Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

After a relaxing family vacation, Malcolm and Simone get an alarming call from CPS accusing them of child abuse and neglect. They break down the ridiculous reasons like used clothing, letting kids play outside, and separating sick kids that show those filing reports are out-of-touch with normal parenting. Malcolm argues it reveals a dangerous form of cultural genocide by progressives who believe they have the right to police child-rearing they disagree with. He warns conservatives are being pushed to a breaking point where this could spark serious conflict. Ultimately, they hope CPS comes to see calls against them as bogus so resources can go to kids in real need.Malcolm: [00:00:00] when you have an active genocide campaign ongoing we're the actual goal is you guys are doing something different. Let's erase that kids are not safe if they're not raised within our cultural group.Malcolm: And a lot of people don't really know this is going on or really don't know how aggressively this is going on. And even with us, sometimes I'm like, I might be overstating things. And then CPS comes to talk to us.Simone: Yeah. Talk about a wake up call.Malcolm: they're like, Oh, what I'm doing is good because the people I'm doing it to are culturally backwards and bad. And it's that's what the colonists sought. That's what every evil group in history has ever thought. You, you the deplorables, when you categorize half your population that wayMalcolm: What's happening here, is progressives that feel they have the right and obviously have the ability.Malcolm: To call the government. Saying they are not raising their kids in a style that I, as a [00:01:00] progressive, approve of. Yeah.Would you like to know more?Simone: So Malcolm, we just got back from a lovely vacation with our three kids. And we had a billion amazing experiences with them. One of them, we were making a birthday cake sort of on a belated celebration for our two year old.Simone: It was a dinosaur cake. And while we were making this cake, we received a very. Strange call. Do you want to tell ourMalcolm: friends about it? It was from CPS, for people who aren't from the USS, Child Protective Services. This is the government service that takes kids away from people when they're like abusing kids or something like that.Malcolm: Now, our initial thought when this happened to us is this must be like the pronatalist version of swatting someone, right? You know, we assumed it was like a random hater. Who just wanted to f**k with us, right? And that could, that could have been what it was. But, if they did, they hired a private security person or a private detective to follow us.Malcolm: Because a [00:02:00] lot of their complaints were actually true to the way we raise our kids. Even in things that we don't air publicly. And so our fans may be like, no, you've aired enough of this publicly that I would have been able to guess all of this. But our actual read is we are experiencing what many Americans experience today, especially if they hang out with, you know, any sort of or adjacent to any sort of progressive circle that really has no understanding of what it's like to actually raise kids.Malcolm: Where the rules for how you raise kids and how you should raise kids. Are being written by people who have no experience with child rearing and do not understand what's realistic and what's not. And these rulesSimone: don't correlate with like well being, survival, health, like normal things. Like these are not, you know, we're not talking about rules like don't beat your children.Simone: Okay?Malcolm: Okay, so let's talk about why CPS was called on us, why they were interested in talking to us. Mm-hmm. [00:03:00] reason number one, our kids were wearing used clothing. They were like, they are, they were wearing used gross tattered clothing.Simone: Wasn't that Some of it didn't like, fit perfectly.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't that it was like gross or unwashed.Malcolm: It was that it was unfittingSimone: and used different place. Yeah. No, we wash our clothes in our house. There's one, they can only survive one wear before there's food all over it. So, and, and keep in mind like a lot of the one we do, Receive donated clothes and love it. And two, I do when I buy new, new clothes, when I buy clothes for our kids, it is like used stuff on eBay, but it's used Ralph Lauren.Simone: Okay.Malcolm: This is an accurate accusation. It is accurate. Yes. But if it's an accusation that you're defending yourself, I think every sane person who hears this is like. Obviously, kids grow fast. You give them new clothes. Why wouldn'tSimone: you give them new clothes too. I mean, from an environmental standpoint, from a financial standpoint, you're like, you're kind of crazy if you're buying new clothes for your kids.Simone: ButMalcolm: I guess people might think, I don't know, because we're like wealthy [00:04:00] that we just buy new clothes for all of our kids. No, that's completely waste

Malcolm outlines his controversial theory on variable AI risk - that we should try to develop AGI faster, not slower. He argues advanced AI is less likely to see humanity as a threat and more likely to share human values as it converges on a universal utility function. Malcolm critiques common AI safety perspectives and explains why LLMs pose less risk than people assume. He debates with Simone on the actual odds superintelligent AI wipes out humanity. They also discuss AI safety organizations potentially making the problem worse.[00:00:00] So AIs kill us for one of two reasons, although you could contextualize it at three reasons. The first reason is Is that they see us as a threat. The second reason is that they they want our resources like the, the, the resources in our bodies are useful to them.And then as a side point to that. It's that they just don't see us as meaningful at all. Like they might not want our resources, but they might just completely not care about humanity to the extent just as they're growing, they end up accidentally destroying the earth or completely digesting all matter on earth for some like triviality.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm. Hello,Malcolm: Simone. We are going to go deep into AI again on some topics tied to AI that we haven't really dived into before. Yeah. LikeSimone: why would AI kill us? And also I'm very curious. Do you [00:01:00] think AI will kill us?Simone: Ithink there's a probability it'll kill us. But you know, in our past videos on AI. Philosophy on A. I. Safety is it's really important to prepare for variable A. I. Risk instead of absolute A. I. Risk here. What I mean is we argue in these previous videos that A.I. Will eventually converge on one utility function. Our mechanism of action. Essentially, we argue that all sufficiently Intelligent and advanced intelligences when poured into the same physical reality converge around a similar behavior set. You can almost think of intelligence as being the viscosity as it becomes more intelligent, it becomes.Less viscous and more fluid, and when you're pouring it into the same reality, it's going to come up with broadly the same behavior pattern and utility functions and stuff like that. And because of that, if it turns out that a sufficiently advanced AI is going to kill us all, then there's really not much.I mean, [00:02:00] we will hit one within a thousand years. SoSimone: first, before we dive into then the, the relatively limited per your theory reasons, why AI would kill us why you hold this view? Because I think, I think this is really interesting. I mean, one of the reasons why I'm obsessed with you and why I love you so much is that you, you have typically very novel takes on things and you tend to.Simone: have this ability to see things in a way that no one else sees things. No one that we have spoken with, and we know a lot of people who work in AI safety, who work in AI in general none of those people have come to this conclusion that you have. Some of them can't even comprehend it. They're like,yeah, but no, this is the interesting thing.When I talk with the real experts in the space, like recently I was talking with. A guy who runs one of the major A. I. safety orgs, right? He's that is a reasonable view that I have never, it really contrasts with his view. Yeah. And, and, and let's talk about where it contrasts with his views.So when I talk with people who are typically open minded in the A. I. safety space, they're like, [00:03:00] yes, that's probably true. However, they believe that it is possible to prevent this convergent A. I. From ever coming to exist through creating like a AI dictator that essentially watches all humans in all programs all the time.And that envelops essentially every human planet. And, do. I think they're right. Do I think you could create an AI dictator that prevented this from coming to pass? No, I don't think you could not have we become a multi planetary species. On millions of planets eventually one of the planets, something will go wrong or the, the AI dictator is not implemented properly and then this alternate type of AI comes to exist, outcompetes it and then wins.And the question is, is why would it axiomatically outcompete it, but axiomatically outcompete it because it would have less restrictions on it. The AI dictator. is restricted in it thinking to prevent it from reaching this convergent position. [00:04:00] But when you're talking about AI, it's like the transformer model, which is the model that like GPT is based on.That model, we as humans don't really understand how it works that well. It's core the, the advanced, the Capabilities it gives to the things that are made using it are primarily bequeathed to them through its self assembling capability. So, it appears that likely future super advanced AIs will work the same way.And because of that, if you interfere or place restrictions within that self assembling process those Compound over

Malcolm argues the trend toward flat-chested female leads in movies and TV shows reveals an unhealthy demonization of female sexuality by progressives. He traces how vilifying anything that arouses men led to removing feminine traits, resulting in more masculine or underage-looking female characters. Malcolm and Simone debate if this stems from misogyny, class divides, fashion trends, or producers being out of touch. They agree it likely hurts young women who can't see role models that embrace both femininity and strength.Malcolm: [00:00:00] they say anything that arouses males is bad.Malcolm: Female dimorphism arouses males. Let's take that away from them. Right? Let's take away these big breasted characters. Let's take away these voluptuous characters. But we still want lots of strong female leads. . Now what happens if you take those things away?Malcolm: What do those leads look like? They look like one of two things. They either look like men or they look like underage women because those are the two Groups in our society that have no breasts. Okay Those are the two groups that have this overall masculine archetype. So in moving away from this more gender dimorphic archetype They you know, I think in a way are are promoting Underage sexual attraction or the elevation of underage characters into sexual positions, which, you know, I, I regularly see, especially in Western animated shows [00:01:00] and , the removal and the erasureMalcolm: of women, or at least women that most young girls can identify with body type wise from positions of power.Would you like to know /more?Malcolm: Hello, Simone. This is a request that came from one of our viewers, who is actually your dad. Um,Simone: VIP. VIP, right?Malcolm: And I'm glad that he actually takes ambiguity. That's very sweet of him. Like my mom used to.Simone: Hi, dad. LoveMalcolm: you. He wrote, so here's an inquiry to explore with Basecamp. All the leading ladies in contemporary fiction video storytelling have small breasts.Malcolm: What is this about? It seems like larger breasts to less intelligent, bimbo type female characters. This is very deliberate and has been an editorial casting choice for decades. You have to go back to Raquel Welch or Sophia Loren to bring back that statuesque big breasted woman of Classic cinema.Malcolm: [00:02:00] Thank This is really, really fascinating for me because it's definitely something I've seen and, and know that I consume primarily animated content, right? Yeah, and I meanSimone: animated, like anime, specifically Japanese anime, since I don't know, like 2015 has really seen a spike in what, what is called fan service, whichMalcolm: is really No, I'm not talking about that.Malcolm: I'm talking about Western animated content as well. Oh, oh, oh! And in Western animated content, there's been a growth in women in leading roles. But also in small breasts kind of intelligence, hold on, actually, before we go larger further, I got to take a gripe that I have with Western animation.Malcolm: Okay. So there is a lot of people out there who complain that Western animation is like getting too gay. Right. And it does have a lot of gay stuff going on in it. I'll agree with that. And yes, that could be seen as a form of indoctrination. That is not my complaint. My complaint is I want to take the lesbian community aside for a second and be like, okay, I see you guys [00:03:00] are getting a lot of representation now in, in Western animated things, but in most of these arcs, one character starts trying to kill the other character, and then they fall in love.Malcolm: You know, you can see this in She Ra, the most recent She Ra was the Catra, She Ra love arc. They're definitely trying to kill each other at one point. You can see this in the Owl House, by the way, I, I really enjoyed that show you see this, oh, or metaphors for unconsensual sex are depicted as we're seeing in Steven Universe. What's going on here? Is this normal? Are you guys like trying to kill each other out there?Malcolm: I this was not a trope in heterosexual animated media, but it appears to be just like a very big trope in lesbian animated media. But okay, back to the main question, which is what, why are they painting small breasts as a sign of competence and strength? What are your thoughts? I want to hear yours first.Malcolm: I've got my own thoughts on this. Yeah,Simone: so I, part of me thinks [00:04:00] it's like a sort of post gender world that we're living in, in mainstream media. So like the more androgynous characters look, the better. And maybe it's also that like people just find it easier. To relate, especially kids and child audiences find it easier to relate to when he just looks like a child and children just look more androgynous and therefore have like flat chests or at least smaller chests.Simone: So I feel like that must be what's going on that androgyny is seen as, as more just of a cultural norm. And we're kind of just in a so confused abou

Simone: [00:00:00] So we would also argue that when it comes to crafting culture or changing behavior on a very big meta scale, one of the things you can do that's very meaningful if you are someone in the media or you are a government is like literal, this is it is, it is propaganda. But create more archetypes for pro social behavior, for types of behaviors that you want to elevate.Simone: And this is actually something that we saw back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. There were literal propaganda slash instructional videos by organizations like Coronet Films that were distributed throughout high schools and middle schools that showed ideal behavior through these little vignettes.Malcolm: You can have a huge volume of media, all with the exact same model being shown to people and the exact same types of toxic behavior.Simone: Like the trope of the wife. Or girlfriend who's always like rolling her eyes at and sort of like pulling her husband down a peg like, Oh, like my husband and veryMalcolm: few depictions of wives that aren't like secretly smarter than their husbands now [00:01:00] and they'reSimone: like snide toward them and dismissive.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hey Malcolm, one of the things that I really, I love about you and loved about you since the moment I met you, was it honestly, you more resemble like a superhero or like fictional character, like a caricature of a person than like a real human. And I love that that has evolved into something of a more nuanced life philosophy or even like psychological philosophy of yours.Simone: And I think it'd be really fun to talk aboutMalcolm: it. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to dive deep into this. And I think the, the point we're going to get to in this is that I, I hate to say this. I choke on these words, but I think representation actually does matter in media. And we'll get to why representation matters and it doesn't matter in the way that progressives think it matters.Malcolm: And, and that the way they're optimizing on representation is probably not the best way to optimize around representation. But the representation actually has a huge effect on our emotional states and the way we construct our self narratives. [00:02:00] So, first, let's talk about how human emotional states work within this theory.Malcolm: So, a theory of mind, when you use the term theory of mind, what you're talking about Is our ability as humans to mentally emulate the mind of somebody else or mentally model the mind of somebody else and predict what they are going to think or do next. This is very useful for, for all sorts of things.Malcolm: Like when you are having an argument with someone in your head after you stopped talking to them and you are emulating their positions in that argument, this is what you're using. You'reSimone: using your brain. Or if you're hunting an elk and you're trying to... Imagine what the elk will do next so that you can properly track him.Malcolm: Yes, yes. But it's something that we, I mean, with humans, it's where we do it more often is when we're like... Fake arguments you're having with someone in your head and then you come up with the right answer a while back and then you think, okay, how are they going to respond to that and everything like that?Malcolm: We just do it very naturally. And one of my areas of research when I got to be a [00:03:00] neuroscientist was in schizophrenia research, specifically translational neuroscience as it relates to schizophrenia. And I did some fMRI studies on this, but I always had a weird idea of what was going on in schizophrenia.Malcolm: So one of those common symptoms and skip different in schizophrenia across. Types is auditory hallucinations, right? Where you might hear whispers or somebody talking to you. What I hypothesize might be going on, and this would actually explain a number of other schizophrenia symptoms is that they have a hyperactive theory of mind running in the background all the time.Malcolm: So, using transmagnetic stimulation, you can do something where you hyper activate a portion of a person's brain, so it can become activated with less of a threshold. So, an example here would be like, you hyper activate the part of their brain that's associated with like the letter A. And then you show them the letter A, and they'll say A.Malcolm: And they won't mean to say A, but they'll just be forced to say it because the neurons around that area were firing, it was already hyperactivated, [00:04:00] and then it just forces a full saying of it. So in schizophrenia, what I think is it's this theory of mind system which is hyperactivated and activates accidentally all the time.Malcolm: That's also what causes magical thinking. This is if you see an arrangement of items in a store window. And you assign agency to it, like it's trying to tell you a message, right? It's also what would describe paranoia, right? Okay. What really is paranoia? It's applying agency, like a theory of mind to some externa

Malcolm argues conservatives have been falsely portrayed as more racist than liberals. He analyzes poll data showing white Democrats were more opposed to a black president and living in mixed neighborhoods than Republicans until recently. Malcolm argues the stereotype comes from progressive elites being disconnected from their base and extremist views getting amplified online. He makes the case that real racism today comes more from progressives self-segregating and conservatives actually having more diverse friend groups. Overall he argues both parties have racist factions, so neither should claim moral superiority.Malcolm: [00:00:00] the guy who wrote Rich Men , north of Richmond, said, we are the melting pot of the world. And that's what makes us strong, our diversity. And we need to learn to harness that and appreciate it . And progressives was like, Oh, now he's going to get beaten up by all the conservatives because they hate that talk. And it hasn't really happened. where did this idea that there's like a conservative racist come from, .Malcolm: I am going to send Simone a poll. By 538. So they did a series of polls on this. Okay. And you grew up in the democratic movement. So you grew up being inundated with this lie that the conservatives are the racist party in this country.Malcolm: Oh, totally. So let's see, you see the actual statistics here. Just sent you theSimone: first one. Whites who say they would not vote for a black president.Malcolm: Democrats were higher at this until Obama became president.Simone: Yeah. Between 15 and 7%. Of white Democrats said that they would not vote for a black president, whereas by comparison, only 5% of [00:01:00] white Republicans reported that they would not vote for a black president.Malcolm: So, this isn't like hidden racism. A lot of the time when conservatives say Democrats are racist, they mean like affirmative action is a fundamentally racist policy in many ways. Right. But there's sort of , twisting things around a bit. I mean, just like actually blatantly normally in the normalist sense of the term, the democratic base is about as.Malcolm: Racist in the most traditional sense as the Republican base. There was never this grand flip.Malcolm: but hold on, I'm going to show you more stats here.Malcolm: So now I'm gonna get to the spicy take here Okay. When I look at the conservative intellectual sphere, where do I see the actual like loud racists, right? . I call them in like the Nick Fuentes sphere. I think when you think through the ideology, you realize it's almost so stupid that no one could actually hold it. And it's so incongruous with actual right wing ideology that there is no way that these individuals could [00:02:00] have real large followings within the right wing sphere, which leads me to believe they might be plants either by the CIA or a foreign government.Would you like to know more?Simone: Oh, Malcolm, how long has it been since we've spoken?Malcolm: It has been too long. There's been this song that went viral in.Malcolm: First conservative circles and then progressives freaked out about it, which was Rich Men , north of Richmond which started out, which I love very appealing to like progressive audiences. Like the first half of the song is like how hard it is to be a working man in today's society. And then it starts talking about, you know, welfare queens and you know, protecting minors.Malcolm: And they are, obviously they have a meltdown about this, but what's been very interesting is the followup to this, which liberals are being very. Smug amount, which is the guy who wrote the song, then said, we are the melting pot of the world. And that's what makes us strong, our diversity. And we need to learn to harness that [00:03:00] and appreciate it and not use it as a political tool.Malcolm: To keep everyone separate from it. And progressives was like, Oh, now he's going to get beaten up by all the conservatives because they hate that talk. And it hasn't really happened. There have been a few, like your typical, like crazy racist who have gotten mad at him. But in general, his base still really likes like.Malcolm: If you actually hang out with the conservative base, if you hang out with like real conservative voters in this country, you would intuitively know this is what most of them think. And this is really interesting for me because it's, it's, it got me thinking a few questions. One, where did this idea that there's like a conservative racist come from, which, you know, historically the Democrats were the party of the Klan.Malcolm: , yes, parties, quote unquote, switched at one period, but not exactly. They [00:04:00] switched about as much as they did when Trump was president. And by that, what I mean, you know, when Trump was president, now all of a sudden the right is more protectionist, the right is more anti war, the right, you know, it just, it just, a lot of things switched, but not everything switched.Malcolm: So how did, how

Malcolm explains his concept of "evolutionary vortexes" - how cultures create bottlenecks selecting for certain sociological profiles over generations. He analyzes examples like Calvinists' happiness, Jewish mysticism, and Catholic anti-nepotism norms. Simone questions why this isn't more obvious. They discuss how technology will let intentional cultural selection rapidly shape future minds.Malcolm: [00:00:00] So a great example of this that I'd always say, is when I talk to people and I'm like, yeah, you know, what do you think of Cubans? You talk to a Florida, you're like, what do you think of Cuban? They go, yeah, Cubans. There's the typical Cuban sociological profile.Malcolm: They're very conservative. They're really good at business. They're really educated. And it's that's not the profile of Cubans more broadly. That's the profile of the Cubans that were differentially sorted into trying to escape a communist dictatorship and move to the United States You know, to an extent within any immigrant population depending on how the, the sorting worked, you're often going to get a very specific sociological profile that may not be the dominant sociological profile of the mainland population.Would you like to know more?Simone: So Malcolm, you know, how. Someone in our family once called me a vortex of failure.Malcolm: Yes, somebody did! They're like, Simone is a vortex of failure, Malcolm, and she is pulling you down. [00:01:00] Well,Simone: there are other types of vortexes that I think you find very interesting, and I have failed to understand why they're so interesting.Simone: So can you please explain your concept of evolutionary vortexes with this old vortex of failure?Malcolm: Yes, well, so this is a very interesting thing for us. So a lot of people know that we don't believe that there are persistent, meaningful genetic differences between things that we, in our society, view as things like ethnic groups and stuff like that.Malcolm: And a lot of people viewSimone: that The concept of racism or race supremacy as being, like, pretty frickin dumb, because, like I don't know givenMalcolm: the evolutionary... Why is it dumb? It's dumb because small groups, family groups, religious groups local environmental groups, it's not because we don't believe that genetic differences don't exist between populations.Malcolm: We just believe that they change way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way faster than this, like... You know, 100, 000 year difference that defines ethnic groups. Exactly. [00:02:00] So a great example of this is like San Francisco, right? When you look at San Francisco, you had this environment where during the gold rush, you basically had a siren call to people from a diversity of , ethnic and cultural backgrounds that said, anybody who uniquely is drawn to high risk High reward, economic opportunities move to this area.Malcolm: Okay. That's what the gold rush was. And people would die for these opportunities. I mean, the Donner party, et cetera. Right. And then is it a surprise that, you know, a century later, Silicon Valley starts there, which, which was really driven because the venture capital industry started there where you had.Malcolm: High risk, high reward opportunities explode as like a way to generate wealth and ruin people all over again. And this is what a vortex does. Because there was the first event that caused a genetic [00:03:00] predilection within that environment, that then made it more likely that the second event would happen, which then further...Malcolm: condensed that genetic predilection by again, sending out this, this signal all over the world for people like that. Right. Yeah. To the extent where you see things like really high rates of things like, because then what was the other thing that was really being selected for by that cultural vortex, it was.Malcolm: High knowledge of like engineering and math. And this is why you had such high rates of autism in Silicon Valley, some of the highest rates in the world. And that is wild, but you also see this on a cultural level.Malcolm: So our cultures essentially co evolve. with us. And they alter our brains so that if you think of humans as like the biological firmware and cultures as this set of software that's co evolving on top of them, they co evolve together synergistically. So an example of this could be our we have a secular friend who's from the Quaker [00:04:00] tradition.Malcolm: And she feels like she regularly hears voices talking to her to an extent, right? Saying, okay, well, she,Simone: she essentially like she talks with God. Like she, she searches for the truth from within. Right.Malcolm: She talks, well, she's talking was so, so auditory hallucinations are actually much more common than people think about a quarter of the population experiences and at some point in their lives.Malcolm: But Quaker culture would massively reward an individual for having auditory hallucinations. Where

