucket of mag maggots that would you,
Malcolm Collins: you can learn to like it. But what's important from our series so people know this, is we argue that. Anything that has a disgust reaction. And it happens more frequently in males and females can have a slang flip and accidentally become due to something [00:09:00] during our biological development become an arousal pathway.
So there is actually an entire fetish category. Called creepy crawlers tied to stuff like buckets and maggots being like poured on you and stuff like that. And we point out in the book that you do not see sign flips tied to any other response. You don't see sign flips tied to fire. You don't see side flips tied to height.
Anything else that has a strongly charged emotional response, you don't see a sign flip with an arousal response unless that response is discussed like dead bodies, infants, you know, all of the things that would cause disgust in a normal person, you're gonna get some small portion of the population.
And we also argue that the sign flip, the volume stays the same. So if you have a really high disgust towards something, normally the volume of arousal to that thing is gonna be really high if you get a sign flip. But this also has implications for like progressive culture more broadly. So one, it adds evidence to the theories that we had that this is inbuilt in progressives we're just lying when they're like, I don't get disgusted by this.
But. [00:10:00] It also shows that when progressives, and I thought maybe progressives have like maybe somehow trained themselves because like I've been like, you can't get rid of arousal patterns or maybe you can't get rid of disgust. Well, no, I know you can't get rid of disgust patterns either if they're working on the same circuitry, but with a sign flip.
That would mean that when progressives are like, well being, thinking fat women are disgusting looking. Which by the way, that's the reason there's a portion of men who are into. Fat women, because generally fat women create a disgust response. And anything that creates a disgusted response, the small fortune of the population is gonna find arousing.
But anyway so women who are obese and create this, there, it's like this thing that's like, oh, well you've only been socialized to feel that way. You, you, you don't actually, like, that's a cultural thing. And we see here, no, it's not a cultural thing. Now here I note, and we talk about this in the book, is people will say oh, well, aren't there cultures like random Island cultures or wherever where like obesity and women is seen as a, an arousing thing?
No, there are not. That is a complete fiction. Let me explain. There were [00:11:00] cultures where it was reported that people. Chose wives who were more obese historically, but in every single instance when they've gone back and measured those cultures after they became wealthy, that has disappeared and inverted.
So what we were seeing there was just obesity being a. Indicator of wealth that was not correlated to the other parts of arousal. And so men were basically like, I'm choosing this woman because she's wealthier. There, there did not appear to be. And, and this is also, we've argued in other videos that arousal likely is correlated to like.
I, I'd say ethnic and cultural groups in a way. So it's not even like, it wouldn't even go our, against our theory that in some weird culture on some weird island they had developed an arousal pathway that had evolved. Right? And I'm like, okay, okay. That makes sense. But it appears that this is such a strong signal that no one, no culture has ever evolved.
A genuine sign flip [00:12:00] on this. At like a, like a, a, a mainstream level, which is really fascinating.
Simone Collins: I also imagine that a lot of these historical cultures that had interest in rotund women were just not emaciated women at this time, and they were seen as fat because. You know, wow, you can afford a few excess calories, and that meant that they were slightly more rounded than the average woman. Mm-hmm.
So, I, I mean, I just don't, I don't think the level of overfeeding that we see today is as common though. I also think that the, the sign flip issue that has, has led to fat enthusiasts today would've led to some in the past. And it could be that there were some fat enthusiasts in the past who were also.
Malcolm Collins: Oh's, the famous fat enthusiast artist who a lot of people use to argue that Rubens like Ruben. I wouldn't say it's re starts as an R. Ruben Rubens, isn't it? Rubens Ruben. Yeah. And it's very clear he had a fetish, like the women who he chooses, they're the same one who Fat fetishes choose. I'm, I'm
Simone Collins: just Google Imaging, Paul Peter, Paul Rubins, and I'm looking at these images.[00:13:00]
Are they chubster?
I mean not, not by modern standards.
Malcolm Collins: Not by modern standards, but it's, contemporaries talked about him as if he was a fetishist, and famous people can be fetishists. One of the things I always point out is well, if he was a chubby chaser. What was the famous Irish writer who liked women farting on him?
Simone Collins: Oh yes. Delight. I like your
Malcolm Collins: cute
Simone Collins: little
Malcolm Collins: tootsies
Simone Collins: or whatever. Read. Yeah. A letter
Malcolm Collins: that he wrote to his lover. Just so good. What was his name again? This was
Simone Collins: God, we're so bad with names. I'll
Malcolm Collins: find it post. But yeah, you, you see these in the past. That doesn't mean that they were normal. They were still very obviously.
Minority arousal patterns. Yeah. And we're not arguing that these minority arousal patterns are modern. I, I do find the issue, and we talked about this in another video, and it's something that like, you know, but what is, what is, what is, we, we sort of debated on this, I assume that attraction to younger phenotypes is clustered in Japanese groups. Like that seems likely to me. I, I, there's some other ones you talked about like attraction to, [00:14:00] like navels and armpits being clustered in Indian groups.
Yeah, yeah. I,
Simone Collins: there's, there's gotta be
Malcolm Collins: a little bit of this going on, you
Simone Collins: know,
it'd be weird if there wasn't.
Malcolm Collins: But well, yeah, it, it, it would be weird if there wasn't, it would also be weird. So keep in mind where we talk about like where dominance and submission gets pulled into this. Mm. Is what we assume is dominance and submission calls arousal because it was just a system that the brain used for dominance and submission displays that humans do.
Mm-hmm. Dominance and submission displays are used very frequently in animal species to signal social status. They're not animal species, mammals, social mammals specifically. So think of a dog like showing it's ready to be mounted as a way of saying I'm submissive. Yeah. And we know that this isn't a female male thing because in species where females are the dominant gender, like spotted hyenas they actually develop something called a pseudo penis, which they can use what an erection with to show when they're submissive.
So in the same way sometimes male animals will, sort of prepare to be mounted as a way [00:15:00] of showing submission to another male animal.
Mm-hmm.
Or female animal even in, in cases in species where females as a dominant erections are the way that you show submission. Which I just find absolutely fa.
Fascinating. Okay, so, so here's what Grok says on this, okay. Research suggests that fetishes may have heretical components with genetic factors contributing to about half of the ver variation in paraphilic interests. Okay? Rude fetishes.
The evidence leads towards a genetic influence, but environmental factors also play a significant role and more research is needed for specific fetishes.
Simone Collins: Well, most of your research indicated that environmental factors were not. Influential. Am I for forgetting something? Well, they might
Malcolm Collins: mean influential in terms of like changing outcomes.
Not influential in like a, I saw this, therefore I developed ex fetish way, like I'm sure a
Simone Collins: lot fewer people are gay when that means that you get thrown off a building. For example, that's an environmental factor.
Malcolm Collins: No, but I mean, they're still gay. They're still like in the population, right? Yeah. But maybe
Simone Collins: that's what Crock is talking about though.
Studies
Malcolm Collins: on related [00:16:00] sexual behaviors like PDA files show readability estimates at 49%. That's not surprise. No one choose, no one would want to choose to have this arousal pathway. Yeah, that's, that's true. Fetish. I'm sure you could get
Simone Collins: any of these people who have that arousal pathway, the chance to undo it, they would undo it so fast.
Malcolm Collins: Fetishes are specific sexual purposes and blah, blah, blah. Studies on paraphilias, which encompass fetishes, indicate a genetic component, for instance, a 2015 study and the Journal of Medicine found her the credibility of sexual interest in you. Youth was 49% suggesting a significant gen significant role.
A broader meta-analysis from nature Genetics in 2015 reported the average readability of 49% across many human traits, supporting the idea that sexual preferences might also be partially ible. While direct studies on fetishes are limited, the evidence for paraphilias suggests it finishes likely have a her readable component.
Though environmental factors like upbringing are also crucial. Disagree on that. [00:17:00] Actually, in our studies on this, they were so shocking to us because I thought that at least like being abused, pre puberty would have an effect on people's adult arousal patterns. And in our data basically nothing that happened to you, even sexual abuse.
Affected your adult arousal pattern significantly. They may suppress them a little bit, but that was it. Yeah. Most of what affected your arousal pattern has happened after or around puberty.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think in over the long term, in terms of another, you were right. Thing, I think we're gonna find that I.
The, her ability is higher than those that 40% range presented. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Here's an interesting thing an interesting finding is that in twin studies, which impair identical in fraternal twins show higher similarities of paraphilic interest among identical twins pointing to a genetic link. Even though most research focuses on broader sexual orientation than specific fetishes.
Mm. Well, I mean this then would make fetishes less distant from the gay thing than people would say historically, because if you don't have a choice in what your fetishes are, [00:18:00] especially if you're born with them. Mm-hmm.
Fascinating. Well, no, if you're born with them, then you can't say that being gay is any different from any other fetish.
Simone Collins: Oh, oh, I see your point.
Malcolm Collins: So people like, why do we have to be
Simone Collins: so accommodating of the gay things? We're not accommodating
Malcolm Collins: to put fetishes, right. We're not accommodating to any other fetish category.
Simone Collins: I think the, the bigger issue is that most. One, the gay is gay. Being gay is, I think a very different kind of scenario because it typically involves a discussed reaction to a very, very common social institution that until very recently was kind of a default setting for people. Oh. And being forced into that is really hard.
It's not like foot fetishists were, you know, also simultaneously disgusted by hands and forced to do you know, manicures every single day. Right. So I, I think it's just, it's sort of a different level and it has to do with major [00:19:00] societal Well, I disagree. I
Malcolm Collins: think that there's a lot of fetishes that there is a real normalization around shaming people for, for having, even if they don't hurt anyone else.
And that's really unfair if when you consider the, the people say, well, for example, I am find people like pathetic and gross who have like, I don't know, like a, a, a maggots fetish. Remember I, I talked about like the creepy Carly fetish or like, being farted on fetish. Like, James Day Joyce, that's, that's who I think it was.
James Joyce. I think you're right. Yeah I find that like creepy, weird and empathetic, and I can mock somebody for that in public and, and somebody would say, well, it's okay because this causes a disgust response in most people. And then I would counter back. I'd be like, yeah, but so does two men kissing.
So why does that get carved out as different than this getting carved out as different, i, I, again, I'm not, you know, I, I, I don't know how I feel across the board on this. I'm largely four people being like, look, if you have an unusual arousal pattern, I also wonder if [00:20:00] communities like, okay, consider something like this.
Mormons, and we talked about this almost certainly in another episode, like the Mormon, the sharing partner thing must certainly have different arousal patterns than other populations due to their history of one, how they recruited people and two, polyamory. I think so polygamy and I suspected that they likely have a lower discussed response to seeing their, partners kiss other people because wives that had this response didn't have as many offspring likely. And that is why you see more Mormon partner sharing sort of thing. Oh yeah. Culture.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Where it's like, well, we share when we do everything, but like, you penetration or something, and therefore it's okay.
Mm-hmm. So here's what I asked it next. I asked it for ethnically tied fetishes because I was like, is there any evidence for this? Oh, it's saying it can't find it, but it is saying that BDSM seems more common in western countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. BSM
Simone Collins: strikes me as so white and also so German.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so German, it's extremely
Simone Collins: German.
Malcolm Collins: And then you have the the famous British [00:21:00] Vice, you know, which is A-B-D-S-M related thing being, being submissive as a male, no more like
Simone Collins: school teacher spankings.
Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. I I love what GR says. Regional observation studies, like ALA's survey suggest that BDMI love just like
Simone Collins: name drop other, well, I mean, it was big on, big on X, so,
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Hold on. I, I'm gonna see if I can find any other here. Evidence from cross-cultural studies research. For instance, a study from PMC on ethnic differences in sexual attitudes among US college students found that Asians reported more conservative sexual attitudes compared to Euro-Americans and Hispanics, but did not address fetishes.
Similarly, a study from HRAF on sexuality noted that society very widely in their tolerance of non reproductive sex, but did not provide data on fetishes. A notable exception was alas 2022 survey, which analyzed fetish preference by region including North America, Western Europe, et cetera. The survey was 10,000 responses from some regions found that BDSM.[00:22:00]
And age play were more popular in North America and Western Europe while foot fetishes showed relative consistent prevalence across regions. However, this data is based on self-reported surveys, blah, blah, blah. All pretty much all sexual data is, I love when it like dismisses a-list studies. I'm like, where do you think all this other data is coming from?
Simone Collins: Come on. She has amazing sample sizes. Her selection bias is, is quite low because she sources outside of just people who follow her. She uses positively to get really good representative audiences. I'm ugh, ala, does not get the credit she deserves. Someday.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, this is interesting. BDSM and company named Bondage discipline.
Everyone know that? Okay. Byta Bell's 2024 report of over 12,700 individuals found 86% of Americans had either tried BDSM or expressed interest. Well, I mean, yeah, after 50 Shades
Simone Collins: of Gray taking off so much, can you be so surprised?
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I mean 50 Shades of Gray I think showed that was in [00:23:00] Europe and America.
This is a normal AFA pattern of women. They may
Simone Collins: not be getting it, but they want it.
Malcolm Collins: We've had other videos on this where like stuff on this, think men are driving this whenever. Yes. Men have to abuse us. And I'm like, you can look at the data. Men actually don't, 'cause it's a lot of work. They actually don't.
Well, so it's not that no. Men do, actually men do get aroused by hurting women, subjugating women dominating women but they do not get aroused by it as frequently as women get aroused by it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And the, the primary driver of demand for this, I think is. Is is men, I'm sorry, is women. Women are the ones who are like, I wanna see material like this.
It shows, it shows up all the time in romance novels. These like power dynamics, these quasi abusive relationships, these questionable behaviors. Like, and not even in a, you know, what we would call like modern BDSM context in which the sub is ultimately the one with all the power [00:24:00] rules. So yeah, women actually don't even want that.
They're like, no, no, don't, don't do that.
Malcolm Collins: That's really fascinating. What is, well, I wonder like, I'd love for ala to do more on this to find out, like, because we've gone over the chart before from her that shows when Paraphilias or fetishes age of onset is uhhuh. So that would be really interesting.
I, I would guess that the age of onset of Paraphilias likely correlates with how arousing they are. Actually, let's look up a ALA's age of onset of paraphilias chart.
Gaps between trans and cis fetish onset. Oh, this is interesting. Here's a list of difference in years between, okay. Okay, that's interesting. Age of onset. Okay, so if we're looking across here, which fetishes have earlier age of onsets? Tattoos, body mod, skinness, et cetera. Very young age of onset, 13.1. Body parts normal.
Non non genitals. So this is like, knees, armpits, head hair, et cetera.
Okay.
But then other ones that have been very [00:25:00] early age of onset are things like brutality and violence. This has an age of onset of 14.2. So that's really interesting is incest has an early age of onset 14.4. I could see that being hereditary because you do see it occurring more within certain subcultures.
And then some have very, I don't know, interestingly, the latest age of onset is reproduction, pregnancy, surrogacy, AVI position, et cetera. 16.9 is when that starts.
Simone Collins: That's interesting. There does seem to be a, a bigger IC reaction among adolescents to anything child related, so maybe that. It is connected. I don't know.
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I'm, I'm looking at these here, and this doesn't ring true for me, that Jevan said is, is connected to how hereditary it is. But maybe, I mean, it would make sense that incest arousal patterns in communities that relied on incest for reproduction would appear at a young age.
'cause those communities would likely also begin engaging in, in sexuality at a younger age. But, [00:26:00] like reproduction almost certainly has some like the people who get turned on by that, some correlation to genetics. I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't. And I'd also be pretty surprised that things like humiliation didn't given, and, and that's one of the later ones is at 15.6.
I, I'd also note that they, oh no. Humiliation
Simone Collins: just seems to me to be like one manifestation of interest in power dynamics, which is extremely pervasive.
Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Anyway, very, very interesting statistics there. And I, you must be so
Simone Collins: satisfied to be validated in your research.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's really cool that I make predictions years before they begin to become validated by the field, and then the field begins to validate them.
And one day somebody will come out there and be like, I discovered that arousal and disgust are actually using the same fundamental system and this is how, and I I, I'd be like, Malcolm came up with all of this years ago. But it also shows that when progressives pretend to not be disgusted by something, when progressives pretend to not be like ed by [00:27:00] something, it is just that they are pretending this is not real.
They are actually even the most tolerant person. And I actually think that this is a bad thing because what it leads people to believe is. I am accepting of this population, yet I still feel gross when I see them do this. Therefore, there must be something wrong with this population. I mean, that's what disgust evolved in us to, to instigate, right?
Like disgusted at like a person with leprosy or something who's like falling apart. It was
Simone Collins: about, it was about personal safety and then there's this big problem. Discuss
Malcolm Collins: your bodies and poo and everything like that. Yeah. Continue.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But then there's also the problem of people. Intuitively though it's not always correct, associating disgust with poor morality.
And I think, I mean, you, you see this more with spoken versus unspoken progressive behaviors around race, where like, they're like, oh, you know, like other, other races that are not white are really, really important. We have to protect them. And yet they, like, they don't hire them, they don't work with them.
They, they [00:28:00] don't live with them. And then, you know, on the other hand, like conservatives don't have anything to say and yet. They hire them, they work with them, they live with them. Like there, there's by, by
Malcolm Collins: the way, to, to get an idea of how bad this is, there was a recent study done on DEI positions and only 3.8% of DEI positions are held by Africans
Classic,
African Americans.
This is, this is. Hilarious. That's, well less than their percentage in the population, and it just shows that this is like a white woman thing. The entire field of this progressive urban monoculture is white women. I love the white women for Harris thing, you know? So good. That was such a moment.
Yeah, amazing. It turned out that they were the only ones who supported Harris. The, the Hispanics were not super excited. Blacks voted for her less than Biden keep on Blacks voted for her. They, they, they did not like Harris. Well, there was that
Simone Collins: famous like black journalist meeting during the election when Trump spoke with them, you know, was willing to speak with what he expected to be a fairly antagonistic audience.
[00:29:00] Yeah. And he's like, oh yeah, you know? Yeah. Now, now Kamala's black when it's convenient for her. And the progressive and mainstream media rolled that quote out again and again to be, to, to, to act as though this was an outrageous thing. But you actually hear chuckles from the audience. Yeah. It's not dead silence.
They're kind of like, I
Malcolm Collins: mean, yeah. Very interesting. I, I completely agree. And I think that that was, that was really interesting. So do you have any other, discuss, anything change for you on learning that the progressive men who say they're not experiencing it are most likely lying?
Simone Collins: You know, it, it just reminds me of, of how my progressive upbringing was, where there were a lot of things that secretly discussed me.
And I had to pretend that I was okay with them. And that was really, you know, it was really tough and it, it honestly led to poorer mental health because [00:30:00] I felt there was a variety of things that I wished I could do something about, like, ugh, I really, you know, don't, I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna go here, but if I, if I avoid going here or if I don't do this thing, it will involve an admission, even if it's an unspoken admission that I have a problem with this thing.
And therefore I'm not, like, my values aren't right. You know, I need to, I need to
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Simone Collins: Like correct myself. And it, it caused a lot of stress and a lot of cognitive dissonance. And after meeting you and after sort of getting permission to feel what I felt, I just felt so much relief. And I, and we, we just did another episode on mental health and progressives being poor.
And I, I do think that's a part of it is just maybe part of the reason why progressive mental health is worse is that there's more. More of them are forced to lie to themselves in a way that causes cognitive dissonance and and distress, and it prevents them from addressing problems that would be fairly easy to address.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:31:00] Yeah. Anyway what am I eating for dinner tonight?
Tonight is taquitos.
Simone Collins: Thank you. You did
Malcolm Collins: great. Taquitos. Are you gonna put some cheese in? Obviously. Make it extra sharp. What cheese
Simone Collins: do we have? Ooh,
Malcolm Collins: I,
I don't
Simone Collins: know if we have extra sharp cheese. You can use the cheese I bought at the store. Yeah, actually, so you didn't realize this, I guess, but you had an open one of those already.
No, I didn't use some of that. You think it'd be okay? It's a hard cheese, isn't it? I mean, it maybe it melts. I dunno how it melts. Do you know how it melts? It melts. It does. Okay. I just, I haven't worked with that kind of cheese before. I will finally grate it using a, a lemon zester. And even if it doesn't melt, it doesn't need to be grated.
Like I, I can bite into cheese, but it's taquitos if you can't roll them. You know, it's like a sharp shard of cheese breaks, the delicate corn tortilla.
Malcolm Collins: Whatever you
Simone Collins: want. This is how dare you. No, this has to be done right. We can't use American cheese though. So [00:32:00] we will find a way. We will find a way.
Malcolm Collins: What a sweet baby. She is. Very sweet. Love you to death.
Simone Collins: I love you too. Thanks for, thanks for being a shot caller. It's one of the things we respect most in this world, and I love it about you.
Okay.
Speaking of ozone, by the way, I was just listening to this Andrew Huberman podcast episode in which he speaks with a dentist, like a dental specialist, and she uses ozone in her dental treatments, which is really interesting. Like when she's putting sealants on teeth, she'll use ozone to make sure that there's no.
Hm. Like bacterial growth or something. Really just like
Malcolm Collins: that. Good at killing bacteria. We, we recently No, it, it's
Simone Collins: antiviral. It's antibacterial, it's antifungal. So this is, it's the best. So the reason why people don't use ozone gas more in their homes to remove odors and. Kill bacteria and bugs and other things is one, if you have house plans, they're gone.
[00:33:00] Two, it can, through prolonged exposure, cause degradation of wires, rubber, and some fabrics. So it's, it's not something you wanna use every day, every week I. You know, it's maybe once a year in a room once every six months.
Malcolm Collins: But you, you had a, a bedbug scare because of the hotel we were at. Mm-hmm. You had bites that looked like bedbug bites and then you just ozone everything after that.
Nuked it, not deal with it.
Simone Collins: Nook it, nook it, nook it. Yes. And I'm so glad. Yeah. We got, we bought ourselves an ozone machine on Amazon during the pandemic at the behest of one of our friends who thought that it would be really effective and we kind of never used it and I'm so glad we had it. I'm so, and also our rooms.
Really smell fresh now, so it's great.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
The Progressive Mental Health Crisis
26 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the rising mental health crisis among progressive women, examining data and discussing potential causes, including the impact of urban monocultures and the evolution of harmful online communities. We compare mental health and life satisfaction rates between liberal and conservative women, analyze the role of therapists, and explore the influence of platforms like Tumblr. The discussion also touches on the diverging experiences of men and women across political ideologies and the broader societal implications of these trends.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we will be touching on the issue of exploding mental health rate. Problems within progressive women as well as exploding lack of life satisfaction. They actually have life satisfaction ratings three times lower than conservative women.
And we're gonna be going into co. Funding data that could explain this. This is a topic that we have touched on in the past, but it is a topic with such a voluminous amount of information around it that it is worth going into deeply with new data, with old data and, and trying to understand it because it's, it's, it's really fascinating to me because what we're seeing exploding mental health issues within progressive women is we are seeing.
The urban monocultures effects on somebody's mental health in psychology. [00:01:00] And through that we can, because that's, that largely aligns with, with progressivism, right? The dominant culture of our, of our society. And we can understand through that through understanding what might be causing this is how the urban monitoring could be hurting people.
And we're also going to go into a brief exploration that I found really interesting in, in a piece that I found. On how the most negative psychologically harmful culture evolved on, tumblr,
Simone Collins: this sounds like just, you know, hitting all my favorite keywords. I am very excited about this and let's, let's do it.
Malcolm Collins: All right. So. First, I'm gonna be going over a piece called Why So Blue Liberal women are less happy or lonely, but why?
Simone Collins: Oh, they went there.
Malcolm Collins: Good. Good points on the title. Yeah. Yeah. The loneliness thing is actually really shocking as well. Young liberal women are especially pro nowadays to reporting poor mental health.
[00:02:00] This was a discovery that Zach Goldberg made almost five years ago, pouring over the Pew data in the spring of 2020. Now, here I'm putting a chart on screen and it's looking at has the doctor or other healthcare provider. Ever told you you have a mental health condition and this is the amount who said yes.
Simone Collins: I just, I love this idea though of like the healthcare provider being, say, your dentist, just like, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: she is problems. And this chart is famous. This one we've gone over before that showed that white liberal women. 18 to 29, 56 0.3% of them had been diagnosed with a mental health condition. Conservative women
Simone Collins: see is, I think is not the problem that they're seeing therapists in the first place.
I think it's really hard for anyone to see a therapist and not be diagnosed with something, even if they're completely normal. Well,
Malcolm Collins: the therapists are part of the cult of the urban monoculture. Yeah. It's like going to your confessions. Like they see it as important. As I've mentioned, I've seen women who will screen [00:03:00] dating guys.
Who aren't seeing a therapist, and that's like they have been incepted with the dependency of the urban monoculture to believe that I cannot be mentally healthy and no one can be mentally healthy without seeing a therapist.
Simone Collins: Yes. And yet when you see the therapist, they point out how mentally. Yeah.
Ruby
Malcolm Collins: Art actually had an interesting talk about this, where he's like, oh yes, he went to be a progressive therapist and then a conservative therapist, and the progressive therapist just kept. Having him ruminate on his problems. Yeah. And the conservative therapist was like, okay, here's a chart. Here's what you need to do.
Here's the timeline for getting rid of it. And what's, which is nice, I mean,
Simone Collins: and he didn't even imply that the, I. The conservative therapist was certain, he just gave him potential things he could try that were evidence-based. And it's so, but it's also so indicative of the feminine versus masculine response to someone preventing a problem, presenting a problem.
You know that the correct feminine response is, oh, I'm so sorry. Tell you more. This must be so hard for you. And then the masculine response responses, okay, let's make a [00:04:00] solution. And that that scene is so toxic by many
Malcolm Collins: people. Oh, absolutely. But, but to this graph right here yeah. One thing that's really interesting in it is, yes, okay, over half of liberal white women have a mental health condition, have been diagnosed as one, but also keep in mind here.
That the moderates had about the same rate of being diagnosed as the conservatives. So the white moderate women, 28.4% white conservative women, 27.3%. Mm-hmm. And this goes down a lot in older age ranges. When you're looking at like the 65 plus, it's only 5.9%. For those women. Another really interesting thing is that if you look at, older ages. The difference between males and females being diagnosed with mental health issues decreases. Mm-hmm. And it also decreases when you're looking at moderates with moderates, you see men and women being diagnosed at around the same rates. But in both conservatives and progressives, you see women being diagnosed much more.
And, and what's really [00:05:00] interesting is in progressives you see about the same rates of diagnoses at 30 and up, but it's 18 to 29 where you see this the big difference, huh? And I think this has to do with where mental health professionals have sort of penetrated and captured aspects of these markets.
Um hmm. Like if you are a progressive guy, what I actually think is happening here no, this kid back can't be what's happening? 'cause the rate's not going up. Yeah. I just think it's the, we'll, we'll get into how Tumblr caused all this, but any more thoughts on this before I go further? I.
Simone Collins: I wanna go further.
I just wanna keep going. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Further research in 2022 found that depression had surged among liberal high school girls in the last decade and a half, and much more so for them than other high schoolers, especially conservatives. And so here we're gonna look at a another article titled. Why the mental health of liberal goals sink first and fastest.
And the first chart I'm gonna pull up here is Pew 2020. And it's looking at, has a doctor or healthcare provider ever told you that you have a mental [00:06:00] health condition? And it's just what we were looking at before, but it's done as a graph, which I think is a bit easier to see. Graphs are so much easier.
Next chart. Is depression scores by gender and politics. And what you can see here is female liberals are absolutely at the highest here, and their depression scores started to shoot up. They were always higher, but they were about in line with male liberals. Mm-hmm. They started to shoot up at around 2011.
Was that when they. Was that when the girl, whatever the believe, believe her movement started.
Simone Collins: Me too. No. Yeah, me
Malcolm Collins: too.
Simone Collins: No, me too. Started much later. Let's see. Yeah, 20 20 17. But it was founded by activist Tarana Burke in 2006. So we're talking way before that. Lets see, that was, that was a year after you and I graduated from undergraduate.
I don't know, like smartphones were taking off at that point. I
Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't know. Smartphones were ubiquitous before that. Only
Simone Collins: among rich kids. I dunno. I got my first smartphone [00:07:00] in like twenty, twenty eleven actually. Yeah. I, I'm gonna
Malcolm Collins: check to see if Tumblr maybe had did something around this time.
I'll add it in post.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, look up, well look up when Tumblr got popular.
Simone Collins: Peak in terms of user activity early 2014. It was on its way. It was on its way to the top.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, look up when Tumblr first started to gain traction.
Simone Collins: It was founded in 2007. It quickly became popular, so by 2011 it would've been fairly.
Malcolm Collins: So that's fascinating. Yes. I think this is a directly downstream of Tumblr is what we're seeing here. That's so funny. The depression scores, because Tumblr was where the modern iteration of the urban monoculture was born.
Before that progressivism had a very different like thing. It was optimizing around. Now what's also really interesting is conservative female and happiness starts shooting up now. It's still nowhere near these other groups. You mean like relative from what it was before? Yeah. It was a complete flat look.
So like, they're happier now. [00:08:00] They're, they're happier now in, they're shooting down like, like they're having problems. Higher depression rates. Okay. So it was, it was stable from 2005 to 2014, then it starts going up. Conservative male mental health was stable until 2013, then started going up. What happened in 2013 and 14 that would've caused conservative?
Simone Collins: I,
Malcolm Collins: I, I don't see it as a break of the dam because it was so stable before that.
I don't know.
Simone Collins: Can you send me the graph
Malcolm Collins: sound off on this? What do you guys, can I see the graph?
Simone Collins: Thematically, I actually sent you a screenshot of a, an Instagram post by a friend who shall go nameless that I, I don't know, kind of really indicates the different experience of two girls, me and her, who went to the same school, hung out, had a ton in common but then took very different political directions in adulthood.
Just like, look at that and read the post while I look at this. Okay, so
No, no, she might, [00:09:00] what if she watches this, then she knows. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I, I won't describe the person. It says back by, no one's demand and a very progressive looking person, and it says. Proof of life in the style of 2014 in an era where most things kind of suck, both personally and as a human woman on earth, maybe a little more word art TM can help.
The bar is pretty low, but always worse. Reaching for vampire, I guess, and happy ver Venus retrograde to all those that celebrate survive peace sign skull. It's been a doozy, but we're gonna make it.
Simone Collins: So she lives in a scary dystopia in which women have been robbed of their bodily autonomy. Her personal life is in shambles.
She, she doesn't look as, as healthy as I remember from before. And like I am really happy. I really love [00:10:00] my friends and my family. I. Am healthier now than I was before, despite being on pregnancy, literally healthier now. Like, yeah, like my osteoporosis is reversing despite the fact that I'm not on medication because the pregnancy seemed to help it.
