Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

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.

Join Malcolm and Simone as they embark on a thought-provoking journey into the nature of truth, the roles of centralized bureaucracy, expertise, and individual discernment in our society. Taking a historical perspective, they analyze the reformation and parallels with today's society, and propose intriguing theories around cultural interpretations of truth.Starting from their reflections on the expert consensus and personal experiences to their deep insights into the historical Jesus, they conclude with an unexpected yet fascinating connection between different cultural groups, their perspectives on truth, and their propensity to form criminal syndicates in the United States.In this conversation, you will find a comprehensive discussion that weaves historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives into a compelling exploration of what truth is, how we determine it, and its effects on society at large. Watch now to join the discussion, and don't forget to subscribe for more thought-provoking content!This is a transcript for SEO - it is not edited after an auto translateMalcolm: [00:00:00] different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, like the Catholic cultural groups those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? [00:01:00] But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracySimone: prepare for troubleMalcolm: and make itSimone: double. To protect the world from devastation,Malcolm: unite all peoples within our nation toSimone: announce the evils of truth and love.Malcolm: To extend our reach to the stars above Jesse JamesSimone: team, rocket blasts off at the speed of lightMalcolm: surrender. Now we're prepared to fight.Malcolm: Meow. That's right. So, oh God. We had done that at in another, one of our things is like our personal motto because all of the, the, the pers of the song really extend to aspects of our philosophy, whether it is, extending our stories as a bob or seeing love as an intrinsically evil thing, which we have talked [00:02:00] about in other.Malcolm: Episodes in which we'll certainly do a longer episode on at some point. I mean, is there anything more perverse in a marriage based on love? This, the only reason we feel it's cause our ancestors are felt it had more surviving offspring. And even if you take a religious perspective on this, the devil can use love to manipulate you.Malcolm: Like what a better emotion to manipulate people. Right? Especially love for a human over love. God or Christ, right? That's, that's an evil thing. So the idea that even from a secular or a theological perspective from our cultural perspective, at least maybe not all cultural perspective, but from ours, love is typically at the very least, something to be suspicious of.Malcolm: But the one point we haven't really gotten over here is the evils of truth. And so I want to talk and take this episode to talk about how we see truth. How does the diversity of perspectives on truth and Yeah. I, I think right now we're at a turning point [00:03:00] civilizationally for the concept of truth.Malcolm: Mm. And it's a turning point that is very similar to when we've gone through in the past, and I think we can learn from the last time we went through this. So if you look at society right now, you look at all these conspiracy theories that people have that keep coming up true. People are like, oh no, conspiracy theories don't come up.Malcolm: True. Yeah. Now, do you remember how insane it was that the idea that there's these like cabals of pedophile among like the wealthy elite in our society and now it's like. After Epstein, it's like, oh, oh. There, there was actually at leastSimone: one major. I mean, it was just one Malcolm. It's fine. It's fine.Simone: Well, well youMalcolm: think we would catch a lot of them? I mean, he messed up. I, I don't know. I would, I look at all of t

Sit back, grab a drink (preferably not a champagne bottle you're sitting on) and join us for this enlightening discussion about relationship contracts, inspired by a listener's comment. This episode delves into the importance of relationship contracts and the many unspoken social contracts that govern our interactions. With honesty, humor, and a champagne bottle or two, we explore how these contracts play out in the everyday scenarios of our lives and more importantly, in our romantic relationships. We also touch on the topic of maintaining physical attractiveness within a relationship. Whether you're single, dating, or married, this conversation will make you rethink how you navigate your relationships.Transcript by AI:Based Camp - Relationship ContractsSimone: [00:00:00] Okay. Oh, la la I keep sitting on these champagne bottles, like IMalcolm: just, why are you covered in champagne bottles? What's the story there? It'sSimone: our, it's our billionaire tech elite lifestyle.Malcolm: We just, okay, hold on. We'll, we'll do this in the record. Oh, it's recording now? Yeah. Why are you, why are you sitting on champagne bottles?Simone: It's, I show them and tech billionaires just like have champagne bottles. Sitting all over their furniture. It's annoying. You trip over them, it's like Legos in a parent's house, but champagne bottles, no,Malcolm: but really Simone, what is going on with the champagne bottles? I went through her room and she had two champagne bottles in her chair.Malcolm: I,Simone: I mean, so if we're being honest, it's like a, a motivational thing. Like, I mean, I, I don't really drink now cause like, we're going through an IVF cycle, like we wanna get pregnant and, and yet like, I just wanna know it's there. And if anything goes wrong, we have these like consolation, prizes, like, okay, if, if, if there's a failed transfer, I get this consolation prize.Simone: If there is [00:01:00] a miscarriage, I get this consolation prize if there's a, a stillbirth, because like, I, I need to not get so demoralized that we don't keep trying. Right. Cause it can be really hard. Well, thisMalcolm: is very germane to the topic of the video. What are these cancellation projects? What's theSimone: cancellation like?Simone: It's consolation, consolation, notation. I'm. I'm not being canceled, canceled, don't cancel meMalcolm: when I have a miscarriage. No. The idea is, is so she asked me for permission. I don't even know why she asked me for permission. I likeSimone: that. You're, you're, no, no. Well, it's actually, it's a marriage contract thing.Simone: I'm just, I'm making sure that with an expenditure of joint funds on a consolation prize related to our fertility plans, that you are on the same page and that you officially in writing and in a documented fa fashion, approve it. And this has to do indeed with the with the topic of this podcast, which actually came as a commentary suggestion.Simone: So I'm like really excited because people are now giving us suggestions for our podcast. Are what episode of a suggestion too. Yeah. But anyway so this, this suggestion came from Cat Ad Victorian who said [00:02:00] 100% want your dedicated video to relationship contracts. Your fat clause is so relatable and reasonable.Simone: My husband does relationship coaching and probably one of the top three reasons, and sadly it's so taboo to point this out, is one of the spouses slash partners has let themselves go and gained a bunch of weight and stops making an effort to be an attractive person in some way. There's this entitled attitude, they should just accept me as I am.Simone: And if they can't handle it, they're emotionally abusive. It is wild. My husband and I have both gone from periods of fat to fat and fit and back. And so we've experienced this for ourselves and we've learned over our 15 years in counting marriage that we're both making a maximum effort to be healthy for one another and to be alive for as long as possible for our four children.Simone: Things are pretty satisfying. Well, much more satisfying than if you slump and become schlumpy. It's neither good for yourself nor your spouse. So anyway, Kat adv Victorian. Thank you for your comment. Thank you for your suggestion. We're gonna talk about relationship contracts, and yes, one part of relationship contracts is making sure that you're on the same page with [00:03:00] expenditures.Simone: I just wanna give like I.Simone: Bird's eye view of relationship contracts. One, you're in a social contract with everyone that you interact with, like that's the key premise of like, why is it worth it to have a relationship contract? Every time you have a conversation with someone, every time you get on a bus, like you are engaging with a social contract, the social contract on a bus is that you're gonna sit down and not urinate and not get naked.Simone: You're, you're gonna, def. Allow the wheelchair bound people just in the wheelchair area, if they come in there, t