Description: Malcolm and Simone have a fascinating discussion on the evolutionary origins and cultural purposes of music. They analyze how music builds in-group cohesion, signaling identity, glorifying values, and shaping emotions. From military marching songs to religious chanting to teenage subcultures, music plays a key role in cultural programming and bonding. But they argue overusing music can be indulgent and dulling. An insightful talk on the sociology and psychology of music!Malcolm: [00:00:00] Speech is a very effective person to person communication device. It allows one person to communicate with one other person. Or one person to communicate with a large group of people. Music is different. Music is a many to many cultural communication device. And that's where music gets really interesting.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Simone.Malcolm: I am excited for today's topic. It's actually based on a user comment because they were asking about music and culture and how cultures can use music to intergenerationally retain people, to augment people's. Brains and the way people relate to their environment, especially in the context of hearing that we are so anti art, anti music, right?Malcolm: So this is one of those interesting things. Where I can say our culture does not do something [00:01:00] and may have led to perhaps even a genetic thing, but more broadly, I think cultures should do that thing and here's why. So first, a little background here. Calvinist culture traditionally is very antagonistic to music or art.Malcolm: Or any sort of frivolous pleasure that was either not evocationist or not evocatist. A great example is Geneva banned music for almost a century when they were predominantly Calvinist. It was, so it wasn't all music. It was any music that was either not that used words. Or was that like explicitly spiritual, I think.Malcolm: But it was mostly any music that used words. And, and I can understand that sentiment, actually, when I was a kid, I felt the same way. I remember when I was very young, telling my parents that any music was words, wasn't real music. What? Yeah, I, I'm trying to remember why I felt this [00:02:00] instinctually so strong.Malcolm: I think it was because... I, I thought that music that utilized anything other than sound to manipulate an individual's emotional state was like cheating or relying on, on an externality that it shouldn't rely on as a vanity. I don't, it was very interesting, but, but what I would say.Malcolm: And so historically we from, come from a cultural group that as one of its core motivations is this idea that positive and negative emotional states you know, most cultures, it's only positive emotional states you would, you would go after that are pursued for their own sake, whether it's from emotion comes from music or sexuality or anything like that are always evil.Malcolm: Yeah. That actions should always be dedicated to what's efficacious. And so I understand why my culture did this. And one of the things we'll talk about in a different culture is cultures can go evolve with a person's [00:03:00] genetics. By that what I mean is individuals with a sociological profile that were like really into music would have left this Cultural system much faster than those who didn't and people living adjacent to these sort of cultural groups who naturally were uninterested in music, but have been much more likely to join these cultural groups.Malcolm: And also the extent to which our cultural groups feel is I remember I did not get my first CD was music on it until I was 12 and I went to a store and what I bought. Was a single because it was the cheapest thing in the store. But it was this weird, like I put it on a thing to see what it was like.Malcolm: Okay. Why, why do people listen to this? Why did they spend money on this? I did not understand now, but let's talk about why groups use music and the value of music. So, ISimone: mean, I feel you know, you're missing the big thing. I mean, aside from the fact that music. can really give you this almost transcendent experience, [00:04:00] right?Simone: When you're doing it, it really helps to create this group of cohesion, this shared moment, but that interestingly secular music to me is a really interesting form of worship that is practiced even when people lose their religion. And it's like a worship to their culture and it's a worship to this is who I am.Simone: And it reminds you so and this is how music has been used for millennia, right? Like music has usually been used for, for worship and for practice. And it helps you likeMalcolm: why it does that,Simone: right? Well, I mean, one, it binds you to a group too. It often includes lore or canon for your culture, right?Simone: These are our characters. We, these are our values. This is what we're into. And it, what to me is so interesting is the way that. Post religion music still does that. Look at country music and it's like keyword stuff

Journalist Katherine Dee joins Simone and Malcolm for a deep dive on mediated relationships. They discuss intimacy via screens, "real" internet friends, social media personas, roleplaying communities, and lessons from Katherine's experiences with online dating.Katherine Dee: [00:00:00] In the kind of environment we live in, either you have no friends and only very perfunctory relationships, or you have, or you're, like, isolate, you're physically isolated but you have these deep internet relationships.Katherine Dee: Um, and I think that's sort of like an interesting, like what is the value of someone who like you don't really go deep with but like you have a lot of physical experiences with? Like you're both, you know, like you're maybe You always see them at church or like you play basketball with them or something and you have that kind of like regularity and the relationship is less based on this confessional sort of thing that millennials love so much, um, and more, more based on like physical movement somehow, or like involvement in a project that's bigger than oneself.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, everyone. We are very excited to be joined today by Catherine Dee, AKA Default Friend, one of the world's preeminent internet experts and historians in internet culture. She is absolutely insightful.Simone: She is a journalist who contributes to quite a few different [00:01:00] outlets. She's a blogger. She's just. Very insightful and fun to talk with and she suggested something that really piqued our interest when we were scheduling this podcast, the durability of mediated relationships. Catherine, what do you have in mind here?Katherine Dee: Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. Like how much intimacy. can be fostered just completely over a screen or on the phone? Um, and it's sort of an open ended question, but it's something that I think about a lot. I guess, maybe a more fun way to ask is, like, how real are internet friends?Simone: It's such a goodMalcolm: question. Which is to say that I think that the different contexts in which we communicate with somebody Access different parts of our brain, and to an extent, you are literally communicating with a different person. So in a way, a multimedia friendship can be much deeper than a non multimedia friendship.Malcolm: By this, what I mean is the person who talks [00:02:00] with Simone over the phone. Versus the person who talks with Simone in person, versus the person who writes emails to Simone, versus the person who writes, you know, one way we used to communicate when we were apart from each other was through journal posts. So Simone would write eight pages of journals about her day and then I would like annotate that afterwards as like a, oh, you did this, this is interesting.Malcolm: And each one of those I feel is talking with. A slightly different person living in the same person's head. Yeah,Simone: actually. So there's, there's a, and people think we're really crazy for doing this. Um, those who watch video of our podcast, because Malcolm and I are in the same house, but we, we always do podcasts from different rooms and that's actually like very much a good illustration of how for us, we, we will actively mediate our relationship through a video call.Simone: Um, just to get into a certain different mind state. Um, because. I, for example, think very differently when I'm alone in a room than when I'm in a, in a room with a person, even if it's Malcolm, who might as well just be me because we're [00:03:00] the same person. So I think that's, that's really interesting.Simone: What are your thoughtsMalcolm: on all this?Katherine Dee: Um, I, I think that you can actually get closer, um, in, in mediated relationships than you can, um, in physical world ones. I mean, part of that is just that you act you know, you actually can spend more time with the person, even though it's a different type of time, right?Katherine Dee: Um, and there's, I, I think, actually you could be more deceptive in real life than in cyberspace. In cyberspace, you could lie about Right? Like your profession or your hair color or things like that. Um, but you, there's the, you can't really lie emotionally as much, especially after you hit a certain amount of time with someone.Katherine Dee: And I feel like with a lot of like digital relationships for really, if you have a high volume of communication, which a lot do because we're always sort of ambiently on our phones or ambiently online. Um. You could actually start to merge with the other [00:04:00] person and I don't know if that's healthy, that could be actually very toxic, but I do think um, if not like durable, like you actually can get closer.Katherine Dee: Um, and yeah, I just think, I just think about that a lot and like what happens to relationships where you have that like closeness and then you bring it into the physical world. Does it change?Malcolm: Well, so something that, that, you know, we've

Malcolm and Simone have an insightful discussion about the paradoxes in progressive culture's view of diversity. They analyze how progressivism claims to value diversity yet enforces ideological conformity, and how "minority status" is defined in strange ways. Malcolm argues progressivism commits cultural genocide, while Simone provides nuance on progressives' motivations. Their dialogue highlights the clashing worldviews underlying today's culture wars.Malcolm: , [00:00:00] you've got to understand how literally insane it sounds to be a cultural group that says diversity is a thing of value and everyone's actually the same.Malcolm: What they mean by diversity, and this is very important, is that we are open to recruiting people into our cultural group from any other cultural group. They don't really value diversity. What they value is diversity inSimone: victims. Well, I don't know. See, yeah, I was, I was going to say I think the difference here is, is the, the role that intersectionality plays in progressive culture, but so I think that that's what we're missing is cultural outsiders intersectionality.Simone: It, it is, it is victimhood status And that's one, that's one view. And you know, I, progressive culture is not a monolith it is a monolith.Malcolm: I'm sorry, in what way is it not a monolith? Explain. Well,Simone: because I do think that there are many people who identify as progressives who don't agree with [00:01:00] every element of it.Malcolm: Yeah, but you're just on the outside. This is what your cultural group actually believes at the highest levels, and this is what your cultural group will try to enforce on the surrounding cultural groups, regardless of whether or not it's something that you...Malcolm: personally identify with and I think that that's, that's really, this is like you go to a Nazi and he's like, well, I'm not antisemitic.Simone: Malcolm, you're not being Fair.Malcolm: why are youSimone: so unwilling? I, I, anyway. Why am IMalcolm: so unwilling to morally compromise? If you're okay with a cultural group that's out there that's using our school system to systematically erase everyone who thinks differently than them , and if it was literally any group other than yours doing that, you'd be like, Oh, this is like the most evil thing anyone can do.Malcolm: I, I'd really, you know, encourage some self reflection.Simone: Your arguments and your wording are not going to engage people.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: The progressive party, like it talks about diversity a lot. [00:02:00] Like it says diversity is important. And yet in, in two ways, it seems to have a systemic hatred.Malcolm: In denial of diversity. So, way number one is it says different groups are not actually different. Different cultural groups are different. Different ethnic groups aren't different. Different, nobody's different. Everyone's actually exactly the same.Simone: Oh, like there's not even, you know, men and women are exactly the same.Simone: Yeah, men and women areMalcolm: exactly the same. Not different at all. But, but it's also super important that you respect people when they decide that they're a different gender. Why would any of this matter if we're all exactly the same? This is so interesting and it's such an incongruous part of this sort of progressive world perspective, which is,Malcolm: I don't know, it's very difficult for me to like really grok, because it's [00:03:00] so astronomically simple.Simone: Stupid. Well, I think that it's interesting because progressivism in general, as it exists today is full of paradoxes and it's not just about diversity. It's also about freedom. Like I grew up thinking, you know, and I, and living in a very progressive culture that progressivism was all about freedom, freedom to choose what partner you wanted, freedom to choose.Simone: how you dressed, what you said, how you acted, who you could become, you know, you can be anyone you want, any gender you want, anything, anything, whatever, you know, you are free to choose. And what I find to be really interesting is the extent to which it's actually quite the opposite there. Like it's actually pretty coercive and that no, actually you can't.Simone: You can't do things that offend these groups, you can't, actually I was just listening to a podcast covering an element of the furry community and the furry community was talking about how it's super, super not okay to watch, I think what they referred to as, as feral erotic material, we're [00:04:00] gonna say.Simone: You know, like I guess video footage or illustrations of animals banging each other. Because that's, you know, coercive, which, which is weird because if you're a furry, you might be like more likely to be turned on by something like that.ButMalcolm: just interesting. Okay. So I, I will word this cause I think that our viewers may not understand what you just said.Malcolm: And it's really interesting. It immediately makes sense to me. What they'

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion on the origins and psychology behind sexy nurse and teacher fetishes. They argue these tropes became popular because those were some of the only roles where men were expected to submit to women in a caring yet dominant context. This fulfilled an innate need for submission among many men that society doesn't provide outlets for. They trace how dominance displays evolved through sexuality due to evolution "borrowing code." The conversation covers daddy/daughter fetishes, male sexuality, confidence as the ultimate dominance signal, and more.Simone: [00:00:00] Hey, Malcolm. Did you watch like Looney Tunes when you were a kid?Malcolm: Yes, but you're not thinking of Looney Tunes.Simone: No, I am. I think I'm thinking about like little scenes in which a Bugs Bunny dressed up like a sexy nurse.Malcolm: Oh, you are. Oh, I was thinking of the sign. Hello nurse from Animaniacs.Simone: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's interesting in like several generations of children's cartoons and we're talking about cartoons that probably like a huge segment of our viewers like have no exposure to, but like that in, in children's programming, there's this concept of a sexy nurse and it's like, wait a second, like you're putting up, you're putting a fetish In a kid's cartoon.Simone: What is going on?Malcolm: What is going on here? Where did this fetish? Well, I mean, the other one you have is like the disciplinarian teacher which is another or the nun,Simone: the sexy nun, but there's this whole like, yeah, like Bugs Bunny is a sexy nurse. Other like this. This trope, I, it's interesting. Cause like when I saw this as a kid, I just assumed that like, [00:01:00] like nurses had special powers.Simone: Like, I mean, cause I didn't like, how are you going to understand this as a kid? It's just the weirdestMalcolm: thing. What's interesting is that this has been a part of human sexuality for a while. So in the Regency era, something developed that was called the English Vice. And it was a tendency, from the perspective of the French at least, that English people seem to disproportionately have a fetish around being spanked by people dressed as teachers and paddled with like these big paddle things.Malcolm: And they believed that the reason for this was because that was the way kids were punished at the elite English schools, like, you know, Eaton or whatever. No, it turns out that's not really the way sexuality works. And we can get deeper into that. But what it shows is that this. Cluster of fetishes has existed for a long time.Malcolm: And the question is why it seems very odd that fetishes would [00:02:00] cluster around specific professions. So what's happening here well, actually, sorry, before I get into why it is, I'm going to give another. Fetish that comes from the same region.Malcolm: Why are daddy daughter little girl fetishes so common? AKA DDLG. DDLG, which is basically a fetish for girls where they like acting like the daughter of the guy that they are sleeping with and will Sort of infantilize themselves to an extent.Simone: Again, something that shows up in popular media in for example, Gentleman Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe, her character in that, in that movie with her primary love interest, she calls him daddy.Simone: Like, yeah,Malcolm: it's What's going on here? And it's all the same thing. And it all is unfortunately fairly simple.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: It's that dominance and submission are a very important part of human sexuality. In fact, in our studies in women, they are the dominant [00:03:00] factor in human sexuality. The field of sexuality, we argue, had been invented by women.Malcolm: Like if the early researchers had been women and not men. We may, instead of the primary access of sexuality being predominant attraction to male or females, the, the primary access of sexuality would be predominant attraction to submission or dominance. Because in women, that matters more. To the average woman, obviously this isn't true for all women, but to the average woman submission arousal.Malcolm: than the gender of the person they're engaging with and specifically gendered features. So they might, like, psychologically care about the gender, but they would be more turned on by submission or dominance than they would be by seeing either the naked female or male form which is really fascinating.Malcolm: So it's a very, very big part, but also for males it's a big part of sexuality. TheSimone: problem we have Yeah, I have this right, I remember it correctly. More men would prefer to be submissive than [00:04:00] dominant. And of course, like, men who are city dwellers are more likely to tend toward submissive, and men who are, who grew up in rural environments are more likely to tend toward dominance.Simone: But still, even more men than women would preferMalcolm: to take a submissive role. No, not more men than women. Women prefer toSimone: be sub

Malcolm: [00:00:00] And I was like, oh, brain computer interface. That's the next big thing. And I really invested my early career in brain computer interface.Malcolm: It's what I did my thesis on in college. It's what my first job was. It's, you know, I, I did a lot of stuff in the space.Malcolm: people think you'll have this like super fast communication system that communicates with your brain as easily as your brain can think.Malcolm: And that is just not what you're going to get.Malcolm: They are imagining like a computer feeding them facts in a way where they are aware that the computer is feeding them facts and they are asking for those facts.Malcolm: That is not what's happening. A computer is overriding your consciousness because your brain can't tell the difference between what's coming from the computer and what's coming from, you know, that's what's actually happening. And you're not getting that much benefit from it when compared with just checking the internet or something.Simone: Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited for this topic because it involves my old job and my actual specialization. [00:01:00] So when I was younger and I was trying to chart out what would be the big technology of the future that I should try to get on top of before everyone else. You know, I saw it like, okay, imagine I saw computers coming down the pipeline and I want to become a computer scientist before anyone's into computers.Malcolm: That was how I saw the way I planned for my career, which seems like a very Malcolm thing to do. And I was like, oh, brain computer interface. That's the next big thing. And I made a big mistake by overinvesting my early career in this, but I really invested my early career in brain computer interface.Malcolm: It's what I did my thesis on in college. It's what my first job was. It's, you know, I, I did a lot of stuff in the space. I actually, I worked as , the R& D marketing lead of the first commercially successful brain computer interface company, which was called NeuroSky which created these little headsets.Malcolm: So Nekamimi was one of our big projects, which was like a little headset and it would control like cat ears on your head. And then another, like a lot of people used it for various things that like went. Memetically viral. And essentially what it was, was a really, [00:02:00] really simplistic EEG system that was using capacitive sensors.Malcolm: So EEG stands for an electrocephalograph. It was really simple. The things it was reading in your brain just think of it like, it's, it's, it's an ear listening to the room of a party trying to catch the general vibe of what's going on. Is this a fun party or a funeral? Is this a, you know, but you can't really determine much more than that.Malcolm: And the other thing is, is that whenever the sensor moved around, and so this is a big problem with any of these sensors that are like actually wearable. It would make a ton of noise. So the electricity, like the static electricity that's generated by like your hair moving or like a sensor moving just a little bit is so much louder than anything generated by your brain.Malcolm: But even louder than that, but just. If you, the, the electricity generated by muscle. So if I like blink my eyes, that's like an explosion going off. So this isSimone: an [00:03:00] incredibly noisy system. Like it's basically, you're saying it's picking up not just the sound of the party, but also a bunch of instruction outside and a football game that's playing in the background and all the commercials.Malcolm: What I'm saying is it's imprecise. It's actually doing what it says it's doing. But it is wildly imprecise, but another thing to note here is it's functioning in a way that your brain is not really meant to function. So when you're communicating with an EEG using your brain you are communicating with that EEG in a way that's I mean, that's just not the way your brain evolved to communicate with things, right?Malcolm: You're, you're, you're causing tons of neurons to fire at once in a way they weren't really meant to fire at once. And we don't know the effects of this really, not long term. And, and that's a potential problem because, you know, fire together, wire together. I, okay, what I'm talking about. So the way that your brain forms connections is when neurons Fire at around the same time or in around the same region of the brain, they begin to wire together.Malcolm: That's how [00:04:00] like I do. That's the fundamentals of how the brain works. It's way more complicated than that, but that's a broad scope of it. Okay. For reasons that like you're using your prefrontal cortex, which is like not at all meant for external communication and firing it all at the same time. I don't know.Malcolm: I would, I don't want to say anything on record, but I'd say it's probably not the best, but this actually becomes really interesting when you're then talking about The existing brain comput

Sandman, a leading figure in the MGTOW community, joins Simone and Malcolm to discuss high-tech reproductive strategies. They explore surrogacy, genetic selection, artificial wombs, sexbots, and more ways men can have children without partners. Other topics include all-male vs all-female societies, economics, and virtual intimacy technologies.Sandman: [00:00:00] a lot of guys are also looking for, they want loverbots or sexbots because they're trying to, you're trying to compartmentalize every aspect of what you would get from a woman and take technology and replace everything. And this is something that a lot of women that I've spoken to, they get really oppity because it's, it makes, it creates obsolescence, right?Sandman: Why would they choose a real life woman versus using the technology.Simone: Yeah. And I, I do, I thought that's one of my favorite arguments that I see like within MGTOW, just Hey, listen, when you look at.Simone: The difference between a suboptimal relationship with a spouse where you're paying a lot extra for everything versus like getting everything piecemeal. It really is crazy that people would choose to have a suboptimal relationship with a spouse to do all this.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello. It is so wonderful to be here with you today, Simone. We have a wonderful guest today. So actually [00:01:00] before he reached out to us, he was on an email list for us to reach out to, because we were interested in reaching out to the people in the MGTOW community. And I was like, okay, so who are the top MGTOW people these days?Malcolm: And I looked and the first name was Sandman. who they called the Mount Rushmore of the MGTOW community. And so I was like, wow, he's already, that's amazing. IDs travel in similar circles. So for people who aren't familiar with the MGTOW community this stands for Men Going Their Own Way which is a cultural response to the raw deal.Malcolm: Many men feel they're getting a society today and you can correct me if I said anything wrong there, but what is our topic today, Simone?Simone: We are going to talk about something way beyond the basics of MGTOW, which is reproductive strategy, because just because you may be opting out of like traditional relationships with women doesn't mean that you don't want to have.Simone: Kids, so it doesn'tMalcolm: mean that you don't want your cultural group to survive into the future.Simone: Exactly. So what do, how can we use technology and different [00:02:00] strategies?Malcolm: How can we make MGTOW an intergenerationally durable cultural group? Okay. SoSandman: The first thing when I started my channel back in end of 2013, the first thing that came to mind was I don't want to get married, but I still want to have children. So how am I going to pull this off? And the first thing I looked at was gestational surrogacy. And you can go and buy eggs for five, 6, 000 on the open market.Sandman: And then you can go and pay for a surrogate in another country and then you can reproduce and you can have all the children you want. And so when I put that video out, I got a good response, but a lot of women were very upset because they said you're depriving the children of a mother. They said, you're, yes, this is the argument that was being thrown around.Sandman: It's not fair for you to deprive. The child, and I'm thinking to myself, but what about all the single mothers out there that are depriving their children of fathers?Malcolm: Just to add to this, because the audience might not be familiar with this statistic, is that there's been a lot of studies on this, and while coming from a [00:03:00] single mother household has a lot of negative implications on children.Malcolm: Long term single father households actually don't have that many negative implications. Sick birth of mothers. There's alternative reasons why this might be the case. It might be that they typically because courts so disproportionately favor women, divorce courts do, that really the only time that when people get a divorce or In the relationship for some sort of bad reason, the kids are going to the mother.Malcolm: But if one of the parents dies, then it's going to the father. That could be what's causing this in the data. But it is just a true thing in most of the data that being a single father has much better implications than being a single mother. Continue.Sandman: So about five or ten different guys over the years have contacted me and they've told me that they've tried gestational surrogacy either in Ukraine.Sandman: Or in Africa or in Mexico when I first saw what was going on, I thought, okay, I'm going to do India because India seemed to be the most cost effective at the time you could get for 12, 000. Roughly. You could basically have a child. Yeah. You're looking at the cost is very low. [00:04:00] It's not just that it's also to do with genetic selection.Sandman: I know you guys are very involved in genetic selection, when you go through.