Like it's, it's just kind of crazy because we had so much in common as kids. We grew up, you know, within, within walking distance at each other's houses, same broad, you know, demographic background, and yet there's such different outcomes. And I feel like the primary differentiating factor here is culture.
Malcolm Collins: The primary factor is me.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. But look at the graph. You wanted to see the graph. You see what I mean? Yeah. The lines are stable and then they start going up outta nowhere. There's clearly a triggering event where both, yeah,
Simone Collins: like what happened to conservatives in 2014 that made their quality of life decidedly worse and it wasn't.
And, and you, you would've thought, like if I, if you and I had to guess, we would've guessed that mental health. Would start going off the [00:11:00] rails, say in 2008 when there was a recession, that that would cause people to feel, or like a gradual thing, but no. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And it's, and it's not. I'm still arguing like pervasive, smart, and keep in mind, like smartphones did exist before 2011, but they didn't have this great app, ecospace.
Now you have Tumblr on your smartphone like by 2011. Tumblr has a decent smartphone app, like you're actually getting stuff. I,
Malcolm Collins: I think it's downstream of Tumblr as somebody who paid attention to what was going on in Tumblr as it was rising. Yeah. But we'll get to that later.
Simone Collins: But 2014, that is. Right.
Hold on. Let's just just ask Grok
Malcolm Collins: what
Simone Collins: happened in 2014. Event conservative, and I'll
Malcolm Collins: keep going while you're asking. Okay, thanks. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So now we're gonna put up another graph here that says, whenever I try to get ahead something or somebody stops me, USA 12th graders. So interesting here what you see is this is actually splitting over time with conservatives.
It's going down for conservative girls and with liberal girls [00:12:00] it's going up. But here's what's really fascinating.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. For
Malcolm Collins: boys, for liberals, it's going down. And for conservative boys, it's going up. Whenever I try to get ahead somebody or something stops me
Simone Collins: and for conservative boys felt more stymied.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That makes 'em stronger. It's like a
Simone Collins: good
Malcolm Collins: thing, but, but it's the opposite with, with girls. I, I don't know what we're seeing here. It could be like the, the sort of cool, like, oh, the society's against me, man. That, you know, Andrew Tate was sort of promoting during, because this is from 2017 to 2021.
But that's, that's interesting. External locus of control. Here, what you see is 2017 to 2021. Liberal girls shoots up the internal locus of control and conservative girls actually goes down a bit with boys. Wait, so
Simone Collins: conservative young women lost their internal locus of control? They lost? No, they have more
Malcolm Collins: an internal locus of control.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Simone Collins: [00:13:00] So, so progressive young women had more of an external locus of control, meaning they attributed their life's problems more to external factors. Than they did before, which is shown
Malcolm Collins: to be correlated with poor mental health. Yeah, I mean, it was really, I thought, but here's the thing. I thought this was more core to progressivism, but if you look at boys, liberal boys and conservative boys have about the same rate.
I. Here.
Simone Collins: And that's, I think that's because boys aren't allowed to blame outside factors because they're the patriarchy. It doesn't matter.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. What's interesting is they have about the same rate and it's about what liberal girls have.
Simone Collins: What
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Conservative girls are like way so, 'cause you're, the girls are the only
Simone Collins: ones who are like, yeah, it's on me.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What? That doesn't make any sense. What it shows is that conservative girls are a better catch than conservative boys. Yeah. Apparently. Well, it's a smaller pool, like that's another thing. Yeah. You know, there's, there's two conservative boys for every one conservative girl, and I assume that number might be even more severe for those age ages.
What did gr say when you asked it?
Simone Collins: Honestly, I'm not getting anything. It, it said the [00:14:00] cultural events. The, the Ice Bucket Challenge goes viral in 2014. You remember that People dumping ice water over their head to donate money. The Grand Put Best Hotel came out. Robin Williams died. Guardians of the Galaxy came out and that was good.
It was good. It make me happy. Conserv movie, there was a World Cup, the Brazil FIFA World Cup. That's not bad. There was the Ferguson unrest. So there was some, some like police brutality concern. Gay marriage became more. Pervasive in terms of legalization, but I don't see how that would make the conservatives more depressed.
Well,
Malcolm Collins: here, here we're gonna get a graph that aligns exactly with the other graph with 2014, remember? Yes.
Simone Collins: 2014.
Malcolm Collins: So, so I will tell you all what happened. I, I
Simone Collins: just declared a caliphate Scottish independence referendum, but that didn't pass. So this,
Malcolm Collins: this aligns exactly. It was the 2011 number here. Okay.
So, you see between 2009 and 2013 in this graph, I'll, I'll share this graph with you 'cause it's important. Thanks.[00:15:00]
Simone Collins: Midterm elections in the us like nothing really happened in 2014. It was, it was not a consequential year really. I mean, it sort of things churned along. But it wasn't like, oh, like new administration. Huge social change.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so here's a graph. In this graph, what you see is the other numbers line up with mean derogation or like self degradation is what you're seeing here.
Simone Collins: Self derogation ation. Oh, like derogatory remarks you make about yourself.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay. Liberal girls and liberal boys begin to shoot up on this at around that time period with conservatives shooting up at the later time period tied to their increasing rates of depression. This is a cultural factor tied to, something that's causing young people to say terrible things about themselves over and over and over again. And people can be like, oh, that must be social media. But Facebook existed long [00:16:00] before this and was popular long before this when I was in college.
Simone Collins: Who was in winded Instagram peak. Hold on. When did Insta Instagram first take off?
'cause Facebook was very homegrown. You used Facebook to make sure people weren't. Fish. What catfishing you? Because really it wasn't a place of idealized pictures. It was a place of here's what your life is like, here's what your friends are like. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It could be the 2014 Boost Instagram. I could see that because more popular with conservatives.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Rain. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm, I'm gonna say Instagram. Instagram was really, and I mean, Facebook even had those reports that leaked where it was like, yeah, we know these make people feel terrible about themselves.
Sorry. I,
Malcolm Collins: I think Instagram may have been where the culture that was started on Tumblr. Interacted with an infected conservative, females first and then males. That would make a lot of sense to me.
Simone Collins: No, no. I think it's more [00:17:00] about idealization and not feeling like you're good enough.
Malcolm Collins: I, I disagree. I.
Really look that happened before all of this. If you look at the nineties, everyone was concerned about how pretty the models were and that girls not living up to that. The women who girls would've had to compare themselves to before social media might have even been more beautiful on average. But no.
Well, but no, no, no, no, no,
Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no. It was very different and it felt very different for me. And the reason why it did was that they were. Movie stars, they were in magazines. And suddenly with Instagram it was like, no, no, no. These are my peers. And you have to understand like our, our friends and colleagues who have children that are young teens, the way these girls look, their, their knowledge of makeup is like your, like your mom's level.
They have like 16 step beauty routines. You have to like the standards to which women hold themselves. Now, if they are online, if they are on. Instagram or now TikTok are [00:18:00] insane. By the way. There was this recent scandal with TikTok. They had a fat filter, one that made you look chubby. I think it was called chubby filter.
Sorry, Andy. And all these, like, Instagram and, and like TikTok models kept using the filter, like showing what they would look like, fat. And then it got a lot of people mad, which I just love. I I want more of that. I want ugly filters.
Malcolm Collins: Hilarious. Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna read here from the article that we were pulling these graphs from that I mentioned earlier.
Okay. And this is on the Tumblr hypothesis. Phelps, Roger and Rowling take us through the dizzying events of the early 2000 tens. This is the witch trials of JK Rowling is talking about here. Okay. As the social media site, Tumblr exploded in popularity reaching its peak in early 2014. Tumblr hit peak popularity in 2014, and also Vivaciousness Tumblr was different from Facebook and other sites because it was not based on anyone's social network.
Mm-hmm. It brought together people from anywhere in the world who shared an interest and often an obsession. Oh yeah. Yeah. [00:19:00] Like
Simone Collins: affinity groups rather than your immediate friends. Like Facebook was Really,
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
Simone Collins: Your college friends and and, and then your high school friends, but yeah, this, yeah, you're right.
That is okay. That is
Malcolm Collins: interesting. Phelps Roger interviewed several experts who all pointed to Tumblr as the main Petri dish in the nascent ideas of identity fragility language. Harm and victimhood, which evolved and intermixed there. Mm-hmm. Angela Nagel, author of Kill All Normies, described the culture that emerged among young activists on Tumblr, especially around gender identity in this way.
Hmm. There was a culture that was encouraged on Tumblr, which was to be able to describe your unique non-normative self, and that's to some extent a feature of modern society anyway, but it was taken to such an extreme that people begin to describe this. As a snowflake, referring to the idea of each snowflake is unique.
The person who constructs a totally kind of boutique identity for themselves and then guards that identity in a very, very sensitive way, reacts in an enraged way when [00:20:00] anyone does not respect the uniqueness of that identity. And I saw this. A hundred percent. Were you like, not from the Tumblr perspective, but from the other side, because I was really into Tumblr in action.
Mm-hmm. Which was for finding crazy Tumblr posts. I was really into exploring the crazier side of Tumblr all the time because I found it from a psychological perspective, really interesting. And humorously, you know, I didn't see them as not my people either. I saw the, the Tumblr people. As it, it's very much like, well, like related to nerdy culture and stuff like that.
I, I may have had some like, oh my god, they're so silly, whatever. But like silly people should be able to do what silly people want and there's no harm to this. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And strange Aons on YouTube does so many great Tumblr deep dives. Yeah. I don't find myself associating it with. Mental toxicity so much as, as I find myself associating it with weird and communities
Malcolm Collins: is this is where [00:21:00] even the modern concept of trans identity evolved on Tumblr.
Because before Tumblr transness was something you needed to be diagnosed with 'cause you needed gender dysphoria. And then the people on Tumblr who were like, oh you're not trans 'cause you aren't diagnosed. They were called Tru Scum. And this whole movement evolved that sort of harassed them constantly.
And then the two cutes, the one that said anyone can be any gender they want, whenever they feel like it, they basically won that war. And it's also where the Theon community evolved. These were the people who wanted to be identified as animals and stuff like that. Oh, right. On top of all. So Therians are not furries, right?
They're No, they're not. It's more like. Trans to Crossdresser. That's Syrian to furries. Crossdressers. No, they're not actually the other gender. And they're like, this is just something I like doing. Yeah. Furries. No, they're not actually the, the animal. They're like, this is just something I like doing. Thank you.
And then they're crazy ones who think that they're like actually a raccoon or a girl or something like that.
Simone Collins: Although that seems to have really died down recently. Is it just me? The, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I don't think so.
Simone Collins: Really? [00:22:00] What makes you say that? I just haven't seen many recent YouTube videos of them talking about their lives and howling and running through the woods.
I had. They're always wolves. Why are they always wolves? Hmm?
Malcolm Collins: I'd wanna be a wolf if I was like connected to something. No.
Simone Collins: Brutal life. Terrible existence.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hungry
Simone Collins: all the time. Cold. They look cold. Wolves always look cold. I guess everything
Malcolm Collins: you eat has to be like a living thing, so that's, everything you eat is
Simone Collins: raw.
You, you're, yes, you're always hungry, and again, they always look cold and they don't.
Malcolm Collins: Don't look, you know, it's funny that you mentioned that. I, I, I was thinking today like because I was watching a video on Mormon preppers and like all the food they have, and I was like, that's so great. Why not just get more bullets?
Here's the trick, here's the 'cause. They're
Simone Collins: not
Malcolm Collins: mean. Okay. They're not. Here's the trick about society. Humans are made of food. Mm-hmm.
Simone Collins: All, I don't wanna get mad cow disease by [00:23:00] eating human. You don't have to eat their
Malcolm Collins: brain. If you cook them, you don't have to worry. They're as safe as any beef or pig or anything like that.
So long as you don't eat the brains, because then you're not worried about prion disease. But humans are made of food. You don't often think about that. But it's a, it's a neat little trick for apocalypses. This one trick.
Oh, God, I hate you so much. You hate me so much.
Speaker: Uh, it's only been like four hours. Aren't you resorting to cannibalism a little quickly? That's the law of the land, Mr. Director. Now wait a minute, we all had a big breakfast.
Can't you people go without eating for a little while?
Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay. Although I,
Simone Collins: I can tell you right away, our kids would love building traps
Malcolm Collins: for humans. They, yeah. Yes. Yes. They, they talk about that sort of stuff all the time. All the time. One, our kid actually came to, to Moun and, and he is like, okay, I want to eat people like zombie vampires.
And you saw that vampires ate people, and you were like, no, vampires don't eat people. And he's like, well, what does, right. Like, so he [00:24:00] could play the, the right thing. Because you scolded him for playing, eating people as a vampire? Well,
Simone Collins: no. He was just like, well, mommy, like, vampire's gonna eat me. I'm like, no, not exactly.
Vampires consume blood like mosquitoes and ticks. And he, he, I just, you know, I didn't, I missed entirely what he was all about because I was deep on the lore with him and I was deeply annoyed that he thought that zombies couldn't go outside during the day, which is every color of wrong. He needs to understand,
but now he's obsessed with. Scv anything, but I'm deeply, deeply disturbed by this.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he's scv. He's got a dis scv. So the, what happened with Tumblr is this was the first time it became popular to list your mental illnesses alongside your like gender in your bio.
Simone Collins: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Just like in our discard people list the number of children they have.
But on Tumblr, the status was just how mentally ill you are.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, it is, it was [00:25:00] clearly like a part of your status. It was alongside your gender. Mm-hmm. You would, you would, and then you'd have like flags associated with, because you know, when you've removed identity, when you've removed a person's connection to their ethnicity and religion and, and, and history, or you've made them ashamed of it, people need to find identity somewhere else.
And this No. Yeah. Well, no, in,
Simone Collins: in any. Community where they're trying to show status. There are things that you use as markers, like in the VAR reach community that tries to pretend that it's not var reach, it's how much lower PI you you wear. Yeah. And that's like, it's, there's all these little things that like people utilize.
And mental that is so like, such a bad sign when this is your amount of, it's like spoons, you know, like, oh, well I, you think you're sick. I'm on an iv. Ha.
Malcolm Collins: It's like a community. Yeah. Where it became cool to like get amputations or something and then it's like, I got more amputations than you. I mean, literally the trans community.
But like. I, I was thinking recently [00:26:00] the way that we relate to gender transition, given that it appears to be a culture bound illness like anorexia, you know, overwhelmingly in autistic individuals at that exact same age tied to body dysmorphia, it would be the same as treating anorexia by removing people's organs to make them lighter.
Like an anorexic person would tell you like. This is great. Like they removed a few of my organs that I didn't a hundred percent need one of my lungs, maybe a uterus.
Simone Collins: That's not how it works.
Malcolm Collins: It, it would be okay. Okay. Actually, a very good analogy would be like removing people's uterus who are anorexic to make them lighter.
Simone Collins: Yeah, especially, yeah. Yeah, because it's like additional like abdominal volume that you'd be thrilled to get rid of. Everyone's that flat bought belly, and you also want that gap. So if you could just like remove. Like musculature from your thighs. Be thrilled. And the anorexic
Malcolm Collins: people would be thrilled about this.
They'd tell everyone afterwards, this is the best surgery. I love it. Pro Anna is like a huge thing, like yeah. But, but all the same people would be like, that is a really bad way to handle this [00:27:00] condition. Yeah. So, so to continue here, Nagel described how on the other side of the political spectrum there was.
The most insensitive culture imaginable, which was the culture of four chan. The communities involved in gender activism on on Tumblr were mostly young, progressive women, while four chan was mostly used by right-leaning young men. So while there was an increasingly gendered nature of the online conflict, the two communities supercharged each other with their mutual hatred.
As often happens in a culture war, the young identity activist on Tumblr embraced their new notions of identity, fragility, and trauma. All the more tightly, increasingly saying that words are a form of violence. While young men on four chan moved in the opposite direction, they brandish a rough and rude masculinity, which in which status was gained by using words more insensitively than the next guy.
It was out of this rough. Reciprocal dynamic that experts on the podcast suggest that today's canceled cultures were born in the early 2000 tens. Mm. And I do think that that's what we're seeing here. This is also where [00:28:00] the birth of what became the new Right. The tech right. The MAGA Republicans came from, as we pointed out in one of our videos, for people who want to see an interesting, his historical documentary, the new right.
The, the modern maga Right. The online right. Was born out of. The atheist movement. Mm-hmm. The online atheist and skeptic movement which split into two groups. One group was like, oh, you guys weren't actually interested in the truth. You just wanted to dunk on conservatives. And then the other group was actually interested in the truth, and many of them have converted back into religions like ourselves.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But very, very interesting to note that all of this started on Tumblr versus four chan. Trump was first pushed by four chan, and when I say four Chan got Trump elected, many people are like, well, four Chan wasn't that relevant in the general election? In his first general election.
I agree. But four chan was super important in gaining him internet popularity and making him seen as a viable candidate in the
Simone Collins: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Malcolm Collins: And people forget what a joke candidate he [00:29:00] was in the primaries that all the other conservatives were making fun of him and four chan mean him into Yeah.
But he is the main counterculture candidate.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: We have what we have now. We have Doge now, all of this. And keep in mind how much the culture of MAGA still has those four chan roofs that Elon called Doge. Doge, literally like a meme coin with like a a, a, a dog that was caught used on four chan.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Now let's look at more modern evidence. Okay? Yes. New evidence from a 2024 American Family Survey indicates it is young liberal women are markedly less satisfied with their lives than their conservative peers. And this is from the original article, not the second article. Okay. Okay. Specifically, we found that 37% of conservative women reported being completely satisfied with life.
Well, only 12% of liberal women did so less than a half
Simone Collins: back to that high school elementary school friend of mine. Then and now you know me. Now her, now it's, it's You say you're
Malcolm Collins: completely [00:30:00] satisfied.
Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah. Especially vis-a-vis her. I mean, obviously there are so many ambitions and things that we want to achieve together and we wanna have so many more kids.
We wanna do so much more good in the world. But that comes from a place of like. A deep feeling of agency and satisfaction and
Malcolm Collins: it was what we've already done.
Simone Collins: Yeah, like that we can do that.
Malcolm Collins: Young conservative women were three times as likely to report being very satisfied with life compared to young liberal women.
Moreover, liberal women are two to three times more likely to report that they are, quote unquote, not satisfied with their lives compared to conservative women. And consistent with previous research, the effect of ideology on young women's happiness held up. Two controls for age, education, and race. And so I'm putting a graph on screen here that says, liberal women least likely to be completely satisfied with life.
And you see it's a, just a huge difference. And it goes up, it's 12% for, for liberals, 28% for moderates, 37% for conservatives. So huge jump there. Now let's look [00:31:00] at loneliness rates. Okay, so it's not just this, and this is in 2024, right? So. With liberal women, 29% say they feel lonely. Often only 11% of conservative women feel that, and you get the middling 19% for moderates.
Simone Collins: Do you think this is because conservatism likely tracks really highly with being a member of a church and that's built in community? I.
Malcolm Collins: I think so, but I don't think that that's all of this. I would assume you're actually finding the same thing with liberal women who attend churches. Well, and I
Simone Collins: would, I would guess so.
I think it's two factors. Yes. I think one, it's that, that there's a higher correlation of church attendance and therefore community membership. But I would also argue that I, conservative woman and a liberal woman with the same amount of social interaction in their lives would probably define the state of their.
Loneliness differently in that a a, a progressive woman would be far more likely and perceive it
it differently. Yeah.
Perceive it is like, this is a problem. I don't feel perfectly satisfied or I feel [00:32:00] like what I see. No,
Malcolm Collins: I, I disagree with the way you're framing this. I, I think the conservatives genuinely feel less lonely even if they are the same amount of interpersonal interaction.
Because there is no status to be gained. So your emotions, the way you relate to your emotional state is largely due to your internal framings. You can significantly alter. Very internal state.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And, and so with the conservative, there is no benefit to self victimization. And so they don't do it.
Liberals are trained to have this mindset through things like Tumblr and stuff like that, like even your, well, they're also trained to know that
Simone Collins: if
Malcolm Collins: they
Simone Collins: don't feel 100% perfect, that that is a problem. Whereas I think conservatives are more likely to understand that the state is transient or not even think about it.
Not even be like, oh, this is, I'm feeling something bad. Ah, you know, they're just like, okay. Yeah. You know, the bigger things to worry about
Malcolm Collins: your friend. Right. When we were reading her quote like mm-hmm. This, like, why is she posting that? Like if, if you [00:33:00] were feeling sad, would you post it? Like if you
Simone Collins: were feeling she's trying to post, she's, she's, I think she's signaling that she's a hot mess right now.
That she's not happy, she's not feeling okay, that she thinks the world is terrible. And she's looking for social affirmation and she does have some comments on that, that are like, that's my friend. And like, oh, you look great. And things like that. So I think. I, I think it's, and maybe it's also.
Malcolm Collins: And I'd also point out with her post, her post is as I think very normal, it's not cringe.
It's not like pathetic liberal beatty stuff. It is I consider like a very, I think you did a very good job of finding like a very average and normal post for a progressive to make that a conservative would never make.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It's not like, it's not an unhinged libs of TikTok thing, it's just what a, yeah.
This Simone's private friend from high school is randomly posting on, you know, a certain day of the week. In spring and, and that's, [00:34:00] yeah. And like what are all my posts? Just our, our
Malcolm Collins: kids, they're often ideological. Well, they're meant to have agency in the world. Like your posts are either our kids, like showing off like your family so that other people are jealous and hate their lives.
Which is more like
Simone Collins: I, I, I take pictures of our kids and I'm like, oh, they're so cute. Then I wanna post them. 'cause I hate wasting the pretty 'cause they're so pretty.
Malcolm Collins: I do the same thing. I stick 'em at the end of videos so that people are forced to form a pair of social relationship with us in
Simone Collins: this is un non, non-consensual.
Malcolm Collins: You going forward is, I'm gonna try, try, keep in mind to take out curse words, even from added clip.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. I'm, yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry.
Malcolm Collins: So that our videos can be safe for kids. Well, I don't
Simone Collins: think kids need to be shielded from curse words, but I think they should be taught that curse words are. Yeah, for lack of a better way to put it, like low class a, a sign, curse words are a sign of not having enough creativity to use a turn of phrase that actually gives the message that you want, the wit that you want.
Well, I think
Malcolm Collins: we need to figure out ways to be vulgar without curse words to be ide [00:35:00] ideologically vulgar. When
Simone Collins: I read, when I read Emily Post from the 1940s, this woman has the sickest burns, but she doesn't use any sling. She doesn't use any affectation.
Malcolm Collins: But, but Simone here, here's a way I can be vulgar without any, any, I think Trump should have another term.
That's, that's, I was talking with the BB, C and another UK outlet today. I didn't say that, but I So should have said that. I, so should have said that. I should have been like, well, you know, of course we're really excited for his next term to just, I love when he sometimes drops jokes about that in
Simone Collins: press conference because he knows, like he can probably see.
The pulsing veins in the foreheads of some of the people, the journalists present? No, they're,
Malcolm Collins: they're manifesting this by freaking out about it so much. Only
Simone Collins: doing it in the same way that a kid in school. Will bully a child because that child goes re really, it's hard not to when, when they react in such a pleasurable fashion.
Malcolm Collins: [00:36:00] Yeah. No. That's what we're all here for, right? This is why, you know, we live for. The day after Trump gets election and, and everyone's having a meltdown, like that's one of our better performing videos of course, because everybody wants to watch the meltdowns. Yeah. And we should be watching more meltdown.
I need to get more meltdowns. This is a problem. Right. You know, people denying reality, saying oh, actually Trump, there was a, a huge thing of like people thinking that Trump wasn't actually gonna be sworn into office. There was. Yeah. Yeah. I was a little late to do a piece on it, but I thought it would be, you know, funny.
But were, were, were people, there were all these conspiracy theories that, like the dims were gonna like trick him at the last moment and they're, they, they had been talking about it.
Simone Collins: Oh. So now they like January 6th as a concept.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, of course.
Simone Collins: When it's, of course, when it's there. January 6th.
Malcolm Collins: And I mean, they, they literally tried to, to put him in jail on like trumped up charges.
Was that felony conviction? Yeah. It was
Simone Collins: clear they, they were planning to circumvent democracy.
Malcolm Collins: But what, well, here's, here's a fun little conspiracy theory I hadn't [00:37:00] heard before. Okay. I love, did you know that the only time that CNN was filming any of Trump's speeches, they never filmed any of his speeches live except for the one where he was shot?
Simone Collins: No.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: It's
Malcolm Collins: the only speech
Simone Collins: of him in Butler, Pennsylvania in, but Butler, that's when they decided to go live.
Malcolm Collins: Why?
Simone Collins: Well, it was a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer. There isn't a lot to work with Lum Cycle, or,
Malcolm Collins: or, or maybe, or maybe.
Simone Collins: There's a lot, there's a lot of highly. Irregular stuff around that particular shooting.
So,
Malcolm Collins: hey, we still have no good information on what the guy, the, the, the, the explanation we have is super suss. I heard something about like, his house had been like ra ran through when they, when they went to check it and it was like missing things. It was weird. I, I don't know. I, we will do an episode on it if we do an episode on it where we can go over [00:38:00] the conspiracy of the Butler shooting.
Yes. But I wouldn't be like shocked if, you know, it was just too obvious like that roof. It's, it's not like that roof is, is like Oh, and out of the way. It is literally the only raised location anywhere around there. Yeah. It's literally the number one. The only, and why, why
Simone Collins: wouldn't, why and why wouldn't the secret service be on that roof?
It would have been because it was
Malcolm Collins: slanted. They weren't on
Simone Collins: it. Oh, God forbid they slip and fall.
Malcolm Collins: A teenager. Yeah. Oh no. OSHA would
Simone Collins: not stand for that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, oh my God. Well, this shows what happens when you put all these DEI people, you know, that was when the Secret Service was being run by a lady. And we know that, that a lady was not the most qualified person to run the Secret Service.
I don't mean this in like a, women don't know this stuff way, I mean this in a, I know statistically the number of men versus the number of women in the Secret Service means it's highly unlikely that the most competent [00:39:00] person in the entire Secret Service was a woman.
Simone Collins: Oh. Just because, yeah. If you have like 74.
Women. Candidates and you have 538 Yes. Male candidates. We have a problem.
Malcolm Collins: There's, there's like no way, like this was obviously DEI nonsense. So maybe, maybe she was trying to protect her job, you know, chump gets taken out and then she doesn't have to worry about the DEI cleanups 'cause she was on the out after he came in anyway, given what's been going on within the government.
Simone Collins: Who knows.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to death, Simone. It has been fun chatting with you about this. No. What do we, what
Simone Collins: do we do with this information?
Malcolm Collins: Just like, well, I, I think that, one is noting that conservatives, whatever happened to progressives is now happening to conservatives. Whatever happened to progressives, it's continuing to happen and, and get worse over time.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
We need, but the conservatives aren't just devoid. It's not like, you know, whenever you see a progressive, you know, tell them you're sorry and give them a benzo. It's, it's like, [00:40:00] actually there's something. Going on. You need to be aware that this
Malcolm Collins: is happening in our community as well. Mm-hmm. And, and fight against it.
And, and fight against it through focusing on, you know, an internal locus of control. Promoting an internal locus of control. Mm-hmm. Promoting self responsibility. I'd say stay away from therapists, like your life depends on it. And then, I mean, who would've thought
Simone Collins: that, like, we'd end up taking this very Scientology esque.
Malcolm Collins: No, it's funny because modern therapy, as I often say, functions more like ology. It's like Scientology psychology. That's what,
Simone Collins: that's such a weird double reverse flip.
Malcolm Collins: But it's, it's, so, it's, I had a friend reach out to me, a, a progressive who heard me rant about this a long time ago, and apparently thought I was being stupid or crazy.
She recently emailed me and was like, you know, I started going to work on these issues with a number of psychologists, and you were right. I had no idea how bad it is. I am dedicating. A big portion of my life and philanthropic efforts now to bringing attention to how bad modern psychology has become.
This is the story of
Simone Collins: your life. You're like, [00:41:00] oh, this is a problem. Everyone says, Malcolm, you're crazy. Malcolm, you're delusional. Malcolm, you need to get checked out. Malcolm, you're, you're lying through your teeth five years later. Oh yeah, you
Malcolm Collins: were right about that. That was kind of crazy. Malcolm. Yeah.
Or they just
Simone Collins: pretend that they always agreed with you and that you're delusional In saying that you were ahead of the time on this?
Malcolm Collins: I always, not a new fertility collapse was a problem. I always knew it a developed world problem. I always knew that the psychologist had basically become a scam cult. Yeah.
I always knew. And, and no, there are still good psychologists out there. It's just, it's hard to identify them. And I think that I wouldn't risk it was my own kids. Now, now I am somebody who was trained as a psychologist. Okay. That's part of my training as a neuroscientist. I was trained in that. I worked in that field, you know, I am not antis psychology.
I went to psychology. Well, there are
Simone Collins: also so many other interventions that would be so [00:42:00] much more effective, like changing the context of the subject. Because that's often so frequently at the root of their problems, or there are underlying health issues. There are just so many other things you can do first that will likely solve the underlying problem.
And I think the problem with psychology, I. Is it often only deals with surface stuff when you, you can't solve that until you've shifted the other language. It is
Malcolm Collins: literally right. Like, like nut up and work out. I think the reason why that culture has done Yeah.
Simone Collins: People realize, oh my gosh, wait, this is suddenly working for me.
Like I, I switched to intermittent fasting and I work out three times a week and suddenly I feel okay.
Malcolm Collins: Well it reminds me of Christian science. So a lot of people don't know this. Christian scientists, it's like a branch of Protestantism. It's not actual Christian science. But anyway, when it was founded, it's so cool though.
Simone Collins: It sounds, I'm just picturing, you know, it,
Malcolm Collins: it sounds cool, but when it was founded, it had a belief that, that they still hold today against medical technology. [00:43:00] Mm-hmm. You know, no, IVF no blood transfusion, no. Anything like that. Right? Yeah. But in the past, theoretically, no. No leaching, no bleeding. No.
Yeah. Isn't that backwards? But when it was founded. The medical profession had gotten so bad with quack treatments, they likely were better off not engaging with the medical field. It was likely an adaptive cultural evolutionary trait during its early period, 100%. It only became ill adaptive as the science got better.
But science is getting worse now. Like there's a reason to distrust science again. And in addition to that, psychology, which used to be great psychiatry, which used to, you know, serve a purpose is, is getting worse. Mm-hmm. And I'd say that now we're back to sort of where it was in the eighties when people were doing like hypnosis and implanted memories and stuff.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Your, your kids will be incepted to hate you if you send them.
Simone Collins: Ah,
Malcolm Collins: anyway, love. You did ask Simone. Have a spa. Oh, oh, by the way, great study. I sent Simone on [00:44:00] this. If you're like, well, what do I do as an alternative? Ai ai what, what's the study that I sent you is great little statistic there and