Join us as we dive deep into a riveting discussion with Diana Fleischman, a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, as well as the author of the upcoming book "How to Train Your Boyfriend". In this episode, we explore a variety of intriguing theories, most notably the concept that humans have evolved to be a "slave race", especially under the lens of evolutionary psychology. Diana brings fascinating insights about status hierarchies, gender dynamics, and the potential evolutionary roots of certain behaviors and preferences. This conversation will definitely get you thinking about humanity's social and evolutionary history in new ways.An AI written transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. I am super excited. We're gonna be speaking with one of our favorite people today, Diana Fleischman, who in addition to being a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, is the author of the Not Yet published but upcoming book called How to Train Your Boyfriend. And she's written a ton of other fascinating stuff that you must go down that rabbit hole.Simone: Trust us, you'll be very, very entertained. We're going to speak with Diana about a wide range of things. We also want her to, and she starts to be the uh,Malcolm: aria podcast. Yes. HostSimone: Appia podcast. I furiously. Yes. And we, we honestly want her to start by stress testing one of our weird theories but we also wanna hear all sorts of other things from her.Simone: So, Diana, welcome first and foremost. Thank you.Malcolm: So the theory I really want to go over with you is one from our book, the Pragmatist Guide de Sexuality, which is that we are a slave race, and I'll explain what I mean by this.Malcolm: [00:01:00] Specifically the, the majority of the evolutionary pressure put on human to human social interactions was put on humans who were low within local status hierarchies. First. Most humans, historically were basically near the bottom of a, a social status hierarchy. Very few humans were near the top of the central status hierarchy, and while men in that position definitely had more surviving offspring even when they were in that position.Malcolm: There was less pressure on them. To behave in certain ways. Like a leader who failed isn't gonna get his genes erased as quickly as a a, a servant or slave who fails, which means that the average human mind is much more optimized around servitude. And this has a few interesting takeaways. One Ayla mutual friend of of, of both of ours this would explain why even in men around 40% prefer to take on sub submissive positions in, sexuality.Malcolm: But it also may explain the way we relate to [00:02:00] things like deity or society writ large. How like a president will say, well, I'm the servant of the people. Even though the president is technically the highest level position in society, or the head of a company might say, well, I'm the servant of the board.Malcolm: We really have few concepts of non servitude in our society. So I wanna get your take on this as an evolutionary psychologist.Diana: So one idea that's very interesting is, Potentially hunter-gatherer societies were less hierarchical than current societies that have very large hierarchies. I've been reading a lot about male and female dynamics, so men tend to be more forgiving of their friends and they also have more stable status hierarchies than women do.Diana: Mm. Because their status hierarchies are based on more stable characteristics such as strength and prestige over time. So it does make sense for men. To, you know, and I was listening to an interesting conversation with Beau, we guard and Jonathan Palon about, you know, why would a man gain status [00:03:00] by carving beautiful sculptures of a man from history who's high in status?Diana: You know, these kinds of ideas. So it's possible. Yeah, I do see what you're saying. That yeah, the average man is actually subservient. The average man is monogamous or, or worse. What I'll riff on this with is what I think is even more interesting, I have an idea, is I was talking to Louise Perry and we were talking about like, how evolutionarily novel is prostitution.Diana: And she said That it was unlikely for women to have been passed around and have sex with multiple men, but it was probably very common in evolutionary history, ancestral history for women to be sex slaves to a specific person. Ah, right. Oh, and so she talks about kind of Stockholm syndrome and women being uniquely impressed upon by Stockholm Syndrome because it is the adaptive thing to do, not just, you know, because of.Diana: Patro locality. So women would've been taken away. Mm-hmm. On average from their families and given to a, a strange man's family. For her to adapt to his [00:04:00] culture and his language and to his customs would've made sense. But the only way you and your kids are gonna survive if you're taken over by a hostile group is through a, a kind of.Diana: Pleasant submissiveness. I'll say accommodation

I told Simone uploading this was a bad idea but she insist I am just being a wuss. In it we discuss how LGBT culture has become a way for white people to express pride - something not allowed through other outlets - and that that this function of LGBT culture has facilitated the expansion of definitions within it.AI Generated Transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] I think what really did resonate with me was this Backdoor to pride, even if you are white. And I wonder if that's why there's creep into the PRIDE community.Simone: I was just listening to commentary today. On the addition of, for example, poly people maybe to L G B T QA plus Pride and also Asexual people many people complain , well, asexuality is more like a hormone imbalance than it is a sexuality. But then , where do you draw the line?Simone: If in the end, maybe someone being gay or trans or any other things could be a product of their hormones, which could even be influenced by things that their mothers did or did not do, did or did not consume, were, or were not exposed to. So I feel like there's this really interesting gradation.Simone: At any rate, Maybe why some people are really drawn to try to loop themselves in to things like Pride month. When they are, for example, just asexual, or poly maybe that's to say like, I wanna be proud about something about myself culturally, something about my people and my [00:01:00] tribe.Simone: And I also think that like, I don't know of the people I know who are asexual, who are poly, they are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly on the wealthier and more educated end of the spectrum.Simone: I do think it's telling that of all the places where I've been in the world,Simone: that where we see pride most. I guess openly and enthusiastically celebrated is also where white culture is also super not cool to celebrate. Like I was just thinking about like, where's the only other place where I've seen like, enthusiastic celebration of L G B TSimone: can you guess? I don't know, Germany,Malcolm: Like big time. Oh, interesting. Yeah. They do have bigger pride events in otherSimone: places. Yeah.Simone: Pride in coastal cities, is the strongest,Simone: Cause when I think about like the best, like gay pride parades I've been to or drag shows or like events in general. San Francisco, obviously DC Cape Cod, like just,Malcolm: oh yeah. Those are definitely locations where you would have the highest amount of cultural shameSimone: With this [00:02:00] new model of L G B T as laundered white pride do you view it any differently? Like, I don't know what to make of it yet in my head, I think I, I'm gonna, well, I feelMalcolm: kindness. It's not great to grow up feeling like your ethnic group is wretched and deplorable and like intrinsically genetically or culturally worse.Malcolm: Than all other groups. And not everybody raises their kids believing this, but , there definitely is a portion of the population that raises their kids believing this. And I think that portion of the population's kids is a portion that is most likely to end up identifying its L G B T.Malcolm: I don't see it as a bad thing really, because it's better than these kids having nothing they can have pride in. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you buy this, meme that there's just something intrinsically immoral about white people or whiteness, which exists within certain cultural groups, especially in the, San Francisco, New York area.Malcolm: People started basing their identities off of the [00:03:00] state of the Sexual identity research 20 years ago.Malcolm: And now if you. Update the research. Like if the research finds new things, well then you've undermined someone's identity, right? So you can't update, it's now canon, it's now whatever the state of the field was 20 years ago. That's canon. Even if it doesn't align with the actual data, which is, one of the things that we point out in our book is the concept.Malcolm: Of even gay and straight is probably not a really effective way of talking about yeah. Sexual identitySimone: Hello, Malcolm. HelloMalcolm: Simone. What are we gonna talk about today? Is it White PrideSimone: you? You shared with me the most interesting theory about White Pride this morning. I would love for you to expand upon it. Let's dive into it. Yeah,Malcolm: so one thing that we were talking about was this concept that, you know, generally.Malcolm: When you're looking at falling fertility rates, one of the things that's really associated with cultural groups [00:04:00] that have been able to maintain their fertility rate is pride in that cultural group. Like a belief that we are a good thing in the world and more of this thing should exist. And we argue this is one of the reasons why Jewish populations have been so resistant to fertility collapse because a lot of the times, you talk to a Jewish person and they're like, I want more Jewish people to exist in the future.Malcolm: And Okay, so that, that makes a lot of sense. But when you're tal