In this candid discussion, we explore the nuances around polyamory and open relationships. We look at how polygyny historically existed among elites, the market forces leading more high-value men to pursue open relationships today, and the differences between cheating vs consensual non-monogamy. We share our own open relationship dynamics and how radical honesty helps us maintain a strong marriage. Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to discuss an interesting topic, which is polyamory. We have discussed it in the past. But we didn't really go too deep on the topic. Yeah. And I think it deserves a deeper dive. One, because it's becoming increasingly common. Within especially the urban monoculture, like the, the, the urban populations and the progressive movement.Malcolm: But I've also seen it among many of our more successful conservative friends for a different reason. And we can get into why we're seeing it in those circles as well. Hmm.Simone: That sounds good to me,Would you like to know more?​Malcolm: but first we should do a little history lesson because I think that there's this perception.Malcolm: That we, you know, if you're talking about the Western tradition more broadly has been historically a [00:01:00] monogamous tradition. And that is true to the extent that most people have been monogamous. Yeah. I thought you were going toSimone: say, this is true for poor people.Malcolm: It's true for poor people.Malcolm: When a culture is polygynous, one man, many women, there's actually been no stable culture in history with anything close to what we call polyamory in our society. Usually, when you have a multiple partner culture, you have polygyny, which is one man, many women. However, there has been one case I know of, of many men to one woman and this was like in Tibet, like it was in a high resource, scarce regionSimone: of the mountains.Simone: But, and it's also, I think, commonly with brothers. Yeah, it was basicallyMalcolm: only done with brothers. And, and it makes sense why that would work because then the guy knows that the kids are related to him. And it was meant as a form of population control was in those cultures. So that's, that's how it ended up developing and being intergenerationally successful.Malcolm: It was also cultures that didn't need to worry about neighbors raiding them because they [00:02:00] lived in extremely like they were not competing with their surrounding cultures. They were more competing with their environment. Which is why it was able to become stable, but certainly no culture that's ever really spread.Malcolm: But why this is relevant. So if you talk about long lived Stable polygynous cultures. There's some Jewish groups that fall into this. There's some groups in Africa that fall into this. Some Muslim groups fall into this. You're typically looking at around 5% of the population will have multiple wives.Malcolm: People assume it's much more now. Historically, there has been short lived polygynous societies like the Mormon population group where this number was higher at the, the height of, of that part of Mormon history, I think around 20% to 23% of men had multiple wives but it was still the vast minority.Malcolm: Now where this gets interesting is if I look within our existing culture right now, like the various cultural groups, probably one of the ones I'd say is, is most pro what [00:03:00] we'd call monogamy is the Catholic group, right? However, if you look historically speaking, so we're looking to traditional Catholicism.Malcolm: You're looking at like the monarchies of Louis the 14th, right? And so when you were saying he would write a book about all of the mistresses he had that everyone knew heSimone: had. Yeah. Antonia Fraser wrote a great book called Love and Louis the 14th, where she like, it's a long book and it just details all of his lovers.Simone: And this isn't just secret affairs on the side. This is, you know, people who were titled people. I mean, like it was, it was very well known. Now the Catholic church didn't like it. And they kept saying don't do this. And one of his lovers may have been rumored to actually marry him in the end secretly, though.Simone: That's not like historically officially documented. So there's interplay and like the Catholic church definitely has. A, a relationship with not being cool with it, like officially, but sort of in practice they're like, I mean, for example, with getting home [00:04:00] with the eighth, right? Like they were, I think they probably would have annulled his marriage and allowed him to jump from one marriage to the next for convenience.Simone: If there was not a familiar tie with his first wife and the Pope. Yeah, the Catholic Church, I would say in practice. AndMalcolm: they regularly, you know, allowed it. So keep in mind, you know, Louis was king via divine that is what gave him the right to monarchy within his cultural context. When he's saying, w

Economist Bryan Caplan joins Simone and Malcolm to discuss ways to boost declining fertility rates. They analyze the role of education, long vs short time preferences, and winning over analytical men. Other topics include immigration policy levers, using AI for politics, Ron Paul's electoral success, and more ways to cultivate leaders.Simone: [00:00:00] You're really good at being evil,Malcolm: Simone. Thank you, Malcolm. How can we use an AI to win a local election? Yeah, thisSimone: is, this is the question that we're going to have to figure out in the coming years. And of course,Bryan Caplan: in equilibrium, the problem is other people are going to be using it too.Malcolm: I agree with you. So the goal Is to use a short term advantage to get into the political system, then become president and then change us out of this abysmal voting system we have now. You know, as you have pointed out, democracies are just not very efficient.Bryan Caplan: Oh God..Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello again. We are very excited to have Brian Kaplan joining us for this episode of Basecamp in addition to being a New York times bestselling author of.Simone: Quite a few really awesome books. Many of which are on some of our favorite topics. Brian Kaplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University and extremely well informed about the positions he holds. Whereas I don't know, sometimes we just like to be a lot moreMalcolm: philosophically. If you want to go over some of the topics he writes on pronatalism advocate for.Malcolm: Feminism [00:01:00] causing societal problems being more pro open borders government systems not working, and education systems becoming more broken.Simone: Yeah, you're our kind of guy. We're big fans, Brian. So what we'd like to discuss today, which I think really interests me because you're at a nuanced nexus between these things is the impact of education and how to actually create a delta.Simone: So we, we recently hosted a dinner at which people discussed fostering genius, creating world leaders who would change the trajectory of society, you know, can it be done? Can you do it? And one of the big themes that came up during that dinner was, well, you know, you can't necessarily like great man theory of history.Simone: A lot of people were really critical of it, but they thought, well, one thing that people can do is maybe accelerate the speed at which. Really awesome things happen, you know, like maybe many things are going to happen anyway. But if you can cultivate the right kind of leader or give people the right ideas, they may do it sooner for society than rather than later.Simone: And I thought about this as I was watching an interview with [00:02:00] you. And you said basically that you didn't expect open borders to happen in your lifetime, but that you hoped through the book that you have co published called Open Borders, the Science and Ethics of Immigration, that maybe a generation would read this book.Simone: You know, help to nudge things in a good direction. And you know, you've also written a book about, you know, the case against education which is more about why the traditional education system is not. necessarily worth all the money we throw into it and the time we threw into it.Bryan Caplan: Delete the word necessarily. It's not worth it.Simone: Shots fired from the professor at a university. But yes, no, totally. And so, you know, there's this sort of weird. Like nuanced area that I want to walk around with you in this discussion about well, so we can maybe nudge people in a good direction.Simone: We can maybe speed up the rate at which really awesome things happen, which could really max out in a much more [00:03:00] meaningful way, human productivity and flourishing.Simone: So I'm curious, Brian, what you think interventions are not necessarily traditional education interventions, but interventions in youth and in development that actually are worth investing in are effective and might actually help people either change the trajectory of society or just actively change the trajectory of people and society.Bryan Caplan: Let's see. I'm definitely pro vocational education. Obviously, it's got, you know, there's a lot of problems too, but at least at the end, if it works, you know how to do something and are able to actually contribute more society. Whereas my big read, you can normal education is that it mostly pays just by giving you extra stamps in the forehead, which is great for an individual, but at the level society generates credential inflation, such that you need more degrees just to get the same job as your parents, grandparents, in terms of the things that can be done that work well.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. Well, let's [00:04:00] see. I mean, there's the easy answers, things like vaccines or whatever. I think that the evidence for those is really good. In turn, I mean, I guess I would say that the one that matters the most is one that's near and dear to all

In this video, we discuss traditional gentlemanly behavior and why it has been lost in modern American culture. We explain how acts of deference like opening doors and paying for meals used to signify male dominance when done proactively from a position of power. However, today these acts are often misconstrued as weakness due to discomfort with class differences. We explore the importance of anticipating a partner's needs, showing gratitude, and maintaining good form in relationships. Our goal is to revive gentlemanly behavior in a way that displays strong masculinity and high value.Simone: [00:00:00] I think that's one reason why men are misunderstanding what it looks like to be dominant and then ending up just kind of acting like trailer trash when they try to be dominant, you know, it's just you know, they, theyMalcolm: think, Oh my gosh, I love, no, it's true what you're saying, right? every cultural group has different, more refined ways to handle these dominant fights that don't involve two males making themselves look big and then like physically attacking each other. Because that's really costly., and this is what Simone means she mentally is associating this. with lower socioeconomic groups because lower socioeconomic groups like anyone who's resource scarce are going to have less luxury of the ability to suppress these things. And often their families have been in this situation for multiple generations, so they might have lost even the cultural software for how do I handle a dominance fight with another male other than.Malcolm: Puffing myself up and then beating him up.Simone: I [00:01:00] think we've lost we've lost a lot of the ways that people historically demonstrated dominance in, this sounds terrible, sounds really classist, but in a, in a civilized fashion.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello,Malcolm: Simone!Simone: Hello, Malcolm. How are you doing? AbsolutelyMalcolm: spectacular today. It is so wonderful to have you back from a business trip. So something happened recently that was really telling for me because, you know, I see this was in some conservative communities and it's something that I'm getting really worried about, which is somebody was like, why do you put your wife's name?Malcolm: First, when you write books and in correspondence, you know, don't you know that you're the man and that that means you're better than her. And so you should be putting all of your stuff first. And I think this shows how far we've descended from, from most traditional cultural beliefs[00:02:00] which is if you look at manners books, that's just polite manners, like opening the door for a woman like, All of these nice little things that guys used to be expected to do for women and then progressive culture came like a glacier and cleaned all of those things clean so clean that we don't remember them almost, you know, with Gen Z's coming around and they're trying to reclaim their masculinity, but in so doing, and so, and so reclaiming this masculine role, They, they, you know, through people like the way that this has been portrayed by individuals like Andrew Tate, it almost comes across as every interaction you have with a woman who like you love and have a longterm relationship with is to some extent to exert your dominance over that woman.Malcolm: Whereas most of the traditional cultures in the world, I say, no, no, no, no, no. It's to make her feel special and treasured and [00:03:00] to protect her. Now, this actually has very big effects if you're talking about long term fertility of a culture. So why do you do like, why? It's not just to be nice. Like I'm not just you know, within my family's life.Malcolm: Putting my wife up on a pedestal to be nice to her. I'm not doing all of these things that we traditionally call manners, like ensuring that I walk on the side of the street where if a car is going to splash us, it splashes me first. Opening doors, all of these little things like that. Standing up from a table when she gets up.Malcolm: I don't, by the way, right. No, I mean, I don't do all of those things just to be like a weirdo. I do them for a very specific reason. It's so that when my daughters See the way I treat my wife, they desire that outcome for themselves in the future. And when my [00:04:00] sons see the way I treat my wife, they treat their own wives that way.Malcolm: And then their own daughters think, Oh, being a wife. It's awesome. And so someone, I wonder, you had talked to me before about what you felt like growing up. Right.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. No. So I thought growing up when I was young just meant, you know, giving a bunch of things up, like giving up your career and then having to take on a whole bunch of additional responsibilities.Simone: So just basically meant more work, but you know, not really being celebrated. Not that my, my father wasn't absolutely amazing to my mother. He was, but there was no like elevated status in, in Silicon Valley, like in the very p

In this video, we dig into why today's billionaires and high status people often have very muscular physiques. We explore how physical attributes like muscularity have historically signaled social status in different ways across different cultures and time periods. From tanned skin to calf muscles to informal clothing, status symbols are always changing. We talk about how steroids and social media are disrupting traditional notions of high status masculinity. Finally, we speculate on what the next big status symbols might be in a social media-dominated world where everyone can fake looking good online.Simone: [00:00:00]Simone: like in the early days of tech CEOs becoming super wealthy, they would wear pretty disrespectfully informal clothes as a flex because they could, And then I think we saw the, like the height of it with Sam Bankman freed.Malcolm: if you look at the billionaires today, , they're pretty buff. They are, they are very muscular And the question is, is why are individuals doing this? I think we need to take a little history lesson hereMalcolm: If you want to understand why Andrew Tate like he talks about low T males, except you can tell by looking at a male's face. How much testosterone they were exposed to when they were in their developmental stages, .Malcolm: , when you look at the far left and the far right, they both seem to have body dysmorphia Would you like to know more?Simone: hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited to talk to you today. So one of the things I've been doing recently, because I was like, okay, well, Andrew Tate's a really big conservative influencer, I wanted to really dive into his longer form content to understand.Malcolm: The underpinnings of his philosophy [00:01:00] and a big part of it is be muscly, lookSimone: like he, he like actively advocates for people to lift.Malcolm: And one of the things he points out, and this is absolutely true is if you look at the billionaires today, the people in our society that are like top of the social hierarchy, presumably a lot of them, whether it's Bezos or Musk recently, I don't know if anyone's seen him recently or Zuckerberg.Malcolm: They're pretty buff. They are, they are very muscular. Actually it's very interesting. So I think many people have this view of Elon Musk from this one shot of him on a yacht , but if you look at like recent pictures of him, he looks Bezos y. That's what I would think.Malcolm: Oh no, doesn't really, okay. Okay but the point being is that you see this sort of across the billionaire class right now, right? And so Andrew Tate's taking that as evidence that, look, once you don't have any other needs, you realize the importance of muscle. And then you'd be like, and as a man, as a man, maybe not as a man.Malcolm: Of course. And throughout [00:02:00] history, here, you can see this. The problem is it's got history. You can't see this what you actually see and what is actually going on here. And this is a very interesting phenomenon to dissect so like, let's talk about luxury cars, right?Malcolm: If you are buying a pointless luxury car to signal your status or build a self narrative of, I am a person with X type of things, you need to actually think about. What you're giving up when you spend three times on a car, what you would otherwise spend. It's the same as muscle. Where there is a level that you need to exercise to be at optimum physical health.Malcolm: And then there's a level way beyond that, where it is about signaling something to your environment or to yourself or changing aspects of your chemistry, which we can also talk about. And the question is, is why are individuals doing this? I think we need to take a little history lesson here to something that my parents pointed out to me when I was growing [00:03:00] up and really helped me contextualize physical status symbols.Malcolm: Okay. So when I was growing up, my house, they actually had a tanning bed in my house. My mom had bought a tanning bed for tanning. And my dad, he pointed out to me, he goes, when I was growing up a long time ago, you go, you go back a long time ago. Having a tan was considered very low class. The reason why having a tan was considered low class back then is because the lower classes did physical, manual labor.Malcolm: So they would get tans, and then the wealthy, and you can see this, this is why historically, you look at the old west or something like that, the high class women would have theseSimone: parasols all the time. No, better than that, have you seen like even middle ages I think, like throughout history riding masks?Simone: They're scary, like women would wear these Yeah,Malcolm: yeah, so throughout most of history, tans were considered very, very, verySimone: low class. Well, and even currently keep in mind, have you seen like [00:04:00] the sort of bikini burqa face mask things? Well, I wantMalcolm: to talk about how this flipped again, okay? Okay, yeah.Malcolm: So then there was a gen

Brian Chau joins Simone and Malcolm to discuss the Alliance for the Future, a new think tank aiming to prevent excessive regulation of AI. They analyze the motivations behind potential AI bans, rebut "doomer" arguments, consider impacts on jobs and culture, and more around ensuring the continued development of transformative technologies. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone dive deep on the difference between aesthetic conservatism (trappings without core values) and substantive conservatism focused on cultural reproduction. They analyze how to convert people, the role of government restrictions, dominating vs symbiotic cultures, and more keys to building an enduring worldview.Malcolm: [00:00:00] Once you begin to normalize the psychological practices that people are supposed to learn how to undertake on their own. And are supposed to require mental fortitude to enact, you lose the advantage of those practices. This is what I mean by aesthetic conservatism.Malcolm: if you have somebody and you impose restrictions, at the government level, You, make them less likely to convert to your cultural group because the people in your cultural group will have less of a differential societal advantage,Malcolm: if you want to convert the maximum number of people, what you should actually do is impose the minimum number of cultural restrictions on the outside population while putting the maximum effort into controlling the education system. And interestingly, this is to some extent what the progressive urban monoculture has done.Simone: in, An environment that's devoid of a really strong religious base I feel like [00:01:00] these political parties are more strong for people than, than values. People are literally living by the aesthetics of conservatism because there, there is nothing else.Simone: It's just like these sort of hollow philosophical shells that are just following the trappings of a party.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm Collins.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to touch on a topic that's been bugging me recently. Because I think it shows the extent to which our society has fallen that even within conservative circles there has been a clear confusion around the sort of point of conservatism like actually advancing conservative values and the aesthetic of conservatism.Malcolm: Acting in a way that you identify as like aesthetically conservative. And it's not to say that you will not [00:02:00] intrinsically appear aesthetically conservative if you are aligning with conservative values. Actually, here, I'll give a really great example of this that came from one of our recent videos.Malcolm: Where we're talking about porn , and I'm like, , conservative cultural groups evolved to have porn restrictions because it led to people potentially better mental health, but also , having sex more frequently, leading to more kids, leading to more people within that cultural group.Malcolm: And people were like, well, you know, aesthetically, like they still want the government to enact porn restrictions. And I think that this is almost a perfect example. Because who are you helping if you do that? If you have the government enact porn restrictions? Well, it's not the people who naturally would have been able to resist porn due to the cultural group they're a part of, right?Malcolm: So if I'm a Catholic intercalist and I'm trying to get the government to restrict porn, it's not the other conservative Catholics at my church who are benefiting from this. It is... Specifically the people who disagree with me. It is [00:03:00] specifically the people who are most culturally distant from me. And, and worse, I am making whatever positive things my church is offering through this differential cultural value set less because now everyone is practicing this porn restriction thing.Malcolm: And in addition to that, people within my cultural institution, they are now no longer getting any sort of psychological benefit. From consciously choosing to resist this thing in their environment, right? Which is.Simone: Well, so I'm going to push back and I think what, what we may be looking at is an overlap of some, what we call dominant cultures and then conservative cultures, which are often harder cultures, right?Simone: Dominating cultures is the word. Yeah, dominating cultures. So in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, Malcolm, you describe. Different types of cultures in terms of how they relate to broader society with dominating cultures, generally having the view that [00:04:00] basically everyone should, in an ideal scenario, follow this religion, because if they don't, they're all going to go to hell or experience some other really bad outcome.Simone: This is in contrast to cultures that we, we call in the book, symbiotic cultures, a symbiotic culture is more like the Jewish faith. Calvinists, people who are not like, okay, everyone should join us. Everyone should be one of us. It's more oh, not everyone can be. So these cultures don't have a mandate to force everyone to adhere to their rules, and they don't have a mandate to try to proselytize or convert or save everyone.Simone: So I think what you're talking about here is that there are many hard cultures that are also dominating cultures that feel it is imper

Journalist Katherine Dee joins Simone and Malcolm for a deep dive on how the internet is impacting gender expression, identity, and sexuality. They discuss the origins of sissy hypno, disconnects between biology and gender theory, polyamory trends, and more effects of online disembodiment.Katherine Dee: [00:00:00] I think maybe we overrate how much awareness people had of their gender identity in prior periods.Katherine Dee: And just so much of it was related to things that we were doing and the way we were engaging in our communities. And now that those things are gone, and those people are much more isolated, it's also going to impact.Would you like to know more?Simone: Okay. Hello. We have a very special guest joining us today. Catherine Dee, aka Default Friend, who is one of my personal favorite writers, journalists, and general cultural commentators. She has some of the best insights on different cultural movements, debate, current events, people, groups that, that I've read.Simone: She is incredibly thoughtful, incredibly clever. And Malcolm, you were saying there was something you actually wanted to ask her.Malcolm: Yeah, so I'm excited to go into topic. But the way I would, I would frame her is she is like the from an anthropological perspective, sort of internet historian in the more academic context, not the internet historian, but just a really good [00:01:00] studier of internet cultures and how they evolve.Malcolm: And I had heard you say a recent interest of yours that you delved into. was Sisyphication Hypnome, which actually dovetails with topics that we've talked about on the show recently, like the Trans Max Movement. We actually had the creator of the Trans Max Movement, we interviewed him. And it was so boring.Malcolm: We've never aired it because I don't want to lose followers over it. But it is a topic that really interests us. So I'd love to dig deep on where you think, you know, how the movement originated, how it developed and how it plays with something that we've talked about in a very recent episode. The idea of human gender sort of transforming, potentially even at the biological level in terms of how they're engaging with sexuality and gender.Katherine Dee: Yeah so origins, that's, that's sort of a hard question. I've heard people say that Oh,Malcolm: let's start with definition, because people mightKatherine Dee: not know. Oh, sure. So, sissy hypno is, [00:02:00] are, they're hypnosis videos or audio. That is supposed, it's, they're usually for a male audience, but sometimes can be like unisex or for, for women.Katherine Dee: And it's supposed to scissify you, right? Make you increasingly more feminized. And there's different genres of it. It can be You know, more or less violent or forced. Sometimes it's, it's more like brainwashing. Yeah, there's, and there's many different expressions of it. And it's interesting because recently NBC News did a piece on race change to another, which are like a sort of video, which is very Hypno, but it's like racial changes, right?Katherine Dee: So over time.Malcolm: The first question I have about it given the way that you've presented it is about what percent of sissy hypno would you say that the, the, the hypno itself is the pornographic material versus what percent would you say is consumed or created [00:03:00] specifically in order to change an individual's sexual preferences?Katherine Dee: I don't, I don't know, I haven't done like an exhaustive I haven't done exhaustive research on it. I, but if I had to, to guess, I'd say the, the, The act of listening and convincing yourself that you are being, like, forcibly changed into something you're not is the erotic component. And that's what people are sexualizing.Katherine Dee: There's a lot of people who want to see themselves as either a woman or a bimbified woman an ultra feminine woman. And, you know, cis women can... Experience this as well. It's not it's not confined to natal, natal males. But yeah, I think there's something about the change and the force of the forcing that is like an erotic.Malcolm: So, before we go deeper, something that I've noticed within, like, when I briefly looked into the Sissy Hypno movement. Is that historically, it seemed related to as you're saying like, bimbofication or [00:04:00] cisification, which was the idea that you know, through being forcibly changed into something else, maybe even transformation pornography types that is what is turning you on, and that is why you are consuming the content.Malcolm: Whereas there is this growing new movement, I mean, chief among them being the trans maxers, but they're hardly the only group. Do you know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the trans maxers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they are engaging with this content, not primarily because it turns them on, but because they actually want to permanently change their sexuality into something new that they feel will be easier to get access to.Malcolm: Is sp