Simone Collins: people, they can't tell the difference between an AI therapist and a human therapist, and also the ai I think they, like the AI therapist did better in some measure.
I can't, I, I didn't read the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. But that doesn't surprise me at all because when you look at those chat apps that people like high school students are getting addicted to, like my AI boyfriend, I can't quit him. It's not the boyfriend I. Scenarios that are even the most popular on these platforms.
The number one chat scenarios that are popular in all of these, and not because they're trying to fob this off on people. One, the safer work
Malcolm Collins: ones, I should clarify, but the safer, yeah,
Simone Collins: no it's, it's therapists. This is already proven. People are showing with their clicks that this is really effective for them.
And it's, you know, when I con, when I contrast this. To people's experiences on better help. I don't know if you've watched any of the mini YouTube [00:45:00] exposes on Better Help. Better Help is a bad idea. It's, it's awful. And what, what is the
Malcolm Collins: expose on? Like what, what's the ridiculousness of it?
Simone Collins: Oh, the, the, the therapists on it are, are really phoning it in and not very good at all.
They'll actively. Like not know anything about the conditions of the, the people that are asking for help. There's just like a lot of people who really shouldn't be on the platform, who are on the platform. And so this is why use ai,
Malcolm Collins: use
Simone Collins: Clause?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Honestly,
Simone Collins: I don't think you even need to use like a therapist, AI just.
Just talk through things. No, just go
Malcolm Collins: to go to clock. Rod would be a good AI for this. Grock would be a good AI for this. All right. Love you did, Simone.
Simone Collins: I love you too.
Malcolm Collins: Gorgeous.
Simone Collins: What shall we do next? It's
Malcolm Collins: just making everything extra difficult.
Simone Collins: Well, at
Malcolm Collins: least it won't interfere with my workload.
Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. But, you know,
Malcolm Collins: sick on a plane. [00:46:00] I showed Simone Art from art assets from the upcoming game, and she loved every faction that, that, the Catholic faction, the Mormon faction, the Quiverfull faction, she hated the techno Puritan faction.
She said they looked like Voldemort. And I was like, well, I, I expect
Simone Collins: more. Machine integration. This is the techno puritan branch, and it's in the future we are gonna have a lot more cybernetics going on.
Malcolm Collins: You want more cybernetics with them? I, I tried to do some cybernetics and it always over. Does it?
Simone Collins: Is there such a thing? I guess you need the Chanel rule of cybernetics. Just take one. Device off before you leave the house, then you'll be,
Malcolm Collins: but the other factions, by the way, are looking boss like I, I really like it. They're, they're really differentiated. I think people will have a lot of fun. It basically takes like American and American and religious, cultural anthropology and like dials it up to 11.
The way that I think should always
Simone Collins: be dialed up. I love it. It's so true. That's the way he,
Malcolm Collins: yes. Over the top. [00:47:00] Over the top.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Over the top or bust,
right?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Post-Globalization Monarchist Philosophy: With the Aristocratic Utensil
25 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we are joined by Spoon, the YouTube personality known for his monarchist leanings. We dive into topics like the relevance of democracy today and possible alternatives. Spoon discusses his journey into politics, influenced by changing cultural and political landscapes, and how he arrived at his unconventional views. We also explore the dynamics between left and right-wing ideologies, the role of church and state, and the challenges of modern governance. This engaging dialogue bridges historical perspectives with contemporary issues, making for a thought-provoking session.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. We're so excited today to be joined by a very special guest, spoon, the aristocratic utensil on YouTube as well as on X. Although your handle on X is at Aris.
Malcolm Collins: And what I wanted to talk about today was voting ooh and democracy and is it relevant anymore? And where would, how could you construct better systems? And I thought that you'd be a great person to have on with this, especially talking with us because I know that you had like monarchist leanings, people have called our political beliefs.
Plu Tists. I'm interested to hear more from you.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Hmm.
Oh, basically, how did I get to my views?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, did you, were, did you grow up? Why do you think it's better? Why you think it's, you know, a, a good structure, what a perfect country would look like?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Hmm.
Okay. So it's kind of weird how I even got into politics in general because if I, if I were to look at like my 6-year-old self and my 30 5-year-old self and go, you are gonna be on YouTube one day talking about [00:01:00] politics, I would go, okay, what, what the hell happened in my life that made me take an interest in politics, let alone monarchy?
How, how did I get to that? That's just bizarre. I don't how and it was ba it was basically because a friend of mine several years ago this was like back in early 2010s, I wanna say. Hmm. Before Bernie Saunas really hit the scene, but she was also a Bernie fan. The, this, this is show you how long the culture has shifted for, and just a very short amount of time actually is that she was a.
Californian girl who was let's just say she was built in a very feminine way. She's from California, but lefty perspectives, but she control like, an absolute a*****e right? Winger, which by today's standards makes no sense, an extremely lefty person, but they, but they spit right? Rightwing insults.
Yes. Like she would drop slurs in a way that would get you banned on Twitter within 30 seconds which is not a human being that exists today. Standard. And she got me into [00:02:00] Bernie Sa as, as as a political figure. And then right about the time he said a couple of things that made me as a South African go, that's just factually not true.
Hmm. He said,
white people don't know what it's like to be poor. And I went mathematically, that doesn't even add up. That's just, that is not true. And the way he spoke about certain. Racial policies made me go. Okay. Were you,
Malcolm Collins: were you a a like Bernie supporter at this point? Like you liked him as a political candidate?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes, I think, okay, so I said this in one of my streams and I think this is what makes you go further left leaning and what makes you right wing.
Mm-hmm. Is that from the, the old liberal perspective, I do think it is based upon a lot of people can look at the system and go, there is a lot of corruption. There is a lot of unnecessary government control in places they shouldn't be. And they sort of just look at the, the current paradigm and go, [00:03:00] this is not a moral system.
And the problem is they look at this situation and go, there should be state intervention. What they're really looking for is morality in the state.
Hmm.
Whereas if you are a right winger, you'll recognize this doesn't work.
Right. And
so you'll, you'll tend to go from more libertarian perspective, which is just these institutions are beyond repair because they incentivize a certain behavior that you cannot generate just through powering through the institutions.
You have to structure them in a way that actually make the. Political class want to benefit the citizenry and the way that they want the system to work just does not gel with human nature.
Hmm.
And when you go from that perspective, you can go, okay, now you have to shift libertarian or go completely insane and advocate from monarchy in the 21st century.
That's more the route that I took, whereas the opposite end of leftism, they are just moed motivated [00:04:00] purely by envy. It's just that I cannot compete in this system, and so I must smash it to b***h in the hopes that whatever comes next will appeal to me. And I've seen the people who go for that, and I don't want to be disrespectful, but there's not a brain cell in those people.
Like really, they are completely driven by this fantasy idea of an idealized bureaucracy. It's kind of weird. They, yeah. This is the way I'm describing these people is whatever I wish to see in a king. They wish to see an entire bureaucracy that abides by their morality.
Simone Collins: That's a great way of putting it.
Yeah, because what, what I feel differently about what you were saying is you were saying that like the sort of the leftist leaning is smash what exists and then rebuild it. Whereas I think that was how it was for a while and then it turned to just have the government fix it. Like fix the, yeah, because they're Taiwan.
Fix the, yeah, fix the market failure. And then this assumption that the entire government can suddenly. Oh, trust
The Aristocratic Utensil: me. Do that on a whim. Yes. I,
Malcolm Collins: I really like [00:05:00] a point you made here and I'd elevate it as I think that this is distinctly part of what makes the new Right. Quite different from the old, right, which is the new right.
Isn't particularly sold around one government ideology. It's more just that they actually want to fix things and they have multiple hypotheses about how that can be done. And there is like active debate and active attempts to implement this. We even see with like Elon and Trump's government right now or JD Vance you know, talking about like economic issues that would typically be outside the normal, right.
Whereas the left just wants to not have to worry about money and that can be achieved through printing money or taking money.
The Aristocratic Utensil: They're basically materialists. I would say the biggest problem that the right has, and this is gonna sound a bit strange, but there is an aspect that the left, this makes no sense if I say it out loud, so I have to explain this, unpack this a bit, is the left understands humanity and the right does not.[00:06:00]
Which I'm aware that Yes. Here's what I mean by that. The the Harry on the Lotus, he has pointed this out as well, 'cause him and I were having a conversation about this is that the way that the, the left operates is they claim the champion egalitarianism and equality equal rights and all this stuff, but the way they behave when power is militantly hierarchical,
Malcolm Collins: yes,
The Aristocratic Utensil: there's control from the top and anything down below, there's no dissent.
It's one man follow, like a general in an, in an army. It's why they make such powerful roads because they actually abide by how humans actually function. The problem with it is the ideas they implement don't work 'cause they don't abide by human nature. What the right doesn't recognize is this is how your opposition plays the game, is they will make you abide by their rules and they just hack the system because they know that as long as you play by those rules, you will lose and they can do whatever the hell they want.
That's something that the right needs to learn is that if you wish to get in [00:07:00] power, is that your opposition just gets power and imposes their will. What you have to do is getting power and force your worldview down their throat. This is the same way they do to You don't this, this thing, this, this is an idea of No, no, no.
Ideas must be challenged and ideas must be debate and like yet that's a nice ideal if everyone is playing the same game.
Yeah.
However, if you're not playing the same game, then it's, I have the biggest stick and I'm gonna beat the crap outta you with it. And people think this is oppressive, but this is how the world works.
Malcolm Collins: Structurally, how do you do that? Like if you were giving advice, I mean, I feel like right now when I look at what the Trump administration is doing this cycle, I'm like, wow, like this is exactly what I've always wanted to see a president do. Like would you be telling them to do something different or do you think they finally like figured it out?
The Aristocratic Utensil: I think if you were to just get, okay. I would think America's biggest problem is separation of church and state is, I don't think, I don't think that is a good idea. I think [00:08:00] any sane civilization. The church and state must be wielded if it's gonna survive
Malcolm Collins: because, oh, here's an area where I would disagree really strongly.
I think combining the church and the state always ends up watering down the church was more progressive or secular ideals, as we've seen happen to the church in the uk.
Simone Collins: Well, but we also have that America, we're moving in in more spoons direction because the domestic policy in America, Haley is part of broader, broader efforts to reshape domestic policy, including the establishment of the White House faith office.
Which was established via executive order on February 7th, and it aims to pretty badass into faith based perspectives.
Malcolm Collins: That is pretty badass. Yes. No, but hold on, hold on, hold on. Because I actually believe this very strongly. I think that in the US and in the uk, some churches have liberalized, but within the uk, like the church that always ends up liberalizing, one of the most is whenever you have, at least to my knowledge, pretty much in every country where you have a church and state integration and that church and state integration is a Christian one rather [00:09:00] than a Muslim one.
The state ends up corrupting the church and making it very progressive. So if we had a state-based version of Christianity in the US, it would be one of the most progressive versions. I was just watching a great video with the dean. It would be
Simone Collins: Univers, Unitarian Universalist. Yeah. Yeah. And he
Malcolm Collins: was the oldest churches in the us are always the most progressive, and the newer churches are always the more conservative.
What are your thought thoughts on that?
The Aristocratic Utensil: I wonder if that's more an American phenomenon.
Hmm.
Ooh. Because I don't, I think that scales depending on the culture around them. The reason I say this is because I actually think it's, it's about the competing sex of Christianity. Because the reason I say this is because I've had conversations with American Protestants and the Protestants back home, and what I find interesting is that South Africa's Christian sect comes from like the French Huguenots that were trying to escape Catholic persecution in France, and you have Germans and you've got Dutch Mix, and there's no other competing sect of [00:10:00] Christianity.
It's just Protestants. Mm-hmm. So there's no like Russian Orthodox or, I mean there is now, I suppose, but there's no, there's no like mixture of competing ideologies. And so there's just the one, and I get the feeling that if it's just like this one that everyone relies on, then okay. Yeah. It is more, I suppose it is easier to change the culture if you happen to permeate the.
The church and change it from the inside, but it is also more protective because everyone knows like, yeah, this is the only entrance you can go. The change is through this one institution, like there's no other entrances. So I'm wondering if the competition of many also makes it easier to spread the ideology in ways, like what you just said is like age is a variation that you just brought up.
I'm not saying this is the case. I'm just wondering if if that might be. Yeah, we, we actually
Malcolm Collins: have talked about this a lot on the show because it's something that we study to try to understand how to like, keep cultures protected. And a really common phenomenon you see across religions is if a religion is connected to the state, like if, or, or even the majority of the population, like if a Catholic majority population in a [00:11:00] country the Catholics in that country will be very, very loosey goosey Catholics.
But if they are a minority, particularly a oppressed minority, then they will be much more conservative and rigid in following their beliefs. And I can understand why that would be the case.
The Aristocratic Utensil: That's probably why. It's because if they're, if they're a minority, they feel threatened. If they feel threatened, they will take whatever is closest as a defensive mechanism and bolster it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: And once, once something becomes more mainstream, it becomes more watered down. I.
Malcolm Collins: That is a question I had for you based on what you were saying earlier. Is aligning government worker incentives with sort of like, like what is good for the people? I've written extensively on this particular subject because I think it's really interesting.
The way that, like I wrote is probably the best you could do that is to separate the different incentives that you would want for a state and then build voting patterns based on each of those incentives. IE like the amount that you're paying in taxes determines [00:12:00] your vote within one branch of the government.
How many kids you have determines your vote within another branch of the government. I'm wondering how you look to do this within a monarchist system, or was it any sort of a system that, that you would think of? Like how do you align the government bureaucrat's incentive with the people?
The Aristocratic Utensil: I quite like what you just pitched there, like, almost like a scoring based system for your sway in power.
Yeah, that's, that's kind of cool actually. But my, my only problem, so, okay. I can
Malcolm Collins: explain how my government system works. No, no, no. I wanna hear
Simone Collins: his only problem with that comment. Okay.
The Aristocratic Utensil: My, my, my only problem that I have with, with democracy in general, and I was reading a, a short stint by a book by James, I think it was James Brennan the case against, or like Against Democracy.
And one of the other things that, that he points out with is that there is an idea of democracy in a sort of idealistic way, is that if you give people information, they will vote in a certain direction that is more in line with their interests. That makes sense on paper. The problem is you can have the [00:13:00] smartest people in the world, but if everyone you vote for is a corrupt a*****e, the geniuses of your population goes nowhere.
I actually asked this on Twitter. I said, if you could have a smart population or moral politicians, what would you have? Like 90% said moral politicians. Like the intelligence of the population did not matter because they said those who are in the state are the ones who make the policy, and those are the people that matter.
The voice of the people in the grand scheme of things does not matter if everyone that you can vote for is a prick, which is like, oh God. Yeah. Like I, I was, I was listening to some of the people that are like outspoken democrats today. Yeah. And I said to a friend of mine, did you realize the most rational Democrat right now is probably John Fetterman?
Malcolm Collins: Honestly, the best. Yeah. I, I like John Fetterman. He's, he's, he's local to us, and I'm like, if John Fetterman won and then ran in the next election cycle for president, I think he'd be a really hard person to beat.
Simone Collins: Yep.
The Aristocratic Utensil: That's the guy with like a literal brain injury is the most functional one. That it's like an SNL skit.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, [00:14:00] no, no, no. We've been on SNL skit mode since 2016. This has been great. Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: It's, yeah. It also kinda makes me embarrassed when I just look at human civilization. I sort of look at this and go find what
Simone Collins: we, the interesting timeline. Don't you wanna be in the interesting timeline?
The Aristocratic Utensil: I'd rather be in a functional timeline.
Simone Collins: Lame. I disagree. I'm,
The Aristocratic Utensil: I'm very boring. I'm a guy. This is where I may
Malcolm Collins: disagree the most with you because I love people. I, I was on, I don't know, one, some show on, on, on, I Dunno, Fox or something. And they were like, oh, aren't you tired of being the rebellion? And I was like, no, no. Being the rebellion's the best, this is awesome.
I am fighting a big, bad evil. I have my, my collection of, of Rudy Tootie. Like in fact, in fact, I almost think if we won and we began consolidating power I may feel an instinct to switch sides because I feel like, am I just like a voice of the state now?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. That, that is a, a, a way to view it. [00:15:00] But I would say.
There's a certain kind of monotonous thing about it is that you're just constantly cheering for your side. And I, I do understand the aspect of it. It is more fun to be the rebel that punches, whereas there's a certain element of, how can I say this? Like aristocratic haughtiness of just like, oh, we're in power now and we get, dictate what we want.
Maha ha ha. And you come across like an evil villain. But then I also look at my opposition and go, when you are in power, this is what you did to me. I'm going to enjoy crushing your soul for the next four years.
I mean, and I'll
be very villainous about it because I have the accent for it. So, haha.
Simone Collins: I, I,
Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, if you got it,
Simone Collins: flaunt,
Malcolm Collins: I worry as well.
I mean, I see this instinct on part of the Right, right. But they haven't been successful in influencing the, the, at least the Trump administration and the position of power right now. And I think that this is enormously good. If you look at where the Trump administration is actually counting its wind right now.
And Trump is even said this in some of his speeches. He focuses only on 90 10 issues. [00:16:00] And I think, yeah, that this is really smart because we don't want to have happened to us. What happened to the wokes in the culture war, which is we let our version of like trans activists that are pushing things that like wouldn't even win was in our own party as our mainstream message and then get the general public to hate us.
And I think Trump has been, while he has been like absolutely brutal on the stuff that every American agrees on, like Doge and USAID and everything like that, and the trans people in sports, he hasn't pushed over the line. And there was actually an issue, Simone, where you wanted him to push over the line and then you were like, oh, I actually appreciate, what was the issue?
I can't remember. You are like, why won't he go over on this? Oh,
Simone Collins: no. Daylight savings. Yeah, sorry. Daylight
Malcolm Collins: savings. Yeah. You wanted him to abolish daylight savings. Yeah. I guess most rationally people do an issue.
Simone Collins: Yeah. He, he points out that this a
The Aristocratic Utensil: surprisingly popular issue to abolish daylight savings. And I don't, is there a particular reason why I'm, I'm, I've just seen a lot of people do it.
I go, why is this like an issue saving? 'cause
Simone Collins: an hour is [00:17:00] stolen from your weekend once every year. It is the worst holiday of the year
Malcolm Collins: weekend. But Simone, you, you, the specific argument you laid out for me is specifically,
Simone Collins: so it has been scientifically shown that on Daylight Savings Day because of the schedule change, 'cause not everyone is on board in that organized there is a spike in hospitalizations and heart attacks and, and I think strokes as well.
Because of the stress associated with the time change. Now, I would argue that simplifying the tax code with the IRS would probably save a lot more lives because I think that causes way more stress than like a, like a time change being, oh, I'm late for work. But it's still. A fairly la
The Aristocratic Utensil: I I had a horrible Don joke now where that went because like, no, tell the joke.
That's our audience
Malcolm Collins: right here.
The Aristocratic Utensil: That's like the difference between the male and female. My, my interaction was, my God, if daylight savings time causes you hot takes, maybe you're supposed to die calls the week. Yes. We can just call it
Simone Collins: gentle purge day. Happy gentle purge day.
Malcolm Collins: Oh
Simone Collins: God. Oh [00:18:00]
The Aristocratic Utensil: God. Well it not that your death coming.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Yeah. We talk about this on this channel a lot as like the prenatal list people, people are like, oh, you must want these selfish dink couples having more kids. And I'm like, no. Like it is great that they're being removed from the gene pool. Nature is healing.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I, I tend to have a more, higher genetic variation in the population, primarily because I've seen what bad genes do to people, and I've seen how people with shitty genes behave like this. Something that I like about the right wing is it is becoming much more aggressive with the physionomy checking.
Simone Collins: Oh God,
The Aristocratic Utensil: it's fantastic.
Yeah, it's, it's great because I think, yeah, I think
Simone Collins: aporia just released a, a long essay on like, is physio gonna be real like this? It's become so trend. What on earth is the
The Aristocratic Utensil: obvious answer? Like this? There's certain people I can just look at and go like, you're just evil. I can just tell like my soul is looking like, oh no.
So b****y resting face is
Malcolm Collins: just, you're a b***h face. I.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I can't really say much 'cause I myself look quite evil. [00:19:00] Oh no. Yes. I mean, you're
Malcolm Collins: very clever in, in putting. Yeah, no, it's actually something that we noticed when we were in San Francisco last and we were looking at like old protest marches and stuff like that, and we're like, oh my God, these people actually, we see this.
So there's like
The Aristocratic Utensil: humans in the sixties, they
Malcolm Collins: look
Simone Collins: like mutants. They, they, the one at the, at the protests did not look like humans. And, and yeah, when you normally, when you look at pictures in the sixties, you're like, wow, this is before everyone got overweight. They, they look like the background from like Rocky
Malcolm Collins: Horror
Simone Collins: Picture Show.
They look like that cast. Yeah,
The Aristocratic Utensil: they do.
Simone Collins: It was notable. Yeah. You can see this, if you go to the Harvey Milk terminal at SFO they're big, like wall sized pictures and it's just notable. Yeah, I
The Aristocratic Utensil: have seen some pictures of like, the rainbow hippie matches and like. Okay. God, if you want to flood the world again with these people, I would not be opposed.
Just give me a floating route. It'll be good.
Simone Collins: Alternate theory. It could just be the intense amount of drugs they were all on. No, no,
Malcolm Collins: no. Simone, that's true. Was it a discount bin? [00:20:00] Discount bin Love? No, wait. Where I really saw this loudly was we go to this conference where like the, I dunno if you've heard of like the effective altruist movement, but like our branch of it, the right wing branch of it ends up mixing with the other branch and the right wing branch.
It's a group that I generally call like the bio bros and everything like that. And every single one of them looks like a fraternity guy. Like, that's, I don't know if you've seen like Johnny Anomaly or like, Matt Archer who runs seia or we saw REU in, in person from from X and he looks exactly like a character from like Animal House.
Like, and it's, and and then the other side all actually looks like mutants.
Simone Collins: Well, or as, as, the jelly heretic calls them spite. What? Spiteful mutants.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Ah, yes. I should get an interview with him. Actually, he messaged me a while ago.
Simone Collins: Oh yeah. If you want us to like warm intro you or something, just, just let us know.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Because I, I, I, I do find him interesting and I feel like he can draw out like my spiciest behavior and I can probably say some real s**t with him. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't want the topic to discuss with [00:21:00] him.
Malcolm Collins: Come up with anything. He's more spicy than us, I'll tell you that. Like he is,
The Aristocratic Utensil: yes, yes.
I've, I, I've, I've I have some friends who've met him and he is like, he is really, really based, like I can deal with that. I can, I can say I have some horribly spicy opinions that I'm he is the dude, dude that
Malcolm Collins: he's, I wanna say I'm, I'm and he was, was filming a documentary at our house and he actually offered, he's like, I'm gonna cut out some of what you guys said because it was too spicy.
And I was like, what did I say that was so spicy? And then I realized what it was. I went on a rant against the German people and Oh, I'm glad they're going extinct.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Ah, okay. Yeah, I, I would, I would take the opposite position. Probably 'cause I have some German a and I'm like, I do too. I do too. But I mean,
Simone Collins: look at Germany right now.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, I, I kind of want their, their current elite class and return to the Kaiser because that, that to me was just where it all went really, really wrong. Like even the Kaiser said application was not a good idea. It did not produce what I wanted. And that, that's, that's a whole thing I kind of want tell to people.
Just be very careful [00:22:00] about who you wish to get rid of, because I can guarantee you the person that you wish to prop up is not the cure that you think it is. Yeah.
Yeah. You just see the
currentness is evil and everyone that you like is, is good, and everyone that you hate is bad. And that is very simplistic binary that is not historically speaking accurate by any means at all.
Like take a look at what happened when you knocked off Gaddafi.
Mm-hmm. Or Sadan
Husain. Or literally anyone that America's intervened with in the last, oh, I don't know, about 125 years since the Monroe Doctrine. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe give that a second thought.
Simone Collins: That was actually this really underrated element when, when I studied technology policy, the whole thing was basically about when and how you should intervene when there's a market failure, that the only purpose of the government is to step in and intervene when there's a market failure.
And then there was this one, one day in one class in the entire course where they were like, well, and I guess we should sometimes question whether or not the government is actually capable of. Sufficiently resolving market [00:23:00] failures. Like can they actually fix it or do they make things worse when they intervene?
This
Malcolm Collins: Cambridge, by the way, for people who are wondering where she was studying this,
Simone Collins: and they, they brought this just once and it was, it was never like, oh, well here's a statistical, a, a statistical analysis. Statistical analysis of every time there has been an intervention of this type and whether it has worked or not.
There was, there was no like, okay, well let's try to figure out if it's on average worth it for the government to intervene. It was just, I mean, maybe, maybe it doesn't always work when the government intervenes, so maybe we should be asking that just one
The Aristocratic Utensil: lone moment of dissent.
Simone Collins: Yes. This like, this, like one little, like, maybe that's the question guys.
Maybe we shouldn't be, how do you think
The Aristocratic Utensil: the art,
Simone Collins: why, why, why would intervene? We
The Aristocratic Utensil: actually expanded the bureaucratic states and basically paved the way for the government America's suffering under now that has a load of gunk that needs to get rid of.
Simone Collins: Okay. Here's my thing though about monarchies, right?
There's a lot of monarchies out there right now of varying degrees of actual [00:24:00] monarchies and, and varying degrees of like shadow democracy taking place. Are there any countries or even experimental city states out there where you're like, that's a model that I like that, that it exists today? Or would you need to Or in history?
Malcolm Collins: Or In history?
Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. First today, then history. See,
The Aristocratic Utensil: this to me is, is always kind of an interesting question to ask because I feel like if you look at historically speaking at, at monarchies, it very much depends on how the people themselves want to be governed rather than the sort of individual kings of the time.
Because you can always look at history and go see. When people look at historically, they sort of look at the modern perspective of. If this person was alive today with my politics, how would I rate their reign? Hmm. It's very difficult to sort of look at history and go, what does a king in this period of time is considered like a noble or good king?
Because you can look at history and go, your [00:25:00] Richard, your lion arts, your, your king Alfred, your Catherine, the Greater Peter, the great of Prussia, and sort of say like, well, they expanded economic opportunities during this time, or your enlightened monarchs, or desperate, you know, and I, it's always, for me, the case of, if I was gonna look at a, a modern day sort of state, the main thing that everyone is concerned with in, in modernity is materialistic gain and really not much else.
Uhhuh.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And to what end.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes, there you go. Is is to what end. And I, I've said to people, the biggest problem of, of modernity is not capitalism. It's consumerism. Yeah. That there's no problem with, with private property and, and free markets. That's all fine. The problem is that if you only live to consume, you're just a mammal.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But how do you, how do you think about this? I mean, so you, to the point you're making is that you would judge the monarch by their ability to increase the material wealth of the [00:26:00] people. How does that affect your thoughts? Or do you think that that's a bad way to judge a, a good monarch?
The Aristocratic Utensil: I, I, I would say like, if, if somebody were to ask me like, what would a monarch do in today's society, I feel like it would be very difficult to answer that question.
When I look at the problems of our society today, like, like for, except the, the separation of church and state is in my head, is, is a better idea than what we have now. Because like you, you can say that. Well, if you look at you, you, you consider it. The acceleration of progressivism. If you were to wed it today based on what you see, which is maybe a good case to make, but then you might also make the case of, well, if we tried in a monarchy in today's society, might it be different because the structure's different.
We don't know the experiment with that. So that's kind of the thing that I would say the main thing that I would like to see a monarch be able to do, or just any state in general, is just you need to find a way to actually flex power and also do it in a [00:27:00] non-Democratic way and just say, yeah, well I'm taking the reins and you can piss off.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Well
Simone Collins: that's always been such a delicate interplay, right? Because when you look at the most famous monarchs, half of their story. Is them trying to rest control from the nobility, which in turn is trying to undermine them at every turn and maybe subvert and take them over. You're right. They, they, they don't, yeah.
That you can't think of a monarch out of context. They didn't fall out of a coconut tree. They exist in a context in which all in which they live and what came before them.
The Aristocratic Utensil: There's a really great quote I wish I could find another, 'cause a friend of mine posts me this it was from a guy called et Ledine.
Mm. A very long name. Name. He was an Austrian Noble. Yes. He was a, an Austrian nobleman of the, of the early 20th century. I think he was born the late 19 or late 18 hundreds. Incredibly bright individual. I think he could speak something like nine languages
Simone Collins: of Well, classic European nonsense.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Classic of Austrian aristocracy. Mm-hmm. I think he could, he actually taught Ja Japanese in Japan, which [00:28:00] to me Yeah. Classic individual. Beautiful. Yes. And he and mentions Mobu. I think he was read him as well because, well, I know we'd read 'em because it was through unqualified reservations that I discovered the name reading.
There you go. Works. Yeah. And he makes a case of in the old world, the function of the king was to unite with the peasantry against the aristocracy.
Simone Collins: Ooh, that's good. Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: But here's, and I know Moog also made the point of the three Aristotelian forms of government is rule of the many rule of the few rule of one.
Mm-hmm.
And typically speaking the two outta three can, or two uniting can knock out the third. So in our timeline, it would be the people uniting behind the monarch to get rid of the aristocracy. Yeah. Which is basically what you have now is because I was watching M-S-N-B-C or CNN, why was I doing that?
But there's, there was a guy on there who basically said that I. The bureaucracy exists to impede the executive. And in my head I went like, [00:29:00] you just gave the game away right there. You just, wow. Literal. You just said the bureaucracy exists to impede the monarch. That's what you just said. Yeah. And at no point do these people ever discuss, I call it the procedure.
And what I notice on television, all I see is them discussing what should the state be allowed to do? Not what is good policy, not is what is good statecraft. I just say, yeah, this person is doing something that is illegal. I'm like, the reason why politics bores the s**t out of me nowadays is 'cause everyone television just discussed this.
Hmm.
And nothing else. It's the reason why everyone is so dull and boring. 'cause they don't know what good statesmanship looks like. 'cause it isn't discussed anywhere. All they discuss is the legalese. But if you want to discuss what's good statecraft, you have to go back to previous century 'cause we don't see it.
In our timeline.