Oh shoot! I just realized this might be offense. Sorry but also I don't care. In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone examine the concept of autism and its prevalence among society's elite class, drawing fascinating parallels with historical court culture and contemporary tech CEOs. They delve into how certain aspects of autism, such as a desire for intense schedules and a dislike for touch, resonate with medieval court cultures and are reflected in the behaviors of some of the world's wealthiest individuals. Simone shares her personal experiences living with autism and how this has shaped her understanding of societal norms. The conversation takes an intriguing turn as they contemplate whether the prevalence of autism among the tech elite influences their ability to relate to the general population. If you're interested in understanding the intersection of autism, power dynamics, and societal change, this video is a must-watch.TranscriptMAlcolm: [00:00:00] When I first met her for a long time, she really hates touching people. Just hates it. And so early on, she would even wear gloves when we go in public, so she didn't have to actually touch anyone's hands.MAlcolm: It's the same as doors. She will sit and wait at a door for like eight minutes for me to open it for her because she. Hates touching door handles, knowing that a lot of other people have touched these door handles. She really likes like a intense schedules. She likes you know, ceremony in her daily life, like doing very structured things and I'm like, what does this sound like?MAlcolm: This sounds a lot like court culture in, medieval Europe. You know, having to wear gloves before you touch people standing at doors. There's even accounts of nobles like standing at a door for 30 minutes because there wasn't the servant who was supposed to be there to open the door for them.MAlcolm: And then the intense. , ceremonies and very specific things you had to do throughout the day and the ways you had to interact with people. Even the not looking them in the eyes thing. So much of it sounds like they've tried to create this little autistic paradise for themselves, or at least [00:01:00] similar to how autism is manifest in my wife, it's a little suspiciousMalcolm (2): Simone, I have heard this conspiracy theory that lizard people, I. Control our society. Now, when they say this, what they mean is there's a group of people who are like humans, you know, humanoid, but a little different, maybe less emotional than other humans sort of, uh, secretly controlling our society and.Malcolm (2): The funny thing is, is we actually had a chapter we removed from our book on this subject saying that it might be true um, but not in the way that the conspiracy theorist made. Hmm.Simone: There was an organization that, that I worked with for a while that I really like that would gather very high caliber people.Simone: Like the, their criteria for membership was you have to be the best in your field. In order to qualify as a member. So this is bringing [00:02:00] together the top tech CEOs diplomats, politicians writers, journalists, activists artists, et cetera to have off the record conversations. And the funny thing about it is that it was very much.Simone: A series of retreats really designed for autistic people where, you know, you're sitting, you know, every moment of the day is scheduled. When you sit down for a conversation with people, the subject is chosen, the people are handpicked for each other, and there's one moderator that is making sure the conversation, you know, stays on track and that everyone speaks and contributes.Simone: It's like super, super structured. There's no stress about, okay, where do I need to be? Which topic should I attend? Like, no, that's all decided for you. It's like, I love it personally because I'm autistic and I love like the structure and the guidelines and the rules and the procedures and oh my gosh, it's dreamy.Simone: So the, but I think it's telling, being is what's telling about it already. GetMAlcolm: disproportionately the elite cast in our society is on the spectrum already.Simone: Yeah. [00:03:00] Even if they don't admit it, that like that this kind of format would appeal disproportionately to. The top performers in the respective fields?MAlcolm: Well, it's not an admit or not admit thing. We can just look, I can look at the richest people in the world. I can look at Mark Zuckerberg on a stage trying to give a speech and I'm like, oh, that guy is obviously on the spectrum. Elon Musk has admitted to being diagnosed with Asperger's, which now doesn't exist as a diagnosis and is just autistic.MAlcolm: Just. In case people aren't familiar, the reason why the diagnosis of Asperger's doesn't exist anymore is because it used to be autistic, but high IQ and successful. And it's like, that's super unfair. Like imagine if there was like dyslexic and then dyslexic, but successful. Well, man, everybody who is lab

Written by AI:In this engaging dialogue, Malcolm and Simone dissect the concept of "trad wives" and the socio-cultural transformations that led to their rise and eventual decline. They explore the 1950s ideal of the stay-at-home wife, and why this model is often misunderstood as a "traditional" family structure. Delving further back into history, they illuminate the "corporate family" structure that once dominated society - an intricate network of blood relatives and employees functioning together as a unit. Touching on economic and historical contexts, they show how this setup evolved over time and why it is vital to understand these changes. If you're intrigued by the evolution of family dynamics, societal norms, and economic influences, this discussion is a must-watch. Transcript:Based Camp - Tradwives are a Progressive ConspiracyMalcolm: [00:00:00] this PSYOPs campaign around tread wives, it's a fun aesthetic and yes, it was a model that was popular, was in certain classes of American society around the 1950s, but it was in the 1950s. A fairly new and it turns out short-lived social experiment.Malcolm: And that you're not actually going back to any sort of a traditional model of family when you, whenever you are atomizing the family.Simone: Yeah. Well, and it's, it sounds to me like you're describing it also as the first step in the atomization of everyone. Like first you separate out the corporate family into the nuclear family.Simone: And then you just separate out the man in the living. You pick him off one by one, we've gotten to a point where no one's e even that incentivized to get marriedSimone: hello, gorgeous. Hello Simone.Malcolm: It's wonderful to be here today. What are weSimone: talking about? Tread wives. How would you define a tread wife?Malcolm: A tread wife is a woman who attempts to [00:01:00] emulate the 1950s ideal of a wife that we now see in sitcoms where you typically have a family dynamic in which a woman stays at home, takes care of the house in terms of cleaning, in terms of gardening, everything like that, and child rearing, and the husband then leaves the house to go to an office and be a breadwinner for the family.Malcolm: This. Of course is a progressive scam. And let's talk about what I mean by it being a progressive scam, because I think a lot of people can hear that and they're like, no, this is definitely the way things used to be. And they are right for a specific, very constrained geographic group. It was. A common way of living specifically upper middle class to upper class Americans from the 19, 20 to the 1930s, to the 1970s to [00:02:00] maybe the 1980s. So you're really dealing with a half century period. Where this was common and really only in the Americas at any sort of large level.Malcolm: And the reason, so first, let's talk about why this was even possible in America. During the economic wealth that came with the War II period in America, specifically, America was just in a uniquely wealthy state vis-a-vis the rest of the world because most of the developed world had just had all their infrastructure basically destroyed and was rebuilding themselves up again.Malcolm: And America had done. A number of things during that period that put it in a really good economic position, which means you could afford to have families living off of one person's salary, even though this was not the traditional way of doing things the traditional way. So before the 1920s the common marriage style, especially if you go before the 1880s.Malcolm: Right? So if you expand this time window a little bit. It was something like 80% of Americans were in what is [00:03:00] called the corporate marriage structure which is very corporate family. Yeah, corporate family, which is very different from a nuclear family. So how would you describe a corporate family, Simone?Malcolm: A corporateSimone: family is typically a husband, wife, their children, and an extended family and employee network. So in terms of the ARC type of the corporate family in modern, it runs a. Yeah, well, they run some kind of business, like they're all maybe working on a farm or a brewery or a garment manufacturing business.Simone: Basically a cottage industry business, a from home business that everyone works on collectively, meaning that the kids are helping out probably as soon as they're old enough. There are aunts and uncles that are involved. In fact, the very house from which we are filming this podcast in different rooms was.Simone: For five generations occupied by what could be described as a corporate family, and we've met the fam like the. The youngest generation of Yeah. Of that family that used to live here. And they described the various types of people who lived here. And it was always multiple generations. There would be [00:04:00] a grandmother and grandfather living in the house or just, one surviving grandmother.Simone: There would be aunts often made an aunts who would also be watching kids. There w

This was written by AI: In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone engage in a deep dive into the phenomena known as "thots" and the Red Pill Community. They discuss the psychological, societal, and relational aspects of these subjects, considering the stereotypes and realities that exist within them. Malcolm and Simone present their unique perspectives on how certain behaviors and actions can influence the narrative context of a relationship, and how individuals adapt within different contexts. Additionally, they delve into the influence of Red Pill ideologies on online communities, offering insights into the perception of "thots" within these spaces. Join us in this enlightening exploration of the complexities of gender dynamics, sexuality, and online communities.Based Camp - The Thot ProblemMalcolm: [00:00:00] What type of woman decides to sign their entire, this one short life they have to being. Submissive to someone else only for attraction to that person. That's a thot, like that's a very definition of a thot, the type of person who would do that. And that's a very narrow psychological profile. Now, this profile can be elicited from most people, men and women.Malcolm: Like, say, suppose you trained a woman how to be like this aggressive, sexy bombshell who was like very forward and very good at playing men and everything like that. And, and this woman created a whole movement around how to do this, like how to seduce men like this.Malcolm: And then these women are like, it's all men are simpering, pathetic dogs, right? And you're like, well, no, you are able to bring that personality out of any man because of the mechanisms that you are using to attract those men. [00:01:00] Yes. The systems you are using can attract actually a broad range of men.Malcolm: But they change those men's personalities within the narrative context of your relationship. Because we do change our personalities in different narrative contexts, the way I act at work is different from the way I act at home. And so if you're creating a persistently similar narrative context, you are going to create a persistently similar person.Malcolm: hello, Simone. How's it going today? Good. Hi Malcolm. I am excited to be here because today we are going to talk about thots, not intellectually, of course t h o t a hot woman who is vapid, primarily interested in sex. And who is apparently a major problem for communities like the red pill community. And in a lot of these conservative intellectual spaces, [00:02:00] I. There's a heavy emphasis, a a lot of them almost seem to be like a red pill diaspora, where as the men's rights movement of like 20 years ago began to dissipate into like the MGTOWers and the red Pillars and the, the other types of pickup artists type people.Malcolm: They begin to influence a lot of the culture of new online right-leaning intellectual movements pretty heavily actually, in the same way that sort of the Tumblr feminists ended up influencing a lot of progressive online cultures. Ah, yes, yes. Where this gets really interesting is that thots.Malcolm: In the real world, the sort of thirsty manipulative of women, like they're not actually a problem. They're, they're not a problem to most men. And so the question is, is why are they perceived as such a problem by the, the red pill diaspora? And I have a theory around [00:03:00] this, so I always found the red bill community really interesting.Malcolm: I did you, I actually think you used to browse it more than I did. Um, Way more. And they, I think, were fairly accurate in their understanding of female sexuality.Simone: Well, it was also the first community online where I really encountered a more economic analysis of mm-hmm. Of relationships and dating strategy and sexual strategy, which I think is a far better lens than the typical self-help or romance based analysis.Simone: Oh,Malcolm: absolutely. Yeah. And, and, and they were saying things that were, Obviously true that people weren't happy to say, which was things like actually if you look at statistics, the majority of women do prefer men with dark triad traits, like, narcissism and machiavellianism and that if you like, like in terms ofMalcolm: mm-hmm. So I'll use a different word so I won't get demonetized. In terms of [00:04:00] submission and like in a bedroom context, right? That the, the majority, not all, but, but women do differential prefer that. , and also stuff like muscle building. Right. Like, oh, if you, if you get toned and you spend time at the gym, you will be more physically attractive to women.Malcolm: And through these realizations, they began to be able to pick up more women than they were previously able to pick up. And four young men. That is a major. Problem in life, like in a way that I don't know if women can fully understand just how much consternation this causes young men.Simone: Well, I think there's another really big factor to like the original traction that the community enjoy