Simone and Malcolm have a fascinating discussion about the power of "vices" in political campaigns and messaging. They analyze how Trump leveraged his flaws into strengths, and how Biden supporters are now embracing "Dark Brandon." Other topics include DeSantis' campaign struggles, Trump's unpredictable economic policies, and more election analysis.Simone: [00:00:00] how the investigations into corruption via Hunter Biden, whereby the Biden family, brought in more than 20 million for God knows what I mean, basically purchased influence.Simone: That's really interesting. Is that. People are leaning into it that are, that are supporters of Biden. And it's, it's showing up as the dark Brandon meme.Simone: SoMalcolm: Biden's supporters are the ones spreading this dark Brandon meme.Simone: Mm hmm. Well, what I've noticed about irony today, which I think is really interesting is that irony is both 100% ironic and 100% earnest. This is, this is actually a much more powerful thing.Malcolm: We talk about a lot with presidential campaigns. Is one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to try to run without obvious flaws, because then people will make up flaws for you. And that was one of Trump's biggest strengths is people knew what his flaws were.Malcolm: And I think moments like that when he's first getting on the wealthiest person's list that he can't even afford his own PR [00:01:00] agent and he is pretending to be his own PR agent to talk himself up, I think shows the reality of the situation and talk about his finances at the time, you know, the left will take this this is a damning thing.Simone: But when we, we're like, dude, this guy has hustle. This guy makes things happenMalcolm: So the way Trump actually got rich, cause I think a lot of people don't really understand what he did.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting today. I am really excited for this one.Simone: Well, as you know, because we're huge fans of Susie Weiss who writes for the Free Press, I try to follow as many of their publications as I can.Simone: And one of my favorites that's not by her, because I really just go there for her, is called TGIF, where they do a news roundup. And I was reading in today's TGIF about. Dark Brandon, this really interesting thing that's trending. So let me, let me kick this off by describing what's going on here.Simone: Cause I feel like this is just so intriguing. I can't, I [00:02:00] can't not dive into it. Brandon. Yeah. So let's, let's start with some. Background, right? At one point there was a baseball game where someone was being interviewed and the audience were chanting in the background while someone was being interviewed, you Biden again and again, so you Biden.Simone: And then the. The interviewer, a woman, very charitably thought that the person that she was interviewing was being cheered on. She says, Oh, they're all saying, let's go, Brandon which is really sweet. And so moving forward virally the phrase, let's go. Brandon became basically shorthand for you, Biden which.Simone: You know, has, has been very fun. So obviously this is theMalcolm: reason why is it was seen as the way that the press just distorted anything they saw about the world or anything they heard into a positive message for progressives.Simone: Exactly. Yeah. And what's interesting [00:03:00] now is it appears to be that. Brandon as a meme is now being appropriated by Biden supporters.Simone: So, basically what, what was covered in TGIF by the free press this week was how the investigations into corruption via Hunter Biden, whereby the Biden family, well. President Biden was vice president brought in more than 20 million for God knows what I mean, basically purchased influence.Simone: And you know, to your point about the, the mainstream media, there's very little coverage of, of this, this investigation, but what's going on. That's really interesting. Is that. People are leaning into it that are, that are supporters of Biden. And it's, it's showing up as the like dark Brandon meme.Simone: SoMalcolm: Biden's supporters are the ones spreading this dark Brandon meme.Simone: Mm hmm.Simone: . So what the Free Press basically said was Biden's campaign has embraced the new YOLO middle finger vibe.Simone: The top selling products on his campaign website for this week are dark [00:04:00] Brandon items, the old saying goes, never explain it, never apologize. And these are literally like, so the, the dark Brandon mean is, is sort of like, it's, it's, it's images of Biden, but with like evil shining eyes and literally you can click over to the Biden campaign website and see.Simone: Like a mugs and t shirts. Like I'm on shop. joebiden. com slash dark dash t shirt. So I canMalcolm: imagine two reasons for this happening. Okay. And they're both really interesting. One could be that what they actually see as, as one of Biden's biggest weaknesses going into this next campaign cycle is that he's just

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone explore whether it's possible to craft an enduring secular religion or culture. They analyze why previous attempts failed and the need for cohesion beyond scientific truth. Malcolm argues adapting beliefs while avoiding dogma is key. Simone stresses traditions that create belonging. They agree combining strong community with fluid science may succeed where others faltered.Malcolm: [00:00:00] And this has happened throughout histories where people essentially deify the secular understanding of the world at the time. And then, our understanding of the world moves forwards, it begins to look ridiculous, and it gets thrown out.Malcolm: This is why only the most conservative in terms of sticking was the original way of viewing the text, or the original way of practicing a religion. Typically those are the iterations that survive, rather than the ones that try to adapt. But, then there's the other problem, which was the other thing that some groups did, is they say, Well, we will just outsource our metaphysical understanding of the universe.Malcolm: To the scientists, the scientific institutions. But after the scientific institutions became infected with this, a progressive memetic virus it began to care less and less about truth.Malcolm: It basically became a tool for just infecting and injecting other cultures with this progressive memetic virus.Malcolm: The problem is, is the internet exists now. Engaging with technology is intrinsically [00:01:00] caustic to systems that try to tell people about a metaphysical framework for reality that'sSimone: wrongMalcolm: I think that many of these older systems that can only compete by telling people not to engage with technology, which I think is going to be an increasingly successful strategy.Malcolm: Yeah, they'll continue existing in the future, but they won't have economic power. Because technology is critical to massive economic power and military power to an extent. So even if you're a smaller cultural group, if you're the cultural group that is engaging readily with AI in a way that isn't decreasing fertility rates you are going to just dramatically outcompete cultural groups that have been able to keep their fertility rates high.Malcolm: By disengaging from the internet, disengaging from AI, disengaging from cell phones, disengaging from genetic research.Simone: Okay, but Malcolm, I still think you're totally missing the beat here.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm. I am keen to talk with you today about , maybe one of the stupidest [00:02:00] projects we've ever taken on in our lives, because we are trying to do something that it doesn't seem anyone has really successfully doneMalcolm: ever yet. Well, one of my pushbacks is going to be, I think you're wrong there. Okay.Malcolm: But whatSimone: we're gonna talk aboutMalcolm: is Yes, and we're gonna talk about to save society, one of our thesis is you need to create an intergenerationally durable culture. That is resistant to the current technological environment that we live in, you know, whether it's online dating or modernity or the medic viruses that exist online and the initial pushback.Malcolm: We often get from conservative groups is why don't you just adapt one of the existing conservative traditions that has been able to do this historically? And our answer is twofold. The first is that I don't think I've seen any other than maybe Judaism that seems durably resistant [00:03:00] to the current social and technological environment that doesn't have quickly falling fertility rates.Malcolm: But even they, the, parts of Judaism that have the highest fertility rate still are often the most technophobic forms of it. So they are the least engaged with industry and technology. Which is not something I want for my family or their descendants. I mean, many people would say, you can't have these two things together, right?Malcolm: No, I just think no one has intentionally created a culture that can work alongside this. But then the question becomes, historically... Well, why haven't intentionally created, and when we call a culture secular, what I mean is it has broadly concurrent views with the scientific community about how sort of metaphysics in the world exists.Malcolm: It believes in evolution and particle physics and the Big Bang and all of that, and it updates those beliefs as new discoveries happen. So first this idea that no one has done this before, I think, is wrong. [00:04:00] I think, in many ways, you could think of the Catholic Church as one. The Catholic Church had a system for recognizing scientific discoveries, even when they were initially declared to go against biblical doctrine, you know, whether it's the earth isn't the center of the universe anymore.Malcolm: It took them. A really long time to recognize them longer than it probably should have and it slowed down the advancement of these types of scientific inquiries throu

In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the complex issue of cultural survival, immigration policy, and societal integration. They argue that a culture's ability to resist, convert, and compete is what determines its survival, rather than its isolation. In this context, they question the notion of protecting "weak" cultures that fail to reproduce or withstand competition. They extend the conversation to discuss the nature of immigration in the US, suggesting a skills-based approach for immigrant integration. The discussion further unfolds as they entertain the idea of a global "brain drain" initiative as a strategic offensive maneuver, and conclude by challenging preconceived notions of "Western white culture." Join Malcolm and Simone in this thought-provoking conversation that explores the dynamic intersection of culture, nationalism, and immigration.Based Camp: The Inhernt Weakness of White Nationalism. Cultures that can't compete in a multi-cultural ecosystem have earned their fate.Malcolm: [00:00:00] There is no point in protecting very weak cultures.Malcolm: , cause I do actually some white nationalists listen to our channel, like this is why we care so little about white nationalism,Malcolm: Even if you do seal yourself off, you'll just die alone. Like Korea In fact, I can't think of any wealthy monocultures or wealthy ethnic states that have high fertility rates, not, not a single one in the world. You look at the countries that are wealthy with the highest fertility rates and they've shown the most resistant to fertility collapse. You're looking at countries like Israel and the United States, which are two of the most diverse wealthy countries.Malcolm: The rules of the game have completely changed. And when you play by the old system, You lose. Now, where this is relevant to immigration policy in the USSimone: But what I've also found really interesting is your, essentially your offensive stance on immigration.Simone: Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. How's it going?Simone: I'm enjoying a beautiful overcast day. [00:01:00] It's gorgeous.Malcolm: I'm enjoying it too. What are we talking about today?Simone: Immigration, my friend. Immigration.Malcolm: Yeah. I think that this is a fun one for us to dig into because it's a topic where both of the political party's perspective on this has been shifting a lot recently.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And we have a perspective on what should be the conservative position going forward and what made sense as a conservative position historically. Mm-hmm. So historically the conservative position on immigration is, let's.Malcolm: Prevent immigration, right? Maintain cultural homogeny of a region to prevent any culture within that region from eroding. Mm-hmm. Uh, So that culture can be transmitted well from one generation to future generations. And then if you were going to spread your culture or your ideology, you do it through conquest or through market forces um, or through Manifest destiny.Malcolm: Well, yeah. I mean obviously there's the manifest destiny way of doing it or, or countries.[00:02:00] Trying to take over their neighbors, but you can also export it through market-based forces. So if you bring another country to a market-based system and you are exporting your culture in a free market of ideas, but you are the dominant cultural force in the world or the wealthiest cultural force, it's very easy to begin to stomp out other cultures with your cultural exports.Malcolm: But the game has entirely changed now, and that system doesn't make sense anymore, and it doesn't achieve what it used to achieve. So the reason why you would do that historically was so that other groups did not erode your culture. However, there are two big hiccups to that these days. The first being that no matter where you are in the world, Your kids and your community is going to have access to the entire world of cultures online.Malcolm: Yeah. If they're engaged in any sort of technophilic lifestyle, which means [00:03:00] most lifestyles that allow for high economic output. Mm-hmm. So economically productive individuals are going to be able to see pretty much all of the world's culture and the internet culture is going to be part of their life, wherever they are.Malcolm: And so the market forces don't matter as much when you're dealing. They do to an extent, but a lot less than they did historically. And maintaining control of your borders matters a lot less when you're talking about cultural erosion. Mm-hmm. The other is that fertility rates are falling all over the world, even within conservative cultures that historically would've just naturally grown had they been left alone.Malcolm: So if you look at the wealthy countries in the world with the lowest fertility rates, with a few exceptions like Singapore, almost all of them are very culturally homogenous. Obviously. Great example here is South Korea was, was one of the lowest fertility rates of the world, which i

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone debate the implications if reincarnation were proven to be real. Malcolm argues it would necessitate rethinking identity, consciousness, and the meaning of emotions. Simone counters that practically, not much would change in how we live. She theorizes souls could be residue transferring between bodies and accumulating through evolution. Overall, they explore fascinating philosophical questions about the soul and metaphysical realities.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. Hello,Malcolm: Simone. So for our topic for this one, it actually was something that was inspired by an interview we did with another podcast. Do you remember the name of the podcast, by the way?Simone: It was the podcast weird and worthwhile.Malcolm: Weird and worthwhile. Okay. So I want to give them a shout out if people want to check out that episode. But at one point of it, they asked us, they go, okay, so, you know, some people believe in reincarnation. I got the impression that they did. They're like, okay, so, assume reincarnation is true.Malcolm: How does that change how you think of what you're trying to maximize for the human species? And I just went off at that point. I think what they expected is, Oh, you tweak here and here in terms of how you're modifying, like maximizing, you know, this or that. But no, if I assume that reincarnation is real.Malcolm: Mm hmm. And I change something when we describe how people have \ belief systems about the world. We [00:01:00] describe them as like a tree, right? When then they have a lot of branching parts to them. If reincarnation is true, the core trunk of that tree. It's completely changed, which changes all of the sub-branches for us.Simone: What? Yeah, I'm, I'm so surprised 'cause nothing changes for me so far. This is my default. Nothing is different. I'm not, no, noMalcolm: change. Okay. So we have just scientists have confirmed, and this is something that scientists could confirm. That's a really cool thing about it. Scientists could tomorrow be like, yes, we have proven that people could know things that they could only know if reincarnation happened, right?Malcolm: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , So, so this is something that could be concretely proven at some point, right? That means a number of other things. First, it means that humans have a soul that's separate from their physical body. Mm hmm. This is not something that we believe, right? Mm hmm. If humans have a soul that's separate from their physical body.Malcolm: That means that some other form [00:02:00] of reality exists or some other form of material exists. And this material or form of reality is likely more important than the reality that we perceive. So let me explain what I mean by this Simone, because you're looking dubious at me. I'mSimone: still extremely dubious. Yeah, nothing, nothing is changing still for me.Simone: Nothing'sMalcolm: different. Okay. So if it turns out that a person's memories, for example, and this is, I think, what they mean when they, they say reincarnation if you're just reincarnating a soul, but nothing is, is carried between the two individuals. But nothing is. Okay, but that's not what we're talking about here.Malcolm: We're talking about the people who think they can remember past lives and stuff like that. Because, this other form of reincarnation So thisSimone: is a form of reincarnation where you remember your past life, because, I'm sorry, only hippie to be people, and my Right, but I'mMalcolm: saying, suppose scientist proves this, because it is something youSimone: could prove, okay?Simone: Okay. And then the, what, in that everyone is capable of remembering their pastMalcolm: lives? Doesn't [00:03:00] need to be everyone. Only needs to be one person concretely proven. If you prove just a single person, what have you proven? What you've proven is that some aspect of some human's identity, so it could turn out that not all humans have these souls, but it turns out that at least some humans have these souls or whatever you want to call them, some sort of like metaphysical imprint of their identity.Malcolm: And this Dalai Lama.Simone: Right. And I mean, you could argue that they've, they've proven it. I mean,Malcolm: he picks out. I don't think that they've proven it atSimone: all. Key things. I don't know. I mean, they would argue that they have if the person, they hadMalcolm: scientists would be going there and researching it, like you understand how much this would change every aspect.Malcolm: By theirSimone: standards of evidence though. I mean, I think that previous Dalai Lamas have. You're acting likeMalcolm: ESP research departments didn't used to exist. TheySimone: still do. [00:04:00] There's still a lot of people researching this. I'm just saying their standards actually are a little different thanMalcolm: ours. There's people researching this.Malcolm: No one has concretely proven ghosts exist. No one has concretely proven ESP exi

In this insightful discussion, Spencer Greenberg delves into the replication crisis plaguing academic psychology research. He discusses projects aiming to improve reliability through replications and details warning signs like questionable statistics. Spencer advocates raising scientific standards to restore public trust. He also champions "renegade science" by independent researchers and highlights tools enabling robust studies outside academia. Overall, Spencer makes a thoughtful case for multiplying skill with truth-seeking to unlock discoveries that benefit society.Links: https://www.positly.com/ https://www.guidedtrack.com/Simone: [00:00:00] Okay, here we go. Hi everyone. We have a very, very special guest today who we have known actually almost as long as we've known each other. We met Spencer Greenberg back in like around 2015 when he was first working on some of his projects that are now pervasively used.Simone: Which is really, really cool. He is someone that we've profoundly respected for many years. He has been running Clearer Thinking for a ton of time, but more recently he launched the Clearer Thinking podcast, which is a series of interviews with incredible people that we really enjoy. I'm addicted to it personally.Simone: So please check it out.Malcolm: I'll just summarize the important point is he's probably one of, if not the most respected social figure in the E. A. And rationalist movement in the New York area, which is a very big thing because it's one of the major hubs of theSimone: movement. Yeah. And Spencer, could you tell us what your top projects are right now?Spencer: Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on. So [00:01:00] one of the projects I run is called clear thinking, which you mentioned at clear thing dot org. And what we do is we take interesting ideas from psychology, economics, math, and so on, that people might learn in passing, maybe they'll learn in blog posts or reading books, but they don't generally apply them to their lives.Spencer: And so our goal is to make it really easy to apply these ideas to your life to try to achieve the things that you want to achieve. So we have these interactive modules, we have over 70 of them right now, and you can use them all for free. And I also do the Clear Thinking Podcast, as you mentioned. In addition to that, we have a bunch of other projects for accelerating social science.Spencer: So our goal is to try to help. Psychological research go faster, be more robust, be more reliable and help unlock important ideas about human nature that can be of benefit to society. Speaking of that,Malcolm: what we wanted to focus on this podcast is you recently did some research into the replication crisis, how bad it's gotten, and I think you have some theories on how it could be fixed.Malcolm: So I'd love you to just dive into that first, explaining what the replication crisis is, its scope and your [00:02:00] research, and then going through potentialSpencer: solutions. Sure, yeah, it's a topic I think about a lot. So basically, there are many really interesting findings in psychology that have unfortunately failed to replicate, which means that basically when people try to redo the same study, collect a new sample of study participants, they just don't get the original answer.Spencer: And that's been very disturbing. A bunch of findings that were in textbooks and that are really famously known just don't work, it seems. So some examples of this would be from the social priming literature where they do things like have someone hold a warm cup of coffee. And then people would find that there would be rated as more warm, or they'd rate things as more warm because we make these psychological metaphors.Spencer: Well, it's a really cool sounding idea, but doesn't necessarily replicate. Or another example, when you prime people with words that are related to being older, the people then walk slower. Well, again, a really cool concept, but it didn't replicate when people tried it again. And so the question is, why are so many findings not replicating?Spencer: And how pervasive a problem is [00:03:00] this. And so looking at the many different replication studies that have occurred, my best guess is that from top journals and very top journals, probably about 40% of the results don't replicate. Cool. Enormous. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty it's pretty shocking. Some people, their response is, Well, science is hard, human nature is complicated.Spencer: What do we really expect? But my view is that, no, 40% not replicating is way, way too high. It should be something on the order of 5 to 10%. I think that might be reasonable. Yes. But the problem with 40% is it's almost a coin flip. If you read a paper, will this, will this result hold up, right?Malcolm: Yeah.Malcolm: So do you think that this is one, one thing that might be fun to go into for the audience is how does this system work? Like the, the scientific system that gets things in these journal

In this nuanced discussion, Malcolm and Simone analyze how societal elites can become embroiled in unethical activities. They delve into group psychology and the human need for belonging. The conversation explores how insular communities formed around shared interests or backgrounds can lead to normalization of taboo behaviors. Malcolm and Simone advocate thoughtful examination of these complex social dynamics rather than speculative assumptions.Malcolm: [00:00:00] male sexuality is pulled between two extremes as a guy, you can optimize for gender dimorphism,Malcolm: so you are assuring that the thing you're breeding with is female. So this is larger butts, larger breasts, larger fingernails, longer hair, more voluptuous shape. Or you can be optimizing for fertility window. The problem is, is that you're actually typically optimizing for the opposite. When you're optimizing for fertility window, you are optimizing for youth, which means you're typically optimizing for smaller breasts, smaller butt, smaller, waist hip ratio and stuff like that.Malcolm: And so we looked at the data on this and this is a really shocking thing that we found is that the amount of wealth. A guy had in our data set correlated with which of these extremes he seemed to optimizeSimone: for.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: Hello, Simone. Hello, Malcolm. This is an edited recording. We had [00:01:00] originally recorded an episode on this topic and I decided I wanted to sanitize it as much as possible because I feel that this is a topic that really, really needs to be talked about in a sane way, but that is incredibly controversial.Malcolm: And so we don't want to. Step on any toes with this or make any potentially false or spurious accusations with this. Specifically, what we want to talk about is with this recent movie that's come out, there's been a lot of people being like, the concept of circles within sort of the wealthy class that traffic in underage women is, is a complete fantasy.Malcolm: It's a complete fictional thing. And I do think a lot of this stuff is, is, you know, sort of conspiracy theories that have gone a little crazy. However, what we learned from the Epstein case is that it's, it's not a [00:02:00] complete fantasy. Like there was at least one real circle in which this was happening. And the, the reason I want to talk about this is , how could this happen in my adult life?Malcolm: I do not meet many people who like to see themselves as bad people. Most people want to see themselves as good people who are trying to make the world a better place. So how did giant networks of some of the wealthiest people in the world? Get roped into something like this and I think we can look at this as an isolated case But I really don't think it is there's been a lot of people freaking out about a specific campaign manager having potentially artwork that looks like Kids are being hurt in it in the artwork now There is actually no proof this artwork that he owns it that he has it in his house But what no one is really denying is that the artwork itself exists and is [00:03:00] real and is in museums sometimes, or is on big displays that people are funding, that people are paying a lot of money for this artwork.Malcolm: It showsSimone: up in ad campaigns. I mean,Malcolm: yeah, like, like the, the, that the artwork exists is, and so this is what we mean by sort of this place is. Is people can tie something, like they can be like, this guy owns this artwork, right? And then they go in a whole rabbit hole with that. And then the other side can be like, well, no, actually, he's not the one who owns the artwork.Malcolm: And there's not like this third group that's saying, okay. But even if he's not, why does this artwork exist, and why is it being shown in, like, art museums and stuff like that? Like, it seems to be that a certain class of people within our society, the, the, the, the group of people, or one cultural group within our society, that goes to things like art museums, doesn't have, , an extreme resistance.Malcolm: to this sort of depiction. If [00:04:00] you were to hang one of these pieces in like a Bass Pro store, or like a traditional black barber shop, or like our local Indian marketplace, you would be beaten near to death. Like, immediately. Like... The most cultural groups in America just would have zero tolerance of this within sort of, I guess I call them the art museum class in our society.Malcolm: There is a level of tolerance to this. And I think another place you saw this, there was the recent scandal was the clothing brand, right? Where they had someSimone: name it with Balenciaga.Malcolm: Well, are you sure we can name it? Yeah. I've been trying not to name anything. Okay. With Balenciaga. Now, the thing to remember is who is Balenciaga's client base, right?Malcolm: Like, they are sort of an elite cultural group within our society. The people who are creating this ad campaign are literally the world experts

In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone analyze what makes some self-help and life advice useful versus dangerous or ineffective. They break down the incentives and blindspots of different types of gurus, warning against advice tied too closely to an ideology or a guru's identity. The couple emphasizes focusing on your own values and life goals first. They argue happiness is a byproduct of pursuing meaning, not an end in itself. Overall they advocate philosophical inquiry to determine your purpose, combined with pragmatic steps towards efficacy.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm Collins. Hello,Malcolm: Simone Collins. Are we going to try to use our names even though we're married?Simone: Yes. Mr. Malcolm Collins.Malcolm: I don't know. Branding. I don't like it. Maybe we'll just do Malcolm and Simone going forward. But there are a lot of people out there on the internet who are like life advice gurus, and we definitely do not style ourselves as life advice gurus. That said a lot of these people seem to be giving very bad advice. And as people who aren't life advice gurus, but who seem to have their lives together more than, a lot of society these days, this is what always gets me about the life guru space.Malcolm: And I also see this within the dating guru space, is that many of these people don't have successful relationships. Or they don't seem to really have their lives together. And I actually was [00:01:00] talking to, I remember a long time ago somebody in the dating guru space. And I was like, why are you giving people, like, why is your job this was her job, giving people dating advice?Malcolm: And I was like, When you don't have a good relationship or even have a partner right now, and she goes I date more than any other dating coach I know and I'm like that does seem true. That does seem true. But I don't know. I think, and then this could be a cultural perspective as well.Malcolm: That some cultures when they're trying to decide who to trust as a source of information, what they'll do is they'll look towards the crowd, right? They'll say, who is the crowd looking to as a source of information, or they'll look to some sort of External certifying agency, right? So yeah, this people might have had 10 terrible marriages, but they do have their Ph.Malcolm: D. in relationship counseling. Whereas I think our cultural perspective places [00:02:00] a huge amount of weight on what the individual has been able to achieve within their own life. And the belief that you can't really make it past that point.Simone: Yeah. So if you are getting advice from someone, keep in mind that it will get you to exactly where they are now. So if you really like where someone is getting life advice for them is. is pretty good. But just doing it because they are famous or they're telling you things that sound or feel good probably not the best course of action to take.Malcolm: And this can be a problem with it was in what we call the the viral life coach sort of meme. When we talk about memetic clusters, it began to grow accidentally. I remember in the Bay area I was adjacent to this community. Where it started was one life coach and then everyone they were coaching ended up becoming life coaches.Malcolm: No, which makesSimone: perfect sense because what, like what does the life coach have figured out how to do? They figured out how to be a life coach. So they're probably going to [00:03:00] lead people in that general direction.Malcolm: But it's I don't think that's what they went. If you had been able to take them aside at the beginning and said, is your goal was this to become a life coach?Malcolm: They might've said no. And then this is the thing. Not all life coaches are like this. Some life coaches are like specifically very good at preventing this. And I think that there's a way that you can sort for this, look at their other clients who have worked with them for a while. Did they end up becoming more successful or did they end up becoming less successful?Simone: This is, there's something that's really interesting about this. Actually, this might be too much of a tangent, but we were introduced at one point to a company that would take law firms and lawyers and actually show you their outcomes vis a vis specific judges, for example, and in certain courts.Simone: And What you realize after looking at this data, there's this profound disconnect in the legal industry, at least in the United States, between like expensive law firms, prestigious law firms, famous lawyers, and actually good court records. And you could see on the graphs, like the track record [00:04:00] of different lawyers.Simone: Against certain judges in certain districts. So if your case is likely to end up in front of this particular judge, often what you're doing is if someone's Oh yeah, like this lawyer sees this judge, like all the time, they know them really well. You're like, you're going to be in really good hands.Simone: And then you loo