Malcolm Collins: So the, the by the way, when he, when he talked about bu he's talking about Curtis Jarvin, who's been on the show before. Friend. Yeah. Good, great guy. We, we should have him back on. I sent you an email telling you to ask him back on Simone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I wanted to ask how you prevent, like, this is my [00:30:00] fear around monarchies and why I've generally been more antagonistic to them is you end up like what you had with the Roman Empire where you can get like truly atrocious monarchs that are purely self-interested.
When you look at like, even I'd say average monarchs of the Imperial period of the Roman Empire, what are your thoughts on how you deal with that?
The Aristocratic Utensil: I don't actually think you can. I think that's just a function of history.
Hmm.
And you just have to weather the storm because like, this is someone, this is the common question that you always get asked is what do you do when the corruption gets too hot?
And in our timeline, I. The corruption is not touched through the democratic process. It just grows indefinitely behind the scenes. You're just changing the management, but you're not changing any of the people that pull the strings. So you make a surface change, but nothing actually changes. And so you get to the point where you just invest a whole lot of money and time into this thing that inevitably steals and grows from me to the point where we [00:31:00] don't know how this ends in our timeline because we're not there yet.
Mm-hmm. And I fear the collapse comes. It's gonna be really, really bloody and gory. And I eventually, the imagine bloodshed will arise at some point in our lifetime. I don't wanna go that way. Interesting. But I, I think that is inevitability. 'cause I don't see the permanent bureaucratic class in our timeline willingly give our power.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I don't see them. So I'm like, my take on this is and this is where I push back and stuff like, well, I mean, there could be a rebellion. And I've talked to Simone about this where I'm like, she's like, could there really be a rebellion? And we, and I'm like, well, all you need for a real rebellion to happen in this country is for one party to deny the election results of the other party.
She's said,
Simone Collins: no, no, no, no. I disagree. June's point starving people. Yeah. People have to like literally starving people doesn't
Malcolm Collins: create rebellion. Venezuelas have starving people for a long time and they didn't get a rebellion
Simone Collins: things. It is not on the ground. I think they, no, I think, I think they're fed. They may not have electricity for days.
Malcolm Collins: But they're fact, if [00:32:00] you look at the British Empire, it was the wealthiest part that rebelled first.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Ah, yes. Juche has made that point that the Aris, the aristocracy is always anarchists.
Simone Collins: They are the, they, they do seem to be the most dangerous ones, to be fair. Yes. He said
The Aristocratic Utensil: because the, the anarchists, the, the aristocratic class, they have no interest in good government because they can always leave.
They have money. It's the poorest people that have the most interest in good government because they don't have any other option.
Mm-hmm.
Which is probably why poor people like a strong executive.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Oh, that's a, a really strong tie together here. Okay. Well here's question interesting I have for you. How do you pull all this together?
So like when you look at like crashing fertility rates and what that's gonna do to like the global economic and tax system, sort of, how do you see, what's your past to chart forward into the future? What's your hypothesis for your family, for example?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, good god. So how would I institute, like basically how would you make traditional values Cool.
Mm-hmm. I would say, do you know what I think is honestly missing [00:33:00] from not just the, the right wing? Okay. I'll use an example. And I'm gonna piss off a whole bunch of people saying this 'cause this is sort of where I deviate and annoy a lot of people is, is take for example, Andrew Tate.
Okay.
Now, Andrew Tate is a contentious figure because of what he's done outside of it.
Now my issue with him is I can listen to him and find him an interesting figure despite what he's done. Because the way that I look at him is can he say something interesting and thought provoking? And the answer is yes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. And I can look at somebody and ignore the bad things because I'm only looking for the good things.
Like I can separate the art from the artists and this kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And what I, what I f*****g detest about so many people who claim to be right wing is they look at people like that and they see a face, and all they see is the villainous actions.
Hmm. And
the, the thing that I want to tell these people, do you understand that there's people like me who don't care for the bad things because they're looking at him as a positive role model?
Mm-hmm. When all you see [00:34:00] is the bad. You can't go to somebody else who sees the good and go stop listening to these people because you are looking at the bad and you are trying to impose the bad on them and ignore the good that he is done.
Mm-hmm.
All you see is the face of evil because that's your morality.
And you can't just impose that on somebody and shred the good that he is done because they're looking at going, why are you imposing your evilness on me? I've like, this person did something good for me, and you are chastising him and making me feel like an a*****e for it. That doesn't work. So what you need to do is you need to prop up, Andrew Wilson said this, it's not enough to destroy somebody's worldview.
You have to replace it with something.
Yes, absolutely.
Right wing. The right wing does not have an answer to Andrew Tate's popularity because Andrew Tate is a popular person for the material world.
Mm-hmm.
And you, and if you are trying to impose traditional values, you don't have, you are trying to use a currency that is not currently in circulation.
Simone Collins: But we have to get people off that currency. It's such a toxic currency. Yes. And the right wing
The Aristocratic Utensil: [00:35:00] doesn't know how.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I,
The Aristocratic Utensil: that is the, that's the biggest problem.
Malcolm Collins: I think you point to something really important here that I've seen really positive moves on, which is the idea of cancellation prevents, like the sort of intellectual diversity you see with someone like Andrew Tate and JD Vance has been the biggest hero on this with big balls saying stuff, you know, racist against Indians, like within a year.
Right. And, and consider, even though JD Vance is married to an Indian and has Indian kids and JD Vance was like, f**k off, like, rehired this guy. Like, why, why did you let him quit? Just because it came out that he was a racist. And I think that, like, I remember that.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, that was based.
Malcolm Collins: That was so base we need, like, as this continues, and I saw that as like a a, we had one of our fans reach out to us recently and they're like, actually, like I had been, like, had trouble getting jobs in the corporate world for a long time.
And me and my partner applied to jobs and like, we were hired this year and like, we were shocked and like, the, the partner's working at like a university now. And he's like, like [00:36:00] vulnerable young minds are seeing his potentially conservative worldview. And I think that, that we're beginning to see a sea change on this, but we have to be really fastidious around, like personally not allowing like, cancellations to prevent us from you know, having people on and stuff like that.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I'm, I'm not kinda surprised by his, his choice of, of ladies. Because one thing that you kind of joke about, all white supremacists don't ask them the race of their girlfriends. Yeah, yeah. Which is good because, and people have asked me like, why is that a thing? I said, well, it's very simple because if you are the, if you're the colonial empire, you colonize, oh Lord.
Then they're women.
Malcolm Collins: No, hold on. This is a problem for black supremacists as well. Go to the far left, like, look at any far lefty, like racist. The politician, like a OC or something like that. But they
The Aristocratic Utensil: all have white men.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, usually Jewish white men too.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But like, that's what the power is and women are attracted to power.
Like, that's just like the, the one thing that annoys the crap about Moderna is there's so many things that is natural that we just [00:37:00] ignore.
Hmm. Like, yes, there's, there's those that will go with the Aryan Princess and reproduce their children and then those are like, your genes are s**t you must make with better genes. That's how they're wired.
People
think that's like a controversial thing to say, but that is how they actually look at the world.
Yeah. Whether
you like it or not, you can say it's memetic. 'cause it's, it is funny. But that is how they see things. '
Malcolm Collins: cause we've, we've, we've created f*****g insane ideas of what a racist is. People will be like, if you recognize that there may be any sort of a difference between populations that have been genetically separated for potentially thousands of years, that makes you a racist.
And therefore, a lot of people who are quote unquote, like Johnny Anomaly, who we really like, you know, he's married to like a South American woman or, or you know, JD Vance is married to an India. These people don't have f*****g problems with different races. Like, that's not the thing they're
The Aristocratic Utensil: reading with them.
That's, that's kind of a good indication than not.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I love, there was the one thing where, where the, the left got mad at this guy who had like black kids and like called him racist and he's like, what are you [00:38:00] talking about?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. That's happened
Simone Collins: quite a few times. That is a, a very common,
The Aristocratic Utensil: I will say, I can kill the accusation of racism in like a civilizational state in two paragraphs and just would like two questions.
The one that I always like to go to is how is segregation and nation state borders not the same thing, if not scale,
Malcolm Collins: segregation and nation state borders. Yeah, I, I guess I don't understand what, what do you mean by this? Like, yeah, explain this in more detail. I don't get it.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Well, let's see. If you're segregating, you are suggesting that only a certain amount of people should enter a given territory. Yeah. A nation state is exactly the same thing.
It's just the, the legal bounds to enter is different.
Simone Collins: Oh, I see. Oh. But I don't know, like I, I always thought segregation was about only allowing a certain criteria, people certain criteria in an area. Yes,
The Aristocratic Utensil: yes. Yeah. But exactly. It's the use of force.
Malcolm Collins: Like you are born with your national identity because of where you happen to be born.
It's complete chance, Simone. Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: And it's complete chance. [00:39:00] But you what like ethnic group you're born into. Okay. That's okay. Okay, that makes sense.
The Aristocratic Utensil: But you are still prohibiting the entry into a certain territory through the use of force.
Yeah. Okay. Which is what you do in
segregation as well. Mm-hmm.
And as far as that is concerned, I would just say to say that to anybody. 'cause I know I've noticed leftism loves blood and soil when it's native population, except when it's Europeans, then everyone else must be allowed to enter European territories. It's funny how that one works. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: There's no indigenous people's
Simone Collins: day
Malcolm Collins: in
Simone Collins: the United
Malcolm Collins: Kingdom.
No, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on. It's Europeans. Or where they really hate it if it's blood and soil. Jews. I'm like, yeah. One population in this world where they were displaced by an imperial group, they then took back their native land and are fighting to defend it and you guys want them erased.
The Aristocratic Utensil: But I, I would say.
Say that I conquered a territory, like any tribe or whatever, and somebody comes to me not of that tribe and says, give me access to your land, your people, your capital and its markets, or [00:40:00] else I will call you, insert label X.
Hmm. Yeah.
Why should I listen to that person and capitulate to their demands and grant them everything?
Malcolm Collins: That's a a great point. Yeah, no, because it is a lot of a capitulation. And I think that the way this works within leftism is the intuitive belief in the superiority of their culture. By this, what I mean is leftists believe. They're like, oh, yes, well, like these Muslims may come to our country today and say that they want, you know, gay people should be illegal and everything like that, but eventually our cultural values will erase their own.
And what we have seen is this belief in their superiority is as delusional as anything
The Aristocratic Utensil: else they believe,
Malcolm Collins: anything else they believe, but also, you know, a lot of the historic racists. You know, it's, it, one of those things I always joke is, is, is, you know. You'll see in, in certain populations where they'll be like, oh this is where you get like [00:41:00] delusional racism when you start claiming like every historical figure was actually part of your ethnic group.
Like Oh yeah, the, the, the Greeks were actually Northern Europeans. Yeah. I
The Aristocratic Utensil: I do like that. It always makes me laugh because they also claim our history is evil. But you also, no evil
Malcolm Collins: was of white people.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. And it's like, ah, I so wanna make fun of you all damn day long, because there's just no consistency at all.
It's good stuff.
Malcolm Collins: All right. All right. It's wonderful. Well, I've had oh yeah. Any pass through this? Any path through this that you see for yourself? You mentioned elevating people like Tate, but like how do you, how do you make this, this cool Erta Farms? Is that it?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, dear God, no. I would say it's one thing I don't like about like the Christian worldview is it's very, the, specifically the Protestant wing is, it's very focused on forgiveness.
'cause that whole like equality doctrine is very based on a sort of perverted Christian [00:42:00] perception of almost like the white man's burden
in
a sense. And I, that just ignores all of reality. I've heard a lot of people just say, oh, look like it's our job to like civilize the world. I'm like, okay, well, you do realize that.
Okay, that's kind of imperial, which is kind of based, I'm not gonna lie, but yeah, you, you also, you also want to tell people they should behave like you, but you don't have any reason other than you are telling them this is how they should behave. And that's not how human beings work. People don't like it when other people tell 'em how to behave with no reason other than I told you so.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, when there's no hold on, they give them lots of money. Look at usaid, that's what it was all about.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. And considering USAID was given to my country and it hasn't made a dent in making people say, and I'm not really a believer in that money theory
Simone Collins: exactly though. Exactly. Yeah. So,
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, it tends to, what was it someone said recently?
International aid is taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor, or giving it to rich people in poor countries. That is so, so freaking accurate. Oh my [00:43:00]
gosh. Oh yeah. I
act, I actually had a conversation with with a girl earlier today, and she seemed to be more lefty leaning.
I found her like in a very right wing, like you are an unusual person in a very right wing place. I, I, she, she's not stupid, definitely not, but she's, she hasn't really examined her perceptions of the world. She was very adamant and research into how she sees the world. But I tried to tell her, this is a nice ideal, but you have to look at the world for what it is, not how you wish it to be, especially when it comes to people.
And that is something that I've noticed. A lot of, particularly American right wingers clinging to with like immense f especially when it comes to the Constitution. And there's a really good clip by do you know Judge Politano?
Simone Collins: The name's familiar, what we know. We, you
The Aristocratic Utensil: guys should check him out.
So he had on Lionel Mason both sort of, you know, legal experts and he, Lionel asked them, is the, the US Constitution still valid? And he gives a very interesting answer. He says, it depends on how you look at it formally and [00:44:00] functionally.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. He says formally it still establishes, you know, a three branch of government that is the law of the land.
You know, three branches of government, the separation of powers, yada yada. But he says, functionally it has been an abysmal, abysmal failure. It has failed to retrain powers. It has failed to balance. Like the checks and balances don't work. Congress just passes whatever the hell they want. They tax something.
And he said the best way to sort of rewrite the ship is to appoint governments or appoint judges that will chain the government down. Mm-hmm. And at the end, Lionel says, so the, the problem is isn't the constitution, the Constitution still works it, the problem is it isn't being followed. And I thought. It is kind of weird to me that you suggest the way to fix this is to apply the Constitution, but also people don't listen to it.
Like that makes no sense to me.
Malcolm Collins: People aren't listening to it now. Why would they listen to it then?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Right? Yeah. So I just like, okay, so you are admitting the document has failed because Michael Malice had a good quote. He [00:45:00] said if you think anyone in government now is gonna listen to the whims of dead men from two 50 years ago, that is more utopian than communism.
Like, damn malice has a way of just like cutting through the grain and just like hurting your soul. Like
that's good.
That's good. That is very accurate. And I've noticed some of the Americans that I've spoken to that I can sort of break free from this sort of spell of constitutionalism is my God, they, they start hating their own countrymen.
'cause they, once they realize that, oh. Oh, I can't unsee this. And they come to me and go, I can't speak to anybody else about this because they all look at me like I'm insane.
Hmm.
Like, yeah. If you can tell me how you fixed that, please tell me. 'cause I don't know how to, I don't know how to answer that question.
'cause I also look at these people and go, I'm gonna get hated for exposing the truth. And then like the, the few that agree with me go like, yeah, welcome to the club. Thanks for ruining us. Like, I'm sorry about that. Not much I can do about that.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Not a nice perspective to tell people horrible truths about reality as of people, especially when [00:46:00] it's growing novel.
I don't know, like
Simone Collins: I think if you told that to young people who were just learning about the formation of. The United States. Yeah. They'd be like, oh yeah, this was, it was always, yeah, early draft mode. This was not, do you
The Aristocratic Utensil: know, do you know what's really interesting about that? Now you mentioned that because Aiden is also American, she's a monarchist, and we were looking at perceptions of monarchy mm-hmm.
Across the demographics. And it's really weird when you look at them across the United States and the uk
Oh.
In the, in the uk the younger people hate the monarchy, but the older people have reverence for it, which is understandable. I mean, they grew up in the Elizabethan era, so that's, yeah.
Yeah. Whereas
in the US up to like 25% of Gen Z favor monarchy.
Simone Collins: That makes sense. Really. Yeah. That makes sense.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. Like the, there's like, and it's the reverse for the older age, obviously. Yeah. It's like the older people like uphold monarchy because, well, you know, they're older, they're boomers. Whereas the younger generation sort of look at the con, I think it's because they just look at like their chances of actually getting, I.
Like a house is basically impossible for them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So they look [00:47:00] well smaller government. I I, I see to the people like this, this is the pitch I always tell Americans to with, and they always think like, huh? I say to them, think of Trump. If you gave Trump complete control of the government, okay, but say 90% of government is removed, how much damage could he actually do?
Right. When most of the bureaucracy is gone and there's no taxes to pay for this s**t. Yeah. And they go, huh, I get to pay significantly less tax and I can see the one person doing everything. They're like, that doesn't sound so bad. Like, yeah, I can maybe get on board with that. 'cause the moment you appeal to their pocketbook and like this one person, but they can't do much 'cause the bureaucracy is gone.
Yeah.
Suddenly they look at it like, oh, now my materialism is, I pay less tax.
Simone Collins: Well, it's kind of been like this since the beginning too. I mean, even after we voted in our first president, there was this huge struggle to. You know, n not have him,
Malcolm Collins: you know, it's your ancestors, your, your yeah. They're like, come on man.
Simone Collins: Just, just just be the king. Can you just
Malcolm Collins: talk of, of
The Aristocratic Utensil: George? I've heard some [00:48:00] people just say that. You're like, oh, just Washington. Why didn't you just take the crown and we can be done with this? They were
Malcolm Collins: so ready for it. They were like, okay. Simon, by the way,
you are the descendant of one of George Washington's siblings, and he had no kid.
Yeah. He's a
Simone Collins: great, great, great, great. So you would be
Malcolm Collins: of the monarchy family right now if it existed? Oh,
Simone Collins: yes. I would be in American. I wouldn't dy Yes or Duchess or something. I
Malcolm Collins: would've married into a monarchy. Oh, see? Yeah. Oh, well, what a, what a jack as he was for not accepting it. Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: It is really curious to me that there was 12 years when they had the article of Confederation and that's been totally airbrushed out of history.
Malcolm Collins: Right.
The Aristocratic Utensil: And nobody knows much about America's first government. Like if you ask Americans, who was the first king? They'd all say, oh, George Washington. Like, no, that wasn't the first king or the first the first president. Yeah. It was oh, I can't remember his name now. It was, I think it was
Simone Collins: Don't, yeah,
The Aristocratic Utensil: it was, it was,
Simone Collins: that's because it's airbrushed out of history.
You've literally been brainwashed to not know this.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And it's John Han,
The Aristocratic Utensil: I think was the president of the Congress. [00:49:00]
Simone Collins: Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I think he was the first one that was appointed. And I think there was problem with, with with currency regulation was like one of the biggest ones about they just realized that, okay, this, this doesn't actually work.
There's too many com com competitions. Yeah. Around And you need the central figure. Central, yeah. Remember them saying like, yeah. Like, oh, but if we give birth to an executive, this is gonna be like the fertile grounds of monarchy. Like, oh yeah. If only we can hope. Because you need the central, you need the sovereign.
Yeah. You need the one person when everyone is fighting. I remember I, I spoke to this one girl and she's like very quite lefty leaning and she was in favor of co-ops. And one day she came to me and she said, I'm kind of reconsidering your position. And I said, why is that? And she said to me, well, we have a bunch of people, but they're all fighting.
Like, we just need one person to tell everyone to shut up and what to do. Like Yeah. I wonder why that is.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Daddy needs to stand up and just be like, shut up. We're doing this now. Like
The Aristocratic Utensil: the amount of people who look at Trump as like a father figure when they're [00:50:00] just like. The meme was like, oh, look, daddy's home.
Yes. And now you all have to behave. I'm like, you realize all of you look at Trump like he is a monarchical figure. You look at him like, like the great man. Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And it's very different than the way Milo used to call him Daddy.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But it's, it is curious to me that if you ask most Americans, who's your local representative, they have no idea.
Yeah.
But if you ask him who's in the White House, everyone knows, because the perception even with Americans is that that guy is actually in charge and he's the one that can like, do anything through executive orders. Mm-hmm. And there's service. He can, but the, the problem with that is, is that Congress is like, Congress is a long-term fix for short-term problems.
And executive orders is supposed to be a long-term fix for like really short-term gain.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's. You need to, that needs to be in reverse, but to get people in Congress to do things in the long term, especially when they're there for impossible. Yes. Yeah. Because they're not [00:51:00] interested in governing the nation through long terms, because there's no benefit to them when they leave office.
Mm-hmm.
Like they're there for short term stents to basically loot the place and then get the hell out. Exactly. Other people, you have to think of voting as garbage collection day, as in while they're in office, they can pile on as much corruption as humanly possible. And that little speech of like, oh look, we can just shorthand.
And the, the garbage goes out, disappears, supposedly, but it goes into a landfill and then just the whole process starts all over again. And this, this, this, this little button, reset button that basically stops you from killing politicians because there's no physical repercussions. Like you don't hold the politicians to account ever.
And that's how the bureaucracy goes. And like, do you realize. Voting benefits the elites more than it benefits you. You get the veneer of being in control while somebody else props him on the ballot and which is what they're beholden to. And you don't actually, your process is just like yay or nay. And that's really it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I mean, not, not to mention even that in the United States, it was never supposed to be direct as it is now. But this [00:52:00] thing was a huge mistake. And your
The Aristocratic Utensil: accounting fathers were violently opposed to democracy for of these reasons.
Simone Collins: Yes, they were. They were, yeah. For very good reasons. I mean, first they were like, Hamilton
The Aristocratic Utensil: is like crazy when it comes to democracy.
Like, gee, Hamilton.
Simone Collins: Yeah, no, it's
The Aristocratic Utensil: we like him. He's a, he's, I remember Moberg said like he was America's first monarch. 'cause he's the one who really run the treasury
and ran it
like a proper executive. Like Washington is the face, but like the brains of the operations, like Hamilton is really running the show.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, interesting.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. But
Malcolm Collins: the original Elon the original,
The Aristocratic Utensil: yeah, yeah. Sort of in a sense. And, and, but you know, all of these people have kind of shady, honest backgrounds, especially like. Especially when it comes to sex, like my god, like blackmail in the government. I imagine. I think it was someone had said like the way that China's bureaucracy gets any rank is they need to do some shady s**t to like advance, which is why they're all like sleeve.
Oh, so they
Simone Collins: they have dirt on each other.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. So basically the reason why it's all like militant organized is because they can't step outta balance 'cause they know they'll get screwed if they try. I
Malcolm Collins: love that on this [00:53:00] where we explore how you know, PDF files ever became, like, this is one of the crazy things when we talk about like conspiracies in the US there was a conspiracy that there was a.
Cabal of PDA files who controlled reigns of power within our country or had a great deal of power within our country. And then we found out that was real with Epstein, and now everyone is like, well, we got rid of Epstein, so it must be gone now. Like that's a done thing.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, that's the, that's sort of like, oh look, we can just depose the head of the mob.
And like, no, he's got like capos and a whole bunch of henchmen underneath him. Like the way to topple the hierarchy is to start from the freaking bottom until he is alone. It's, it's not by just capping off the head of the hydra. 'cause then the hydra grows another head.
Mm-hmm.
So what someone on my podcast suggested something interesting, they said that the reason they're not releasing the Epstein files is because the people in government Trump can use them to leverage them and get what he wants.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, that's a fun take. I, I don't think Trump's doing that. I just
Simone Collins: figured it was because I wish he
The Aristocratic Utensil: was based enough to actually do that, but I don't think [00:54:00] it's within him to be that kind of cutthroat as much. Honestly, he's a nice
Simone Collins: person. Like he, he doesn't, he, he wants to. He doesn't want people to hurt or suffer.
He, that's,
The Aristocratic Utensil: that's one thing that's his kind of detriment is that I think Trump is actually too nice. Too,
Simone Collins: too pathetic. I don't think
The Aristocratic Utensil: he is this like ruthless cut road a*****e that everyone thinks like I've, something I thought was very interesting is I've seen like the left try to mean Trump and they always make him sound way more dangerously based than he actually is.
I'm like, can you just give me the Trump that the leftist think he is? It would be fantastic.
Malcolm Collins: He needs to be more.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I said to a friend of mine, there is a, there is a reason why they're like that. Why they look at him as this great evil. It's because it triggers the response mechanism. If he is not this horrible, evil person, then it induces complacency.
Hmm.
They need to him to be this radical figure because if they realize, oh my God, he's not actually gonna like take away my right to, you know, kill my own child in this kind of crazy s**t. He's just like a regular, like [00:55:00] 1990s American democratic dude.
Mm-hmm. Because
if they realize that then they might not radicalize and they might actually become right wing and therefore that would thin their ranks.
So there's, there's functionality in there. Absurdity.
Simone Collins: 100%.
Malcolm Collins: Alright. Alright, well we can't have the episode go on forever, so we gotta stop. We'll let you go.
Simone Collins: Also, it's so late. So thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate. It's actually only
The Aristocratic Utensil: seven 30 here.
Simone Collins: That's, you don't understand. That's like when we're asleep.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, do you, are you like really early bird rises?
Simone Collins: Yeah, we are. I try to wake
Malcolm Collins: up at around two every day. Yeah. So we're, Jesus,
The Aristocratic Utensil: how do you give respect? How do you function?
Malcolm Collins: Wait, are you in the UK right now? No. Yes. Oh, you are in the
uk?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. Yes. I mean, yeah, I'm in green. I
Malcolm Collins: am. I, I am. Are you thinking about a movie like most of the people I know in the UK are looking at getting out at this point?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Well, my family wants to go back to South Africa and that's probably not
Malcolm Collins: fun.
The Aristocratic Utensil: No. Well, they said to me like, do you wanna go home? And I looked at 'em [00:56:00] like, well, I don't have any other family here. Mm. And if I go back home, they said to me, well, you can stay like here close to us. 'cause basically my my aunt and uncle are rather well off and they have like a guest house and they said, well you can stay there.
And I saw the guest house because I hadn't, it's kind of weird the last time they showed it, it was like 2010 Google and there wasn't completed yet. Still in process mode. And I saw it recently 'cause it got updated when like, that's where you want me to stay. And it's like a stone story from a beach. Oh.
In probably a like more safer area when like, I don't actually oppose this.
Malcolm Collins: Look, you, you stack of generators in the UK right now. Like one of the lotus eaters. Right? They got pulled over by like the passport control or something, right?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Callum did for terrorist activities, which was like, oh,
Simone Collins: good heavens.
Yeah. Really? Were you by?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Not as far as I'm aware. No.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. There's a recent conference they had there that a lot of the little see guys rip. But anyway. Yeah. So they I was so afraid of [00:57:00] being like, passport pulled over. Like, I'm like, the UK is getting scary, man.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. I would rather be in South Africa than the uk That's
Malcolm Collins: saving a lot.
That's, that's dire. Yes.
Okay.
I, I don't know if you heard, but Trump's administration is like letting people in for visas from South Africa as like a discriminated group. Yeah. I,
The Aristocratic Utensil: I will, I will say, because I, I sort of see a lot of crazy s**t in South Africa from like my Twitter feed, and a lot of it involves Julius Moer and to the people who have this perspective.
Can I just say this, Julius Moer in South Africa's politics is like a OC to you.
Simone Collins: Oh.
The Aristocratic Utensil: He has no institutional power.
Simone Collins: Okay. And he
The Aristocratic Utensil: never will. He's, he's the crazy person that says insane s**t to be relevant. That's, well, to be fair, like our
Simone Collins: only experience of South Africa was like just going through the townships outside of Johannesburg.
So we, we probably don't have Oh, okay,
The Aristocratic Utensil: okay. Yeah. So you saw like the roughest of it. Yeah, yeah. Like whereas Western Cape is where like, no, f**k up my s**t. Let's, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. There's a thing of like basically [00:58:00] the white of the area, the safer it is, which is reality. Yeah. No, no, no.
Simone Collins: Like the, what we use to de what, when we try to explain to people how demographic collapse is going to play out, we're like, just look at South Africa.
Like,
Malcolm Collins: yes,
Simone Collins: there, there, there're going to be walled gardens that are incredibly nice and that's where all the wealthy people with resources are gonna go. And then there's gonna be the townships, and that's where everyone who is not wealthy and resource is gonna be, you're gonna have brownout, you're gonna have blackouts, you're gonna have crime, you're gonna have rapes.
And that's what it's gonna be.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I, I will say it's, it's, it's so that is kinda a weird place because we essentially have three capital cities.
Hmm.
Which is quite strange that like, I have a, as far as I'm aware, like keep in mind I left South Africa as a child when I was about, just on the verge of 11 years old.
Oh, okay.
So like my, if, if I were to go home now and describe politics, like it's very difficult for me. And we also have a rule, don't discuss politics with people who are not South African
Fair because they
don't understand the reality of demographics. And like, like everything is like, what, [00:59:00] what do you think of like an actual South African thing?
It's like, yeah. All of that. And way more based than any Americans can possibly.
Malcolm Collins: That's what we gathered when we were there. We're like, okay, yeah. I think one of the things in South Africa is that a lot of people are like, oh, it's like white people versus black people.
And it's like, that's not really the way South Africa is tribe. It's, it's corruptly. Everyone else, each other, and the tribes will f**k each other even before they care about if you get one, one tribe elected to power, it's like, okay, let's loot from all the other tribes.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. That's, that's, it's like how any civilization works.
Yeah. South Africa is not unique. It's just unique in our timeline. But if you look at it from like a historical perspective, like if I tell people this if you look at how South Africa's demographics came about, the South Africans, the Africans who are nature of that land, they've been there since 1652.
It predates the American state.
Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. They've been there for, I didn't realize it was 16 hundreds. That is.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. It's really, really old.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): To put that in context, you know how now we're all, oh my gosh, I can't believe the Jews would [01:00:00] displace the historic Muslims who lived in Israel. Well, Israel only became, or the place we call Israel today, Muslim majority in the 12th century, so not that much earlier than this group moved to Africa.
Malcolm Collins: We do have to, this is, oh my gosh, so long at this point. So, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's fun. It's so fun talking with you.
Spoon. Thank you so much for going on.
Great. Having you on.
The Aristocratic Utensil: How did you guys actually, how did you guys actually discover my channel?
Malcolm Collins: I watched Aiden's channel first. I, I then watched some of your content with her. I then watch some of your content.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, okay.