Description and transcript written by AI: In this enlightening discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the fascinating concepts of life extension and experience extension. They explore how the brain forms memories based on novelty and change, a phenomenon that could enable us to expand our remembered or experienced life significantly. Their conversation highlights the idea that by disrupting habitual patterns and seeking out new experiences, we can enrich our lives and potentially remember 50 to a hundred percent more of our lives than through traditional life extension strategies. Whether it's moving to a new country, starting a new job, or even taking a unique vacation, the key is to embrace change and novelty. This video is a must-watch for anyone curious about human memory, life extension, and the power of unique experiences.Based Camp - Life Extension vs Experience ExtensionMalcolm: [00:00:00] And when you are doing a, a task that you've done over and over and over again, your brain will erase that and, and begin to, so suppose on a weekend, right? If I'm always watching movies and drinking and, and doing about the same thing over a weekend, my brain compresses all those experiences together.Malcolm: But if one weekend I do something different, like, go to a petting zoo as my kids, my brain will distinctly remember that more than if I had done, done the, the same thing I'd been doing over and over again. And through this knowledge, you could actually expand your remembered life or experienced life.Malcolm: More than you can than through traditional life extension. So if through traditional life extension today, like being healthy in many ways and stuff like that, you're increasing your lifespan by like 25%. You can easily get your memories up 50 to a hundred percent.Simone: Hello Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. What are weSimone: talking about? We're gonna do a lightning round [00:01:00] on life extension versus experience extension cause it's something we talk about a lot and I figured it might be fun to chat about it. Again, IMalcolm: really like this topic, so when people often meet us, they go, oh my gosh.Malcolm: It's like, you guys have lived 20 lifetimes. How have you done all of this? And, and still be so young? Or, I always expect to meet someone older. And we look at all the things that we've, we've done in our life and it's like, yeah, it is true. We have done a lot more than a lot of other people, and it's because of the way we compact and manage our time, but it also means to a very meaningful extent.Malcolm: That we have more memories. So when I look at the different chunks of my life, I remember them as chunks and they do feel like full and separate lives. Mm-hmm. So a lot of people, they might think of their time in college, for example, and it can feel like. A full and separate life, even though it's only four years.Malcolm: I mean, if you're an adult, think about what you were doing four years ago that was like nothing [00:02:00] ago, if you're not constantly, changing where you live, changing the jobs you're in, et cetera. But in addition to that, there's also a a, a biological and measurable part of this, so let's talk about reminiscence bumps really quickly. A reminiscence bump is a tendency to remember more during your late adolescence, often when you're in college. And people have like a much clearer memory of these things. However, reminiscence bumps can be created at different times of your life when a person really changes their environment.Malcolm: So, you also see reminiscence bumps after immigration to new countries and stuff like that. People are literally remembering more because they recently went through a re a major change. You also see this happen with memories when a person. It's experiencing something new or different they will record it more.Malcolm: And when somebody's experiencing something they've done a hundred times, again, Rome Hypnosis, something they brought up on the podcast before road Hypnosis is a phenomenon. Where when you drive, especially cuz the route you've done a bunch of times, your brain will actually just completely erase [00:03:00] that entire thing as if you were asleep or something.Malcolm: And when you are doing a, a task that you've done over and over and over again, your brain will erase that and, and begin to, so suppose on a weekend, right? If I'm always watching movies and drinking and, and doing about the same thing over a weekend, my brain compresses all those experiences together.Malcolm: But if one weekend I do something different, like, go to a petting zoo as my kids, my brain will distinctly remember that more than if I had done, done the, the same thing I'd been doing over and over again. And through this knowledge, you could actually expand your remembered life or experienced life.Malcolm: More than you can than through traditional life extension. So if through traditional life extens

This was written by an AI, not me: In this video, we delve into a nuanced understanding of conservatism, progressivism, traditionalism, and accelerationism. The goal is to dissect these ideologies and identify their manifestations within various societal structures and cultures. As part of this exploration, we respond to a viewer's question about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, colloquially known as Mormonism. Through our personal experiences and observations, we share insights into Mormon culture and its place on the axes of conservatism-progressivism and traditionalism-accelerationism. We also discuss the impact of societal norms, changing technology, and progressive threats on these cultures and religious communities. This conversation aims to provide an enriching perspective on how societal cultures evolve and adapt in the face of constant change. Whether you're interested in the sociopolitical landscape, religious studies, or an engaging discussion about social norms and cultural evolution, this video will give you plenty to think about. Watch till the end for a deeper understanding of societal cultures, the importance of adaptability, and a fresh perspective on Mormonism. Transcript from AI:I will describe this graph . It has two a axis. Okay. This a axis is progressive to conservative. Mm-hmm. Okay.Progressive means more like the dominant urban monoculture. Conservative means more deviant from the dominant culture. Okay. Then the other axi is traditionalist versus acceleration. Okay. It's easy to confuse these two axes and think that accelerationist means progressive and traditionalist means conservative.Yeah. And these are two completely unrelated things, and in fact, Generally the most accelerationist cultures are also the most conservative cultures and the most conservative cultures are often the most accelerationist cultures because they need to protect themselves from the dominant societal culture.That's goal is to stamp out any anyone who's doing their own thing, any signs of true diversity within society. This progressive monoculture will eventually inject itself into the central church. It will eventually eat the central church.This virus is incredibly good at corrupting everything, especially large bureaucracies. The larger and more entrenched the bureaucracy is the more susceptible it is, and it is a miracle that the central church hasn't been eaten yet, but it will be 📍 Hello, gorgeous. How are you doing today? Absolutely spectacular. So this video is in relation to a user comment who is something like, I'm a Mormon. What do you guys think of Mormons? Um, Now keep it, we know enough about Mormons to know that the church deemed that term offensive. Was it like eight years ago?What did they call it? One of the council? Yeah. But members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints doesn't exactly roll off the tone. Yeah. You're not allowed to use l d s either. And you know, my friends who, so for, for context, from soup to nuts. I've been adjacent to Mormon communities.In preschool. I went to a Mormon preschool, it was called Class A Tiny World, and I loved it. And everyone was Mormon except for like me and a few other kids. And then I. Went to college, their parents pulled her out cuz she started asking them about Bible stuff and they freaked out cuz they're like extremist progressives.Well, no, that's, that's just when they started sending me school, that's when they started sending me to Dharma school. They didn't take me outta that daycare because it was the best ever because Mormons are the best ever. And then I went to, College and pretty much only had Mormon friends because my roommate out of freshman year was Mormon.I tend to avoid people and only like befriend people that I work with. So I just had work colleagues and then my like recreational friends were Mormons and members of the local singles award. And I loved it and I loved Mormons, but also like even within community, they refer to themselves internally, like as like.They'd be like, are you a mo? Like, like they don't even say Mormon. So how can we be at fault for not calling, you know, people, members of the church, of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint when they're all like, are you an ex mo? Are you a mo? Like, you know, come on guys. Well, and you also did, you didn't drink when I met you and stuff like that.No. Well, I mean, when all of your friends and morons. Yeah. Why would you buy, I, I told her on the first date, I go, this isn't gonna work unless you drink. So I ordered her uh, uh, uh, uh, what, what a cocktail. I was like, That was your loss, Malcolm. You paid through the nose for that Cocktails in San Francisco.I mean, god knows now you can probably buy, like, you know, for the price, you'd get a cocktail. You could have gotten a car like 10 years ago. Um, But yeah, so I. We we're gonna call them Mormons, because that's, that's just what people do. It's actually a very interesting community

