Public Reaction and Critiques

In this provocative Based Camp episode, Simone & Malcolm Collins react to Nicholas Decker’s viral Substack essay and tweet: “When I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor.”

They explore the ethics of genetic self-removal, Spartan-style cuckoldry, polygenic selection, the power of family-level regression to the mean, why some men feel visceral disgust at raising non-biological kids, whether “good genes” and “good parenting” are the same thing, and the long-term cultural suicide risk of normalizing donor parenting.

Malcolm argues this strategy is intergenerationally unstable because genes that make you want to reproduce genetically will eventually dominate. Simone pushes back with nuance around self-hatred, family dynamics, adoption, and the beauty of loving non-biological children.

A raw, high-stakes conversation about love, duty, genetics, fulfillment, and what it really means to be a parent in the 21st century.

→ Read Nicholas Decker’s essay:

Show Notes

Today we’re going to discuss the choice to become a parent, but with SOMEONE ELSE’S GENES, even though one could reproduce on one’s own

While we have friends who are very consciously and intentionally choosing to not reproduce genetically for fear of passing on problems they have

We personally feel like it would be child abuse for us to raise kids who aren’t ours

And we’re bigger believers in using science, rather than self recusal, to reduce or eliminate the risk of passing on heritable health issues or traits perceived to be harmful

On March 23rd, Economics student Nicholas Decker wrote that he’ll use a better donor for his children, arguing genetics drive outcomes like intelligence and parenting should focus on nurture. He compares it to treating genetic diseases or specializing via comparative advantage, sharing how dating a man made surrogacy clear.

NIcholas Drecker @captgouda24: When I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I will have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here: https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/why-my-children-will-not-be-mine

Critics mocked it as neo-eugenics or cuckoldry, while some agreed he shouldn’t procreate with his genes; geneticist Razib Khan met him and softened his initial skepticism.

His Substack Article

Why My Children Will Not Be Mine, published May 23rd on his substack Homo Economicus (over 6K subscribers)

“I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think that I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn and do great things. I am filled with a great yearning that is not entirely in my control, the same yearning which I imagine must affect the salmon as they travel up the river or the goose to fly south for the winter. I also have a sense in which it is my duty to procreate – the world becomes richer as there are more people in it, and having more children would therefore make the world better. There is one thing, though – they will not be genetically mine.

This does not mean that I would adopt. Rather, I would have someone else, who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child. I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which everyone should do. Here is why.”

His why (summarized)

* “To start, I think we can agree that it is bad to harm your children.”

* “We also know that genes matter. They affect life outcomes. A substantial part of the variation in people’s outcomes is due to their genes.”

* “If you would take actions which would definitely change your children’s genes for the better, you should also take them for actions which change them for the better in expectation”

* He sees choosing someone else’s genes over yours as just an extension of something like gene editing

* “They would still yet be your own children. Or else is an adopted child not your own? If someone is left an orphan as a baby, and then is brought up by a family who loves them, whose child are they? Would you love them less for not being your own? Or suppose that you learned that the person who you believed to be your son, whom you raised, was in fact conceived by another man. Would you cast the child out of your life? I would hope you do not. If you are unable to do this because you would only love your children if they were conceived by you, we should regard that as an unadmirable failing, not right and normal.”

* He points out that just because ONE person is OK phenotypically, it doesn’t mean their genes are optimal for certain desired outcomes

* An extremely valid point

* “Further, your child’s outcomes are correlated not only with direct genetic father, but also with their parents. Outcomes are not a first-order Markov variable. If your family is mediocre, then your child will also be more likely to be mediocre. Even if two people’s phenotypes are the same, you should choose the one whose family phenotype is better.

* He doesn’t much like his family

* Another super valid point

* “You might also think that I will relate to them better if they are more like me. I disagree with this. I would expect them to be like my family. I do not particularly care about my family. I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than like my family.”

* He was prompted to think about this after thinking about gay couple reproductive logistics

* I came to think of this because I have dated a man before. If we were to have children – and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them – it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who. The choice was obvious, though – it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him, than if they were more like me.

He is still open to being the genetic father if his eventual partner refuses to use a sperm donor: “I am unable to convince my partner of this scheme, I would still have kids the old-fashioned way.”

The Response

On X

Richard Hanania: Having kids and seeing how much work it is has made the decision to adopt even more incomprehensible to me. No offense to those who do it, but I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the screaming and crying for someone else’s child.

Michael Ebenstein @mebenstein7: “Why not have someone better than you raise them?”

Along those lines:

* Cruciform Ligament @CruciformLig: “Answer this Nicholas. If you truly love the children that aren’t yours, you’ll let someone that isn’t you raise them.”

* And Chris @Alicoh1 responded “The supply of good parents is much more restricted than the supply of good DNA.”

* And I heartily agree on that

* And I wonder if we don’t talk enough about the difference between good parents and “fit people”

Build/Boost @build_boost wrote: “Something has happened to drive a significant degree of Western society into a kind of suicidal cuckery. It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, and utterly bizarre. No civilization has welcomed its enemies inside its gates with open arms while denying what those enemies say they want to do every day. No civilization had men who preferred not to pass down their genes. Something is very sick with our society.”