Simone Collins: I'm gonna say algo for me.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I, oh my goodness.
Yeah. YouTube is actually quite nice to me, which is bizarre. 'cause I've been told, like you say, a lot of spicy things, but YouTube tends to recommend me for some. I think it, it
Simone Collins: just, it just assumes, you know, it, here's your, you know, it must, it must process your accent and be like, oh yes. I just noticed, have you
Malcolm Collins: noticed that YouTube has started suppressing?
I we recently did an and an episode and there were two lowest episodes. And I think YouTube is suppressing both topics.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.
What's going on? You might want to rephrase it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [01:01:00] Okay. I won't say anti, I'd say an issue related to the gender people. Gender people you know,
The Aristocratic Utensil: contemplating the rainbow hippies.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. The rainbow hippies. Yeah. No, actually I, I have a question for you because this, it is pretty interesting. When I look at you, you are really much in like the social circle of, I think like the old YouTube conservative group. Or, or like, like questioning woke group. Do you know when we talk about things like Aporia or Johnny Anomaly or Ew, do you know who any of these people are?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Some of the names do do surface. Okay.
Simone Collins: Okay. So
Malcolm Collins: you
Simone Collins: do know a job? Yeah. Okay. You're, you're on, you're on X way more than we are, I think. So that yeah,
The Aristocratic Utensil: I, I mainly, I mainly use X to s**t post. I've, I've, I've had some people like. Come to me especially women, and say to me like, you're very aggressive with how you are with women.
And my immediate response is, have you seen my content? Like, yes. I, I am very much against like any people voting and I don't think women should have a say in polls. I'm very [01:02:00] vocal about that. I will openly say that I don't care who gets offended. The thing of it is that I find very fascinating about that is the women who are traditional are more traditional than the men.
Oh yeah. Why that is
Malcolm Collins: so people don't dunno this, but during suffrage in the United States, the primary anti suffrage group was the women. Women, yeah. Dude. Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. And I, I said to them as well, like, if you look at my audience and my timeline, I always tell people what irks me. It's not just like, I hate women today, and then just like ramble, like, no, no, no.
I will give you an example of this thing that is currently pissing me off. And when it comes to like, women, it was probably a woman who DMed me in the first place,
right?
Because they come to me and go, spoon, look at the stupid s**t that my sex is doing. Yell at them. I basically, yeah, they, they're the, they're the police.
Malcolm Collins: They're the, the secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Because I, I tell guy, I tell guys this, like, be the guy that can openly talk about women in like in a bashfully, well, in modern day sexist kind of ways, because [01:03:00] women cannot talk about other women to women because it just escalates into a fight. I. Yeah.
So they will
go to a guy and say, this is the stupid s**t my sex is doing.
I know this annoys you as well. It's one of the, one of the few times, 'cause I know women has this tendency of don't actually solve my problem, just listen.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no. Yeah. No. But there's a bigger problem of like, the guys who are feminists are always the worst guys to women. Yeah. It's also true recently, you know, like yusof that put out like the, you know, this one where they, they have the Johnny Somalia simulator.
Where you go around as a black guy and kill random Japanese. Great phrase by the way. You know, great. I heard that I was, as soon as I heard Johnny Somali simulator, I was like, yeah, yeah. I was like, that's
The Aristocratic Utensil: brilliant actually.
Malcolm Collins: That's what this game is. But anyway, so they're now in a lawsuit in France.
And the things that their executives were doing to employees are horrifying. One of them yeah, I wouldn't be surprised of, would play porn so loud. Everyone in the office could hear it. And he made a woman do a handstand so he could see her skirt in front of the entire office. And then at [01:04:00] another time you had other employees holding down, very progressive woman so he could kiss her at a party.
Like when somebody's doing feminist s**t, this is the s**t they're doing behind closed doors.
Simone Collins: That sounds about right. Yeah. Well, Malcolm, you found the solution. You, you, you didn't marry a woman, you married an artist and that is the only safe way you hold it, but Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: But the, the, the point that I was trying to make is that this is one of the few times where you can actually listen to a woman explain her problems because the issue that is, is not one that can be solved.
The issue is just like her own annoyance that her own sex.
Hmm.
Yeah. So that's one of the things that you can listen to and like sympathize with, because I can guarantee you what annoys her also annoys you and you'll become friends. Because the one thing is mutual hatred.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And there, and there's nothing, nothing that can be done about it.
So Yes. That's, there's no solution that you're like dying to present.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But they just want you to say can, like, can this. That must be so
Simone Collins: frustrating. I'm so sorry. Yes. Tell me more. I have How did that make you feel?
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Yes, I have, I have one female friend when she streams with other streamers, like when they're women, she just like messaged me like, oh my God, these women are annoying.
The crap [01:05:00] outta me. And then she comes to things with me. Partner
Malcolm Collins: streaming is a woman, right? Yes,
The Aristocratic Utensil: I know. And I also have a, another girl that I stream with on Rumble vex Electronica. It's a bit of a different stream with Aiden. 'cause Aiden is very prim and proper and she like organizes everything ruthlessly.
And Vex just messaged me and goes, I'm annoyed. Let's stream. And then we just make five hours disappear with no prep at all. Yeah. So it's just like a rambling And we, yes. Yeah. 'cause we get to say game of words and just like, this is the dumb s**t that is currently wrong with the world, especially culturally.
Mm. Because
we are there's a lot of sort of like cultural anti woke people that we don't like because they're, they're just liberals.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they just
The Aristocratic Utensil: disgruntled with liberals that went to fond a slippery slope and they don't know how to pull it back other than just yelling.
Malcolm Collins: Interesting. But I'm trying to do a better job like myself.
'cause earlier asking like how we found you if connecting with other conservative streamers one of the things we've been looking at doing forever, we've talked with the Heritage Foundation about doing this. When we get together, we should talk about putting the first steps into this. Simone is putting together a conference to connect conservative influencers with conservative [01:06:00] policy makers.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Like there's, I think the problem though is,
Simone Collins: is again, de spoons repeated references. What would ever incentivize a conservative lawmaker? To do anything that isn't in their immediate best financial, the Heritage Foundation are
Malcolm Collins: good guys who wanna make the world a better place. The heritage.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Heritage. But they are not themselves, the policy makers. They have to find ways to connect the short term and often financial incentives of the policy makers. The policy, long term best interest
Malcolm Collins: affect elections. The Democrats have been using the influencer class to affect elections for ages without any reciprocation.
At the very least, we can try to create some reciprocation where the influencers can affect policy.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. I, I would say the sort, the sort of, the real problem with appealing to a right wing base is that is it's, it's very cruel, like right wing politics, like left wing politics is very fairytale and idealistic and it's why it appeals to women.
Hmm. Whereas the right wing sort of Chad [01:07:00] aggressiveness really appeals to men, but like. That worldview is very difficult to sell to men right now because it is more than just materialism.
Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna disagree here every right wing conference and you know, I go to a lot of Rightwing events and one of the funny things is whenever I meet somebody who used to go to left wing events and now they go to right wing conferences and they're like, oh my God, everyone is so nice and accepting at right wing conferences.
Yes, that's true. And everyone at the left wing conferences was so judgy and hateful. I didn't, and there's no, no, no, there's a
Simone Collins: spectrum. So the, the. Old guard, conservative right-wing conferences feels very cliquey and very like, Hmm, you're not,
The Aristocratic Utensil: yes, you're not quite right. I have heard as well. And then
Simone Collins: the like, farthest, farthest, farthest left American ones are like, Hey, come here.
I need to tell you my conspiracy theory. I, I'm a sovereign citizen and here's how it works. And you should never pay your taxes. And like, these
Malcolm Collins: aren't the lefty right wing conferences. These are the more right wing, the more right wing It is. Like the more, the more open it is. Yeah. The more welcoming it is.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
Malcolm Collins: it's so funny, these people I'm talking about who are like lefties, I don't mean like normal lefties, I mean like obvious [01:08:00] trans people. They'll be like, oh yeah, the right wing conferences have been so much nicer than the left wing conferences.
Simone Collins: Yeah. They, they, I think, yeah, I think they enjoy hanging out at the, the right wing office.
There
The Aristocratic Utensil: was a, there was a point that I saw someone say that it was interesting. They said like, the right wing is full of gay is. Strip people, they're actually gay. Whereas the left wing people are all straight people pretending to be gay. It's,
Malcolm Collins: it's funny you say that Maddie is
The Aristocratic Utensil: so freaking accurate.
Like, holy s**t, I know so many people who fit this paradigm. Like
Malcolm Collins: it's not even funny making a population. That's a strategy in animals where you pretend to be the other gender to the force.
The Aristocratic Utensil: But it, it disturbs me. Like why is that a thing with the right, because I've noticed there's a lot of like, there is, there is, there's so much sexual degeneracy in the right wing.
It's like I, when I look at some of the people, 'cause I know some of them behind the scene. No, it's only
Simone Collins: degeneracy because it's on the right wing. It would just be normalcy if it were on the left wing.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Whoa. Okay. I never, I grew up on the hard
Simone Collins: left, so I know this.
Malcolm Collins: So, so I recently was at a Heritage Foundation conference and [01:09:00] this was on like gender being realistic about gender issues.
And it was so funny, the conference was like, I'd say 25% lesbians and people at the, this is the Heritage Foundation and lesbians at the conference joked that this was the main lesbian dating event of the year. That's so, because it was the only place they could go where it was still all real women.
The Aristocratic Utensil: No, no. Can, can I read something interesting? This, this pulpit? I actually, 'cause a while ago, GR three came out on Twitter. That's so good. It's amazing. Yes. And yeah, it said it has some better views. So I, I threw it a curve ball. I said to them, can you give a cultural critique that you would employ to persuade women to give up the right to vote?
Okay. Okay. And it's was
really, really good.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, give it to us. Give it to us. It
The Aristocratic Utensil: said it said, okay. Let's dive into this with a thought experiment. I'm assuming you're looking for provocative cultural critique and not literal policy proposal. I'll channel [01:10:00] a mix of historical perspective, social theory, and a dash of contrarian flared to craft and argue.
It sounds like me actually. Here's how we might go. I. Imagine a cultural critique rooted in the idea of modern democracy with its obsession and over individual rights has eroded something deeper, communal harmony and natural division of labor that once held societies together. Mm-hmm. You could argue that voting as a symbol of atomized power pulls women away from a more primal, influential role, the stewards of family and culture.
The pitch might lean on a romanticized pass. Think pre-industrial tribes or even Victorian ideals where women's authority wasn't diluted by a ballot box, but concentrated in the home, shaping the next generation's values directly. The critique would borrow from thinkers like Rousseau, who saw excessive individualism as a societal rot and twisted women's suffrage.
While soulless empowerment actually traps them in a masculine game of power struggles and abstract debates disconnecting them from their supposed true strength. Nurturing [01:11:00] intuition and moral grounding at a modern swipe. The chaos expos in 24 7 news cycles shows how voting fuels division not unity, and women as the civilizing force might reclaim the influence by rejecting the circus altogether to persuade you'd frame it as liberation, not loss.
Ditching the vote isn't subjugation, but a bold opt out from a broken system, a return to a sphere where influence isn't diluted by partisan noise. It's a hard sell, obviously, but I would lean heavily on nostalgia and gender essentialism, which plenty would call out as bunk, but that is a cultural angle dialed up to 11.
Okay,
Simone Collins: I love it. No, no, no, no. It's, it's there. That's it. I mean, between, between the the four Bs movement and trad wives and stay at home girlfriends. This is very much something that appeals to all ends of the political spectrum of female.
Malcolm Collins: But hold on. I wanna read something that was posted in our discord in relation to this topic that I found really compelling.
And I'm like discord, by the way. Because modern feminism is a [01:12:00] movement that serves the male sexual imperative. It tells women that we should accept a man fornicating with us with no commitment. If we say no, he will go watch porn of women being beaten and trafficked and demeaned. If we say yes, he will demand that we mess up our body and hormone cycle was a pill.
If the pill doesn't work, he won't support us, and authority figures will encourage an abortion. No wonder so many women are rabidly abortionists when the alternative is grim for them, which will traumatize you if we date. He will eventually have you move in and perform domestic labor while having you pay rent and not giving you the benefits of marriage.
And if you marry, you will bear children while working full time and doing most of the housework. Basically, the feminist movements are huge simps for Chad, and then wind up unhappy and miserable if they have children at all. I mean, I don't agree with all that, but that's compelling.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I don't think any of that is true.
Malcolm Collins: You don't.
The Aristocratic Utensil: No.
Malcolm Collins: About [01:13:00] feminists.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, okay. It's okay. Whenever I hear feminist in the word marriage, it's, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, beer on ice don't go together.
Malcolm Collins: I am a feminist. Right. And, and because I'm a feminist, while my wife does the housework, she also makes the family's money. Money.
It's empowering. It's empowering. I'm a feminist. Yes.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Right. It's a
Malcolm Collins: feminist. But
The Aristocratic Utensil: like
they, they, I kind of wanna say to them, like, what do you, to those women, what do they think their role in society actually is? Because a friend of mine said something horrible said to me like, women's own values basically sex.
If you strip that away, like everything else can be done better by men.
Simone Collins: Well, making babies. It's not sex, it's, it's childbearing.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But that is directly correlated to sex. I mean, I'm not necessarily necessarily their ways, I would say, but that, but that is, that is their role in basically human civilization.
Is to reproduce nice offspring.
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, no, no. We, we are the, we are the agar, we [01:14:00] are the stable substrate of civilization and men are the high risk, high reward, disposable propagators of good software updates.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Thank you for causing us disposable. That's very kindly. You're
Simone Collins: welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Third, thank you.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.
Simone Collins: I called me a stable agar. All right. It's, it's fine.
The Aristocratic Utensil: But there's, there's utility instability, so that's kind of thing where it's like there's utility in pushing software update.
Simone Collins: Okay. It's just that only the good software updates get pushed.
The Aristocratic Utensil: I would say it's only compatible hardware that can receive the good software.
That's kind of my
comeback. Shauna,
Simone Collins: you really don't need to write your stuff, man. It's, it's there. I,
Malcolm Collins: in the beginning. This is, this is a good intro. Okay. Anyway, I
The Aristocratic Utensil: have I have used that argument for a lot of the things that I think is, I think it's because Moog writes like, everything is a computer program.
Mm-hmm.
And because I'm a guy and I also have this like input process, output function, whenever I analyze things I kind of like that. So I said to [01:15:00] people, the way that the globalists look at human beings, they look at them like they're pieces of, of software that just, or a hardware that can be updated.
I'm like, sure. That's not how humans work. They're not just, Hey, look, here's just the hardware that can be updated. Like if you ever worked with an actual computer, you can't just upload any software to the hardware, especially if it's old.
This is true with a
computer. You can throw it away, you can upgrade the hardware, but not all hardware upgrades are compatible.
That's where you're running the freaking problems. Like, Hey, look, we're gonna make like a freaking Pentium two run Windows 11. Like, no, you are not. That's, that's not gonna work. So good luck with that. I actually wrote a bit about free speech using that, and I'm curious how it's gonna go because I, I said a horrible thing with regards to free speech that it's gonna make free speech has explode.
I try to reframe it as an argument that free speech is not just like speech. It's actually like a consumable.
Oh yeah. That's interesting. That's fair.
Yes. In the sense of, in the real world, if you look at something like drugs and [01:16:00] alcohol, that is regulated because it can alter behavior.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sure.
The Aristocratic Utensil: And I said speech has the same effect. It can also radically alter people's behavior and make them believe in insane things like trans people are real. Mm-hmm. Which is not f*****g true.
Mm-hmm. And the
other argument that I have is that. Speech is not information in isolation. It needs a base where those ideas will actually gel.
Yeah. And the argument from free speech absolutes is that the way to be bad speech is more speech. And I fundamentally disagree with that 'cause it's not true. In fact, the way that I characterize it, and I will, I will basically power through this 'cause I think this is probably the smartest thing that I've ever said is that the idea that the best way to compare bad speech is with better speech is like saying the antidote of fat people is better food.
You have to understand why they eat the bad food. Yeah. It's not that better food doesn't exist. [01:17:00] It is that they want the bad food because it makes them feel better. It is not an issue of being factually correct. It is about an emotional appeal.
Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.
The Aristocratic Utensil: That is a difficult thing to sell to people that is like, Hey, look, you can have, like, on the one hand you can have broccoli and steak or whatever, and that's really good, but other end is pizza.
And pizza is a hell a lot better than the former.
Mm-hmm.
Unless you're me who eats it every damn day. Pizza or broccoli. I, I eat, eat pizza literally every single day.
Malcolm Collins: Oh.
Simone Collins: What are we having
Malcolm Collins: for dinner? It has all the food groups know, I send you down to make food. I've got a, yeah, I've
Simone Collins: got a surprise for you.
Actually tonight, let's just say it has something to do with my dubious heritage. Your devious. Is it my dubious heritage? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Oh no. Jewish.
Simone Collins: You'll find out. No, don't look. It's all, all, we'll see. It
Malcolm Collins: is good to have you on and have a spectacular day.
Simone Collins: Yes. This was a pleasure. You are so clever, so fun.
Everyone. Definitely make sure you check out. We
Malcolm Collins: doing
Simone Collins: okay. Sorry. Okay. Bye [01:18:00] Bye. Bye.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Cheer
Malcolm Collins: on. I'm hitting end recording. I'm hitting record now and we can throw this at the end, but Yeah, I, no, I'm sorry. I have to talk. What, what are they thinking? Like why intentionally be an a*****e when you're trying to get support? We were talking about the DDoS attack by Ukraine on, on X.
Simone Collins: Well, allegedly, you know, still not confirmed. Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They, the left is pretending likes, that's, that's what Elon
Simone Collins: Musk said is, is it appears to be Ukraine related. So
The Aristocratic Utensil: yeah, who
Simone Collins: knows? He's
The Aristocratic Utensil: got some good social capital to believe, I suppose.
Simone Collins: I imagine his information sources are pretty good. So
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes, considering he is working with the, the state, so Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And Elon Musk allegedly is a lot more value
Malcolm Collins: than Trump is buying a Tesla tomorrow.
And is telling all his supporters to buy them to support Ellan? No, a cyber truck. That's so
Simone Collins: sweet. Aw. I hope it's a gold cyber truck because otherwise I. All that's
Malcolm Collins: wow.
Simone Collins: Oh wow.
Malcolm Collins: But I, I thought that was really sweet of Trump to do for Elon. You know, it shows a [01:19:00] lot of support from him. Yeah, and I think one of the benefits of this, like recent slew of Elon Attacks has been that it has made specifically Trump incredibly sympathetic to Elon.
Mm-hmm.
And I think a lot of Trump's inner circle who maybe previously would've been more cold on Elon better understand, you know, just how much he's taking for this. That's a really good point. Which further embeds him within the administration, sort of loyalty department.
Yeah.
Hmm. Okay.
And there was the, well I think, you know, we're also beginning to see sort of who the slimy guys are. Like it was Mark Rubio who Elon was dressing down. And Mark Rubio was just being completely like an a-hole. Elon was like, you literally have fired no one. And Mark Rubio apparently reported you know, shot back.
Oh, what about all those people that accepted Layaways, like those 1,500 people? Like, does that not count? Oh,
Simone Collins: for the [01:20:00] love?
Malcolm Collins: And it's like, obviously that doesn't count. You, you, what are you talking about? That is what Elon did. That is what happened automatically. You were supposed to be doing something to make your own apartment more efficient as well, like everyone else.
Simone Collins: Yeah. As if he was like exempt from it.
Malcolm Collins: For those literally
Simone Collins: the lowest effort option meant that he did anything. So, wow.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That he didn't actively fight other people helping him. I, you know, my little brother is on Doge now. So that's really cool. So he hopefully gonna go in, fix all of this, but it, it, it, I think showed that, that Rubio has no future in the Republican party where it's going that he would resist the efforts of Doge is just, you know, this is something that's like not just a Republican winner, but has like 70% like broad approval among Americans.
Like, it shows a complete alliance with deep state slime over you know, the American people. Which I guess I should have guessed, like Mark [01:21:00] Rubio does have a face that sort of looks like deep state ally type. Do, do you get that impression when you look at him like, I. If I went to like a bureaucrat party, I'd expect him to be like king bureaucrat.
The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I wonder what I come off as to people, 'cause people say like I code specific ways. I don't think it's as a generic lefty, but mm-hmm. But certainly not conservative. Like they see it, they say you code like a dominatrix librarian.
Simone Collins: Yeah. What's right? I mean, we, we typically hear soy boy with you, but which that's like, that's the most common word.
That is common. Yeah. It's
Malcolm Collins: a common word. And it's, it's like obviously non-descriptive because I have, you know, fairly defined cheekbones, jaw, everything like that. So I don't know.
Simone Collins: I don't, I think soy is, is not a physiology thing exclusively. It's, I, I really don't know. I really don't [01:22:00] know. Maybe it has to do with your voice too, because you don't have a deep booming voice.
Kind of how with the animatronic Abraham Lincoln, that, well, they made his
Malcolm Collins: voice deeper to, to they,
Simone Collins: they intentionally changed his voice. They had a historically inaccurate voice because Lincoln too did not have a low booming voice. And therefore,
Malcolm Collins: oh, by the way, on the, on the episode on gay conversion stuff, I don't know if you saw the title I came up with for it.
I love
Simone Collins: your title and I am excited, which is,
Malcolm Collins: does electrocuting gay people turn them straight? We have to at least try. This is gonna be. The episode's actually pretty good prepped because I went into it. Like AI was like really resistant to say that any of it might work. And so, and obviously like I'm not gonna trust if there's like a bunch of studies saying it doesn't work because, you know, you'd lose your job if you said it didn't work.
So I decided to try to understand better when the specific types of treatment that they're using within conversion therapy were used in other aspects of psychology, [01:23:00] like for phobias and stuff like that. Did they work? And the answer is broadly no. Like most of the stuff used in conversion therapy does not appear to work.
It's not that there are like nothing would work. I, I suspect some medication stuff aimed at reducing libido would be fairly effective. But you cannot create arousal where previously none existed. Oh, for sure. All of our understanding of. Of sexuality. Yeah. So you, yeah. Like you can't
Simone Collins: give someone a foot fetish.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You can't give someone who doesn't have a foot fetish. A foot fetish.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It's not contagious. You can't catch gay. You can't catch straight. It doesn't work that way. I mean, although I don't know though. So here's where I'm like, not so sure. Because this whole issue when I worked at hub pages was what the moderation team referred to as auntie porn.
Like auntie, like someone's
Malcolm Collins: aunt. Oh yeah, yeah. You mean the Indian thing?
Simone Collins: Yeah. It was like normal Indian woman and I, I mean normal because normally when you see a, a [01:24:00] picture of an Indian woman, she is a 10 out of 10 gorgeous woman. This was like sixes, fives, right? So, so not an online, like even mid person.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And it was things like armpits and that I was extremely culturally specific.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, I, I think you know, different cultures of ethnic, okay. But there may be ethnically linked fetishes or ways of looking at things.
Like, if you're talking about people who present phenotypically oh, so you just,
Simone Collins: you think it's genetic, the just that it happens
Malcolm Collins: to be yeah, for example. Does, does Japan have a higher prevalence of that than other regions? I would guess it probably does. In terms of No, no. Like you don't think that they have a high really, that would astonish me.
Simone Collins: We've, we've seen so much hint eye at this point. And also like when I was in Japan, I collected as a teen, I would collect all of the little, sex [01:25:00] worker cards. They had like little sticky notes that they would put all over, like rails of bridges and stuff. So that, like, you'd call them, like, you'd pick up, it's like a, a business card, but also sticky notes.
Right. But, and like none of them emphasized armpits and pictures. That was
Malcolm Collins: not a silly point. What are you, how are you confused? I said phenotypically young. I am trying not to say a word that gets this demonetized
Simone Collins: that, that No, no, no.
Malcolm Collins: Obviously.
Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. So that, that is a, a, a greater tendency. I don't know though, in,
Malcolm Collins: in Japanese look, it would be weird if arousal patterns did not code into ethnic and regional groups.
That would be No, no, I
Simone Collins: agree
Malcolm Collins: with you
Simone Collins: on that. But I think that being into really responding to youth sexually is a pretty universal super stimuli that people respond to. Okay. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But this Indian thing I do not think is cultural. I think it's genetic.
Simone Collins: You just think it's genetic. So there is variation, but you just don't think it's cultural.
Malcolm Collins: I don't think it's cultural.
Simone Collins: I, I could see that.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, okay, so what would be the argument here? Like let's think through this. Okay. Okay. If it was [01:26:00] cultural, yeah. You wouldn't expect so many cross-cultural and cross timelines wise, unusual fetishes. Mm-hmm. As I've pointed out, typically, if you can find it unusual fetish today, you can find it mentioned somewhere in a history book as well.
Mm-hmm.
Which we've gone into on, on some episodes. There are, e except for ones that they maybe lacked the technology to create in the past or something like that. But generally speaking which implies to me that this is not a cultural phenomenon, even though people believed it to be the one.
Like for example, the one instance where there was a belief that I'm thinking of even historically in cultural fetishes was the English vice, was the idea that English liked being spanked because they were exposed to it, like in their school system. Ah. And so, you know, getting spanked with a paddle was like more common that I wouldn't say as cultural.
That I would say is exposure, potentially alerting them of a fetish they may have that other people don't have. But I, I, I, so I think that, [01:27:00] you know, you have some cultural like exposure, like I, you know, but I'm exposed to normal looking women and like armpits and like navel, I would know do nothing for you.
If that was arousing to me, like, oh, I
Simone Collins: don't think I've, I've never seen belly buttons actually, so. But
Malcolm Collins: changing what arouses you, I just think is incredibly difficult. Or, or making a new thing arouse you that doesn't previously arouse you. No,
Simone Collins: totally. I agree. I agree.
Malcolm Collins: I, in fact, I've never heard of somebody being like really grossed out by something and then later it becoming one of their fetishes.
Um Mm. Like a sign flip. Like a sign flip in like adult life. I've never heard of that.
Simone Collins: I
Malcolm Collins: haven't
Simone Collins: either though. I do wonder if the sexual proclivities of the guy who had a rod shot through his head,
Malcolm Collins: like, oh, Finnis gage.
Simone Collins: Yeah. 'cause Phineas Gage had a lot of personality shifts. I wonder if his sexuality was also, apparently he
Malcolm Collins: became much more sexually aggressive after that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. [01:28:00] But that's, that could just be grouped with overall aggression, you know, like maybe the, the sexual or just, or worse
Malcolm Collins: or worse inhibition centers.
Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah. I don't, I don't see that as, as compelling. But I don't know. Finney Gage what a name too. It sounds like a very steampunk name. If you had to just think of a Steampunk name, you'd be like, oh, oh, Finney Gage.
Malcolm Collins: I like that too. Yeah. Yeah. Just have to choose it. Not even knowing who he was. Goodness gracious.
And what else did you learn anything today?
Simone Collins: What have I learned? Oh I, I've been working with Emma Waters on finding points of contact to reach out to. I will give you email drafts to review tomorrow morning for five people or so, asking for 30 minute meeting.
Simone wrote some
Malcolm Collins: executive orders for the Trump administration and we're trying to find people to give them to
Simone Collins: well prenatal
Malcolm Collins: list org. [01:29:00] Did,
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: I'm, I'm prenatal list org did through you. It's not like they paid you.
The Aristocratic Utensil: No. So
Malcolm Collins: you did. I wish they did. We, we don't accept any money from our foundations right now.
We're like super lean which, you know, whatever, maybe, maybe we won't be super lean forever, but right now, you know, it's a, it's a one directional cash flow into the orgs, not out of the
Simone Collins: we, we give it money and work. But yeah. So I will send you those email drafts to see if we can.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Why the Left Can't Mentally Model the Right
24 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into research papers exploring how political ideologies affect empathy and understanding between left-leaning and right-leaning individuals. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon where conservatives seem to display more empathy towards liberals than vice versa. Studies like 'Empathetic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals' provide insights into this asymmetry. We also touch on dehumanization, cultural narratives, and real-world examples from gaming communities. Join us for an eye-opening discussion on political empathy and cultural dynamics.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be an episode where we're gonna go over a few research papers that explore lefty and righty brains. Again, really interestingly, but with a focus on a persistent phenomenon that has been found, which is that people on the right politically.
Have a much easier time modeling how people on the left think than people on the left able to model people on the right.
Simone Collins: That is so strange. That is so strange. Yeah. The people I grew up thinking as someone on the left, that we were the empathetic ones, that we understood everyone better and we knew what everyone we needed.
Malcolm Collins: How can we get this so wrong? Oh, it's not just that we're gonna go into other things. So like, just speaking of them not being empathetic, just to give a little sure thing away here. So there were four studies with nearly 4,800 participants in the UK and the us Okay. To look at how much empathy each side had for their political opponents.
Yeah. This was called empathetic [00:01:00] conservatives and moralizing liberals. Political intergroup empathy varies by political ideology and is explained by moral judgment.
So what it showed is that liberals have less empathy for conservatives than conservatives have of liberals. This actually
Simone Collins: makes a lot of sense too, because I remember being on the left, growing up. Having empathy for the entire world, but still seeing conservatives as this inhuman boogeyman. Yeah, so that actually checks out.
That's wild.
Malcolm Collins: Conservatives do not dehumanize lefties. But lefties do dehumanize conservatives. They do. They do. And, and this is, this is seen in the data, like this study was like, surprisingly, conservatives showed more empathy for liberals than liberals showed of conservatives. This asymmetry was found across studies and was statistically reliable.
Why is it surprising? Maybe it's surprising because of your own biases going into the study. And I love the way the study explained this away. It's like, well, this is actually justified because [00:02:00] lefties beliefs, conservatives want to kill them, and conservatives don't think lefties wanna kill them. And I was like, well, but conservatives don't want to kill them, so it's not, this is like saying the Nazis were were justified because blood libel.
They're like, yeah, well they did think the Jews were murdering their babies. And it's like, yeah, but the Jews weren't murdering their babies. That doesn't make their ideology justified. What? What are you talking about? Now I note here that there was a great study done on the nature of the dehumanization, which I think can help.
So, this was the study, political meta dehumanization in mental representations, divergent emphasis in the minds of liberals versus conservatives. And this study found that liberals and conservatives differed in how they dehumanize the other, at least in the framing of this static. Okay. So what this study found was that.
Conservatives tend to view liberals as immature, while liberals see conservatives as savage. Which is true. But one is like a pitying, like if you had more information. Yeah, yeah.
Simone Collins: You're just misinformed. You're [00:03:00] just, you're not exposed to the world as it's, I, I
Malcolm Collins: like that's dehumanization. It's not dehumanization.
That's just like. Actually the way it is. If, if I believe that, if they, if, if you actually empathize with someone and see them as human, you're going to think that the reason they hold these views is they just don't have access to as much information as you Yeah.