Written by an AI for SEO from transcript. This is meant to be consumed as a podcast:In this eye-opening video, we explore the two prevalent factions within the conservative movement - the traditionalists and those advocating for adaptation. We debate whether it is possible or even wise to revert to the 'way things used to be', especially in light of major issues like infertility and technological advancements. Using the lens of history, we discuss how traditionalist groups have fared during civilization collapse and how some groups have found strength in adapting rather than resisting change. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion about survival, adaptation, and the tension between clinging to the past and embracing the future.(Bad) Transcript: within the conservative movement there are two factions. There's the traditionalist faction, which is to say let's just go back to the way things used to be. And then there's the other faction that says, you know, this progressive super virus has screwed everything up yet. We need to, we need to learn from tradition.We need to harvest truths from tradition, which can help us through this situation, while also understanding that people who blindly clinging to traditionalism are likely going to be as swept away by the sands of time as the extremist progressive mind virus zombies. So what I'm getting is basically you can't turn back time.You remove technology? Not really. I mean, if you, you can try, but there will always be some groups that continue to use it and they will outcompete you, right? So there, there is no option to go back to full pure Traditionalism really with some exceptions I suppose. Like you could go Amish and find a niche that kind of works for you, that's symbiotic with society as it progresses. one of these social changes that we're dealing with is humans are becoming increasingly infertile and you can't outrun infertility with. Just having sex more often? Not anymore, not at the levels to which you, you're looking at a 50% reduction in sperm count over the past 50 years. Over, over that, you know, a 30% reduction in testosterone rates in what, the last 20 years or something? Eventually, if the trends can trend you, which everything seems to indicate that they are continuing, humans will become increasingly and increasingly infertile. And the more you hold to IVF bad, you know, because with IVF you're losing access to some embryos. The more. You as a cultural unit are going to struggle against the cultural units that are aggressively using I V F one to not only combat this fertility collapse, but also to expand their own fertility windows. that's the, that's the core trap of traditionalism is that it is more effective, the more extreme you go with it.Okay. And effectiveness increases linearly with how extreme you take it. So you are always. So like if you talk with like a Catholic traditionalist, right? Like they're actually not that much of a traditionalist. If they were more of a traditionalist, if they moved more like on the Amish side of the spectrum, if they disengaged with technology completely, if they went off the grid, they would see a rise in mental health.If they would see a rise, infertility rates, they would see a rise in all of the things that show vitality within their culture. . why can't.Traditionalist group end up being the group that survives, right? Yes. And, and the answer is, is because the effectiveness of traditionalism is linearly correlated with how traditionalists you become with groups like the Amish being the most effective forms of traditionalism. The problem is, is it technology?Uh, uh, Quease you with many advantages, whether they are health advantages or just the advantage of one group having automatic weapons and the other group not having automatic weapons being able to produce, or one group having automated drones and the other group trying to fight those drones with automated weapons.You, you cannot fight a group that technologically leans in. If you're a group that technologically leans out, you, you can, you can. Maybe like passively fight them for a bit, but at the end of the day, you always lose. Would you like to know more? Hello, Malcolm. Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today. Are you speaking more softly because you are afraid Wake the approaching civilizational collapse. Well, we did, we did have a podcast on that recently and we're going to be talking about it again today. Yeah, so today we are going to talk about the way people react to civilizational collapse.And fortunately because we've seen civilizational collapses before, we, we know how it always, it turns out like the different ways that people react to it.So naturally civilizational collapse typically looks the same because Civilizational peaks looks the same. , throughout history, whenever you had a group that was more urban and educated, they were almost always in universally seen as more a feat. And uh, sorry for people

Written by an evil AI for SEO purposes: Title: Unraveling Free Will: A Discussion on Determinism, Quantum Physics, and Consciousness Description: In this engaging and thought-provoking video, join hosts Malcolm and Simone as they delve deep into the philosophical debate around determinism, free will, and the role of quantum physics in our understanding of the universe. Stemming from their Calvinist backgrounds, they present a unique secular viewpoint on determinism and its compatibility with free will. They explore the concept of free will as an emergent property of reality, interacting with a mechanistic universe. This enlightening discussion will challenge you to reconsider your understanding of free will and determinism. Whether you are a scholar of philosophy, quantum physics enthusiast, or someone who is simply curious about the universe and our place in it, this video promises a riveting exploration of these complex concepts. Don't miss this insightful exploration into the nature of free will, the determinism of the universe, and the role of quantum events in shaping our reality.Translation:So a person may say, well, because the future isn't exactly determined, because there is variability added by, for example, quantum events or, or, or by timeline branching, right? That means that we don't live in a deterministic universe, and thus the, the problems created by a deterministic universe as it relates to free will don't exist within our reality.Whereas the problem that it's created by a deterministic universe for free will is that regardless of your free will, the future will always only end in one way. This is what people who are against, you know, who think these two things they're in a battle will believe. The problem is, is it doesn't actually fix the problem because the only way that free will like meaningfully exist, like the the problem, the in compatibility with free will and determinism.The reason it comes into play is because your free will isn't shaping the future. If the future is shaped by random quantum events that have nothing to do with your free will, but are probabilistic occurrences in the fabric of reality, then your free will has all of the same problems it has in a completely deterministic universe. Without quantum events, what needs to happen for free will and the way that that people who believe that free will is incompatible with determinism want free will to work. The way it has to work is free will. The events of sort of your consciousness or your sentience have to be able to change the course of the universe.They have to be able to essentially break the laws of physics, and I personally don't understand why this would be a comforting thought. So from our perspective, the things I am thinking. Are completely determined by the things that have happened to me before and who I am, sort of my existing state to want free will to matter within this context.Either who I am needs to not matter, or the things that have happened to me before need to not matter. Basically, you need sort of a random number generator within every person's consciousness in a way that actually removes autonomy from them. Yeah, because then it's not you. If it's not, if it's neither your nature nor your nurture that causes your actions, what?What kind of free will is that? 📍 Hello, Malcolm. Hello Simone. What are we talking about today? Our mechanistic universe. Our deterministic worldview. Yes. So we had mentioned this in a previous podcast as something that's really important to how we see the world, different. Cultures can sometimes see things in different ways, and sometimes those ways they see things can continue even after the culture.Secularizes. This is one thing with us. We both come from Calvinist backgrounds and one of the most famous things about the Calvinist tradition is that it has a deterministic view of the universe that it believes the future is already written, and we as secular individuals still believe thisnow, let me explain what I mean here. This doesn't mean that we don't live in a universe with splitting timelines. We might live in a universe with splitting timelines. However, those timelines don't split based on any aspect of our free will. They split based on quantum events. Our free will is an emergent property of reality. But it also interacts with reality. And this is a really interesting thing about determinism that I think a lot of people miss, is they think that a belief in determinism is antagonistic to a belief in free will when I think it really isn't. So I'll explain what I mean by this, starting from a religious perspective.So when I look at the decisions that I made yesterday from where I stand today on the timeline, all of those decisions are set. They only could have happened in one way. However, yesterday when I made those decisions, I had free will in every one of those decisions I was making. Yet God exists outside of the timeline.He is looking at the timeline as