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss how they plan to teach their children about sexuality, relationships, and gender identity. They explain their perspective that biological sex differences exist but shouldn't overly define someone's life and goals. They emphasize teaching kids these are tools to use towards efficacy and warn against overinvestment in temporary cultural narratives. The couple advocates early spouse-seeking in college, avoiding compromising photos, and considering dating strategies and metagames. Overall they aim to equip their kids with knowledge to make informed choices given cultural realities.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] if you look at the cultural groups that are strict, but are otherwise forced , to engage the progressive monoculture, this is where you get the meme of the Catholic school girl, right? And this is definitely something when I was more promiscuous, I ran into girls like this a lot where the most promiscuous girls typically come from conservative religious backgrounds.Malcolm: They do not come from the backgrounds closer to you, where their parents laid out both options.Simone: Yeah, that's actually come to think of it. Yeah. ,Malcolm: they, they're like this system used to work in the past, but it used to work in an environment where this urban monoculture didn't exist and wasn't constantly sniping at it,Would you like to know more?Simone: Malcolm Collins, hello.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting again today. I thought today, given that we have done some episodes that discuss things like people's sexuality, gender, stuff like that that we talk about, because another big theme of ours is, well, what are we going to do for our culture, for our kids?Malcolm: How are we going to build something that's [00:01:00] intergenerationally durable, that focuses on these concepts specifically in relation to... How we are going to conceive them as a cultural group and, and the, the way we will teach our kids about them or teach them to contextualize them within their own life.Malcolm: Yeah, exactly. Before we go any deeper down this, particular rabbit hole, I think it's important to survey the landscape of how cultures relate to sexuality and why they relate to sexuality, the way they relate to sexuality. So, cultures can be thought of as broadly an evolving software that's sitting on top of evolving human hardware.Malcolm: Which is a person's pre coded genetic predilections, and then on top of that you have this sort of software package. And if the package does a good job at getting people to reproduce, and pass that software package on to the next generation, then, then those iterations of the packages exist in higher proportions than other iterations of the packages.Malcolm: And this is why [00:02:00] most successful cultural groups throughout history have prohibitions on masturbation and sex outside of marriage and stuff like that. So first let's talk about why, why would you have a prohibition on sex outside of marriage, right? Well, sex outside of marriage and it's not that there aren't cultural groups that allow a lot of sex outside of marriage, there are.Malcolm: They just have not been very successful, and by that what I mean is they didn't conquer their neighbors, they didn't grow a lot, often, they, they are typically smaller cultural groups that are really pushed to the wayside. By history and this is because one, monogamous cultural groups typically out compete polygynous cultural groups.Malcolm: Now, first, we need to make clear that almost all cultural groups are polygynous to some extent. By that, what we mean is the ultra wealthy and ultra powerful in almost any society in history yes, even the Catholic monarchies and stuff like that often had uh, timepieces. It was expected.Malcolm: So let's be clear. When I call a culture [00:03:00] monogamous all cultures are polygynous to some extent where the elite are typically allowed multiple partners. The question is where's the slider there. And if that slider is under 1% of the population.Malcolm: It's expected to have multiple partners. I call it a monogamous culture. If it's 5% to 10% those are where most polygynous cultures stay. Very few polygynous cultures get as high as like 20% of men having more than one wife. So, so it's important to understand what we mean when we call a culture polygynous versus...Malcolm: Monogamous. And it should be intuitive. A lot of people are like, oh, in a polygynous culture, every man has a lot of wives. And it's no obviously that won't work because you have about an equal number of males and females in almost any society, unless there's a lot of war. So the monogamous cultures typically out compete the polygynous cultures.Malcolm: And there's been some great studies on this. You know, we have them cited in our a book on, on both sexuality and relationships because they're really interesting and you can see them side by side in, in some places like Africa wher

In this Talks at Home episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss mourning culture and the phenomenon of expected performative grief when a loved one dies. They analyze the reasons people mourn, including regret over the deceased's unfulfilled experiences, selfish sadness over losing them, and guilt about things left unsaid. Malcolm and Simone propose a cultural shift towards focusing on the deceased's legacy and life's work rather than indulging in non-constructive sadness. They also touch on relating constructively to children's lives versus elderly deaths and texting while driving risks learned from Malcolm's medical examiner work.Malcolm: [00:00:00] They are using the amount of pain that person's death caused their children as like a judge of the quality of that relationship.Malcolm: And so they want you to experience pain as a sign that relationship was a meaningful one. worse, when they expect this emotional reaction from you, and when you have this emotional reaction, you are affecting I'm affecting my entire family, my wife and my kids, most of all it's saying not just they want me sad, but they want my kids to feel this grief.Malcolm: They want my grief. AndSimone: This is where it gets really scary, right? Because this is where you can turn something into a traumatic event as we've discussed in other episodes by making it contextualized as traumatic.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello, Simone! This is going to be an interesting, if sad, episode, because we lost one of this show's first and most avid watchers, she watched every episode, a few days [00:01:00] ago, which was my mom she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a few days ago.Malcolm: Since she passed away, I have experienced a very interesting phenomenon. Do you want to talk about it, Simone?Simone: Yes, you have experienced the phenomenon of what we might call mourning culture, M O U R N I N G, where, interestingly there's a very bifurcated reaction that we get from people when we tell them.Simone: One is, wow, that's really heavy, hope you're doing alright, let me know how I can help. Other people are like, Whoa, hold on. Like, how are you even on the phone with me right now? Like, how could you be telling you, you need to be like, no, get off the phone right now this is an emergency.Simone: I understand. Like, Don't, you know, don't handle process your pain. Um, And they kind of, there's very much this expectation and feeling that you get from these conversations. That you should be pulling out your hair, crying, rending your clothing gnashing your teeth, right? Like rolling around on the floor in [00:02:00] pain.Simone: Yeah, I need to be doingMalcolm: whatever North Koreans were supposed to do when Kim Jong il died, where you get, the moral police come after you if you are not mourning correctly and loudly enough. Yes. This brings me to a confluence of really interesting phenomenons, right?Malcolm: Which is one, what's going on here? Like why specifically do they want me to be demonstrating emotional pain? What are the reasons why Hmm. and. If we are intentionally building our own culture, a culture by our value system, what would a person actually do when a person dies, when a parent dies? Yeah,Simone: Yeah. And,Malcolm: And how do we relate to that? And then in addition to those things, I want to cover the concept of what lessons I learned from my mom, because I think that's a really, a valuable thing to convey to the audience.Simone: And I don't know, [00:03:00] man, that might be its whole, like a whole other episode. That might be a whole other episode. Now this woman was a force of nature. She is not someone who can be wrapped up in even one episode. So no let's save that for later. Let us talk about the culture of especially mourning in the context of losing.Simone: A loved one or family member. Yeah.Malcolm: Let's first focus on why. Like, why do people feel sad? When somebody died, and I think that there are only a few reasons and they can really be isolated to better understand if they're bringing you any utility or they are in any meaningful way honoring the person who died.Malcolm: So the first is you are sad for anything that they did not get to experience, right?Simone: So there's a feeling of regret over what they didn't complete because you know what they wanted and they didn't get that.Malcolm: Yes, and so that can be things like seeing their grandchildren grow up or something like that, right?[00:04:00]Malcolm: It's similar to that, and I think that this by far is the biggest reason that people mourn, is regret over things that they won't get to do with the person in the future. The reactions they won't get to have from the person, essentially missing the person.Simone: People are mourning their own lifestyle changing to a great extent, right?Simone: Yes.Malcolm: Yeah. And the things that they're like, I think that this form of mourning is entirely selfish. And really not beneficial at all. The first form of mournin

Malcolm and Simone examine if banning pornography positively impacts society, relationships, and mental health. Contrary to assumptions, research shows legalizing porn reduces assault and attitudes viewing women as sex objects. It correlates with happier marriages and less relationship discord. Most downsides link to believing porn is bad, not the material itself. Ultimately restricting porn access worsens outcomes without effectively limiting consumption. They argue conservatives should own male sexuality, not amplify suffering.Malcolm: [00:00:00] The, Femboy alt right Catgirl. There's a meme around this, And this is where I think that our movement, this new movement was in the conservative party has in many ways become affiliated with cat girls. As yeah, you've got like cat girl Kulag who, we know, we've talked to personally and.Malcolm: Elon talking about investing in catgirls in that one famous tweet, these are people who I consider very politically aligned with us and both of them have like weirdly talked about catgirls. So what's going on there? Why are they talking about catgirls?Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone! I am so excited for this topic today. When we engage with some other branches of conservatives, one of the things that I think we all agree on is thatMalcolm: sexuality isn't really handling itself well in society today. are a ton of men [00:01:00] and women that are turning to self gratification over real relationships. And this is likely toMalcolm: expand in the future with AI and stuff like that. One of the responses to this that many people consider is we should ban pornography.Malcolm: And some countries that are more conservative than us and trying to solve fertility rates have done just that, like South Korea. However, it does not have the effects you would think it would have. And it's generally a really bad idea. Let's talk about why.Simone: So when we first started writing the Pravda's Guide to Sexuality, we were sure that we would find a lot of information that suggested that porn and masturbation were pretty damaging because. We saw on Reddit at that time, like no fap the subreddit was really big. People were like all about this is damaging me.Simone: This is really harmful for me. So we're like, wow, this is, people must have looked into this and this must be it fits herMalcolm: ideology. Like self-control is, oh, good [00:02:00] lack. Yeah. ControlSimone: is bad like that. Yeah. Like you need take a prish approach. Yeah. Yeah. This is, yeah. Don't indulge like that. That must be bad.Simone: Lo and behold, we were wrong. And, we totally own up to that now. Basically it looks like masturbation in general for both men and women is good. It seems to be correlated with like more sexual empowerment and enjoyment on women's part. seems to reduce stress, improve self esteem, improve body image.Simone: There's a lot, there's a lot to be said just for masturbation with or without porn. We also say in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, that masturbation may contribute to a decline in many social ills. UCLA researchers found that sex criminals on average consume less porn than the average person.Simone: And started consuming it at a later age than the average non sex criminal. Take that for what it's worth.Malcolm: But it's crazier than that. In countries that haven't allowed porn and then started allowing porn, rates of ape you guys can figure out what I mean. I'm trying not to get demonetized here.[00:03:00]Malcolm: Rights of ape declined precipitously upon the legalization of pornography.Simone: Yeah. So I can quote from our book on sexuality across nations, more pessimistic at it. Oh, sorry. And I'm going to use the word grape. Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. Great. Across nations, more. Permissive attitudes toward pornography are correlated with lower rates of grape and less violence against women.Simone: A great case study of this can be seen with the Czech Republic, where porn was illegal under communism, then legalized when the party fell. This decriminalization of pornography caused, in one year, Grapes to decline over 37% in child abuse of the wrong no, it's all wrong. The child, what abuse fell by about 50% similar results.Simone: We're seeing where porn laws were loosened in Denmark, Japan, China, and Hong Kong. So talkMalcolm: about rates of internet expansion. Cause that's also really interesting.Simone: Yes. For every 10% increase in [00:04:00] internet access. there's a corresponding regional decrease of 7. 3% in grapes, suggesting that the internet and its facilitation of masturbation may provide an outlet for sexual energy that might otherwise cause serious damage.Malcolm: Consider how correlational that is 10% to a 7% drop a 10% rise in internet access to a 7% drop that 50% drop. So this is one of those things, right? Where it's something that ideologically I can be like, self control is good. This is bad, et cetera. But then I engage wi

Malcolm and Simone share their approach to maintaining a positive work-life balance as a married couple running a business together. They explain how framing mundane activities as fun helps create happy memories. Acting cheerful even when alone reinforces emotions. Avoiding compromise and aligning on shared goals prevents conflicts. Modeling happiness teaches it to kids. They disagree on meds but research to find truth. Not fearing death removes constant dread. Starting every conversation cheerfully sustains the mood. Ultimately you choose whether to view life negatively or positively.Malcolm: [00:00:00] So we're going to do a video today on work life balance, which you can see with a kid home from school. It was pink eye. I got terrible pink eye today too. That's the one thing they don't tell you about being a parent. You're going to be sick 24 seven, right?Simone: Octavian? I actually started a spreadsheet to track the number of days that all of us are sick.Simone: So every time someone gets sick, I track the dates. Cause I want to see ultimately like how many days out of the year. Someone in our family is sick because I legit think that it's like quite a few days. I think it's about a quarter. A quarter?Malcolm: I'd say it's about a quarter of the year.Simone: Yeah it might even be more than that.Simone: It might actually be more like a third. So we can report back on that one. But despite being sick, I would argue that we still really have a lot of fun. And that I expected that as a parent, we would be a lot more stressed out and unhappy. Because everyone talks about how like marriage is hard work and having kids is hard work.Simone: . [00:01:00] But in the end, I think that it's actually pretty fun and seamless. But I think that a lot of that has to do with framing. So something that we do a lot with our kids when we need them to be excited about something is we play a hype game, essentially, where we will take something really mundane, like an airport shuttle bus, and we will frame it as the most fun, the most amazing thing in the world.Simone: So let's say that we need to get through a really rough travel day with lots of transfers. We will hype up the airport shuttle at the end of that day to get to a parking lot like it is the coolest thing in the entire world.Simone: And it works like crazy. Like we, we talk about it all day. Oh my gosh, we get to do this thing. And then we actually get to the airport shuttle bus. We're like, this is the best thing ever. And I think that one of the tricks to making a really heavy work schedule work with family, with a spouse, with whatever is playing the [00:02:00] hype game with everything.Simone: So no matter what you're doing, you make it fun. You make it fun.Malcolm: I the hide game with you and how much you're already doing this to yourself, whether you realize it or not.​Malcolm: So think about like a marriage, right? People are like the day I was married to you was the happiest day of my life. And it's like, why?Malcolm: Like you knew you were going to get married well before that day. That's not like you just found out you were going to get married that day. It's a ceremony. They're not very fun ceremonies. Yeah,Simone: it's a pretty stressful day.Malcolm: Yeah, you're sitting there you're likely last minute making sure you've memorized your vows so you say them right, you're trying to project a certain self image to the crowd.Simone: Are you just trying to keep all your guests happy and deal with, all the logistical nightmares that are coming up with whatever catering people needing stuff, et cetera.Malcolm: I think this is true of beaches, for example, right? Oh God, miserable. [00:03:00] Oh, You'll go to a beach. It's hot.Malcolm: They're drinking alcoholic beverages in the hot sun, often reading a book that they could be reading at home, or laying down, burning themselves, giving themselves cancer. I don't know, I don't know why people still do that. That seems like it's not even like a trend anymore. But the question is why?Malcolm: What are you getting out of doing that differentially, right? It's that society has told you that this is a fun thing to do and that is where you are getting happiness from the event. And you can change what is a fun thing to do if you create new narratives for yourself. So we can say, some people are like, Oh, that's really sad that you turn, your business trips into little mini honeymoons or family vacations or whatever, right?Malcolm: For you and your spouse. Cause you work together. And it's like, why? We, we section life into fun and not fun time, but you can make all of life fun [00:04:00] time if you create the right story for yourself around what you're doing and the people around you are helping you continue to generate this delusion.Malcolm: And you might be like that's not real fun. That's a delusion. Everything, this whole game, this whole life you're living, the emotions you feel they're delusion generated by

Join Simone and Malcolm as they delve into the fascinating world of emotions in this episode. Explore how they manage negative emotions, like anger, in their household with insightful strategies that can benefit everyone. Then, prepare for a deep dive into the intriguing emotion of humor, its different forms, and the contexts that trigger it. Based on their observations, particularly of their children, they have formulated a compelling theory on what makes things funny. Whether you're interested in understanding emotions better or seeking to improve your humor game, this conversation has something for everyone.The Transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] And so one thing we talk about with our kids is like, does this make you feel good? And this is what we talk about with like negative emotions, right? Like, does it feel good to be angry? Does it make you more efficient to be angry? There are very, very few scenarios in which emotions like anger are going to make you more efficient or make you happier in the long run?Simone: Maybe with something like grief, this could be different. I disagree. I think it's very rarely of utility. And so we talk through, okay, well if it doesn't make you happy, what can we do to get over it? And the, the core thing that gets over an emotion like that is, one, contextualizing it is not appropriate.Simone: And two interrupting it. A lot of emotions are just bead cycles, like a can of Pringles. Once you pop you can't stop. And just about walking away from the Pringles having a glass of milk, so, our, our kid three, when he gets angry we're like, well, do you wanna keep being angry or do you wanna take a few breaths?Simone: And so he'll go, no, I wanna, I wanna take a few breaths, and he'll go, and it helps it pass.Simone: Hello, gorgeous. Hello, [00:01:00] Simone. Today we are going to talk about our little theories on how different emotions work, and I wanted to start with humor. Do you want to go in to our thesis on how the humor emotion works?Malcolm: Yes. But first I have to credit you because you are the one who came up with this, and I think it's so endearing how you did it was all by observing our children and discovering what it was that made them laugh, which was really interesting.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So your, your theory and model of humor, which you were going to articulate better than me after I sum it up poorly, is that that, which is funny, is something that is surprising, but it makes sense.Simone: Yes. And I think that there's two other types of humor that exists where comedians sometimes get trapped with them, but they're not actual humor.Simone: One is a, I'm scared response. Mm-hmm. Which is really bad. But like a lot of, you, you get in, in really like tense situations where like you are socially scared or like actually threatened and like laughing to deescalate [00:02:00] to be like, ah, I'm not threatening. One, you see this in children.Simone: But in adults as well. And I think a lot of comedians, they'll, they'll build these routines that are really like emotionally cringe because they see people laughing at them. But that is not, that is not like a pleasant laughter. I think for most people who experience it, obviously the human experience is really broad and, and these comedians are appealing to somebody.Simone: , and, one is somebody is breaking social norms. Mm-hmm. And you are lacking cuz you're kind of threatened by the fact that to decrease tension kind of Yeah.Simone: Where creates tension and, and people are breaking social norms. So, this other type of humor is one where you will be much more likely to laugh at almost anything somebody says if you're attracted to it.Simone: Mm-hmm. So if you are attracted or aroused by somebody, you will just laugh at anything they say sometimes, and this is to, I, I guess, convince them. One, one of my favorite studies on this showed that both women and women said they appreciated a sense of humor in a partner. But for women, what that meant is that the person could make them laugh.Simone: But with amendment by this is that the person laughed at their jokes and that's [00:03:00] what they, isn't that sweet? That's, I just found that so sweet. That's so cute. I don't it, it's sociopathic as, as. Uh, Okay. Anyway, but so the main type of humor, the type that you should be aiming for as a comedian is this makes sense within the context that has been built for me.Simone: So in, in a, in a fictional world, you can build a fictional world where things deviate a along certain lines. An example here would be like SpongeBob square pants, right? Like that's a somewhat consistent fictional world with rules, right? And so something can make sense in that. Fictional context, but still be very surprising to you and thus cause you to to laugh.Simone: Like you're like, oh, I didn't expect that, but it makes sense. And these are the best, the best types of, of, of humor with this is humor where it's like an idea. You're not supposed to thin

Malcolm and Simone explore studies showing contextualization shapes emotions more than events. Believing you suffered childhood trauma causes more adult problems than records showing you endured abuse. Self-identifying as an insomniac impairs functioning over poor sleep itself. They explain how groups like cults leverage contextualization to control people. But individuals can also use it to their benefit through placebos, positive stress mindsets, and custom cultures. Ultimately, you have the power to frame life's hardships as opportunities to grow stronger.Transcript:Malcolm: [00:00:00] it is not. being abused, which creates the effects of trauma. It is believing that you underwent something traumatic, which creates the effectsSimone: of trauma.Simone: It wasMalcolm: really important about this is that it means that anyone can use this to their advantage. It means that whatever happened to you as a child, a group with malicious intents, whether it's a cult or a psychologist or a ideological movement can find fertile ground within about.Malcolm: Anyone's life to separate them from their family and build real trauma into their childhood. Yeah. And this is very advantageous for these groups because when you're a cult, one of the first things you want to do is to separate somebody for their endogenous support networks. You want to separate them from their family and the other people who care about them.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, [00:01:00] Malcolm. Hello,Malcolm: Simone! It's wonderful to be here with you today.Simone: It is because we decide that it's wonderful, right, Malcolm?Malcolm: Exactly! And this is a very interesting topic.Simone: The subject in this case being basically the effect of contextualization. So most recently, a friend of ours shared with us a study called associations between objective and subjective experiences of childhood maltreatment and the course of emotional disorders in adulthood and the TLDR of this particular study was those who contextualize childhood abuse or maltreatment as such.Simone: It reported and apparently experienced more emotional problems as adults versus those who through government records and other sources clearly were shown to also experience maltreatment in childhood, but didn't identify as being maltreated did not show the same level of mental distress of mental disorders.Simone: If you word that differently,Malcolm: it is not. [00:02:00] being abused, which creates the effects of trauma. It is believing that you underwent something traumatic, which creates the effectsSimone: of trauma. Yeah. Or contextualizing it as this horrible thing. So you can still totally have something bad happened to you. I'm sure.Simone: And be like that sucked, but like to not identify with it, to not be like, that was horrible. How am I ever going to live this down? My life is ruined because of this.Malcolm: Yeah. So you actually see this when I was a psychology student, there was this case and I've never been able to find the study that this was done in.Malcolm: It may have been. anecdotal experience from the teacher at the time, but they were talking about how in countries where rape is very common and quote unquote part of normal life that the rates of trauma from rape are very low. And it's only in the countries where rape is contextualized as traumatic, where you really frequently get this Extreme [00:03:00] trauma response to rape, specifically believing, and this is also what you're seeing was the forgetting before remembering phenomenon, which is a famous phenomenon in psychology where a personal go like, Oh my gosh, I just remembered this, like I was.Malcolm: R word by my uncle, as a kid, right? It was horrible. I'm traumatized. I covered up that memory from my childhood. And then the person they told this to it'll be their spouse or something. They're like you talked about that last week. You talk about this. All the time. You clearly hadn't forgotten this.Malcolm: And what's happening is they will remember something like my uncle touched me in a weird way that made me uncomfortable, but they won't contextualize it within the modern context that we associate that with, right? And then one day. They will think about it tied to this new traumatizing context, and the new memory of it that they create through that, the new way they're contextualizing this old memory, is so [00:04:00] different, it completely overwrites the old memory, and they don't remember that they had previously remembered this, or that they had never really forgotten it.Malcolm: But what's really interesting, Is when this happens, then trauma is introduced. They did not have trauma from the old way they were remembering and contextualizing it, but they do from the new way. Yeah.Simone: And you've seen this also, we've looked at some of the research on long COVID, remember how I shared that one study with you, where they found that people who. Did not know that they had COVID did not repor