Simone Collins: That you must know something that they don't know and then that's why you view what you view.
Yes, yes. Which, which is framed as, that's how I remember viewing conservatives as. A leftist young lady.
Malcolm Collins: No, and I remember, Hey, I was a leftist at one point too, and I remember conservatives are the savages who live in the woods and are religious extremists and don't know any. Yes, scary
Simone Collins: Bible. Thumping.
Cultist. Monsters who don't care about other people at all and just want you to live like them. And
Malcolm Collins: yeah. So I wanna talk about like what creates this phenomenon. Yeah. And, and I should note the first study that I was mentioning that led to all of this I heard one guy, I. Point out this was short phyto, Taku [00:04:00] say that in one study it was actually that lefties were three x worse the rate of conservatives in terms of modeling them.
Oh my gosh, I blind that exact study, so I don't know where exactly he was getting that from, but it seems believable given what I've seen. And we recently, oh wait,
Simone Collins: no, no, no. This was What if all test Who said that? While we were driving. Oh yeah. It's one of our hits.
Malcolm Collins: You said that. Yeah. Not short fighter ta.
And, and this was a great video by would've called his, by the way, he's totally back. He's got some fun videos. The one that you missed that I thought was really good was on, and you should check it out was on the anti civilization, looking at how the steps. Kept producing people in groups that went out and destroyed all of this various civilizations of the world.
Whether it was the Chinese, whether it was the Europeans, whether it was the Indians. Wow. And this one region of the world, like in civ, like a, a sponsor reefers.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Just kept spotting the things that destroyed civilization. Yeah. Wait, the reefers, how do you know mass effect? '
Simone Collins: cause Well, in, in, in. In [00:05:00] Serenity, there were, oh, this is the different, oh, okay, okay.
Yeah, this is different universe, whatever.
Malcolm Collins: But anyway yes. Very interesting. And we might do a, a different video on that. I idea, because I think it's really interesting the idea of an anti civilization uhhuh. Although I'd go further and I'd say that their civilization is the anti Jews. They are the exact antithesis of Jewish history.
IE Oh, because they're,
Simone Collins: they're, well. If Jews represent order and process, if leaving
Malcolm Collins: urban centers, these, these
Simone Collins: represent anarchy in distribution. Yeah, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And having a vested interest in maintaining a stable status quo. Mm-hmm. These individuals mm-hmm. They are entropy, entropy incarnate. They lived almost entirely outside of cities, almost entirely with the benefit of the status quo being destroyed.
Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: they're very, very interesting to go into. But that's for another episode. But anyway, so, yeah, he, he pointed that out and I don't think that Rudyard lies about stuff. He seems to know his stuff, so he got it from somewhere. But what I was getting from short fatty taco oh, [00:06:00] was a really interesting instance of this that happened recently.
Okay. Where an individual named Bonni or Bunny or something who is a trans game maker. So one of our friends, stuttering Craig, who does Side Scrollers which is a conservative leaning video game podcast, the number one video game podcast, I think. He did this like just focused on like video game news.
Yeah. He put together a reward show called The Real Gamer Awards and, and Bunless Game, nightmare Cart ended up winning. People would pay to vote and the idea was to build an award show without any of the political bias. Nice. And they really wanted to do that. They wanted one that didn't have the lefty bias.
It didn't have the righty bias. It was just like, these are games that we love. And this person because they were so bad at modeling. The, the modern right. And what the modern Right. Is striving for. Yeah. Did some treat or just game
Simone Collins: enthusiasts
Malcolm Collins: based on merit, how they Well, I mean, he is a genuine righty, but the, the genuine righties [00:07:00] today are just fighting for a fair playing field for everyone.
And they were unable to see this, so they reached out and they said because the general readies don't have control of our culture right now, our culture is controlled by the urban monoculture, which attempts to impose itself on everyone through media, through news, through leftist policy and the right just wants everyone to be treated equally regardless of your gender, sexuality, skin color, et cetera.
You know, we've had reporters do double takes on us where I was like, yeah. I believe that someone should only be promoted based on meritocracy. And they were like, are you sure you want? Don't wanna rephrase that. And I was like, no. I comfortable with that, like famous racist who said, I believe that we should judge people on the content of their character, not the, the color of their skin.
You know, that's, that's who I agree with. But anyway, so this person bonus they ended up winning one of the categories and of course. The people knew that they were trans. Nobody cared that they were trans. They had made a good game that didn't have a lot of politics in it. Mm-hmm. It was a racing game.
It was called Nightmare Cart. And it was like a redo of like other, other racing games. So [00:08:00] anyway, they won. This individual said, oh, I'm gonna go have gay trans sex, was my like, great gay trans girlfriend furry sex or whatever. And they expected the people running this to be like. I hate you. How could you do that?
How could you, oh no, we screwed it up, giving this to a transfer. And they were like, no, cool. Like, do what you want. Like, we're just trying to, you know, award you for your work. And they then freaked out about this. And they it was clear that they didn't understand the, the people who were hosting this award show at all, that the, the, the work show just wanted to genuinely help them and didn't care what their gender was.
And so then they were like, I. Won't take the award even though they had already accepted the award. Okay. And like, you didn't ask me for permission to give me this award. And this was, you know, and then a lot of people started hating 'em because they were basically being a, a jerk. Right. And even in their own internal understanding of the story, even still, they believed that the people hosting the show were like upset or didn't know that they were trans, which [00:09:00] just wasn't the case.
They just don't care.
Simone Collins: Yeah. They were voting on the game.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they were voting on the game, right? And so we need to ask why aren't they capable of seeing this? Like why aren't they? And I think it's because the left has a big problem right now. If they admitted the political reality was in which they find themselves.
A core part of their narrative begins to dissolve in a way that makes it hard to continue to support the left. Mm-hmm. And this is why they're so bad at modeling the right, yeah. Which is they genuinely believe that the right is a group fighting to culturally oppress them or imposition them, and they.
Cannot see that the right, just wants to be able to live life the way they wanna live life, to just do what they want. To be able to work at jobs without being discriminated against. To be able to play [00:10:00] video games without them having gone through some sort of counsel that makes them, you know, obviously not produced by the best writers.
Obviously not produced by the best game makers or they'd be good. You know, and we know this, like video games used to be good before you guys took over, right? Like, if you made games that were woke and good as we have repeatedly seen, like, okay, you're like, oh, the right won't buy a game that's woken good.
What about Boulder's Gate three? Like, that was the wokes I've ever seen. And you could, you could choose to play. You know, did a trans character who hadn't gone through gender reassignment yet, you know, like, that was such a woke game and I loved it. The rest of the right loved it. We talked positively about it on our shows, what we hate.
Isn't trans individuals, it's trans individuals who make shitty games, who use our money from like previous games we supported before these individuals started ruining them to destroy the quality of something that [00:11:00] we care about.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Whether it's, you know, acolyte or you know, veil guard and, and as we've, you can look at our um, Wachowski effect.
With Veil Guard, you can be like, well, these individuals were involved with the previous games. And it's like, yes. But after people become infected with the urban Monocultural Mind virus, they get really bad at everything. Often, not always, but often part with like narrative storytelling is why, why was Nightmare Cartt able to still be good?
It's because I think you could be heavily infected with the urban monocultural mind virus and still be a good engineer or still be good at like non-narrative based games. You're just very bad at like creating narrative experiences often because you struggle to understand what people who aren't like you see in the world, and that's why games within that category are so rare.
Simone Collins: Hmm. I, I guess I could see that. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So it's, it's understanding because if they could put their mind in somebody like stuttering Craig Right. They would understand that what he [00:12:00] wants is just the best games to win.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. He just likes games. Well, that's that. I mean, I was under the, I don't, I don't know him as well as you do.
I was under the impression that he was. Only right in so far as Gamergate pushed a bunch of people to the right and also anyone who actually cared about games became opposed to the urban monoculture was, which was actively killing good games.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and I think that this is something we're seeing across the board here with the modern, right, which is.
The, the urban monoculture created them by taking the things they care about and making them terrible. Mm-hmm. A lot of the, the left thought in the urban monocultural thought that if it could gain control of Star Wars, if it could gain control of the Assassin's Creed series, if it could gain control of these studios, that it would be able to use that control.
To finesse or sort of impose their cultural ideology on the people who were consuming that product. Mm. And that may have [00:13:00] worked had they focused on also making those games. Good. But no, because. Gaining control of the studios also became affiliated with their sort of DEI promote people based on their beliefs, not based on their or their beliefs or their race, or their sexuality, or their gender presentation, and not based on their competency.
Okay. It was associated with bad products. And as the oh, what's he called again? The, the troll guy, we have a big overlap with him, Bri or whatever. He, he, he said if they had only not come for our games, like we were happy if you had just knocked with our games.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: We wouldn't have cared.
And this is the way, like all of nerd culture was like nerd culture used to be a solidly lefty thing. 100%. Now nerd culture is solidly right wing, pretty much across the board except for the people who still control like the the, the, the conventions and stuff, because these are the large bureaucratic boards.
And it really was
Simone Collins: the gaming that did it too.
Malcolm Collins: It really was [00:14:00] the gaming, like, did, did you? Not with gaming, but it, no, the more I think about it, it's wild. It wasn't just gaming, it was the Star Wars nor Nerds. It was the Star Trek nerds. It was the, you know, everybody who liked this stuff for its quality and who like had a genuine attachment to it feels genuinely betrayed.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: That's so bad. That's so bad. Oh my gosh. What, what are your thoughts? I mean, do you have a different take on why the left can't model the right?
Simone Collins: I, I, I think that it, a lot of it comes down to isolation. That for whatever reason, and you see this in graphs of friendship, that people and especially women who are left-leaning, are actively uncomfortable with having friends who are on the right. And they actively shun friends who are on the right.
And when you look at the [00:15:00] same rates of exchange, people who are, who report on surveys as being conservative also report as having a few progressive friends. So for some reason there's this selective cultural isolationism whereby. A lot of conservatives are perfectly happy to be friends with progressive people, which would give them more ability to model them.
The more time you spend around someone, the more you're able to model them, right? Mm-hmm. And there's just a lot less willingness on the part of progressives to be friends with conservative. Now, the question would be, when you look at these, these graphs, well, how is it. That you have conservatives who are friend with friends with progressives and progressives who have no friends who are conservatives.
I think that maybe there are just some progressives who are friends with lots of conservatives and they're unusual, but I think what's more likely is there's a lot of conservatives that just hide the fact that they're conservatives. And are therefore friends with? Well, this is like a
Malcolm Collins: known thing. Like I, I, well, [00:16:00] until I got famous, I had lots of friends who didn't know I had conservative views even after my views had started to grow.
And well, we
Simone Collins: know plenty of people who are like, yeah, I totally agree with you, but I would never say that in public. So I guess that's what's going on is that there are a lot of sneaky conservatives or closet conservatives that. Are able to model progressives really well because they're friends with a bunch of them and progressives just can't.
And,
Malcolm Collins: and this is a fascinating point when we talk about cultural imposition being the hallmark of modern progressivism is the very fact that people need to be closeted shows which direction the cultural pressure is going in the same way you need to be like a closeted gang in the nineties or something like that.
You knew you would face cultural repercussions for, you know, and, and today you knew you would face cultural repercussions if you wanted a game show that was. Completely meritocratic. You know, and, and so you hide that. You know, I, I see this was the message thread was my class. You know, people f*****g crazy like, they're like, oh, all these Nazis and [00:17:00] everything like that.
And I'm not, not even replying, right? Because I'm like, I seem to remember you guys like marching through the streets, starting from the river to the sea. Like you guys actually supporting the people who want to exterminate the Jews. And this isn't like. A fringe thing. This is like Claudia Gay, the woman who literally ran Claudine gay.
Claudine Gay, the number one like educational institution being like, well, you know, we shouldn't punish people for saying stuff about Jews. Like obviously you know, this, this is a dehumanization of the Jews on the left. This is a breaking society into an ethnic hierarchy. Within the mainstream of the left and the people who are fighting against us genuinely want a meritocratic society.
Yes. IE what Martin Luther King was fighting for. And I think that the left still tells itself that that's what it's doing. Like that, it's unable to see that its actions no longer do that. And therefore the people who actually wanted that but are free of it oppose them. [00:18:00] And I think that this also comes down to a question that I have had for a long time, which is why is it the, the right.
And right-leaning influencers seem more prone to audience capture than left-leaning influencers.
Simone Collins: Ah,
Malcolm Collins: so if, if you are not familiar with audience capture, this is where an individual may start as a centrist and then become more and more in lines, whichever political direction they were leaning, because they end up developing an audience that is more extreme than them was in that political direction.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: And this happens much faster towards the right people who, influencers who are centrist, moving towards the right than influencers who are centrist moving towards the left. And I think that the reason for this is actually due to the, a false narrative of their opponent that the left relies on to maintain its followers or its supporters.
Which is to say that once you begin to challenge the [00:19:00] narrative that is normal and allowed was in society, and you see that they have been lying to you, it is much harder to go back. Whereas if you start as a centrist and you begin to challenge. Things in a left-leaning direction, you are not gonna see as many.
Oh, here's all of the places. The right lied to me about this because the right is, honestly right now, j because it's not the right of the past. It's not like a religious right. Like yeah. When you see people go, for example, anti-trans they're not doing that for like religious reasons anymore. The, the main activist, whether it's like JK Rowling or Elon or whatever.
Right? Mm-hmm. It's because they gained access to more information. And you also see a pattern of. When people entertain the right, specifically influencers or right-leaning ideas, they are pushed further right by anyone on the left. And Joe Rogan is a great example of this. Oh yeah. Like the left was like, we need a lefty Joe.
We need Joe
Simone Collins: Rogan of the left.
Malcolm Collins: Joe [00:20:00] Rogan was Joe Rogan of the left. You guys made him right wing by attacking him whenever he talked to somebody on the other side. Yeah. And the question here, is this gonna happen to Gavin Newsom? He's gonna talk to some right wing individuals and he's eventually gonna be like, wait a second.
Were they right All along? Like
Simone Collins: I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. Well, he's definitely getting points for hosting a podcast in which he has active deep conversations with people who are on the right.
Malcolm Collins: And if anyone knows how to contact him, let us know. 'cause I would love to chat with him.
Simone Collins: But it's, I think that's one reason why he.
Is, is winning over so much respect from the world, right? Like, oh my gosh, this, this progressive mainstay, this staple is actually listening to us. This is insane. But because conservatives are never listening, I don't think so. I don't think so because he is playing a very, very, very long game, and he is the slickest of [00:21:00] slick political operators, and he's going for president.
And he's not going to leave his party and he knows he is. He what he cares about more than the truth is winning. And he. He wants to win as a Democrat, a Democratic candidate in the next presidential election.
Malcolm Collins: I will say that this is like an interesting phenomenon as well, that when Lefts learned to empathize was the right, they often become the right.
So there was like the case of the people who went to make like the Red Pill Community documentary and seemed pretty hostile to it at first, and then they learned about it and became like, so Red Pill, like it was like a group of women too. Play the woman who decided she would try to be a guy, just to show how easy guys have it.
Oh yeah. And have it much harder and ended up, you know, unliving her, is herself. Yes. Yeah. Thi this, this is an interesting, and it's a phenomenon people have when they're talking to us, like lefties have when they're talking to us and, and like the prenatal stuff. Mm-hmm. And they come to us. They expect to think that we are absolute demons, and then they're like, why [00:22:00] are you being so reasonable?
Is this a trick? Where, where is the trick? We just did an interview as Mother Jones. We'll see how that goes. But they were very much like, yeah, it seems reasonable the positions you guys are pushing. And I think that this is the challenge. It's that the lack of empathy is sort of core to staying on the left.
And it's also core to, like, even even the old version of the left, I remember I thought of righteous as being just completely illogical and animal-like, like savages. They were like literally like a different species. I was like, I, yeah, like
Simone Collins: ending up on an island full of cannibals. You'd, you'd be very scared.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, left. I have empathy for everyone. Horrible. And you're like, well, what about the, like, what about me working poor America? Like the, the right, you know, the, the factory workers, the coal miners, they're like, well, there's so much
Simone Collins: distaste. Everyone,
Malcolm Collins: you know, you know, you know what I mean by
Simone Collins: everyone? I don't know.
I, I think it's a major blind spot. It's, it's a blind spot. Like they, [00:23:00] maybe part of it too is that they're seen as not counting. Because they're seen as coming from a position of privilege and cumulative wealth. Even if they're not, even if they're not wealthy, like even if they're the disenfranchised Appalachian poor described in JD Vance's, hillbilly Elegy, they're seen as still being.
No, I think they say this, but they,
because they know this isn, they're not, they're not black because they're white. Because they, they
Malcolm Collins: know this isn't true. I think the lefties like in, I don't think so. No. They know that there are poor, disenfranchised white people out there, but they do not see them as human.
When they think of the people who are opposing them, they break them into two classes. One, a group of white wealthy elites who keep them down. Hmm. And then the subhuman, tri Luddites, who mine work in the mines, who work on the farms, who this other group, they understand this other group doesn't have power.
They're just beneath [00:24:00] hearing about or relevancy.
Simone Collins: Or they're, maybe it's that they are expected to have views that are so repugnant lifestyles and views that are so repugnant to. The educated elites that they see them as subhuman but not deserving subhuman. Like you grew up in America. You should have had the good sense to be progressive and educated and to live like me.
And you don't, therefore
Malcolm Collins: you had, you should. No, it, it's like you should have had the good sense to be born
Simone Collins: to a rich family
Malcolm Collins: like
Simone Collins: me. How, how did this not happen to you? No. You know what, but like the thing is like there are view, there are people in other countries who live lives of poverty and have cultures that ultimately are repugnant to.
To progressive leftists, and yet the poor morally repugnant white people in America are seen as irredeemable, I think because they should have known better or something. That they, they're us. They, they, how, how dare they have those views, like those people who [00:25:00] practice genital mutilation? Well, I may not agree with that, but you know, once they, once we give them our culture and our assistance, they will become enlightened and know better.
Oh, okay. So what, you see what I mean? What you're
Malcolm Collins: arguing is they see them kind of like apostates.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I think they see them like apostates if I'm modeling my old way of viewing things. I think that that's, it's like they should have enough money. They had, they had a chance to be a civilized good person and progressive, and they chose, they chose not to be.
Therefore, they are fallen. We do not need to protect them. They don't count. And we view them as less than human because they had a chance they could have been baptized, they could have been serious. Yeah. And
Malcolm Collins: we're okay with supporting, you know, the gays for Gaza stuff we're okay with supporting these people who throw gay people.
'cause once we
Simone Collins: help them and save them, they will see the light and they will be just like us, us they'll be able to
Malcolm Collins: erase their cultural practices. Yeah. Yeah.
Simone Collins: That's, that, that's the, but that's the plan. That is 100% the plan.
What would happen to a gay couple [00:26:00] in Gaza?
Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn't endorse gays. Islam doesn't endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn't endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not
Malcolm Collins: And they don't believe that the plan isn't working. Like fundamentally, there is a disbelief that the plan may not be working within any different.
No. Got of them. Wait, the plan will work. This is why you can take them like directly to like one of these individuals in the US and they'll be like, yeah, we plan to kill the gays. And they're like, we need to give you more assistance. Know. 'cause when
Simone Collins: you, and a lot of this is like the USAID thing, like when we give you more assistance.
You will see that our ways are better. And I think this happened a lot in Europe too, that like, don't worry, once they experience our European social services and see our enlightened European systems, they will drop these, these savage views and they will be just like us. They will [00:27:00] assimilate by choice, but we will never obligate them to assimilate because that is not our culture.
And then I, I think, but they're cultural nationalists.
Right for the urban
monoculture. Right. But they do that through the provision of services. The, the, the ization is by wealth distribution. We do not expend our energy attempting to change your mind because that is wrong. We accept all, rather, we will take someone else's money and spend it on you and then you will love us so much for doing so that you will be just like us.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and well or your culture will naturally evolve in this direction when you get in access to our information or more information. Yeah. Your kids
Simone Collins: will go to our schools, your kids will. Become like us.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is also what we see in so I was reading some posts on ask Liberals, right?
And it was somebody saying, Hey, so like, here's the data showing that liberals have lower amounts of mental health than conservatives. Here's the amount [00:28:00] the polls showing, you know, liberals have, et cetera, right? And anyone who looks at liberals can tell they have way more mental health problems than conservatives.
This is just like a really obvious thing. And what people said was, oh, this is actually just an artifact of conservatives being liars. That's why liberals are more open and honest with themselves and that's why you have more mental health problems. Mm-hmm. And I think that, that, this is broadly what we see.
Like conservatives are all liars. Conservatives aren't honest about themselves. Even though like any rational person can look at the two communities and be like, you guys aren't mentally healthy though. Like you see that, like I always note that the Natalus Convention, one of the interesting things about it is everyone there seems to be happy to be alive and excited about the future.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And it's
Malcolm Collins: rare for me to be around a community like that.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Even if they don't have, you know, everything in the world. Yeah. They, they're happy with what they do have and that's key and so unusual, but delightful.
Malcolm Collins: Well, Simone, any [00:29:00] closing thoughts from you?
Simone Collins: This has just been somewhat mind blowing for me because even though it's been a long time since I've had that progressive cult mind space, it's still, I can still go back to it and it's kind of shocking to realize that I wasn't this enlightened, empathetic person that I.
And I still sometimes have this feeling like, well, I'm the evil conservative now. Ha ha. Like, I don't care about people. And then I actually realized that the reason I switched over to this is I actually do, I, I do care about people and I care about evidence-based solutions and outcomes, and I can't, I can't do that.
And also still be on the left. Yeah. And there were many instances in my life in which I had to encounter that in environmental advocacy and then in [00:30:00] policy and then in tism it just keeps coming back. So the, it's, it's just crazy. 'cause I, I still in kind of brainwashed a little bit in the cold to believe, but of course.
This makes me evil to wanna, you know, save. Yeah. I, I'm the, I'm the one who's not empathetic. I'm the one who can't model other people. I'm the tone deaf one. And, and to realize just how not true that is, is, it's not the satisfying thing I hoped it would be. I'm, now I'm just like, well, what do they have, Malcolm?
What do they, they had, they, they don't have good empathy. They can't model the other side. Well, they don't have really great evidence-based solutions. Their mental health sucks. They just lost.
Malcolm Collins: Come on. They need something. I think this is why they can't, when everyone's like the left is lost. Right now, I think it's, it, it, like nobody knows, like the leftists are all internally talking.
They know something is wrong. They're trying to fix it. And the reason why they're struggling so much is it requires seeing [00:31:00] that they are the cultural imperialists. That they want everyone to follow their way of life, their cultural practices, whether it's the immigrants or the conservatives or anyone else.
And their entire party is built around enforcing that.
Simone Collins: And the thing is, I feel as though if they actually owned that, yeah, it would go better because, for example, they would require assimilation from immigrant groups.
Mm-hmm.
Or only let in immigrants who were willing to assimilate, which would. Which would go better, you
Malcolm Collins: know, it would go better than the, the, the Hispanics coming here and then voting more than 50% for Trump, the male ones at least.
And the, the, the females, you know? Well,
Simone Collins: yeah, but I mean, the, I feel like they're qualified to, to say that because like Mike Solana has said, would, you know a minimum requirement for coming here should be that you, you like America and you wanna be an American?
Malcolm Collins: The, the, the, and that's a Trump view there being is that [00:32:00] these, these Hispanic immigrants came here and the left just assumed that they would be converted to the urban monoculture and they haven't been.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Which is a serious miscalculation. And they have adjusted on that. They've become incredibly anti-Hispanic. They've become incredibly racist against Hispanic people. You see them talking about it all the time. They're like, oh yeah, let's. Get rid of them all now because they didn't follow what I wanted, you know?
But anyway. Hey Simone, what are we doing for dinner tonight? Curry again.
Simone Collins: I Curry night number two. And I will not burn your non tonight, I apologize.
Malcolm Collins: Would you put in a, a little bit of chili oil and a little bit of the chili flakes?
Simone Collins: The red ones?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the little red chili flakes. Or if we have any chilies that we haven't used yet, put them in.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. I don't know if you roasted some that we haven't used.
Simone Collins: Roasted. Oh, I haven't roasted. Yeah, those if they're still good 'cause we were, we were out of town for a little bit. You think they're still good?
Malcolm Collins: I would imagine so. Okay. Yeah, I can chop, I can just
Simone Collins: chop them up fresh and [00:33:00] then simmer them.
No, that's
Malcolm Collins: nicer.
Simone Collins: Okay, then I will do that. How about that instead of the chili oil and flakes? 'cause those are pretty strong. No, that plus chili oil. You really wanna hurt tonight, don't you? Chili oil isn't spicy. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't know. Or not particularly. It's incredibly mild actually. It just sort of adds to the,
Simone Collins: to the what? If not, I don't know the the, okay. The thing that Cal shows, the qua that possess. I will make sure you have it. And well, I'm gonna
Malcolm Collins: go hang out with are we gonna, we gonna do NPR soon? We got a BBC. We got Ireland. We got a lot of news, news coming up in the near future. So for those of you who still read the mainstream media, they're gonna be freaking out about us for a while.
Which I'm excited about. I love throwing s**t at the s**t at the, at the, the fan because I'm in their house
Simone Collins: and
Malcolm Collins: I [00:34:00] just watch it splatter on everything. They, they're, they're all covered in it. It's hilarious.
Simone Collins: I
Malcolm Collins: love you.
Simone Collins: I love you.
Malcolm Collins: You don't have to, I mean, you're fine.
Simone Collins: I don't have to, but I do.
Malcolm Collins: I love you.
But too, by the way, you're, you're an amazing mom and wife. Yay. And I am extremely lucky for this life that I live, mama.
Simone Collins: I feel the same way. Mama. So does Indy. She's, she's ready. She's ready, mama. All right. I will see you downstairs shortly. Bye.
Bye.
Speaker: What did
Speaker 3: you bopped him with? A soccer B Dusty. You gotta get him back.
Speaker 4: I stronger. Oh yeah. Oh, Josie, you gotta power up. Power up. You gotta boost [00:35:00] your power. Bam, bam, bam.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Nihilism is Philosophical Hedonism & We Are All Susceptible (Pessimism Protects You Psychologically)
21 mar· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the philosophical and psychological aspects of pessimism, nihilism, and antinatalism. The discussion begins with the exploration of Emil Cioran's ideas and the allure of pessimism and nihilism. We then touch on how adopting such mindsets can act as psychological protection and social dominance hacks. Throughout the episode, we contrast these perspectives with more optimistic and proactive approaches to life, personal responsibility, and earnest enthusiasm. Includes a critique of C. S. Lewis's argument from desire and the importance of avoiding nihilistic tendencies in personal relationships.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today is going to be an interesting and philosophical episode, but also focused on psychology and sort of best mental health practices for living. I was listening. to a podcast diving into the philosophy of Emil Kairon, who wrote Better Not to Have Been Bored.
He, the Romanian philosopher. And he exhibited many traits that I think that all of us are susceptible to, which is the protective shell of dumerism, pessimism. And this feeling of suffering. And I think that if we investigate this, we can understand why it feels so comfy to go to this place
Speaker 9: That's cool. I guess you can join up with us
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Antinatalists.
Speaker 9: if you want.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go to the graveyard [00:01:00] and write poems about death and how pointless life is.
Speaker 9: Thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Antinatalist.
Speaker 9: kid. We'll see you, Stan.
Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back
Speaker 9: to your sunshine, fairytale.
Malcolm Collins: And, and, and, and just as a, a bit of a preview here, I think there's a few things that play I think one is, it removes some degree of responsibility for one's own failures or states, so there is less need for self judgment or self motivation two is I believe that it looks chic, like it, it, it looks sophisticated.
Yes. Sophisticated. Three is it makes you much more difficult for other people to attack. It's a very lazy position to hold intellectually speaking, because [00:02:00] when people attempt to attack you. You know, you're just like, yeah, you know, life is terrible. Yeah, et cetera. And like, you can't hurt me. Like I'm, I'm at rock bottom.
Where are you going to push me? Exactly.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: I found a video of some real Americans running across a far left voluntary human extinction rally.
Speaker 7: Are these the Nazis?
Speaker 6: No, Donnie, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: My first world life has involved some degree of suffering and I didn't consent to being born.
Speaker 7: It's not fair!
Speaker 6: Fair? Who's the f*****g nihilist around here, you bunch of f*****g crybabies? This guy's gonna hurt us, Walter. No, Donnie. These men are cowards. I f**k you!
Speaker 7: F**k
Speaker 6: you!
Speaker 7: I f**k you! I f**k you! Ball, man. Hey, dick. Oh.
Hey, dick.
Speaker 6: I
Malcolm Collins: so let's go over all of these through the framing of this individual. All right. So this individual is really important to antinatalist philosophy where I [00:03:00] study, you know, if our opponents have a philosophy, I make a point of studying their intellectual arguments as much as I could.
He, did not have any particularly sophisticated or interesting intellectual arguments. But he had a very interesting, buddhism
Simone Collins: because I feel like one, this is a very, very, very old meme. The life is suffering meme is like extremely old. So what is, what are his novel? Are
Malcolm Collins: I don't remember it. No, it was something like just not interesting. The other person I was studying today was C. S. Lewis who had, it was dumb for like way more interesting ways than this guy was dumb. But we'll, we will do C. S. with our audience.
Simone Collins: If you're calling C. S. Lewis dumb, boy, oh boy. I'm sorry, Simone.
I'm sorry.
Malcolm Collins: He wasn't dumb.
Simone Collins: Emails we're going to get.
Malcolm Collins: He was straight up retarded. Like, I was shocked at the stupidity of some of his arguments.
this, this yes, Lewis rant was moved to the end of the episode. If you want to see it, you can go there.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: That said, I'm probably wrong to call him dumb.
It's more that [00:04:00] he's very Malcolm Gladwell y. He mostly just aggregates other people's ideas and tells them in a way that is more accessible to the average person. And when he has independent or new ideas, like the argument from desire, they're typically very, very bad. He doesn't really interject any interesting new ideas to the conversation.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So this guy did basically he was maxing this particular perspective in a way that I think that we can all learn from because we're all are drawn to this perspective.