Dive into a captivating dialogue between Malcolm and Simone as they tackle the issue of scientific racism, particularly concerning the ongoing debate surrounding the genetics of IQ and competence in different ethnic groups. Malcolm makes a compelling case that even if there were genetic variations influencing IQ within populations, these will soon be rendered irrelevant by the growing prevalence and affordability of genetic technologies.In this episode, they discuss the potential of technologies like CRISPR to increase human IQ within a single generation, predicting a future where the differentiation of IQ is not dependent on ethnicity but rather on who chooses to utilize reproductive technologies.Malcolm emphasizes the mission of their foundation to make these technologies accessible to all, regardless of socio-economic status, to ensure a diverse genetic future and avoid any divide between the rich and the poor. He also challenges the arguments of groups who pride themselves on ethnic superiority, arguing that any current genetic differences (if they exist at all) will be overshadowed by the homogeneity brought about by widespread access to reproductive technology.And here is our badly translated transcript for SEO.Simone: Hello Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello Simone. I see you have changed up your outfit. One of my favorite accusations, cuz you know people always make fun of our looks, is that you look like a villain from an Indiana Jones movie. And I'm like, point, yeah, those villains are hot. Unfortunately, they're also often racist. And so this is gonna be a suff spicy episode because, We are gonna talk about racism, specifically scientific racism, which I think is a scientific racism, which I think is a more common topic these days and why it is such midwit perspective. If not actively stupid, if you're actually looking at the data. So first I'm going to define what specifically we're arguing against here, or what we're saying is pretty midway is people who. Argue for there being persistent [00:01:00] genetic differences in competence, sociological profiles or IQ between ethnic groups and that social or personal decisions should be based on these.Simone: So it's similar to what we would consider like evil eugenics, which is that it makes a judgment call about certain traits being good or bad, and it also makes a judgment call about society. On a broad level needing to do something about that, right? No.Malcolm: Very specifically, it doesn't. I think that makes it too narrow and too easy to argue against if you take those positions.Malcolm: It just argues that there are persistent differences. Okay. And policies should take these persistent differences into accountMalcolm: Because I wanna argue on harder mode, right? I want to I don't wanna take such an easy perspective with that one. Okay? So where this really came up is you were doing a podcast. And people kept trying to find out if you were Jewish and they kept tweeting, like Jew knows and stuff like [00:02:00] that.Malcolm: I'm grouping anti-Semitism in wiz racism here. Because when you're talking about scientific racism, these groups are often very aligned. And first I, I think it is very weird that these groups get grouped together by people in scientific, racist communities because like presumably these communities also believes that Jews are like smarter than other groups.Malcolm: So why would they be making fun of me for marrying someone if she might be Jewish? Which by the way, Simone is not genetically Jewish, but I am genetically Jewish, culturally Jewish. What I mean is your Jewish genes might make up like one eighth of your genes, but they are matrilineal, so they are culturally Jewish.Malcolm: But if being Jewish gave you some sort of genetic advantage, you wouldn't have that. So let's talk about the manifold of reasons why this form of racism is so dumb. So first, is it comes from the groups that primarily hold this form of racism, right? So they're like, okay, IQ is [00:03:00] hereditary, which it is like the data just says IQ is hereditary.Malcolm: The thing that they miss is how hereditary IQ is, which is extremely hereditary, and there's high differentiation between people. Within ethnic groups, why this matters is you get really fast drift to the extent that you can't make meaningful judgments around this. So for example, you look at like first generation Nigerians in the us, right?Malcolm: Like they have higher IQ than the white population. Why is it, why are they out economically performing the white population, right? It's because there is huge variation within any sort of ethnic group. And if you're just saying, oh we'll look at averages and then we'll apply these averages across large populations, you don't get really meaningful information.Malcolm: Worse. If you actually look at the rate at which IQ is changing in the developed world right now, and this [00:04:00] is specific to the developed world, so you can look at the amount to

In today's discussion, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into the impending impacts of AI on society, particularly on class structure and economic preparedness. They examine how AI is set to radically shift the balance of power between the wealthy and the proletariat, with surprising implications for social mobility.From exploring how AI could make the lower classes obsolete to forecasting the potential rise of genetically modified, AI-empowered underdogs, this discussion promises a thought-provoking look at our automated future. Simone and Malcolm also touch on the controversy of genetic purity, the dangers of victimhood mentality, and the pitfalls of class struggle narratives.Join us as we take a unique look at the ways in which AI, genetics, and ideological alliances could shape the future of humanity.Transcription and above written by an evil AI for SEO. The podcast is meant to be a podcast:They genuinely think the world would be better off without humans. There is no long-term allegiance here. There is nobody buddy. They are our cultural enemies. I can find a way to ally myself with the most religious extremists that has a worldview that is nothing like mine, but at least they wanna prosperous future for their great-grandchildren.The, when somebody wants the end as a species, you just can't work with them. And the big lie is that there aren't genuine ideological differences. Between people who are outside of this elite cast in society and that at the end of the day it's all paved over because we just want their stuff. It's not, and that's how they've kept us down.Yeah I would emphasize just how. Common. This is I would say approximately 15% of the people that we speak with. Friends, colleagues, people we respect. Respect, yeah. Yeah. Would say but isn't the world, isn't the universe better off without humans like and genuinely believe that and genuinely be.Neutral or relatively pleased with a prospect that humanity will cease to exist soon. I think this is a real threat when you think about things like AI alignment or tech advancement in general. When. One would typically hope that everyone working on ai, AI alignment, or AI in general really, really, really cares about the safety of humans.No, no, No. Yeah. And uh, what was it I've, I've heard from through the, the um, grapevine that one of the top people in the space when they were being told, Hey aren't you genuinely scared about the future of the human species? Their response was, don't be such a human ris. They didn't care. They did not care.And I think there's a way to frame these people as malevolent, but they're not acting with malevolent intent. They genuinely, philosophically believe there is less suffering with less humans. Let's get rid of them all. You cannot tie this millstone around your neck. If you're looking to make genuine change in society.You need to accept that even among people of your economic group. There are those that are not your allies. What I think we will begin to have as society differentiates is more of different social groups that are aligned with each other. Maybe not even by historic cultural backgrounds, and certainly not by ethnic backgrounds, but by ideological similarities.Sort of an alliance of ideological tribes that understand that they can work together and that their groups are aligned in the long run. Because for so long that we've been in a society of nations and I think between. Network state like effects and AI changing society into one where class structure is much more international and much more stratified. And I think that this is a really important thing to note here, is that this sort of wealthy class is an internationalist class. They do not care about their country. They do not care about their people they do not care about their religious cohort. Often they only care about uh, this, wealthy class. And the reason they care about this wealthy class so much is because this wealthy class all has a common interest and preventing themselves from losing the power that they're accumulating. But I think going after them is to some extent, pointless. They simply have more power than us and everyone else right now at an absolutely astronomical scale.What we need to understand and vi to some extent, this frees them from concerns around us and allows us to work to sharpen ourselves. Outside of their supervision to some extent, so long as we are willing to pack up and leave if they begin to lock things down in certain countries, which is, so let's delve into this a little further.Hold on. You're saying, the initial statement of the wealthy using AI to free themselves cells from the proletariat. Yes. That happens. But also the proletariat is using AI too, right? Yeah. What does that mean? What, what happens when the proletariat becomes fractured away from the wealthy?Does this fundamentally change anything? Does it bring us back to a, another place and a cycle between wealthy and non wealthy classes? What does that