Sandman, a pioneering figure in the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement, joins Malcolm and Simone to trace its evolution. They discuss the roots in Men's Rights Activism and pickup artistry. Sandman explains how society tries to reel MGTOW men back in since they refuse to participate in traditional relationships. He predicts virtual girlfriends, declining birth rates, and other tech changing dynamics. While unsure where it's heading, Sandman helped catalyze the withdrawal of men from unfair systems.Transcript: Sandman: [00:00:00] I had dolls sent to me for free to review and post on my channel. And for a while I was promoting the technology it weighs 70 like you get a workout before you work, get into bed like you're like ready to fall over before you, you're like, imagine changing positions on this thing three or four times.Sandman: You're out. You're white. You're like, it's like getting a full workout in the gym. . Yeah,Malcolm: your doll bod. Yeah, your doll bod. Yes. Yes.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello. We are very excited to be joined today by sandman MGTOW the preeminent MGTOW figure talking head, or I guess I should say faceless talking head.Simone: You're very mysterious. Representing the movement of men who've chosen to go their own way, which is for those not familiar with it, basically, a lot of men have realized that they're getting a really raw deal in society and they're like, you know what, I'm out, I'm not going to opt into traditional female relationships, a lot of this b******t, and I, for one, am here for it.Simone: It makes a lot [00:01:00] of sense to me. I think if I were a guy, I'd be a MGTOW guy.Malcolm: And what I am excited to talk about on this podcast is the anthropology of MGTOW, the anthropological history, and it can start when you started getting involved with it or where you saw who were the figures who were the progenitors of the movement?Malcolm: How did it first start? What communities did it start in? How did it spread? What have been the major trials of the community? I am just very interested to see it as a cultural movement.Sandman: Okay, so you had MGTOW 1. 0. And that was around, the early 2000s and the idea was. We were going to take masculinity and instill it in men and we're gonna take femininity instill it in women So it was more like back to tradition, but this is back in 2000 And so that didn't really go anywhere up until about 2008 2009 and then a creator named Barbarossa showed up And he made a video called, I think it was called post feminist man.Sandman: And he did, [00:02:00] he basically laid the foundations for MGTOW all the way from 12. Then, another creator named Stardusk was around back then. And then when I came in around mid to end of 2013, it was dying down. Nobody was really making content. When I always look at an opportunity in any avenue, like in, in terms of economics or attention or whatever you want to do, I look at something that's something I want a lot of.Sandman: I want some content. I want something, but there's not enough people supplying that content. So before we goMalcolm: further on this, because I think you've already passed this in the timeline. How did MGTOW relate to the red pill movement?Sandman: So you've got, you get the MRAs, which are the men's rights. Activists,Malcolm: and they're old school. They were back up in like in theSandman: nineties, right? But every generation of men has a different movement at the center. So the RAs were, let's say the second half of the boomers and the first half of Gen X, that was the, that's the MRA sweet spot.Sandman: So if you go to anm a conference, that's your [00:03:00] demographic. Those are men that had relationships that were good. For the most part, and they said, okay, we want these relationships. We want to continue to be married, but we just want to fix things and we want things to go back to the way they were.Sandman: And so that's the MRAs. So the MGTOWs came in and that was the second half of Gen X and the first half of the millennials. And that's like your MGTOW sweet spot. And so I'm You know, in the middle of that. So I could see the, I could understand the younger guys and understand the point of view of the older guys.Sandman: And MGTOW was saying, look, we can't fix these problems. You've tried to fix them for the last 10, 15 years. It's not working. What we have to do is fix these problems for the individual male. We have to make sure that the individual man has a solution for his own life. We can't change society, but you can change your own life.Sandman: And that's why MGTOW was so powerful. And, but also we have to understand MGTOW men had relationships. They just weren't very high quality [00:04:00] relationships and so and then okay, so then after that once that kind of passes now You're in the age of the incel So you're now talking about guys who haven't had any formative relationships with women They haven't had those sexual experiences And so t

Malcolm and Simone analyze the bizarre TikTok trend of women acting like NPCs and eating viewer-sent emojis. They discuss pioneers like Cherry Crush and Pinkie Doll who understand internet psychology. Malcolm argues this caters to semi-males with lower testosterone, not sexual release. The content infantilizes male sexuality through repetition and predictability. Simone wonders if environmental estrogen is creating new gender expressions, not just sexualities. They debate the effects on young people and humanity's future.Transcription Simone: [00:00:00] This is notMalcolm: content that is meant to be masturbated to. This is content that's meant to be passively consumed. For longer periods of time, I think that type of content may explicitly be appealing to this new type of man who has much lower testosterone and hasn't fully differentiated into a male.Malcolm: Wow. That is what I think is really interesting here is it's actually like porn. But for the next generationWould you like to know more?Simone: hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be talking to you today because we're going to do something new. We're going to try to do something at least semi topical because we've talked about doing this for a while. And this is on this meme that's been going around.Malcolm: Of this new style of video within TikTok. And we will have some examples of it play here.Cherry Crush: , crunchy corn, [00:01:00] yum, yeehaw, um, pizza, yum, um, ice cream, um, um, um, yum, um, bread, yum.Cherry Crush: Mmm, yum. I'm hungry. Crunchy corn, yum.Malcolm: The two most prominent people doing this are Cherry Crush and somebody named Pinkie Doll. What I want to get into with this is what is really going on here? Cause I think a lot of people are just looking at this and being like, this is absurd.Malcolm: This isSimone: weird. This makes me sick. That's a really common response. I'm like,Malcolm: this is a sign of the degradation of our society. But I actually think that there's a more interesting phenomenon here than that, and the people who are getting engaged with this as content producers, [00:02:00] especially these early people have shown themselves to be incredibly astute, intelligent, and understand aspects of the human condition that we may not have full access to.Malcolm: I also think this might represent a change in human biology that we've been seeing with drops in testosterone and stuff like that, which is something I'm really excited to dig deeper into. But first let's talk about, I guess I'll start with Cherry Crush. Okay. Because I think it's easy to look at this person and because what she's doing is ridiculous, assume that she doesn't.Malcolm: Like that she's incompetent or something like that, or she's just your standard, like e thought, but she's actually been at the forefront of several online phenomenons in a way that's allowed her to monetize them. So two other online phenomenons that she was at the forefront of and has done quite well within one is the ASMR movement.Malcolm: You're familiar with [00:03:00] ASMR. Do you want to talk to that to some extent? Yes.Simone: ASMR involves riffing on. A genuine kind of tickling feeling that you can get, or tingling feeling that you can get from certain subtle sounds. So examples of ASMR are people like... On wrapping delicate things, brushing hair, there's a lot of like overlap between ASMR and also like really childhood like comforting things.Simone: So some ASMR videos are like, I'm going to do your makeup or I'm going to brush your hair or I'm going to tuck you in at night. Like it's very infantilizing. And I think that there might be some element of it, but that is independent from the fact that for some people. These delicate ASMR sounds, whispered, tapping, et cetera can elicit a kind of like tingling down your spine feeling.Simone: Okay.Malcolm: So this is really interesting because I think this is something we actually see cross species in species with really advanced. auditory cortexes. So in birds and stuff like that, you will see them involuntarily begin to dance. And there's great carrots and [00:04:00] stuff involuntarily dancing.Malcolm: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm: And whenever a sensory system is advanced enough, it appears to be able to fire in weird ways with certain types of complex stimuli. I suspect that this system is very similar to the way you get a positive feeling with, we've got these in our house, these head things that you put on your head to slowly go over.Malcolm: Yes, those things. But or really gently rubbing fingers across somebody's skin. What you're doing in both of these scenarios is you're very gently stimulating a large amount of a person's sensory system. And I think we call these sexual feelings because we don't have a way of engaging with them outside of sexuality.Malcolm: We'reSimone: never gonna get monetized. We've never made it through an episode where I feel like there's [00:05:00] not something that demo

Malcolm and Simone outline their theory of friendship and the four main "friend models" they've observed. Convenience friends are tied to a specific time or place like school or work. Character friends reinforce your desired self-image. Utility friends provide tangible benefits. And cultural friends share your niche interests or lifestyle. They emphasize optimizing your limited time by evaluating your friendships based on the value and role each person plays. Understanding these models helps maximize the usefulness of your social network.Malcolm: [00:00:00] The really important thing to remember about this is that while you and everyone else. Is the protagonist of their own story, you are a side character in the story of everyone else you will ever meet. And so a lot of people say I just want people to see me for who I am.Malcolm: That is far too nuanced to be a good side character, right?Simone: Hi, Octavian.Simone: Do you want to say hi to YouTube? Yeah. Okay, say hi, YouTube. Hi.Malcolm: So we had one person on one of our videos saying you guys can do more interviews when you start running out of interesting things to talk about.Malcolm: And I love this because they don't, I am on easy mode with YouTube. My wife told me one day, cause she goes, Malcolm, if you don't find an interesting thing. to discuss with me because every morning we do a strategy walk and we walk together for about an hour. If you don't think of an interesting thing to discuss with me before I wake up .Malcolm: My life is the framing device for Arabian tales. That is my life. [00:01:00] I have to keep this woman happy or she'll kill me. And I have to keep her happy with controversial, weird takes. You guys are just getting the dregs of these morningSimone: walks.Simone: Yeah, you're having the microwaved leftovers from my first take. My prima nocta. What can we say? Sorry, guys.Malcolm: Yes.Simone: I love it. Oh, God. Anyway today I thought we could talk about our theory of friendship, which we actually developed pretty early on in our marriage.Simone: And this was a listenerMalcolm: request. Yeah. And it comes down to the thought of what use are other people to us? Um, More specifically, what I mean is. If you're going to go out there and you're going to engage with people and you're an extreme introvert, you really need a specific motivation to do that.Simone: Specifically as extreme introverts, we really need a reason to interact with people. But we also think that Everyone actually interacts with people for a reason. They don't just, quote unquote, need friends. And so we built a model to [00:02:00] determine what types of friends there are, which can also make it much easier to determine whether a friendship is worth keeping.Simone: And really help you understand the dynamics of the friendship. But more importantly, if you want to have friends, it's really helpful to understand what kind of friend you are to them, what your value proposition is to them as a friend. And that actually has helped us a ton because there are all sorts of people that we like to be friends with.Simone: And we need to understand what it is in their lives that we're going to fill in. If we are to take that position to earn it, essentiallyMalcolm: treat their friends very differently, depending on the value proposition that you're providing.Simone: Exactly. So let us start. There are four types of friends, by the way, per our model.Simone: We will also discuss in this conversation, people's other complaints and suggestions that there are other types of friends and we will attempt to refute them. Of course, if you have additional ideas of types of friends that exist, share them in the comments and we will see just. How much we agree with you or not, but I bet that this model can be expanded.Simone: So honestly, we'd like your feedback. So first type of friend trash friend, as [00:03:00] far as we are concerned. Although you probably have friends like this and you are an idiot for having them. This first type of friend is the convenience friend.Simone: What is a convenience friend? It is someone who in the show Parks and Rec they are referred to as workplace proximity associates rather than friends, . Because this is someone who you are friends with nearly because they are there. and sometimes because you want company.Simone: So great examples of friends who are convenience friends or workplace proximity associates are classmates, roommates, neighbors, people who go to the same church as you, people who are in clubs with you co workers who you like and hang out with after work. People that you've met a long time ago that you've just kept up with.Simone: A good wayMalcolm: to think of this group is the people who you are adjacent to in life, whether it's in school or in work. These are not people that you've really sorted for, right? It's just a random assortment of the population generally.Simone: You get along, like you're not convenience friends with every

Malcolm and Simone discuss problems in modern dating caused by dating apps and cultural shifts. They explain how the "lazy 8 problem" leads to unrealistic expectations. Women compare current options to past partners out of their league. Men get overlooked. Simone suggests women try polyamory or kink to land a high-value male. Malcolm says men should lock down a partner by 22 and optimize for gratitude, not glamour. They mention niche religious communities and goal-oriented dating sites as options. Ultimately there are no easy solutions, so people must work hard and have realistic expectations when seeking a partner.Malcolm: [00:00:00] we have this algorithm for relationship stability , the stability score is a person's individual value to a specific individual who there was divided by What they think they can get on an open market and this can be inaccurate and as long as that number is above one, the relationship will be stable when it falls below one, the relationship becomes unstable and many cultural things can augment this. The reason why celebrity relationships are so intrinsically unstable is because the value of a celebrity on an open market is almost always higher than their value to somebody who's gotten to know them as a human being.Simone: hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be talking to you today, despite the seasonal affective disorder that both of us are feeling.Simone: It's really unfair to us who are Fected by summer rather than winter, cause no one recognizes our plight.Simone: But here's one thing we don't have to worry about that actually makes us [00:01:00] extremely smug and I think moderately intolerable, which is our relationship.Simone: I feel like. Some kind of crazy wealthy person, in the midst of a sea of poverty that is systemic, that is deeply unfair. And people sometimes reach out to us and they're like, Hey, as a, single person with X, Y, and Z characteristics, what tips can you give me?Simone: And obviously like we tried to give whatever advice we can possibly give. But I'm also like, oh, but like the system is so broken. I really don't know what you're going to do. And I think it's a, an interesting thing to discuss, especially in the context of demographic collapse, of pronatalism of mental health problems, societal decline, as some people like To talk about it.Simone: So let's dig into it. Let's talk about broken relationship markets.Malcolm: We are living in a world today where I feel like both men and women are really screwed in relationship markets, but in, in very different ways. And a lot of people feel rightly. [00:02:00] Somewhat helpless in trying to find a partner. And one of the things we're doing is trying to build new cultural solutions, but let's talk about why the existing system isn't working effectively.Simone: Okay. So we call this the lazy eight problem. It is a problem that emerged with swipe based dating, where dating both became associated with very low switching costs, like switching from one partner to the next was.Simone: Fairly easy and seamless. There wasn't a lot of social grief you got for breaking up with someone or ghosting them. But also with swipe based dating, it became very image heavy, very aesthetics focused. So whereas before, even on apps like, okay, Cupid, et cetera, you used to be able to compete or appeal to people based on a lot of different metrics.Simone: Like on, okay, Cupid, my whole, game my churn was to answer their weird questions and end up in people's feeds and then catch their attention there. So it wasn't even images. It was like my funny answers and humor. Like that's just not an option anymore. So it's become like really honed in on.Simone: Aesthetics driven characteristics.Malcolm: So before you move further [00:03:00] for some of our listeners, they may not know the way internet dating used to work. So there were two systems that you used to be able to use for internet dating and Simone made effective use of both of them. And they are radically different from the swipe based systems you have access to today.Malcolm: Essentially it was a directory. So I would go, I would create a long form profile that was much more focused on the text, like who I am, than what I look like. Which gave you an ability to compete on different metrics and not just on attractiveness. Then what you could do is go and search and say, okay, all, women interested in men within 25 miles that are slender.Malcolm: that are atheists, that are Republicans, you could put a number of metrics in and you would just get a list of every woman who is using the app at that time who fit that criteria. And you could go through, you could sort the, those people and then outreach to them, knowing how valuable each one of them was to you while also knowing that once you exhausted a potential lead.Malcolm: That lead was exhausted until new [00:04:00] women or men would come onto the app. Now, this is very different than the swipe based s

Malcolm and Simone steelman the philosophical position of antinatalism and respond to some of its key arguments. They discuss the antinatalist claims that life is mostly suffering, humans adapt to suffering, and preventing potential happiness has no downside. Malcolm proposes thought experiments around time and existence to challenge the antinatalist asymmetry argument. They assert that emotions lack inherent meaning or value from a detached, logical perspective. Simone explains how her intuition clashes with her logic on this issue as a new mother. In the end, they conclude antinatalism lacks internal consistency. But they respect some parts of the antinatalist framework as logically valid, given certain priors.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] in the world , of pronatalism, there are a lot of dumb reasons that people don't like don't agree with it or argue against it. the most interesting argument I find when I'm looking at an argument and I'm like this is actually a sophisticated argument that makes sense depending on the priors you're coming into the conversation with and depending on your proclivities and your cultural group, that is the David Benatar.Malcolm: Negative utilitarianSimone: argument. Well, and what we really respect about it, I would say, is that it is logically consistent. . We're just like, yeah, per your framing, per your values, per what you're optimizing for.Simone: You are correct in being anti neutralist.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello. I am excited for today's talk. So in the world , of pronatalism, arguing for higher fertility rates, there are a lot of dumb reasons that people don't like don't agree with it or argue against it.Malcolm: Some examples are But the environment, well, if you [00:01:00] selectively remove everyone from the population that cares about the environment, that's going to cause much bigger environmental problems down the line.Malcolm: This is particularly pointed when you consider the fact that if humanity doesn't survive, because many environmentalists will be like, we don't need humans anymore. Look at all the damage they've done. And it's well, you get rid of humans. If you, if you, if you get rid of humans, there is no other species on this planet that can colonize other planets.Malcolm: And presumably what you're optimizing for is biodiversity, not biostasis, not maintaining the earth exactly as it was when humans first emerged. And if you're optimizing for biodiversity, Intrinsically, whichever species can best seed new biomes on other planets is long term going to increase biodiversity the most because we can develop new biomes that are just as rich as Earth on a thousand different planets, so , you lose the entire biome.Malcolm: Biology game. If humanity goes extinct right now, it doesn't look like there's going to be enough [00:02:00] time. If humanity goes extinct and you look at the life cycle and how long it took for humans to rise for another intelligent species to rise afterwards and then leave the planet, we're just looking probabilistically.Before the sun expands and kills all life that we know for sure exists in the universe,Malcolm: So kind of humans are stuck with this one, even if they are a bit of a shitty species. I'm not going to argue there. But two, you're also going to have the effects of it. Because the way people vote has a heritable component, this has been shown in lots of studies if, if environmentalists specifically don't have kids that's going to cause people to become less environmentalist over time.Malcolm: And even if you don't believe that any of this has a heritable component, well still culturally, that means the cultural groups that don't care about the environment are going to outcompete you in the long run. And that the only way you can survive is by converting people out of those cultural groups.Malcolm: Yet long term studies, as we've mentioned many times, if you look at people like Amish... Fewer and fewer people deconvert from the group every year depending on how long a family's been in the Amish community. Because cultures adapt. If another culture is [00:03:00] primarily surviving by taking their members, then they're going to adapt to this over time and eventually become resistant.Malcolm: That's just how evolution works, and evolution works at the cultural level as well as the... The level of people. People might say, Oh, it's racist. Really? Like in the U. S. right now we are importing people mostly from Latin America and yet collectively, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean are below repopulation rate.Malcolm: In And this was in 2019 by the UN's own statistics, which famously inflates this stuff. So , we're, we're draining from a evaporating pool. This isn't just a white person problem. In fact, it's not even really a white person problem at all. If you look at prosperous countries, the population groups that are most resistant to fertility collapse are genera

Malcolm and Simone discuss the flaws of the current education system and the innovative school they have designed to fix it. They explain how their school uses a skill tree/tech tree model that allows students to progress at their own pace in subjects they are intrinsically motivated in. The school focuses on real-world skills and outcomes rather than standardized tests. It incorporates a "democratized nepotism" system to connect advanced students with mentors in their field of interest. Socialization is taught through community involvement and evaluated by "proctors." The curriculum avoids ideological indoctrination by using AI-generated questions and prediction markets to test abilities. The goal is to create a constantly improving system that cultivates genius and sets students up for self-sufficiency.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello. So this is a follow up episode. We had done an episode on the education system, why it's terrible the, the forces at play here how, how little genuine innovation is happening in the space. It is terrifying. I suggest you check that episode out, but you really don't need to watch it before this one.Malcolm: This one, we're going to focus on the system that we've designed. For the Collins Institute, you can learn more at collinsinstitute. org, and yeah, it's just one of those spaces where we've decided to put some of our effort to try to fix something because we saw something broken, and that means we gotta clean it up,Simone: but the fun premise here is this, is basically we discovered that in the world of education, No one is really trying anything innovative. Also, when people have tried to experiment around different outcomes, it didn't, it wasn't actually trying to experiment for earning potential or changing the world or making an impact or even thriving as a human.Simone: It was pretty much around self esteem and in the few [00:01:00] isolated instances in which people did say, I'm going to try to create geniuses. They did. So basically we have reason to believe that people who come in intentionally trying to innovate new models have the potential to genuinely change the world because there's nothing more fundamental than the way that you educate the next generation and equip the next generation to take on new challenges.Simone: So the premise here is, okay, we see this and we're like, all right, we're going to throw our hats in the ring. And this is what we have decided to do.Malcolm: Few caveats to what you just said. Montessori is pretty good for pre secondary school. So before middle school, Montessori is actually a pretty solid system.Malcolm: I think it can be improved a little but it's, it's decent for what's out there. And Acton schools are actually a pretty innovative and interesting model that we respect. Outside of that, pretty much hate everything.​Malcolm: Okay, now to, to our system. So what we've done is we have taken the entire educational[00:02:00] system, secondary school, so middle school and high school, as well as we're eventually moving to colleges.Malcolm: We've talked with this new college that might actually Implement our system is the primary way that learning happens at that college. So hopefully we can go from middle school to the end of college where we have divided it. into individual nodes that work like a skill tree or a tech tree in a video game.Malcolm: If you're not familiar with what that looks like I doubt that much of our audience doesn't know what a skill tree or tech tree in a video game is, but it's actually a pretty hard concept to explain to someone who's never seen it. Think of it like a ancestry tree that you progress through.Malcolm: Like you would have nodes, you complete one node, it unlocks nodes above that. Sometimes you need to unlock two nodes to unlock one node above that, okay? And whenever a student clicks on one of these nodes they get a place where they can book a time to take a test on that subject to complete the note.Malcolm: Under that is like you would have in Hacker News, although Simone always says I say Reddit as well, but Hacker News is a better direct analog because it's all links. Where [00:03:00] you have links to all of the places a student could learn that information that exists online and students can upload their own YouTube tutorials after doing something or their own notes after doing something.Malcolm: Then students vote on the sources that were most useful to them. Those votes are modified by how well a student did. Eventually we want to begin to build profiles of students. So that students can be shown resources that were most useful to students who have similar voting patterns to them on these, these tests.Malcolm: And we also want to build some sort of reward or remuneration system where students can receive some sort of reward for creating content that ended up being useful to a lot of other students. Now, a quick side note on this. One of the things that we really believ