One of the things he did is even though his book was famous, even though he was famous. He tried to never allow his book to win any awards, so he'd withdraw from any awards that he could win. He would put himself in environments that made him less likely to become more famous, specifically trying to hang out with other failures and be more of a failure, and specifically liked associating disproportionately with failures.
The line that he used is [00:05:00] that he didn't hate misfortune. He hated being surprised by it. And I think that this is something that we all know to some extent. In many ways, it feels safer to not even expose yourself to the potentiality of success because having some goal and not achieving it can hurt more than never having had the goal in the first place.
However, You are never going to achieve any life of genuine satisfaction if you don't build goals for yourself and occasionally fail. Or even predominantly fail. I would say that a lot of successful people early in their careers predominantly failed before they reached that level of success.
Thoughts, Simone?
Simone Collins: I think that's absolutely true. I, I, when you, when you describe that behavior, it just made me think that we're listening to [00:06:00] the description of someone who's suffering from some fairly severe emotional problems.
Malcolm Collins: I don't think so because I think that that's an easy thing to say, Oh, this person's suffering from depression.
Oh, this person is without really, it just seems
Simone Collins: like like super avoidant behavior, maybe that he's very anxious about recognition.
Malcolm Collins: It's not this is I think the mistake here, right? And I think that this is one of the things that we need to look out for was in our modern culture Is the medicalization? And the depersonalization of things that are very much individual choices and this was an individual choice that he made and the reason i'm saying that this is not a medical choice or something Like that is because it's a choice That I feel calling to me that you can feel calling to that.
I think any mentally healthy person feels sometimes it would be better if I never even tried. It is easier to develop [00:07:00] comfort. With failure than it is to aspire to success, the mere fact that it is easier and maybe leads to less suffering was in your life does not mean that you should pursue it. The next thing here is I'd note to the, the chic ness of pessimism.
And nihilism. And I think part of the question is, is why is pessimism and nihilism chic? You know, when I think of the classic nihilist, what I'm thinking of is the, you know, French beatnik in their, in their outfit, like being like, Oh, nothing really matters. Oh, you know, and it's even chic cause it's, Oh, you know, the sexy philosopher man troubled with his, Oh, nothing matters because, and I think that this is why it is sexy, right?
Speaker: Shallow life, drowning alone I gasp for air, coldness creeps over pale skin, there is sadness so deep it pulls me down, [00:08:00] happiness dies in a deep dark sea.
Speaker 2: Yeah,
Speaker 3: happiness dies. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Henrietta! Hi, sweetie! Go away, Mom. Leave me alone.
Speaker: Daddy and I just got your birthday present! But you can't see what it is till tomorrow! You'd like to wait till I was dead, wouldn't you? You'd like to see the magazine in my face.
Speaker 3: You are so creative, honey!
Speaker: Conformist b***h.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Why it is alluring and, and, and high class, because if I'm looking at two people and one person is like, hey I genuinely believe that this stuff does matter and I'm really excited about it. And the other person is, oh, nothing matters. The person who wants things who wants or is excited about something has put themselves in any sort of interaction with this other person on the lower foot.
Speaker 12: To what do I owe the pleasure?
Speaker 11: Jack, [00:09:00] pleasure is the name of a pony I hate. This is business. So, I just happened to bump into Jenna Maroney
Speaker 12: what did you do to her, Hooper?
Speaker 11: Oh, her brain's like silly putty. A toy I am too old for. Kaylee
Speaker 13: Hooper! OMG! It's Jenna!
You're wearing that belt as a joke, right? Of course I am!
Speaker 14: Where did you get your belt? You're so cool!
Speaker 15: Kayleigh, you look so gorgeous today. I'm wearing a headband because you are. Pathetic.
What?
Simone Collins: Well, in general enthusiasm, approbation, excitement are, they open one up to vulnerability. And to criticize those things implies you have knowledge the other person doesn't. And that they are excited or optimistic or hopeful or trying out of ignorance and that the person who is pessimistic or who knows better or who, who understands that that brand is actually s**t [00:10:00] is just more informed and therefore better in, in the hierarchy of that social interaction.
Malcolm Collins: There's such a great way. So if you're in a group of people and one person in the group of people comes up and they're like, I just found this really exciting new product or philosophy or idea. And then another person in the group goes, oh, I know about that. It's terrible. And here is why, like that person has asserted dominance over the person who just came up all excited about the idea.
And I can see why you would have a fear, like if you're building a profile, like a psychological profile to interact with the public, you are going to get a lot of dumb, easy hacks by taking this pessimistic approach in the same way that Simone mentioned when she was younger, she used to dress in these ridiculous, kind of slutty, like, Neon taffeta dresses, very punky hipster because the [00:11:00] people around her socially rewarded her for this as a, as a, you know, a young fertile girl.
That's the way people are. But is a long term maxing for that. Would have really hurt her. And it's the same with this particular tactic in individual conversations, especially when you're young, you can socially cheese those situations by taking the nihilistic perspective and nihilism more than just general skepticism.
Well, and even if
Simone Collins: you like, I think it can happen very subtly. We're just. Every time you take a more pessimistic or nihilistic or antinatalist perspective, you win the conversation, or you're seen as the more respectable person in the conversation, or more people kind of nod and agree with you, looking thoughtful.
So, you might, you might, one, be subtly emotional and reinforced to do it, but also, you will be subtly, Signal that it's correct, even if it isn't correct.
Malcolm Collins: So with this [00:12:00] particular philosophy, this may help you understand just some of the quotes from him here. I only write this kind of stuff because explaining it bores me terribly.
That's why I say when I've written aphorisms, it's that I've sunk back into fatigue. Why bother? And so the aphorism is scorned by Quote unquote, serious people, the professors look down upon it when they read a book of aphorisms. They say, Oh, look what this fellow said 10 pages back. Now he's saying something to the contrary.
He's not serious. Me, I can put two aphorisms that are contradictory right next to each other. Aphorisms are also momentary truths. They are not decrees. And I could tell you nearly every case why I wrote this or that phrase and when it's always set in motion by an encounter, an incident, a fit of temper, but they all have a cause.
It's not all gratuitous. [00:13:00] Every bit of it. Gratuitous? Gratuitous, gratuitous. But every bit of this is about avoiding responsibility for his decisions and attempting to essentially cheese a social fight. You know, starting with the, oh, why do I do this? Well, it bores me terribly is what he starts with.
Oh, I have fatigue. Why bother? You know, very much the,
the,
the, the, the, the, the, the nihilist was the cigarette, right? And then. He talks about, oh, how it's scorned by quote unquote serious people, right? And they'll say that these two things contradict each other. An actual problem if you're writing, like, ideas or philosophy.
He's like, but that doesn't matter. I don't need to address that. And then you see him attacking their, their character for pointing out that his work is internally inconsistent. Or if you want to see other types of things that I think we all feel this way internally and drawn to this because it's such an easy way to frame ideas in our heads.
I invented [00:14:00] nothing., I invented nothing. I've been the one and only secretary of my own sensations. And these are just random quotes I'm pulling for his Wikipedia, but like you get the gist of like this guy thing, right?
And I think that we, I bring this up because I think that this is a huge part. of antinatalist philosophy, is it's a psychologically protective mechanism. This, oh, life is suffering. Suffering is everything. Suffering is the only thing that matters. Where I come to them and I don't even go, you know, oh, well focus on all the good things.
I'm like, yeah, suffering exists. It's what pushes us to improve. Like, It doesn't matter is like an intrinsic thing. It's just like what your ancestors sort of were coded based on an environment that has nothing to do with your modern environment to feel when facing specific stimuli in order to have the maximum number of surviving offspring.
It means nothing. It is literally the most trivial thing you could base your life around. And yet. It is so [00:15:00] easy when you don't have to think beyond it to coat yourself in this, if life is suffering, then your responsibility, your, your failures are not your responsibility, which is an incredibly safe, emotional place to be.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Look
Speaker 10: at that, another
Speaker 9: tortured
Speaker 10: soul. Another life of
Speaker 9: pain. What's the matter with you? Well, my girlfriend broke up with me. Sure does hurt.
That's cool. I guess you can join us if you want.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go write poems about death and how pointless life is.
Speaker 9: No thanks, I love life. Huh? But you just got dumped. Well yeah, and I'm sad. But at the same time I'm really happy that something can make me feel that sad.
It makes me feel human. So I have to take the bad with the good. So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness.
Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid. We'll [00:16:00] see you, Stan.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Note, we don't go into a lot about arguments against the philosophy of antinatalism in this episode or negative utilitarianism because we have a whole nother very long episode where we do that called These People Want You All Dead and have, and are weirdly reasonable about it, see the thumbnail here.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It also, though, strikes me as one of the lower effort interpretations of this that I've heard because the, the Buddhist conclusion of the life is suffering. doesn't just mean give up on everything. It means so learn how to not be attached to anything and then break the cycle, like commit permanent suicide.
And, and let yourself really
Malcolm Collins: want to do, right. But yeah, make this decision on behalf of other people.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean, this just seems like uniquely low agency it's therefore, I will not try. For anything. I mean, there's some of that behaviors in there, like this choice to not submit for any book awards or even be eligible for any is, is, I guess, [00:17:00] akin to trying to avoid like suffering resulting from attachment, but it just doesn't seem very proactive.
And. I, I wonder,
Malcolm Collins: well, I think that the, the, the point I'm making here
Simone Collins: is
Malcolm Collins: that we can very easily confuse psychologically protective mechanisms with a philosophy that is internally coherent and then build philosophy Actions, identity off of the psychological protective mechanisms, these tools for hacking conversations, these tools for not pressing yourself to engage with reality, these tools for excusing your own failures, and then attempting to use this as a foundation upon which you build an identity, a house in a worldview.
And this is really, really dangerous because any identity built on top of [00:18:00] this is going to be. An intrinsically toxic identity. It's going to hurt the people around you. And I think that this is really important to remember when you adapt this pessimistic and nihilistic mindset, it might help you in social situations.
But everyone who hears you dress down that other person feels worse. Everyone who had the person walk into the group excited to share their excitement with other people and those other people could have gotten excited about that thing, whether it's life or whatever and you came in and desired to kill that excitement.
You have made things worse for everyone. You have hurt everyone. Everyone around you. Think about this was in our like marriage or was my kids, right? Like if one of us is feeling down that day, we believe we have a philosophical and theological duty to not push that on to our kids to not push that on to each other.
Because, like, as I [00:19:00] said, like, when the episode about my mom dying, I was like. Yeah, I might feel bad, but like if I go and I cry about this, like, who does that help? That just hurts my kids. That hurts my wife. You know, I get to choose how I respond to this and I'm not going to choose that response to this.
And yet these individuals choose that response to everything because it's the Trump card. And this is what gets me about the effortless and the antinatalists is they'll say things like, Oh, I won't on a live. Et cetera. Because it could cause suffering to others. It would, it would cause suffering to all my friends and family.
Right. And it's like, but your entire philosophical framework, your entire way of acting, the way that you communicate with these people is likely putting them in a state of constant suffering that is higher than any degree that could be caused by you not being
Simone Collins: here. You're, you're doing them a net positive, probably.
What are you waiting for, [00:20:00] huh? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? What am I waiting for? What are you waiting for? F**k you!
Oh my god!
Simone Collins: Being around, you know, having, being friends with fat people more likely to make you fat, being around depressed people. I imagine your risk of being depressed is yourself higher.
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but it's not just that their entire philosophy when they share it, if you go to their subreddit, it's like the efilism subreddit.
It's just like pictures of like mutilated animals and like starving children. Because they're trying to show everyone, like, look at how bad the world is to maintain this constant state of, Despair when, if you are actually being realistic and looking at the numbers, you know, we have the capacity to improve the world.
You know, we have the capacity to improve technology and we are seeing this in all of the data. Like we can make the world a better [00:21:00] place. And yes, because of fertility collapse, there is going to be a period where things get harder, but we know from the technology that we've already built, that we can achieve something better on the other side of that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. There's, there's this other element of the attitude. That I kind of have a, a, a wondering about and I'm wondering what your thoughts are. You'll probably say it's dumb, but it seems to me like nihilism and in general, this pessimistic attitude toward the world. Or so what also manifests is like down with capitalism.
They're all out to get us is a form of like a meta version of displaced aggression. Where, when you yourself are stressed out this has especially been seen with rats experimentally because I think review boards aren't letting this experiment be run on humans, but they found that if you stress out a rat or a mouse and then put another mouse in its cage, it will lash out at the other [00:22:00] mouse and then actually feel better.
And that's displaced aggression, taking it out. And I feel like, yeah, they're taking it out on the world and it, I think it does. And I think that in an age of increased social isolation where people just actually aren't hanging out with other people, there aren't that many other people to take it out on.
And so they just take it out on all of humanity on all of the world on capitalism on the government on, you
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that you can see this. Here's a quote. I'm just reading like any quote I can find from this guy's Wikipedia. This is him trying to compliment Bach, okay? So he says, the, the, the Oh, the composer.
Yes. Without Bach, God would be a complete second rate figure. Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. But I mean, you talk about displaced aggression and it's just dripping with that. And I think that if [00:23:00] you go to the efilism subreddit or the antinatalism subreddit, you see that displaced aggression, but I think that it's important that like, the reason I bring all this up is All of us are susceptible to this.
All of us shouldn't just be looking at the outsider and say, where are they terrible? Where are they doing these things? Ha ha. Look at their community. So toxic. We need to be able to catch this as it bubbles up within ourselves. So that and this is something that people always notice was in me.
They're like Malcolm. Why are you always so excited? Why are you always so high energy? And I'm like, because I choose to be not just because it helps me and achieve a greater state in the end. And it makes my life better to live this way. And it makes me look in a way foolish to other people. So keep in mind, I experience vulnerability because of my upbeat, peppy nature.
Oh, 100%. People dunk
Simone Collins: on you all the time about it. You just heard [00:24:00] Taylor Lorenz and Julia Black dunk on you
Malcolm Collins: for this. Oh yeah, they just did this thing, this episode on us, and they're like, Oh, you're so nerdy, so like weird, so Well,
Simone Collins: no, she said you were foaming at the mouth about this subject, which is, I think that's a really great example.
of taking someone's enthusiasm and using that to assert dominance by talking about, by framing their subject of enthusiasm as not that important or dumb for some reason.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, but I still choose to do this. Like I act. And, and, and experience the world this way in large part, because I choose to, I do it through framing devices.
Like, Hey, how are you doing? I start every conversation the same way. Anyone who's seen me, they know I give them a handshake. I'm like, Hey, it's so great to meet you or see you. Because if I can start a conversation high energy and positively, it's more likely to carry throughout the [00:25:00] conversation. And that positive energy doesn't just.
Allow me to be more efficient, more effective and more mentally healthy, but it rubs off on everyone around me, including my family. And this becomes astronomically more important when you do have a family. And I'd actually say that this in terms of who you might marry is one of the most important things to filter for anyone who attempts these sorts of things should be considered.
not a marriageable candidate or somebody you need to talk through. Do you understand what you're doing and that I cannot have a longterm relationship? Like you can work with them on it, but like if they approach social competition in this dismissive way you and your kids will pay for that. Your kid will come home one day so excited about some new thing they learned and their mom or dad.
is going to be like, well, it's really not that impressive. Is it? That's not that [00:26:00] interesting. Is it? And that's just going to destroy their excitement for reality because excitement for reality is something. that can be destroyed. Now, some people allow themselves to destroy it to remove personal responsibility as we pointed out.
But another person can destroy this apparent etcetera, right? And it's hard to build back up after that. Unless you have role models, like potentially we could act as an individual for like, this is what it looks like to be foaming at the mouth about how much you love being alive. You know, like That's really what they're saying in their little progressive hoity toity world.
Like, how is he, how is he so excited to, to, to care about this topic?
Simone Collins: Yeah in such a put down y way, it's, but yeah, no, it's, it's, Low energy. I actually
Malcolm Collins: note here to people who watch this podcast, you'll note that Simone never [00:27:00] undermines me in this way.
Simone Collins: Do I not? I'm sure I make every mistake out there, I'm sure
Malcolm Collins: it's something different.
No, you, you have some mistakes that you make that I try to work with you on like you will underplay yourself, especially when I do. I guess,
Simone Collins: yeah, I mean, I, I love your enthusiasm so much that I guess I would be unlikely for me to. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Whereas I had other people who almost, and I'd say that there's a certain profile of person, be very careful about creating a relationship with this type of person who will automatically, if you are excited about something or bringing something to them with excitement, feel compelled to, Like s**t on it.
Simone Collins: Yeah, we know people like that. I'm sure you know people like that Anyone listening to this for sure?
Malcolm Collins: And you're just like
Simone Collins: because it's such an easy hack
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's such an easy hack to always being socially dominant. And and so people can say like, well, then how do you [00:28:00] continue to like get by in life?
When you act like this and other people are acting like that. Well, one is that I think it's very hard in the urban monoculture. Nihilism is always the winning hand. Because the urban monoculture is built on this sort of negative utilitarian mindset and social bureaucratic dominance hacks. Which is, I think, part of why it's so, like, mentally negative.
So I think, one, you're going to have trouble playing it in those communities, but when you are outside of the urban monoculture so long as you continue to line in to optimism and excitement you will grow. A community of the types of people who are interacting with you and around you who also do that.
And in addition to that you will move up in the world faster because you will be able to set goals for yourself because you will take responsibility. And that's, that's the ultimate thing here is how much can you sit with? Like these individuals act like they sit with so much [00:29:00] pain and they objectively do sit with so much pain because they're unwilling to hold any of it.
Like if you just pick up that responsibility, the pain of responsibility of saying where I am in life right now is my responsibility. No one else is going to get me out of here. I need to move to the next stage instead of just saying life is terrible. .
Simone Collins: Working with thoughts. Suddenly brain shorted. Another really big issue is that when you define pain and suffering as a major problem, then every time you experience pain and suffering, which is all the time because it's a signal that our body uses to get us to move in certain directions, you're going to make it worse than it is.
Right? Like, the perception of pain is highly subjective, and typically pain only hurts. When you have decided it's a bad thing, right? Some people love being whipped, right? It's kind of their thing. The best pleasure they can imagine. Whipping in other [00:30:00] contexts, probably the worst, most painful and humiliating thing you will ever experience in your life, right?
And it all comes down to context. And I think that a big problem with seeing pain and suffering as a problem. And especially thinking about it a lot is now you're making it painful for sure. There's no way you can just kind of muddle through it, which is what most people have done throughout history.
I mean, it's signals are important. You need to hear them. You need to be aware of them and you need to try to address them. But you also shouldn't this, the signal's not the feature. People don't like worship red lights because they tell you to stop. Okay. So the, when you recognize it, it's a problem.
And now it's like, oh, it's a big deal. And then because you think about it constantly, you're, you're, you're heightening it. You're turning up the volume. And this I've, I've experienced this in, in some small ways where I've had medical conditions that are very uncomfortable. And then I realized what it is.
And then I, [00:31:00] I, I get even more uncomfortable because I know what it is and how bad it is because I actually have a really high pain tolerance. Right. But like the mental acknowledgement of a, a, a sensation as a problem and a serious problem, that contextualization is able to dial up pain levels from like a seven to a nine easily.
And certainly more than that.
Malcolm Collins: And yeah, I guess what I'll end with is, we all know these types of people, and because of that, rather than looking at them as a signal of derision, we should search for this in ourselves, I will give another quote by him and we've got to put the scene of the goth kids from South Park in here doing their poetry.
Speaker: Shallow life, drowning alone I gasp for air, coldness creeps over pale skin,
Malcolm Collins: I am simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously? Which is such a removal. Everything about this Philosophy is about removing personal [00:32:00] responsibility. It is the lowest effort philosophy and world perspective conceivably possible. You know
Simone Collins: what though what actually got me away from this attitude?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, did you ever have a phase like this? I had, like, 100 percent
Simone Collins: had a phase like this.
Malcolm Collins: Huge. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Was that people fully observed, acknowledged, and described that phase to me. Like, they saw it in me. They acknowledged me. And they were like, Yeah, basic. This is very embarrassing for you. Like, please let me help you.
This is a bad look. You don't look sophisticated. You don't look smart. No one's gonna like this. You are being so boring right now, take a try again, try a different approach. Yeah, no, but like that is 100 percent what happened. And it was actually in relation to this really stupid middle school project where you had to like write this whole report on your life and who you were.
And that's, that's why. I got the critique and basically I turned in my rough draft and [00:33:00] was like, life is suffering. I don't even know it. I'm not very important. I'm just a, it sounded like this guy, like you're reading that to me. And I'm like, it's taking me back. They read my draft and they were like, b***h, you need to rewrite this.
I can't, I'm not accepting this. You're not going to pass. If you submit this, this is s**t. This is basic. This is boring. It's depressing. You try again. And I'm like, it's my identity. And they're like,
Malcolm Collins: get
Simone Collins: a better
Malcolm Collins: identity. And I actually think that that is the light that fights this. Yeah. You have enthusiasm for life and individuals who lack.
I think that even just showing
Simone Collins: to the people who do this, that in the end, it actually makes them look super dumb and not sophisticated and basic. Cause that's what worked on me. Okay, this was the vulnerable trying to fit in teenage me who was driven to this in the first place and the argument that worked for me was, no, this isn't the sophisticated thing that you think it is.
This makes you look really [00:34:00] bad. So. I think that that I'm just pointing out that you kind of have to use, you have to argue on their own terms at least subconsciously and if subconsciously they're doing this to look sophisticated you need to explain the lack of ultimately the lack of sophistication it demonstrates.
Malcolm Collins: I agree 100%. Well, I love you to death, Simone. Now we'll add a little bit where I'm ranting about C. S. Lewis. We'll have a whole other episode because a lot of his philosophy and this is the thing. C. S. Lewis is a very interesting counter to this guy because he has none of the problems this guy has, but.
Where he looks for meaning is to essentially outsource it and in a way that is very I'd say almost equally philosophically lazy. And remember
Simone Collins: how you did that episode on how Christmas was not. Actually Pagan, and you were defenestrated for it. So many people got mad at me because they didn't Yeah, this is more than that.
You don't understand how much people love C. S. Lewis. This is, this is [00:35:00] Pagan Christmas all over again. I'm already developing hives. I'm not ready for the You're not ready for me to do.
Malcolm Collins: I might not do a full episode on why I, I actually what I'm thinking about doing is, is building a character into the game, which is pro.
So the way that I do things in, in the game is the game is philosophical battle after philosophical battle. And one of the things that gets me about CS Lewis's work, which really contracts in the way that I try to do art is if you play the game. Our philosophical perspective is always intentionally represented in the most monstrous way conceivable.
Whereas the more antithetical to us a philosophical perspective is, the more generous to that perspective we are. Because that's how I think through things, right? Like, I don't want to create a straw man that I can just bash. I want To make my side the straw man in the, in the in the fictional universe and their side be the strong side so that I get something that's more [00:36:00] interesting to engage with the the, the, so I think it'd be fun for me to build out his perspective and build it into sort of a wider.
Philosophical framing within the, the Catholic faction. I'd find that to be pretty interesting because that's what it really gels well with. But yeah, I that's another thing I don't like about his work. His work, like really straw man's the other side. Of his arguments and we'll get to that if we do a video
Simone Collins: on it.
Like you're above that?
Malcolm Collins: No, I, I do, okay, I will admit, I do straw man occasionally, but I at least, like, internally, when I'm trying to think through things, I do try to steel man them. I don't always straw man. But yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay. Well.
Malcolm Collins: Hey, even, even when I was looking at his thing, I was like, you're like, is that really what he argued?
And I go, okay, I'm going to pull up. No, you,
Simone Collins: you yeah. You don't strawman behind closed doors because you actually want to [00:37:00] win the argument and you know that if you don't If you don't steal me on the other side, you're gonna lose the argument. So your your focus on winning Actually does prevent it's it's really more just publicly you like to strawman because I think you make you think that it makes For better entertainment.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do it when I'm doing like entertainment content rather than actual philosophy content, which is part of our content
Simone Collins: Yeah, 100%. So yeah,
you'll have plenty more terrifying things to say about him.
Malcolm Collins: What are we doing it for? Oh, I know the way that you make CS Lewis work and we'll get to this in the episode we do on him is you need to not think about his arguments logically. And think about them athletically, and then it all works.
You need to approach his morality by saying, does this have an athletic truth to it rather than a logical truth to it? And as soon as you abandon causal logic his entire philosophy is quite beautiful. It just doesn't really gel with [00:38:00] causal logic.
Simone Collins: Okay. That makes sense. The people that I know who really likes CS Lewis are very.
In a contemporary term, vibes based, they're very,
Malcolm Collins: yes, vibes based arguments and they're very good and beautiful vibes based arguments, but you cannot leave the vibe zone.
Simone Collins: It's about the aesthetic feelings and general sentiment and impressions that you're left with. Yeah. Okay. I was going to make you go to John chicken with
Malcolm Collins: steamed rice scratch or reheat some
Simone Collins: reheat.
We don't have any. Fresh chicken. No, I
Malcolm Collins: was hoping you'd reheat some. I'm very excited and I'll have that with some rice.
Simone Collins: I love you. I'm glad you're home.
Malcolm Collins: I'm glad to be home.
Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back
Speaker 9: to your sunshine, [00:39:00] fairytale.
Speaker 10: Aren't you still wallowing in pain? I just realized that there's gonna be a lot of painful times in life, so I better learn to deal with it the right way. Hey, Wendy! You're a b***h. Token, right here, buddy.
Oh,
Malcolm Collins: Sorry, okay, if we're gonna go on a tangent here, if we're gonna go on a tangent here, C. S. Lewis, literally, his argument for God, and he, like, thought this was, like, a good argument, and other people have repeated it.
I am saying this as somebody who believes in God, okay? Is that Humans have this desire for something beyond our world, something greater than this world. And that desire is proof. That thing exists.
Simone Collins: Oh my god, it's like your mom when she wanted you to make more money and she's like, go to your [00:40:00] boss and see, I want more money.
Does it just manifest
Malcolm Collins: it? Yeah. No, this is literally like, I'm like, well, a lot of guys want cat Girl girlfriends. Okay. You got your Elan's and you're all that. That means they must exist somewhere. Maybe they exist in heaven and C. S. Lewis says heaven.
Or consider something like a Tolkien esque fantasy world with elves, and orcs, and knights, and magic. So many people all over the world independently yearn for a life in a very, you could almost say, eerily similar type of alternate universe. Is that at all evidence that that alternate universe exists?
Or is it evidence that popular books propose that it exists and many people are familiar with those books?
The mere fact that a lot of people can imagine and want something and seem to come to this position separated from each other means that that thing exists somewhere.
I'm sorry, but like people can understand how astronomically stupid [00:41:00] that point is, right? Sorry, I'm just flabbergasted by it. Like, sometimes I come across an argument and I'm like, what?
Simone Collins: Why? That's pretty bad. If that is actually his argument, that is really maybe we're missing something. Hold on, I'm going to ask an AI this, okay?
So, let me move
Malcolm Collins: you to the end of the episode so that you can This, okay, so I'm going to go to Claude, okay?
Simone Collins: Tell me if
Malcolm Collins: you think this is a fair phrasing given what I've said here. Did C. S. Lewis argue that proof that heaven exists was that people wanted something beyond this world, and that they would only want that if something beyond this world existed?
What world and bigger existed. That's basically what I said, right? So I'm putting this in the quad.
Yes, it says, C. S. Lewis made this argument in several works. Most notably in Mere Christianity and his essay, The Weight of Glory. However, you're slightly paraphrasing the actual argument, which is known as the argument from desire or argument from joy.
He reasoned that, . One, humans have natural desires that correspond to real life satisfactions. Hunger for food, thirst for water, sexual desire for [00:42:00] sex. Two, humans also experience a longing for something that nothing in this world can satisfy, what he calls joy or a sin shot.
Three, if this desire exists, Lewis argued, it likely points to something real that can satisfy it, just as our natural desires point to real satisfaction. Wow, so like,
Simone Collins: hunger Indicates the existence of food. Thirst indicates the existence of water, and therefore, desire for meaning indicates the existence of, of God?
Y yes.
Now, I note here, for those who are confused as to why you feel hunger or arousal or things like that, it's because your ancestors who had these, desires or emotions in response to specific environmental stimuli had more surviving offspring, either because they had more sex or they got more food or anything like that.
Hunger isn't unique to humans. I mean, I, I don't even, C. S. Lewis would argue that, like, dogs don't feel hunger. Worms feel hunger. Everything that has a degree of a nervous system in the same evolutionary pathway as us feels hunger. Like, [00:43:00] cows obviously feel hunger. What, what,
Even if a desire for more than what we have in this world or something like heaven, was evidence that something like heaven existed, the evidence for something like heaven existing would not be the same mechanism of action for the evidence of hunger to food or arousal to sex, , because those things were driven by evolutionary pressures, and the In all animals, in all insects even, , whereas the desire for like heaven would have been driven by some completely different pathway, like God implanting it in us.
Malcolm Collins: lewis wrote, quote, If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world, end quote. Of course, here I'd say, quote, If I find myself a desire for catgirl girlfriends and anime waifus, that must insinuate that those worlds are real.
It's, it's just absurd at face value.
Simone Collins: It's on a scale of [00:44:00] one to aggressively Hopeful? I would put it on the aggressively hopeful end.
Malcolm Collins: Is it logical to you? Is it an argument that would be persuasive to anyone? This would not persuade me.
Okay, but anyone like you can model other humans, right? You are aware how like the human brain works with this persuade. I would not use this argument and if attempting to convince someone else, okay point now back to the main story here.
Simone Collins: Good
Malcolm Collins: for you.
Dow is down 800 points today. The S& P always seems a bit more resistant. Okay,
Simone Collins: anyway. Do you remember when on the radio people used to just say that the S& P 500 is up this and the Dow is down blah blah blah and like they It was like a
Malcolm Collins: thing. Why did we need to know that? Who was day trading?
We needed to know that because we couldn't like No, but this is back when like you couldn't like Google it. I [00:45:00] think. The newspapers
Simone Collins: would say it. Yes. I mean, we, when we first heard this on the radio as really young kids, it was before internet was available on the young people today.
Malcolm Collins: Don't know that they would like start radio shows with this information.
Like, yeah, of course you need to know.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
- Lyssna Lyssna igen Fortsätt Lyssnar...
- Lyssna senare Lyssna senare
Visa fler