Written by an evil AI for SEO, not for human consumption: In this engaging and thought-provoking video, we discuss the disturbing trend that is emerging within the field of psychology. This trend is the development of an insidious dependency in the patient-psychologist relationship, which can be potentially harmful to the patient's mental well-being.Using historical and current examples, we dissect the dangers of false memory implantation, the trauma narrative, and the business model that incentivizes creating dependency. Is this any different from the tactics used by infamous cults? We also draw parallels between psychology and non-profit sectors, revealing a disturbing commonality in their survival and success strategies.The conversation takes a hard look at the unintended consequences of the commercialization of mental health services and the societal implications that could arise from this trend. If you're interested in mental health, societal issues, or psychology, this is a must-watch video.The terrible transcript:I was walking behind these three women and one of the women turns to one of the other women and goes, I would never date a guy who's not seeing a psychologist.And then all of the other women were like, mm-hmm. yes, I agree. And Yeah, and what I realized is that their psychologists had incepted into all three of these women independently. And enough, and this is a common enough thing that that apparently, like women can just say this was in certain social circles and assume that everyone will have the same brainwashing.That you cannot be mentally healthy without seeing a psychologist. Wow. That was what was implied was what was being said. That is. The, The highest horror of psychologically mis practice that a, that a like, sane thinking psychologist could imagine that a psychologist had convinced him of largely two things.One is you can't be psychologically healthy without saying a psychologist. And then two is you can't be psychologically healthy without continuing to see a psychologist. They were creating dependency in their patients to get a recurring stream of revenue. . Now, what this cult of psychology does is people go to a psychologist with a problem and they then say, oh, that problem is likely tied to a trauma. Early in your life, let's determine what this trauma is and then we can constantly meet about this trauma.Because if you don't have me acting as a constant bull work against this trauma, then it will fall upon you and you won't be able to live a mentally healthy life. And that's dependency this is actually the mechanisms that Scientologists would use, they would do a, theton, and reading and they would ask you questions about things like your parents or other things that happened early in your life. And then they would say, ah, you have some trauma with your mom, or your trauma with your dad, and that's, Essentially what this cult of psychology is doing, which is interesting to me, that you have this one field that is so vilified for, milking people from their money and creating dependency, which is Scientology.And then you have this other field which Scientology labels as like the highest evil, which is psychologists, but in a way it's because they're competing for the same customers, using the same mechanisms. Oh wow. That's why there is this. Fight here. 📍 hello, gorgeous. Hello Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today. What are we talking about? Psychology. Are you ready? So people may not know this. I started my early career in neuroscience and psychology, so yes um, my, or uh, I, I did some early work in brain computer interface, but before that I was a psychologist who focused on like schizophrenia and stuff like that, but also like more general psychology stuff.And recently, I have become horrified and very disappointed in the field because it seems to be turning into a cult. And I mean that very literally, and as terrifyingly as it could possibly be interpreted. So to people who don't know this about psychology, one of the things that all young psychologists are taught about when you're just starting out in psychology is the horror of the fad. That was hypnosis because it turns out that when somebody comes to you and you're in a position of authority over them, it is very easy to implant memories in their mind using specific procedures.Many of those look like hypnosis, but they also look like other things. This is one of these big things that they always teach you early in psychology. It's that memories. Are not actually that great a predictor of whether or not something actually happened the way it's being remembered happened.And this is all important for court psychologists and stuff like that, but the real tragedy comes when people go to a psychologist to try to work out some problem they have, and then that psychologist through mechanisms that we now know can implant memories in a person's mind, which is hypnosis.Implant a bunch of memories of trauma in

Description written by an evil AI (for SEO not for actual reading): In this thought-provoking conversation, Malcolm and Simone delve deep into the question - can our civilization collapse? They discuss the historical instances of civilizations collapsing, drawing parallels with the Egyptian and Roman empires, and offer insight into what a modern civilization collapse might look like. We also delve into the big societal experiments of our time - globalization, gender equality, and high levels of education. As the conversation evolves, Malcolm and Simone also discuss the implications of such a collapse on everyday life, from disrupted supply lines and increased conservatism to impacts on mobility and job availability. Importantly, they provide invaluable perspectives on how to navigate such uncertain futures, discussing the role of debt, pensions, and investments in a potentially collapsing economy. If you're curious about the past, concerned about the present, and thoughtful about the future, this discussion is not to be missed. Make sure to hit the like button if you found this information useful and subscribe for more insightful conversations like this one. Hey Malcolm. Hello, Simone. We have such an exciting topic today. Yes, indeed. Can our civilization collapse? Discuss? Yeah, it's, I think this is such an interesting topic because we hear people talk about this and we call them preppers or we, we, I think it's a very easy thing to dismiss because if you look at the past couple hundred years civilization hasn't collapsed, I think the first thing to establish in terms of thinking about can civilization collapse is, has it happened in the past? And the answer is yes. It's happened a number of times in the past. Whether you're looking at the Egyptian civilization of the Roman civilization or various periods of.The Egyptians that happened to them like four different times. If you go through history, when you're talking about the New Kingdom versus the old Kingdom versus the middle kingdom, that was three periods of collapse with many collapses in between. So in Egypt it got so bad they forgot how to write, came up with new systems writing, they forgot how to draw. It's really interesting.You can see art falling apart and then be. Reinvented, not even rediscover, but reinvented in between these collapse periods. So I think Rome presents probably the best model of a collapse we can look at for what a collapse of our own society might look like. Yeah. That's what people always discuss, right?The fall of the Roman Empire and is quote unquote Western civilization falling. Yeah. Talking about Western civilization today is silly China to an extent evolved on a different civilizational route. Japan evolved on a different civilizational route, Korea did.If they collapse, we collapse. We're all tied together at this point. There's just civilization now. But to go back in time, with the collapse of the Roman Empire to the average Roman on the street, they probably wouldn't have noticed.That much change in their daily lives mm-hmm. as the collapse was happening. They may have noticed that rules around religious practices were becoming more orthodox supply lines. Like they, they had less stuff in their local stores or things were getting dramatically more expensive.Political figures may have been increasingly becoming more radical acting. But from their perspective, and I'm talking about like in the Western Roman Empire, so let's say someone in Spain not that much would've changed from their day-to-day life. And also keep in mind with the collapse of Rome, you had the Western Roman Empire collapse long before the Eastern Roman Empire did the Byzantine Empire.And so there's this idea that collapse means everywhere. All at once goes road wire, right? Cause that's what we see in media. Yeah. Yeah. Road Warrior Water World. We're picturing complete lack of infrastructure. No government. But you're saying that's not what civilizational collapse is, what I'm hearing from you is you're saying it's poorer services.What exactly is it? Be a little more specific here. It's a collapse of. Supply networks. Okay. It's a collapse of an economic system. The biggest thing that's associated with civilizational collapse is economic system collapse. To the extent that once you have a collapse of an economic system, then you begin to have a collapse of a geopolitical order. And presumably this is some kind of irreversible collapse cause otherwise you could define the pandemic. As a temporary civilization? Well, No. What you have to ask is what does it look like when it's, is what we saw in the pandemic part of what you see during a civilizational collapse?Yes. No, for sure. So I guess you could say that what many people experienced during the pandemic is what civilizational collapse would feel like. You can't get some products that you really want to get you, you can't go to work or you don't have a job, or people aren't letting you work.Or

Join us in today's thought-provoking conversation as we delve deep into the topics of life extension, mortality, immortality, and the interplay of these themes with societal progress. We discuss the importance of healthspan expansion and how it differs from life extension, as well as the potential implications of life extension on intergenerational dynamics. We also touch on the conflict within the tech accelerationist communities between life Extensionists and pro-natal factions and how this could shape the future of humanity. Tune in to hear our take on these complex topics and why we champion the cause of intergenerational improvement.A terrible transcript:Hello, Malcolm. Hello Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. What are we talking about? On a scale of one to 10, how excited are you to die? 10. Same. The best. Today we will talk about life extension, mortality and immortality, and I think it's a uniquely fun conversation for both of us because we have a view that deviates from, the typical intuition that people have about mortality because we are genuinely not in favor of life extension. We're in favor of healthspan. Expansion. So we like the idea of having longer productive years, longer years when our bodies are fully functioning, both from a rep reproductive, but also mental standpoint.We believe in longer periods when people are able to work and contribute to society. 100%. What we aren't in favor of is indefinite life, and there are some very concrete reasons why we hold that to you. I'm here indefinite, let's say 500 years. Yeah. Like we're okay. We're okay with. Some life extension, but living forever causes some serious problems.And I think people don't realize that. And I would also point out that we aren't against this at a government level. Like I would not promote anyone limiting access to this technology. We are against it at a family and cultural level. And I think we think that our family will always be better off if we focus.On intergenerational improvement instead of intragenerational improvement. Yeah, and I think you make a really important point here though, is that with this and pretty much every other stance on what people do with their bodies and a whole lot more for that matter, we may have our own stances on what we think is best for us.But we think that any stance that is coercive or that would impose rules or restrictions on other people, especially against their will, that is the height of evil. Absolutely. The height of evil. One of the reasons actually why we don't. Like life extension, philosophically speaking, is that we actually think that it puts more people in positions where they will want to impose their will on others against their consent, I, I would say that even goes to the core of why we don't like life extension. But go on. There's a growing antagonism within the tech accelerationist communities between the life Extensionist and the pro natal faction. It, it surprises a lot of people that there is such the, such a level of antagonism, but it makes sense in that really only one of the factions can win.At the end of the day, if all the technology that we both hope is realized, the life extension affection, there would just be too many people in the world if no one ever died. And so they think they can solve the problem of falling fertility rates by extending the lifespan of the existing people.Whereas if you talk about prenatal as a philosophy is often predominated by the idea that it is the height of arrogance to think that you are the cumulative of all human, cultural and evolutionary improvement. That is to me to believe. That you are a superior race. Like you think that you can't do better than who you are .And so we believe very strongly in okay, creating another generation. But the problem is there is always a. Vested advantage that people have if they have been in the system for longer. If you look at the world today, this is why you often have these old stogy people in positions of power. It's why when you look at the Congress of the Senate and the President, it's increasingly an aging demographic.Do you really want these people living forever? Do you really want the boomers potentially control human civilization for the rest of human civilization? Now they might be doing that whether or not we have life extension if they screw up enough.The way we view life extensionist versus non-life extensionist is that they are individuals. If their job is to maintain an ancient Athenian fleet, Their plan to do that is to take every board of the fleet, dip it in resin, have it stay exactly the way it is for 5,000 years.Whereas the intergenerational improvement people, they see the job as to regularly replace the ships with new models and what that means is that when you go 500 years into the future, one is a fleet to Athenian warships and the other is a modern warley with submarines and aircraft carriers And, yep.So what you're missing is what a life e