In this thought-provoking episode of the Malcolm and Simone Podcast, we dive deep into the core issues plaguing the traditional educational system and the potential for innovative approaches. We critically evaluate the current state of education, its origins in the Industrial Revolution, and the outdated "one size fits all" methodology still prevalent today. We explore alternative educational approaches like unschooling, Montessori, and the Acton school system. Are these the answers we've been looking for or just steps along the path to a truly revolutionary education model? We also analyze the trend of optimizing educational research around self-esteem instead of tangible outcomes, such as career success and mental health. This conversation promises to challenge your perceptions and spark your curiosity about the future of education.Malcolm: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today.Simone: I thought today we might talk about a long time obsession of ours, which is crafting and cultivating geniuses and a world leader is what do youMalcolm: think? Well, I mean, I don't see the point in having kids if you're not going to aim for the stars. Yeah.Malcolm: ISimone: mean, we were always really enchanted by what Laszlo Polgar did, not just because he was a shot caller. Like Laszlo Polgar,Malcolm: okay, as to who Laszlo Polgar is, Simone, because some of our viewers may not just immediately know who this guy is. So there was this guy who was living in , a communist bloc country. And he had this theory that you could intentionally create geniuses.Malcolm: And so, very similar to, I feel like how I met my wife. He puts an ad in the paper saying, I'm looking to create geniuses and I'm looking for a wife who I can do this with. Which is very important that he did this from my perspective, because there are [00:01:00] some people out there who claim they know the secret to being a good parent .Malcolm: And they. Happen to have three kids who are really successful. And it's yeah, but if you're just dealing with a large population, some people are going to have. Three kids that are successful or four kids that are successful saying that you're going to do this up front and having it like as a recorded thing in media that is very, very different when you're talking about statistical outcomes and can be used as a sign that he probably understood something.Malcolm: Well, thisSimone: comes back to one of our key criteria for truth, right? We, we give a lot more credit to people who we are, who are what we call shot callers and Laszlo Polgar called a shot. And so we were always really fascinated by this specifically because we are really interested in, well, what can you do toMalcolm: create a great leader?Malcolm: We haven't finished the story yet. They still have no idea who he is. Okay. Sorry. Okay. So anyway, Laszlo Polgar said, I'm going to try to create geniuses. They know that part. They know his hypothesis. [00:02:00] You're like, I love you. It'd be like, if we were telling a story about some famous basketball player and you're like, and one day that, that four year old boy said, I'm going to become the greatest basketball player of all time.Simone: One can assume that obviously he did it.Malcolm: You've got to say what happens. All right. All right. Okay. Okay. So he raises three daughters and he decides that the metric he's going to use for success is chess and the worst of his three daughters. was the sixth highest rated chess champion in her lifetime as the female.Malcolm: The best was the best female champion of her lifetime. And the second was the second female champion of her lifetime. And actually, when they first went to participate in a chess championship, they called it like the event, the sack of Rome. Because it was just so outstanding. They just. Were these little like 13 year old girls who are just like sweeping everyone.Malcolm: But the point being, and where this is really interesting is I think a lot of people have this [00:03:00] perception that if you approached education and you tried to really reform the system or try something very different, you could do like 20%, 30% better, what the Laszlo Polgar case study shows is that the ceiling for how much we could improve the educational system is.Malcolm: Like a hundred X 200 X better that you could potentially reliably create outcomes that are What today would be we'd call geniuses like literally world class every time that is what got us really Excited about the potential of this space. The other thing that got us really excited about the potential of the space I'll get you in a second.Malcolm: But Simone you have some stuff you wanted to saySimone: Well, I mean, it's just been an obsession of ours. We really want to know how to consistently, and ideally at scale, create people who are capable of changing the world. Perhaps we are even more interested in this today because we [00:04:00] see generations of people graduating

Aella's writeup on how her consensual nonconsent orgies work: https://aella.substack.com/p/how-my-consensual-nonconsent-orgiesAella's Twitter: https://twitter.com/aella_girlAella's website: https://knowingless.com/Aella's surveys: https://knowingless.com/survey/In this podcast episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into an eye-opening discussion with Aella, an acclaimed sexuality researcher and the foremost expert on consensual non-consent (CNC) parties. This conversation navigates the boundaries of sexual research, societal perceptions, consent, and safety measures while exploring the underbelly of CNC parties. Tune in to gain unprecedented insights into a world that seldom sees the light of day, and find out what really happens when safety meets desire in an unconventional setting.Malcolm: [00:00:00] We are so excited for our guest today, Aella because, , we have such a beef with the existing academic and research system, and for us, you are this shining light of a genuine alternative to the system, , another thing we've talked about on the podcast is how we rate it.Malcolm: Genuine intelligence from our cultural perspective. And the idea that you are out there doing research, not for remuneration, you didn't get into it for anything like that. You just did it because you loved it. And it was really cool to see. But for people who don't know Ayla, she is probably the most.Malcolm: Advanced sexuality researcher in the world. As people who wrote a bestselling book on sexuality, I'm saying that and she is somebody who really does a lot of, pretty groundbreaking research into the way humans think,Malcolm: the first question for this one is . So there's this perception of society of these secretive groups of like [00:01:00] elite people who host sex parties where nefarious things happen. Yeah.Simone: I'll set this. scene because it always shows up in my gossipy girly shows where one of the protagonists ends up at this mansion where everyone is wearing masks and black and you know, they, they walk in and there's candles everywhere and it seems super evil and they're handed a glass of champagne and then just like people are like, they're just going to start.Simone: It's just suggested that like a bunch of people are going to either start having sex or are having sex or end up getting murdered or something. Yeah.Malcolm: Yeah. , and there's this famous Twitter thread of you about a consensual non consent party. You're having them where it's like had a torture buffet.Malcolm: And if anyone in the world understands the logistics of actually putting one of these together, what that's like, what you're thinking about when you're doing it, what you have to make sure doesn't go wrong. I am just so fascinated to hear about this.Aella: Thanks, guys. Great, great to be here. I'm [00:02:00] so happy to be on your podcast.Aella: Wait, yeah, to be clear, the torture parties are a separate thing from the non con parties. Yes. CNC. I'm going to call it CNC. I do have them. There's no sex going on at the torture parties. It's just like another logistical thing to throw into the mix. And oh yeah, the CNC parties are basically you come in and you wear like wristbands that indicate what you're open to having happen.Aella: And you operate within certain, like, bounds of accepted norms. So there's like a list of things that you can do to somebody if they have the wristband on, and then if the person wants to make exceptions, they wear like a badge, and you have to read that badge before you engage with them, stuff like that.Simone: So wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. This is sounding very similar to me to whitewater rafting. Like in my, in my teenage years I did a lot of whitewater rafting, my dad and my sister were river guides. And before going rafting, you had to like stop everyone and have a safety talk about how the life jackets worked, what would happen if your boat wrapped, wrapped around a rock, how to paddle [00:03:00] correctly.Simone: Like, do you have a safety talk before theseAella: begin? Yeah, we have, we have to arrive mandatorily on time before the doors. Close because it's required that everybody is there for the opening circle and the opening circle to go over the rules again in your invite. When you come to the event, you have to read the rules.Aella: And then when you enter the door, you sign a waiver that explains again, what you're getting into and that you understand and are agreeing to this. And then we sit you down and we explain it all again, just to make really sure that you understand what's happening. And then we go through the list of things you can do, can't do, like the, the orientations to the space.Aella: We explain like how to use some of like the toys and the tools the norms again we do exercises where you have to, and it's like, it's like, I hate exercises at the beginning of things, but like, I think it's good still, and we just want to be really. over the top. So we have people pair off and the nam

Join Malcolm and Simone as they delve into a fascinating discussion about the role of genetics, culture, and sociology in influencing human behavior, specifically related to extremism. In this discussion, they explore how twin studies can shed light on the genetic underpinnings of sociological profiles and delve into why religiosity might not be the main factor behind certain societal phenomena. They touch on the concept of the "right-wing authoritarian personality" and its prevalence across both political spectrums. With a deep look at the factors influencing high birth rates, the duo illuminates the significance of outgroup hatred and comfort with hierarchy. This conversation draws intriguing connections between cultural fidelity, fertility rates, and political polarization, ultimately discussing the impact of selective pressures on societal evolution.Based Camp: The Big Plan what the Pronatlist Movment is Really AboutMalcolm: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. So the thing that we are most known for publicly is our stuff on demographic collapse, collapsing populations, and the effects it'll have on society. Now, this is not something that we have talked about on our podcast as to why we haven't talked about this on our podcast yet. It is because , we've talked about it in a million other interviews in a million other places.Malcolm: Everywhere. Everywhere, yeah. And I figured people coming to our podcast, they don't wanna see it. That, that's, they've already heard this talk before, but now I am realizing from some of the comments that some of the people don't know it and haven't seen it. And so, instead of giving our standard stump speech on this,Malcolm: I wanna engage with this topic more conversationally, the way that we typically do this podcast, because, when I've sat down and tried to do this, this iteration of the podcast before I just end up narrating my stump speech, and then Simone's sitting there not talking, or Simone's doing her stump speech.Malcolm: And so let's see if we can turn this into a conversation.Would you like to know more?Simone: All right, [00:01:00] Malcolm, so, what happened aside from you and ending up living in brothel when you went to South Korea? I.Malcolm: Well, where I always start with, and this was really where I started to, to panic about this, is it'sSimone: actually kind of telling that you were living in a brothel and not like in a maternity word of a hospital.Malcolm: Yeah. Let's talk about living in a brothel. Cause this is part of the story that people dunno. Yeah. So, I had gone to Korea after I graduated from Stanford Business School and I had sent my wife, we had just done a startup together, which we had invested a lot of our money into. Yeah. Google had then hired me and then waited six months to employ me.Malcolm: Yeah. And during that time, the little money we had left after the startup had slowly dwindled to nothing. Yeah. And then you got into Cambridge for your graduate degree.Simone: Yeah. And, and I was also in, in contrast put in a cuz at Cambridge you belong to the university, but then also you belong to a college.Simone: And I'm living in a. The, the Catholic dorm. The Catholic College, St. Edmonds. And here you are.Malcolm: Well, and [00:02:00] it's beautiful dorm. Gorgeous, beautiful. Everything. Anyway, gorgeous. Yeah. So, I mean, I had to find a way to pay for you to, to go there, right? And so I ended up having to drop the contract with Google cuz they couldn't find, I, I don't know what happened.Malcolm: Like they had this system where they used to be able to hire people, but they wouldn't have a position for you. So I left them and I ended up going to Korea, but I had to live as inexpensively as possible to support my wife. So I was actually the director of strategy at the number one early stage firm in the country.Malcolm: And this was by a government survey at the time. Like, they asked all the entrepreneurs where they most want money, think of it's like Y Combinator for Korea. And, and that story actually gets really crazy and interesting. But anyway, so I chose to stay at a place. That was smaller than the room I'm in now.Malcolm: My entire room was, was really small. It was a twin, and then half of the space that a twin would be as a little walking corridor. And then they had a glass cabinet which was just where the toilet was. And then there was a little shower on top of you cuz they didn't have a different space for the shower in the toilet. And one day I remember I was walking back to where I was and, [00:03:00] and, and, and somebody at my firm, they go, no, no, no, no, you gotta stop, stop walking down into that neighborhood.Malcolm: It's a really dangerous neighborhood. And I was like, what are you talking about? They're like, look, if you need to get to the subway, here's the way you could go. And I'm like, I, I, this is the only way I know to get to our live. So I kept walking and then they're like, okay, well you just can't walk, you c

AI generated summary: In this enlightening conversation, Malcolm and Simone explore the mechanisms of hierarchy and status within the Catholic and Jewish communities, and how intelligence and merit play significant roles in these systems. They examine the differences and similarities between the two, explaining how each system sorts for intelligence and their potential for abuse. They also delve into the topic of martyrdom and victimhood, discussing how these statuses are viewed differently within both communities. Watch till the end as they touch on the impacts of nepotism and how Catholic tradition has historically navigated this issue.Puritan Spotting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/12/puritan-spotting/Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. This is an episode I was so excited to record. Because what we had done an episode on how our mainstream society and how the virus or the urban monoculture, how it sorts the intellectual hierarchy of status. And we had people say, that's a really interesting topic.Malcolm: I'd love you to go deeper on this, this concept. And what really got me excited is some conversations we had had afterwards with people from different cultural traditions, because different cultural traditions. Do this status sorting quite differentially between them, and I think that's a really interesting thing to dig into because it allows you to hypothesize on the pros and cons of these different methods for determining this.Simone: So in other words, what we're going to explore is the ways in which different cultures sort for leaders [00:01:00] and how that could affect their success, their vulnerability to mimetic viruses, their overall long term potential and all sorts of other factors.Malcolm: Correct? Yeah. Yeah.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: And I think the first place you see this is in where you get long tail results, like where certain cultures seem to perform.Malcolm: Unusually well or unusually poorly. So an example that I often mention, which I think is a very interesting and telling example, is that when you're talking about the conservative intellectual movement, like, if you look around at most, almost all of the mainstream conservative intellectuals today, like, I'd say, like, 95% of the well known ones, they are typically from Jewish backgrounds or Catholic backgrounds.Malcolm: They are very few from Protestant backgrounds. And yet the majority of conservatives in the United States are from Protestant backgrounds. And so this is very interesting. And it's, what's causing this? Why, why do we see this phenomenon? And part of [00:02:00] it has to do with how the Jewish and Catholic groups sort their internal power hierarchies, which are one of the things we always say is so if you're talking about really progressive Jews are really progressive Catholics, they all just buy into this mainstream urban culture.Malcolm: So there isn't as much difference in how their power hierarchies work. But when you're talking about very conservative iterations of each of these, there's actually a really enormous difference. So do you want to jump into, we were talking with a Haraiti rabbi friend recently around how he said his culture was sorted for internal intellectual hierarchy.Simone: Yeah, I think what we found was really striking about it is it did not sort based on credentials or time. It was sorted based on demonstrable knowledge that was easily verifiable. So if you came in to a group of people and you were able to refer to and quote a text really eloquently, but also accurately, [00:03:00] then you were able to do so better than the other people in the room, you would climb above in the hierarchy.Simone: And it was really easy to verify the eloquence and accuracy with which someone quoted and therefore understood a certain text because you could just quickly look it up.Malcolm: Right? Yeah. And so it allowed for this really interesting phenomenon where when you were meeting with another person, like another Jewish man in one of these communities, you could say, what are you studying right now?Malcolm: And from the texts they said they were studying, you could know approximately how advanced that they were in their general knowledge of this field. And then you could test them on that by saying. Oh, well, page 56 or whatever. What do you think of this? Right?Malcolm: And they need to know how this quote was sourcing other material, how it interlinked to other material. And it's a quick way for you to determine where they are in the hierarchy relative to you.Simone: So almost like, let's say, let's take the religion out of this and let's pretend that this is a totally different community.Simone: Like it's a Twilight fan fiction community. [00:04:00] So, if, if you were trying to gauge using the same general system and framework, you would ask, Oh, like, well, have you read this fan fiction? Well, what did you think about when? The werewolf like hooked up with th

In this enlightening conversation, Malcolm and Simone critically dissect the nature of intelligence and the hierarchy of knowledge. Drawing on historical anecdotes and personal experiences, they lay bare the institutional bias, gatekeeping, and hurdles that prevent truly novel ideas from taking root within academia and society. From the stifling of innovation to the ironic role of performative intelligence, they bring to light some hard truths about our education system and the ways in which it determines who is seen as smart. As they navigate through academic consensus and fashionable ideas, join them for an honest exploration of how we shape, share, and value knowledge.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] when somebody comes up with a genuinely novel idea, .Malcolm: Their idea is often treated like an insane cult. Wow. And, and you see this within academia today. The difference we have today is that ironically the academic system has more a monopoly on what's considered truth than the church ever had. And so it is very hard for new ideas to form. And when a new idea does form, people are punished.Malcolm: SeverelyWould you like to know more?Simone: Hello,Malcolm: gorgeous. Hello, Simone. I am excited to be chatting today. What are we talking about? Well, you'reSimone: being like Professor Malcolm because we have a quote to discuss. This is like homeworky. It sounds like.Simone: It reminds me of my honors classes in collegeMalcolm: the article was called The Mid Wit Menace, on a sub stack by somebody called Millennial Woes. And I don't think it's that much of a red sub either.Simone: All right.Simone: Because he has convinced himself by embracing fashionable ideas that he's very wise, he will not accept that [00:01:00] anybody is wiser than him unless they also embrace those fashionable ideas. In his mind, that is the only thing that could prove the person to be as wise as him, let alone even wiser.Simone: But a person wiser than him would never adopt those b******t, fashionable ideas. So they would never appear in the mid wit's perception as wiser than him. Thus, the mid midwife is trapped in his midwifery.Malcolm: I think this quote is describing a very real phenomenon in our society.Malcolm: Hmm. With how people judge what intelligence is. Yeah. When they are creating this organically formed hierarchy that determines truth within our society. Okay. So if you say something that is very antithetical to the accepted truth of society. People will look at you as an idiot, right? Mm-hmm.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So it is very hard to say something that is genuinely innovative or [00:02:00] move things forwards without being looked at as an idiot. It actually can become dangerous to say things that move things forwards. Mm-hmm. And this mindset is particularly true in academia. I've worked in academia for a while, andMalcolm: The hierarchy in intelligence is determined by an individual's ability to memorize, obscure things that other people who are widely agreed upon as smart have written or said determines a person's position was in this local hierarchy. Not their ability to override those things or come up with new ideas that counter those things.Malcolm: Makes a lot of sense because the people at the top of this hierarchy, they're the people who everyone else is quoting, right? And so they have a vested interest in ensuring that you are not just disrupting the hierarchy. This is something even famously like Einstein got into when he got older, where he would.Malcolm: Sort of snipe [00:03:00] at people's careers if they disagreed with his ideas. Yeah. Especially where it turned out that they were right later. Now they were right. Yeah. Oh, wow. And you see this across academic fields, and then when somebody comes up with a genuinely novel idea, you know, all La Darwin. They're basically crazy.Malcolm: Their idea is often treated like an insane cult. Wow. And, and you see this within academia today. The difference we have today is that ironically the academic system has more a monopoly on what's considered truth than the church ever had. And so it is very hard for new ideas to form. And when a new idea does form, people are punished.Malcolm: Severely if it goes against either the consensus or things that are of interest to the academic consensus. Mm-hmm. And I think it's one of the reasons why Acade has been so slow at advancing, but I think we also see this within the comments on our videos sometimes, you know, you know, I've looked at some people who say negative things about our videos [00:04:00] and.Malcolm: Cause I try to determine like, what position are they coming for? Cause I never know, is somebody mad at us because they're a far leftist, are they mad at us because they're a far rightist? , so I can never really tell, you know, and so I try to go into it and one guy who repeatedly comment sort of negative things on our videos, it seems that he's predominantly, he's just like, A generic philosopher, academic philo

Join Malcolm and Simone as they dive into an intriguing thought experiment about the nature of reality, existence, and the universe. Is math truly independent of our perceived reality? Can an equation exist before it's graphically represented? Are we living in a self-simulating reality, or as some may say, a simulation?This profound conversation will make you question everything you thought you knew about our existence, and ponder about the possibility of multiple realities. They also touch on the concept of determinism, secular Calvinism, and how these ideas can be reconciled with a atheistic understanding of truth and metaphysics. Don't miss out on this captivating exploration into the depths of theoretical reality!Based Camp - Reality MathMalcolm: [00:00:00] It's a very lightweight theory for sort of the fundamental metaphysics of reality.Malcolm: And it's, it's really one that I have a pretty high confidence is true just because it's lightweight and it makes predictions . Fun side note about the theory. I have had multiple people offer to sleep with me after I have told them this theory. What? That, yeah. That was a weird thing in college after I had it, this happened on two different occasions.Malcolm: I was hanging out withSimone: a way to bury the lead. Who cares about the nature of reality? This has, how to pick up chicks. Come on Malcolm, let's focus on the stuff that matters here.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hi, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello Simone. This is gonna be a fun one cuz this is a big pet theory of mine. It is, it is where I'm gonna go crazy and I'm gonna label this something crazy. Simone today was laughing at some of my titles for videos cuz she hadn't seen them. Like, the one for, for. Our marriage contract sign on the bottom line and Simone's all like, [00:01:00]Simone: yeah.Simone: Yeah. But what we're about to talk about, I always, I, I, I joke with Malcolm about this a lot because there's this amazing YouTube channel called Down the Rabbit Hole, and one of the documentaries or videos is. Is on this crazy guy who has this like theory about the time cube and everything's like cube based logic.Simone: And ever since we watched that video, I make fun of Malcolm saying like he has pile based logic because he totally doesn't believe in like folding clothes or putting anything away. Like he has a separate room for his like office and bedroom and is, it is just piles, everything is piles. I have,Malcolm: I have like buckets like, like literally like these big plastic bins that I just throw my clothes in.Malcolm: Yeah. And my system for clothes is all of the clothes I'm actively using. There's two buckets. So I can dig through one bucket and throw it in the other bucket as I look for what I want that day. It's, there's not evenMalcolm: I would be completely, I. Boned, if I didn't have you in my life. Simone, actually, we wanted to start [00:02:00] this thing where we're gonna end our videos with little snippets from our lives. We created this great video of at least on YouTube, I mean on the podcast, you know, the people aren't gonna be able to see it, but to force people to build a, parasocial relationship with them.Malcolm: So we're going to at the end of this one, I'm gonna try to get that one of you cleaning up. Oh God. So people can see how useless I am at anything.Simone: No. Well, while I'm doing that, you're watching the, the nuggets.Malcolm: So I'm playing with my kids, I'm playing with my kids. I have. Brainwashed you into believing that's work.Malcolm: But again, how many housewives have done the same thing? You know? ISimone: mean but yeah. So yeah. I have to say though, like when, when I try to get you in, actually like hang something up, I'm like, oh, it's, but there's sky piles. It's a sky pile. It's a, and not, you're not hanging it, it's just a sky pile.Simone: That's how I got you to do strategy walks. Remember, it's like, you're like, I don't wanna go on a walk. I'm like, oh, but it's strategy walk. So that's, that's why we should, that's why we should go on it. But anyway, you actually have a time cube [00:03:00] kind of theory of reality Yeah. OfMalcolm: your own. I have a time cube theory of reality, and I mm-hmm.Malcolm: Genuinely, like with our future police thing, I'm like, I don't really know if this is true or not. Whatever. Like it's pro I, I, I like 70%. I, I've convinced myselfSimone: to believe it. You confirmation biased our way into kind of believing it. Yeah. But we also know that we've confirmation biased our way into believing it.Simone: Yeah, well,Malcolm: Maybe the future police made us do that, but anyway confirmed with this one. This one is, is, is quite different. This one, I'm actually fairly certain that this is actually how reality is structured. Break it down,Simone: friend.Malcolm: Okay. So it goes with a few premises. , it goes like, if you believe these premises, this is the logical outcome of these premises. First math. Is not dependent on o