Avsnitt

Deciphering the Progressive Religion: Environmentalism, Trans, & Anti-Semitism

Wild West Dating & Mail Order Brides: Tinder of the Old West

Redistricting: Why the Democrats Need a New Coalition Post 2030

Entering Globalism's Dark Age: Apocalyptic Nirvana

Sub-Cultures With High Fertility: In Japan, UK, and Australia

Robin Hanson: Culture as it Relates to Fertility Decline

Ancient Roman Pronatalism: The Last Time We Failed to Solve Fertility Collapse

Why is Fertility Collapse Happening Faster in Some Places Than Others? (& Are Women at Fault?)

Opus Dei vs. Jesuits: An Outsider's Take on the Battle for Catholicism's Soul

Demographic Collapse Mandates a Transition to Monarchy

The Replicator Program: Mobile Kill Drone Fabs Being Built by USA Military

The Quiverfull Movement: How High Fertility Ideologies Die

WIRED Provably Lied About Us & Pronatalism's Triumph Over Effective Altruism

The Effective Altruism to S*X Work Pipeline

Higher Earnings No Longer Lead to Marriage: Culture is Changing

We Were Right! Two Men Kissing & a Bowl of Maggots (Disgust & Sexuality)

The Progressive Mental Health Crisis

Post-Globalization Monarchist Philosophy: With the Aristocratic Utensil

Why the Left Can't Mentally Model the Right

Nihilism is Philosophical Hedonism & We Are All Susceptible (Pessimism Protects You Psychologically)