​Welcome to our robust discussion, 'Redefining Progressivism: A Dialogue Between Malcolm and Simone'. In this episode, we delve into the evolution of progressive movements from the eighties and nineties to the present day. Our intention is to identify the core values that shaped these movements and to examine how they have evolved or deviated from their initial principles.We discuss the interplay between progressivism and conservatism, the goal of removing emotional pain in current movements, and the ways in which this aim is influencing societal norms. We also examine the role of Christianity in shaping ideas about equality and how these ideas have been integrated into both progressive and conservative philosophies.Our discussion ranges from the impact of standardized testing in schools to the Healthy At Every Size (HAES) movement, from the influence of the internet on societal ideologies to the growing acceptance of polyamorous relationships. Through it all, we keep coming back to one central question: What was the true objective of the progressive movements of the past and how does it differ from today's progressivism?This video is a must-watch if you're interested in exploring societal and cultural changes through the lens of political ideologies. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon for regular updates on our engaging and thought-provoking discussions.This is a terrible AI transcript of the episode: Hi, Malcolm. Hello Simone, my wonderful wife. It's beautiful to be here with you today. I'm glad to be talking. What are we gonna talk about? So on a recent podcast you had brought up something where I disagreed with you, and whenever we disagree on something, we like to hash it out so that we can get on the same page with the topic.So we both agree that right now progressivism in the far left has been eaten by this. Super virus that has hollowed out the old predominant ideologies and just wears them like a skin suit. And we agree that this super virus is primary objective or like the objective ideological function of it.It's to remove in the moment emotional pain from people. That's what it optimizes most of its decisions around. So those two things being agreed, where we disagreed was the movements that it ate, what the progressive movements were in the eighties and nineties, before the age of the internet, before the supervisor arose, what was their real objective and what were they optimized around?This. Yeah, I, my, my position and the general impression that I'm under is progressivism is the move fast break things approach, whereas conservatism is the, hold on, wait, things are okay the way they are. Let's not. Let's not change things so quickly. And so I don't see progressivism as inherently bad.I can see it as risky, obviously, because things do break when you move fast and when you're not careful. But it is just one philosophy and ultimately both progressivism and conservatism must work in concert because if you don't have advancement, if you don't have people moving fast and breaking things, you don't.Deal with new existential threats, you don't advance. But if you only advance, if you only try new things and constantly change, you both lose a lot of value collectively and a lot of efficiency. And also subject yourself to maybe more existential risks than you're building solutions too, if that makes sense.Do you have a differing definition of these things? I do. Yeah, so I think the progressive movement always. Had an aesthetic element to it that contained what you're talking about and has always professed to care about that for a long time. It's professed to care about that. But I think we need to remember that, something could be called the Patriot Act and be totally unpatriotic, right?Like just cuz something professes something doesn't mean it doesn't. And I think that when we're talking aboutWhen we talk about conservatives, modern or even older conservatives, they'll often say that their movement, one of the big things they care about is small government, right? And yet they almost never do anything that actually makes the government smaller or that really, de consolidates executive power or that, and so just because a movement says, and a lot of members believe that this is something that they do, I don't think that we should take that to mean that's actually what they're optimizing around. So when I look around progressive policy pushes in the nineties, in the eighties They all really seem to me, based around optimizing equality, specifically equality of outcomes, and the more equality you had, the more equality you had in the way people were treated, in the opportunities people had access to in sort of everything, the better.And this is not what it optimizes for anymore. An example of how much it doesn't optimize for equality now can be seen an insane thing to has said recently. So as a lot of people, they might not agree with our original premise that it's been eaten

Join us for an imaginative exploration of the future of humanity in an AI-dominated world. Our hosts delve into potential societal and genetic shifts, discussing the future of human relationships and the role of AI companions and virtual reality environments. As AI systems advance, they predict a rise and eventual decline in "robosexuality," with more people choosing to live in virtual pods or digitize their consciousness. They also ponder potential changes in human reproduction and the increasing possibility of human speciation due to environmental pressures, isolation on different planets, and the role of gene selection and editing.Throughout the video, they express how this dramatic evolution might make current societal issues like racism seem outdated due to the high genetic diversity we might see in the future. They also speculate on the possible socio-economic outcomes for those resistant to this technophilic lifestyle. Their conversation concludes with a personal note on their shared enthusiasm for these thought-provoking discussions. Witness this deep dive into the anticipated, rapid evolution of our species and understand how our present might shape the future.An AI generated transcript of the episode that is not great but something: comments what other sorts of like pre-programmed genetic proclivities do you think are going to be able to resist AI girlfriends and perfect VR environments?And keep in mind people will say you could have general utilitarians, right? That wanna make life better for everyone. But um, you know, you have one general utilitarian. Who's open to living this lifestyle themselves? One. Jeff Bezos. One I don't think Elon Musk is a general utilitarian. I think he's much more aligned with us than other people.But I think uh, if you take a Jeff Bezos or a Bill Gates who seem to be pretty, generally utilitarians, like especially a Bill Gates, right? He can put himself in a pod, live the perfect life, that pod is going to have fixed maintenance costs. When you divide his money across the rest of the population, especially a falling population in terms of human numbers, he can put millions of people in pods.I don't think that financial concerns will be an issue as to whether or not you choose the POD option. Yeah, no, I think it'll be available to people. You're also, then again, I like my point. I just don't think that. Ai, we'll say Agi, that wears humans as a suit would have a reason to make more humans like that unless they felt that their objective function revolved around printing more of them.But I think it would maybe just more extend their lives or digitize them. So I really think that it's more likely that our AI future will basically see a blossoming of robo sexuality and then, An absence of it, and then, oh, no I agree with that as well. You'll see the blossoming of robo sexuality and then a juice will completely die out.Because either of these people will have digitized themselves or put themselves in pods or gone extinct because they were dating AI girlfriends. And so the portion of humanity that survives in this sort of aligned world. We'll be highly genetically resistant. Yeah. I say genetically, portions of our sociological profiles have a genetic component.And so the humans that were the most extreme in that component will eventually be the only ones that survive. When we're talking 10, a hundred generations, that's gonna be a very different type of human than the human we have today. Yeah. I think so. And I think. We're downplaying just how different humans are gonna be.I think we're going to see full out speciation that is accelerated very quickly due to agi, and I don't think it's just gonna be the technophilic humans and the Luddite humans. I think it's going to be, The Luddite humans, and then five different flavors of technophilic humans that are I agree, but I think that technophilic humans will make up the minority of humans today.I think the humans that sort themselves into this technophilic branch will be two to 3% of the world's population today, maybe. Yeah, I, yeah it's hard to say. It's easy to imagine a world in which. Meat puppet sex, for example, disappears and people primarily reproduce using IVF and artificial wounds both to optimizing it and because once.Once there is a perfection of virtual sex, it's gonna be so disgusting and weird to do meat puppet sex that people won't want to do it. But then I could also very easily see a world in which humans get really hipster and snobby about meat puppet sex. Like in the matrix where they're like, I was made naturally.You know what I mean? Oh, no, I don't think so because y those people would never have high amounts of economic success and therefore not success. Yeah. So if you don't have economic success, then you just, your idea isn't gonna become aspirational. Yeah. You could say that they've hampered themselves.So you could have a few like old hat, bird, like rich families that are all done through li