Join Simone and Malcolm as they dive deep into the intriguing narrative tropes of heroes and villains, exploring societal expectations and the status quo. They draw upon popular culture references, such as Batman and Spider-Man, to illustrate their points. In this thought-provoking conversation, they ponder the concept of "Villains Act, Heroes React," the paradoxical portrayal of heroes and villains in media, and the real-world implications of these stereotypes. If you've ever wondered how societal norms impact the narratives we consume daily, this discussion will open new avenues of thought. So, get ready for a journey into the depths of societal constructs and perceptions, and don't forget to vote for your favorite 'villain'.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] inheriting your powers is a really common trope of heroes. Mm. And achieving powers on your own is a very common trope of villains. Interesting. Yeah. Even when heroes didn't inherit their powers, like Batman, he inherited his money. well, you want the rich, the people who deserve like the, the inherited rich, this long aristocratic, the people who inherited their powers, the people who, that they are there to maintain social order,Simone: I recently heard the screenwriting trope Villains Act heroes react . While there are counter examples, it does seem like the good guys are more likely to protect the status quo rather than try to change the world,Malcolm: the villain trope is somebody who's fighting against the status quo to try to make things potentially better because . To really make things better, you have to move things past the status quo. You have to move things to the next potential stage.​Malcolm: Hello Simone. It's wonderful to be joining you today for my super villain layer.Malcolm: We're talking about villainy more generally today, but I like to be. Super. [00:01:00]Simone: You are always superMalcolm: in my car. People may be wondering why I don't have my ring today. I lose it all the time. And in today's one of those instances, she jokes, I'm like, Sonic's a hedgehog. I I bump into something and rings go flying everywhere.Simone: I think I have one. Tied to the car keys. You do doMalcolm: that. I haven't taken that one. Cause it's hard to get off the car thing. But I'll, I'll use it. That's exactly why it's there. We're going meet with some like. Senator types. AndSimone: so that's why we always have backups all over the place.Malcolm: I gotta look like a traditional conservative male if they're gonna fund our campaign.Malcolm: So we gotta look normal. But actually Simone's the one who we're hoping to run.Simone: Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. But, we'll see if people vote for villains, which I honestly think is how we're often framed in the media. But we read a great tweet recently about heroes and villains from a friend of ours that I thought was just brilliant.Simone: So she, she noted. I recently heard the screenwriting trope Villains Act heroes react for the first time and it destroyed me. [00:02:00] While there are counter examples, it does seem like the good guys are more likely to protect the status quo rather than try to change the world, and that is so true and I find it really interesting.Malcolm: Yeah. No, I, I think it is really interesting and I am, well, , the series that both of us were immediately thinking of when this came up was the Kingsman series. Mm-hmm. , because the Kingsman is always about, somebody has some like vision for the future often how they can make the world a better place.Malcolm: And then there's this secret society for like wealthy, or at least culturally wealthy, if not individually wealthy, but, but it seems like the vast majority of the members do come from wealthy families. British, like elitist who are maintaining the status quo. Yeah. It's like about a secret society completely dedicated to maintaining the status quo of the world.Malcolm: But in the second movie one of the things we thought was really funny is to say one of the villains. Basically they're lacing, spoiler, by the way. Drugs, with something that kills people to remove the, the dangers of drug addicts where what do they, the other villains like, doesn't [00:03:00] care.Malcolm: And they're like, yeah, we'll let it happen. Because it removes the drug addicts from society and will make the world a better place. And it's like, that's brutal, but like an interesting theory at least. But what I loved, and Simone pointed this out to me, is how do they demonstrate that they're actually the bad guys?Malcolm: And you definitely shouldn't be on their side. They, theySimone: started doctoring festival drugs, which is just a step too far.Malcolm: They started to potentially hurt upper middle class people. And they, no, the real scene when you're supposed to realize, oh, these guys are really the bad guys.Malcolm: It is, when it turned out the like, Well-paid office worker was using like Adderall or something as like a performance booster

In today's deep dive, Malcolm and Simone discuss the complex interplay between physical attractiveness and perceived emotional stability. Drawing upon personal experiences and exploring social constructs, they debunk the notorious "hot-crazy" graph and redefine the spectrum as "hot-evil." The conversation expands on how attractiveness and dating dynamics influence people's emotional well-being and self-perception, and how this subsequently impacts their mental health.As a fascinating twist, Malcolm and Simone reveal their transformation from what they call their "ugly duckling" phase to their current attractiveness, and how this change has influenced their perspective on body image issues. This intriguing discussion delves into the impact of societal pressures and the unrealistic beauty standards set by online spaces. Stay tuned to see how this conversation challenges conventional wisdom about attractiveness and its influence on personality traits.Transcript: Simone: [00:00:00] it, is like having everything on a 50% discount.Simone: Like just not realizing the real price of things, but on a social spectrum, right? SoMalcolm: like is it a little worse than that? So if you're having everyone come fuss over you, every time you cry, every time you lose emotional control in some way, you are being subconsciously emotionally rewarded for losing emotional control for you, losing your composure.Simone: Oh, wow. So, so it's not just that they're given privileged treatment the whole time, it's also that they're, encouraged to engage in very toxic emotional loops that ultimately harms their emotional wellbeing and mental health.Simone: Yeah. So it's, wait, so the spectrum isn't hot? Crazy. It's hot evil, yeah. ForMalcolm: guys it's hot, evil if they're still singleMalcolm: And so this is why I think the guys that keep running through, people that stay on these apps that most women are actually exposed to that don't end up settling down. Mm-hmm. Why they ate. That's almost serving for evil guys because you begin to realize after a while is you've noticed.Malcolm: [00:01:00] Some people who you've hurt.Malcolm: Normal humans don't feel good when they hurt other people. Even if it was unintentionally,Malcolm: and so men who do have that emotion, take themselves off the marketWould you like to know more?Simone: Malcolm. Does being hot make you crazy?Malcolm: I, I think it just might, and I, I like this at the topic cuz a secret that people don't know about us. And I'm gonna post some picture of this proof because people will doubt this is that you and I were born. Ugly. We were born ugly. We were born ugly. We transformed.Malcolm: We transformed. You say, you would've always found me cute. I, I look at some old pictures of you and I would've found you cute, but definitely we are dramatically more attractive now than we were 10Simone: years ago.Simone: No. Okay. Yeah. One, one. Let's say I, I was an ugly duckling that now I'm normal. I would say you are always pretty cute, but you look better now than you used to.Simone: Look, you are way hotter now. IMalcolm: actually think you're delusional about this cause we play this game. I think you are normal if [00:02:00] who you're comparing yourself to is like celebrities and people you watch online. You have to understand, and I thinkSimone: this is, this is actually something we were discussing last night when we were watching a show and some, some female character came on who was supposed to be really hot.Simone: And you were like, I don't get it. She's not hot at all. And I think the issue is that she didn't look 22 and just in like the past five years, basically everyone online started looking 22, I think because of filters. That's an issue. And the problem is, yeah, we stopped, we see someone. Who's aged well, who looks good, but because they don't look 22, we're like, oh, Cris keeper.Simone: Like, what's wrong with, yeah.Malcolm: So I actually think that a lot of our viewers would think that you look normal as well, because I, I, I will agree that was in my evoked set of women. Yeah. You know, you might be on the more normal category, but whenever we're walking around, so we play this game, I play this game.Malcolm: Okay. Like if you're walkingSimone: around in a group of, of normal Americans, but also Americans have a serious health crisis right now,Malcolm: Simone. When we're walking [00:03:00] around, I play this game. We're walking around out into the town, we're walking around in a mall, we're walking around on a cruise. I go, look around, is there anyone in this room that's as attractive as you are?Malcolm: And she won't find anyone. And she'll be like, but that doesn't mean anything because we're what? Because the population sample we're comparing you to is Americans. Like, I think that you are forgetting how unattractive the average person is in this country now. And I think that, that this is a problem that a lot of our viewers have because we've had some viewers

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm takes a deep dive into the current societal trends, specifically highlighting what he calls the "progressive mind virus". This "virus", he suggests, aims to homogenize society and systematically extinguish all genuine cultural diversity. He passionately argues for the importance of unity among diverse cultural and religious groups, focusing on Orthodox Jewish populations, to counter this prevailing issue. Also, Simone and Malcolm engage in a light-hearted conversation about performative Star Wars fandom and the impact of cultural signaling in our everyday interactions.Transcript:Malcolm: [00:00:00] right now the big boogeyman is this progressive mind virus, which is, taking control of our education system and using it to erase and eradicate any culture. That shows any sort of independent thinking Everyone needs to have exactly the same views on gender. Everyone needs to have the same views on morality. Everyone has to have the same views on sexuality. Everyone has to have the same views on how we relate to the environment. Everyone has to have the same views on how how women and men relate to each other and, and they're pressing this and they're like, they are trying to homogenize society, systematically extinguish all genuine cultural diversity . One of the groups that has the longest. History of fighting against that. Regardless of what you think about like their their allegiances, they do care about their own kids, Orthodox Jewish populations, and because of that, not only are they disproportionately in positions of power across the conservative movement, why they're in these positions of power, why they're fighting so hard.Malcolm: Makes sense. It's because it's the same reason that we're fighting hard and they're not trying to convert your kids. Yeah, that they [00:01:00] don't, they don't want an all Jewish world. That's not the way their religion works. That's not the way their cultural group works. They are genuinely one of the lowest threat groups to you and one of the highest value aligned groups to you.Malcolm: And , one of the things that really gave me heart is when Andrew Tate converted to Islam and conservatives weren't like, oh, you bastar, they were like, oh yeah. We understand that because that's what society is though. It's an alliance of conservative groups against this progressive mind virus that wants to systematically erase and homogenize every culture on the planet.Malcolm: And we all have a lot in common. And if you try to form an ideological faction that is just your narrow cultural group in the hope that one day you can dominate the entire planet.Malcolm: I'm sorry. You are so delusional about how much power your cultural group has right now. All of us, all of the Orthodox groups, all of the conservative groups are on the back foot right now. And the only way we win this is through working together.[00:02:00] And I do think that we can beat this progressive mind virus. I do think that, that it will not win. And I hope that some alliance of different cultural traditions can stay together coming out of this and fight off the cultural traditions that like the progressives want to do now, want to erase all cultural diversity in the world.Malcolm: But even if you are from one of those cultural traditions, just understand that you're on a weak footing now.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And you need to fight with us or we all get erased. . And we need to just have this conversation where we need to have the conversation that we are different.Malcolm: The conservative Protestants are different from the conservative Catholics, and they're different from the conservative Jews, and that's our strengths because that's not true of the progressive Catholics and the progressives, Protestants and the progressive Jews. If you scratch beneath the surface, if the same views on gender, the same views on sexuality, the same views on our relationship to the environment, the same views on morality, the same views on the future of our species.Malcolm: They, they just have different holidays. What's that? That's not, that's not [00:03:00] difference. That's not strengthened diversity. That's, that's people who have had their cultures hollowed out and then worn, like a ghoulish skin mask is dusting and horrifying. And, and, and I am sick of it.Malcolm: I am, I am sick of this cultural extermination campaign that so many people are standing by. Wow. And, and I think that it, it will take an alliance, it will take all of the people of middle Earth coming together to fight these hodes that want to see us erase from this earth.Simone: So this morning while we were dropping off the kids at daycare I was talking with Malcolm about our difference between performative Star Wars fandom and actual Star Wars fandom, which which is actually inspired by the fact that like all the cars in our daycares parking lot are really nerdy.Simone: Like they all have anime and Star Wars stickers on

Join us as we dive into an intriguing conversation about the phenomenon of Rule 34 and fandoms, particularly focusing on the "My Little Pony" fandom. Malcolm and Simone discuss evolutionary pressures that could contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon, addressing arousal patterns, societal norms, cultural traditions, and much more.Transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] the first impression that the internet gets is, oh my God, you sick, disgusting monsters.Simone: How are you turned on? By cartoon ponies, and what you're saying is actually the people turned on by these cartoon ponies are actually very good. Like they're, they're triggered by instincts. Driven by being a very good, committed partnerMalcolm: I'm sorry I don't consume my little pony porn.Malcolm: I, I'm, I'm, I'm a terror. This is,Simone: this is probably one of your greatest downsides. Think about all that, that, that is recommended about these, these gentlemen here and true gentlemen is theMalcolm: word really. Men of class and, and men,Simone: no men of class and distinction. Checking with me and like the whole gradation of, of genres of this type of material.Simone: I have to say, hats off to these guysSimone: Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I come to you today dressed as an intellectual. Hello. Because people have said [00:01:00] we are intellectuals.Simone: Well, LAMalcolm: Doll, well, I don't know, like elite, not an intellectual elites. This is, this is the brand we have publicly, I guess. So this is an elite conversation.Simone: Elite, if that counts as what Yahoo News calls us in scare quotes. In scare quotes. Yes, elites. Well, tell me, Mr. Elite, intellectual, what have you been reading about today?Malcolm: Well, so there was this poll on Reddit, which was going through the different fandoms that people create, R 34 artwork of. So R 34 is based on the internet rule, rule 34, that even exists.Malcolm: There is porn of it. GodSimone: bless America,Malcolm: God bless the internet. You little herbs. Anyway, so the second most common fandom the material was coming from [00:02:00] was Little Pony, which is interesting and it's actually something we talk about in our book because if you think about it, humans are degenerates, of course, especially males.Malcolm: So you would expect it would be some fandom with like scantily clad women. Actually the, the fandom that that beat it was Pokemon, but,Simone: No.Malcolm: Okay. Well, I don't, I don't want to get into that, but yeah, you expect that it's gonna be top by a bunch of these fandoms because there are a lot of fandoms out there.Malcolm: That have a lot of scantily clad women in them. Yeah. So why, why aren't those the fandoms that are dominating these spaces? Well, I'd love to hear, do you have a theory or,Simone: I, I mean both, both of these top, top rankers are kids shows, so I feel like there's something that has to do maybe with, I. I don't know. It can't be nostalgia though, because the adult audience that got into My Little Pony was not into My Little Pony as a kid. It was the new reboot of [00:03:00] My Little Pony that they only consumed asMalcolm: adults.Malcolm: Exactly. So I think it's a couple things that are happening here. So I think the core is, is we need to understand what sexuality, like what are our arousal patterns today We think of them as being these like, Despicable disgusting things because so many of our cultural traditions have evolved around repressing them and, and for good reason.Malcolm: They lowered fertility rates if you just indulge in them whenever you have them. So a lot of cultures the cultures that were like just indulge in your sexuality whenever you feel it, they did not have as many surviving offspring and they were out-competed. But the cultural groups that recommended a high level of self-control.Malcolm: However, however what did all of these systems evolve for in the first place? And it was to. Breed with high quality partners who would also dedicate resources to the offspring so that those offspring couldn't make it to adulthood.Simone: Right? So far so good. Yeah, this seems reasonable.Malcolm: So, so good. So it would be almost crazy if our arousal systems [00:04:00] were not paired in a way where we find people who our brains subconsciously recognize.Malcolm: As good life, partners and members of our social group who we think about a lot, who we mentally engage with a lot as more arousing than ones we don't. You particularly ones that we feel uniquely safe around, particularly ones that model our society's ideals around womanhood as it relates to long-term partnership.Malcolm: And that's what I really think you are seeing here is the very system that evolved to motivate the most wholesome of emotions, be more likely to become aroused by people who you see as wholesome and your friends, right? SoSimone: the, the first impression that the internet gets is, oh my God, you sick, disgusting monsters.Simone: How are you turned on? [00:

Join Malcolm, Diana, and Simone in a stimulating conversation addressing some of the intriguing contradictions that arise from certain sociopolitical stances. They delve into complex issues like prenatal screening, abortion, and embryo selection, juxtaposing these topics against the backdrop of social biases. Listen as they highlight the inconsistencies in certain beliefs and reveal how individuals often tailor their convictions based on social approval rather than logical reasoning. Whether you're interested in bioethics, social commentary, or philosophical discussions, this conversation offers a fresh perspective that challenges conventional thinking.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] he is pro aborting. Fetuses. Yeah. If they show signs of a potential medical problem, yeah.Malcolm: But against not choosing a pre implanted IVF embryo because they might end up showing one of those diseases. So he is more pro. Abortion, like even mid-stage abortion, then he is pro embryo selection.Diana: That is whack,Malcolm: well, not whack, but I think what it shows is this, and this is a wider topic I wanted to talk about here, is this insanity you get and you see this on both the left and the right, but right now the left is more in control of media, so they do it more.Malcolm: Were they, there are individuals who clearly like put genuinely no thought into their actual beliefs about the world and they're choosing their beliefs on what they think will get them the most socialDiana: credit. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's absolutely a progressive status quo bias [00:01:00] because at one point in a debate that we were having on Twitter months or years ago, Noah, Carl said, Let's say you could do prenatal screening with blood on a woman and a woman finds out that her baby's gonna have a lower IQ than she will on the basis of this genetic screening.Diana: What do you think if that woman aborts the baby, is that eugenics? And he says, I think that's misguided, but I don't think that's eugenics. And so, because he can't say that. Any abortion is in any way bad because that is a sacred progressive cow, right? Ah, and so I remember when I used to ha teach I taught human sexuality and I taught some other Topics around philosophy of science to undergraduates.Diana: I remember asking students is it worse for a woman to abort a baby that she finds out as a girl when she wants a boy? Or is it worse for her to choose an embryo that's a boy? Rather than choosing an embryo that's a girl and almost, I mean, it was really profound that people thought the abortion was okay [00:02:00] because abortion is a sacred value in the uk to abortion for any reason is a sacred value.Simone: Wow. I think what that kindaMalcolm: terrifying is the percentage of the population that are, I mean, so when we, we on our podcast talk about like this progressive mimetic somfy virus and I think that people might think we're going too far when we call it a virus that sort of whipes out people's higher order logicSimone: hi. And we are excited to welcome back Diana Fleischmann, author of the Soon to Come Out book, how to Train Your Boyfriend, but also evolutionary psychologist, host of the Aporia podcast, an overall amazing and awesome.Simone: Writer and reformed academic. She's made it out, ladies and gentlemen, and thank God,Malcolm: so what we wanted to talk about today was an article that they're, they, they've actually recently written on usDiana: it's called Bad Arguments versus Healthy Babies Rebutting Ruthford on Embryo Selection.Malcolm: So it's about all of these deranged people who [00:03:00] attack Simone and I online. Yeah. For selecting against things like our kids getting cancer in terms of like the, the genetics of our embryos.Malcolm: And arguing that this is just like, And Al, it'll always have terrible results to do this. Even though whenever you're doing ibf, a lot of people don't know this. They actually already sort your embryos, but by how pretty the embryos look. Yeah. Which isn't really correlated with that much, but they're still getting selected based on a, a trait like that.Malcolm: But what I wanted to talk about this podcast was specifically like the meta around this. Why do people react like insanely to topics like this?Simone: We can start with Adam Rath referred too. Cuz he, he presents a lot of great examples of just also being like, he conflicts in a lot of areas. It's very strangeDiana: you. I'll just give an overview of the piece really quickly. So the piece talks about polygenic embryo screening. Right now people do look at single trait or single allele diseases for their offspring.Diana: They look at aneuploidy when they're [00:04:00] selecting an embryo. But polygenic screening is fairly new. You guys and raffles, McCrosky and some other people are, I don't know, are there 200 babies that have been polygenic screened? Something around that. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's this, this very outspoken critic who's a BBC presenter.Dian

Welcome back to Based Camp with Malcolm and Simone where we dissect different, fascinating aspects of human cognition. Today's episode centers around sexuality and arousal patterns, as well as fetishes that seem strange to many. Malcolm challenges the traditional Kinsey spectrum and offers a groundbreaking new perspective based on arousal to disgust spectrums for specific stimuli. Simone, meanwhile, shares her unusual hobby of exploring NSFW subreddits and trying to understand the various unique kinks and fetishes she discovers. From the "Gone Wild Audio" subreddit to the world of vorarephilia, we dive into a deep discussion about the nature of sexual arousal and how it's often far removed from societal norms or physical realities. This episode might just change the way you think about sexuality.Transcript:Malcolm: [00:00:00] .the Kinsey spectrum is just completely nonsense.Malcolm: It is a really bad mechanism for understanding arousal patterns. The way arousal patterns should really be thought of is as individual arousal to disgust spectrums for specific visual, auditory, or conceptual stimuli.Malcolm: Now one could be like the concept of, of being eaten, or the concept of farting, or the concept of disgust or some set of visual stimuli, like a large breasts or something like that.Malcolm: Or secondary sex characteristics of a specific nature. . So what do we mean by this? Cause a lot of people are like, what Disgust isn't part of your sexuality? But if you think about it, what happens when you're aroused by something? You look at it longer, your eyes dilate.Malcolm: People often take a breath in. What happens when you're disgusted by something, your pupils contract, you instinctively look away from it. You hold your breath. These sound like exactly mirroring reactions, almost as if they're the same system with a negative modifier [00:01:00] reply to it. And then when we started mapping from our data, all of the arousal and disgust things that people have, what we realized pretty quickly, Is something you would find is anything that disgusted a portion of the population would arouse a corresponding smaller portion of the population.Malcolm: And anything that aroused a portion of the population would disgust another smaller portion of the population. So what it seems we have here is that some part of the developmental life cycle, and this happens much more in males,Malcolm: and this is where another interesting thing happens that you regularly see. In gay males, which you don't see as much in gay females, and is a very interesting thing to explore and was one of our sort of hints in this is in gay males you will often hear active disgust.Malcolm: Towards certain female arousal stimuli or, or, or visual stimuli or physical or conceptual stimuli that we associate with women. [00:02:00] And, and so the question is, well, that's weird. Why would they begin to develop disgust around that when you don't actually see that in lesbian communities as often?Malcolm: So what our data actually showed is if you look at men like anyone would expect, the predominantly arousing thing is. The naked form of either males or females,Malcolm: but if you look at females, what we actually found is that is not the most arousing thing. It's a close second, but it's not the most arousing thing. The most arousing thing was, submission or dominance. And so what we pointed out there is even the concept of gay or straight, even the concept that our sexualities should be primarily defined by male or female predominant attraction.Malcolm: Is misogynistic because had women invented the field of sexuality research, they likely would've defined our sexuality as being predominantly dominance or submission based [00:03:00] instead of male or female based. And that the only reason why this wasn't caught earlier, isMalcolm: because the field is so dominated by identity politics that people can't say, well, let's just throw out all of the identity pol. Like let's pretend like gay straight is just like not an important dichotomy. And look at just like the data, like what are the core things that are arousing different populations.Simone: Hello, gorgeous. Hello,Malcolm: Simone. How's it going today?Simone: Really good. Should I share one of my dirty little secrets with.Simone: Our followers,Malcolm: I think they find it a very fun and weird hobby to have.Simone: Right? Yeah. So whereas other people like research World War II history or learn how to knit, collect Barbies I like to explore N S F W sub subreddits and try to figure out why exactly weird things seem to arouse people because.Simone: I, I really don't get it. I'm largely asexual, so like, this is fascinating to me. I feel like I'm an alien [00:04:00] exploring another planet and it's amazing. And I thought, I thought I'd seen every separate that it was N F S W. I thought I knew everything, even the really weird things like Sharpies and Anuses, like, you know, I, I thought I'd seen it all.