Thomas Pueyo’s Refutation

Thomas Pueyo, of Uncharted Territories, wrote the following comment:

I saw this idea in one of your writings, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I respect and admire you and your ideas enough that I think it’s very important I share how wrong I think you are here.

1. Not Lindy

This is the least Lindy idea ever. Evolution has operated for billions of years under the force of having your own children. You are going against all these years of a proven mechanic.

2. Evidence

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Usually, in your other essays, you bring it to the table. Here, for a decision that’s so important, your essay is just a series of a few arguments, with no data to back many of the assertions.

3. Extremely high stakes

Evolution has operated to give you fulfillment out of having children. The more you have, the more fulfillment you get. If you get this idea wrong, you will jeopardize one of the biggest sources of fulfillment you could ever have.

4. It’s better for your children if they’re yours

One key way to optimize the happiness of your children is by loving them more, so if you love them even a bit less, they’re likely to be less happy.

Your argument against this is weak: “I like some people more than I like my family” is logical, because you’re a young adult, programmed to actually not love your family as much, so you can go and explore the world. Then you have children, and they are by far the thing you love most in the world. Your parents, siblings, aunts, etc pale in comparison. Of course, that’s what evolution would do.

Evidence suggests that if the children are not genetically yours, you’ll love them less. You’ve probably seen data on how the less related a child’s parents are, the more the child is likely to suffer from abuse (physical and sexual). Children from 2 biological parents are 2x less likely to get physical and educational neglect, and 4x less likely to get emotional neglect. (Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4), I think it’s chart 5-3. There was a better one but I can’t find it).

You won’t abuse your children I assume, but this is very strong evidence that you’ll like them less if they’re not biologically yours. So they’ll be less happy.

5. Variance vs Expected Value

A “better person genetically” than you might have a better expected value in the “quality of your child”, but the variance is so high in the children you get that odds are still high your child is worse off with somebody else’s child. Eg, if you get a donor that is 5 IQ points higher than yours, what are the odds that his children would be more intelligent than yours? I’m going to guess it’s closer to 50% than to 100%.

6. High bar

You are already quite intelligent and bright. Odds are your gene quality is quite good already. Some examples of that include your essays (your thinking is good), your precociousness, your ability to come up with many new ideas (including this one), your success at finding a fitting community, your ability to communicate complex ideas well...

Trying to further “improve the pool” has dramatically less potential impact than if other people did it; much less impact than you think it would.

7. Multidimensionality of a better parent

How are you going to measure if somebody else is a better parent than you? An IQ test is one measure of many. For example, many high IQ people are worse than you at communication or at being able to rethink what society takes as a given. Will you measure all the candidates across all the dimensions of “good gene quality” that exist? Are you then going to do a weighted average of their quality score? How are you sure you’ll take into account all the dimensions that matter? That you can properly measure the relative importance of each factor?

I believe you would have no reliable way to tell whether somebody is actually better than you, so your confidence that you can get somebody better than you to father your children is very low.

8. Pool diversity

Along these lines, I don’t think all genetic diversity is equally valuable, but some is. By choosing somebody else, you’d be weighing some factors as more important than others, but how do you know the factors you weigh less are really less important? Maybe in the future they become more important? It’s like a parent optimizing their children for STEM in a world where AI solves science but not taste.

There’s value in genetic and idea and diversity pool. Your diversity is unlikely to be the type we want to waste.

9. Adverse Selection

If you were able to find a person that looks so good on paper, and that would accept to be the father of your children, this person would potentially show 2 huge flaws that make him worse than you:

- This person would be substantially less humble and more arrogant than you (he would think he’s strictly better than you across all the dimensions that matter)

- This person is much less honest than you, as he’s faking his markers of market value to sear more children

Therefore, you should be especially skeptical of any potential father than might want to sear your children. This is like Groucho saying he wouldn’t join a club that accepts him as a member.

10. Danger of Subbconscious Virtue Signaling

It might be that your brain is tricking you to say this because it sounds like the most EA thing to say, which gives you standing in your community. This is very common in young adults as you probably know, and becomes much less true in other settings (different peer group, different age, different brain chemistry...). To be clear, I don’t think you’re being facetious, I think you believe what you say. But this sounds like the type of situation where your brain might have an incentive to lie to you in a way you don’t realize.

11. Additional points

a. The only way in which I think this could make sense is if your essay is geared towards convincing normies to do this with your gene pool, in which case you’d be maximizing your offspring (although making each less happy because they are not hanging out with their biological father). Pretty machiavellan, I don’t think this is true

b. Timing: By the time you have to make this decision, science might be good enough that you can edit your future child’s genome to optimize IQ and whatever other measure of quality you want.

Takeaways:

Your idea sounds laudable, but it’s not lindy, it doesn’t have enough evidence, it’s unlikely to be actionable, you’d likely make you and your children (both biological and non-biological) less happy and fulfilled, it’d be optimizing for the wrong reasons, the upside is lower than you think, the downside is higher than you think, there are high probabilities of this going awry, and you’re possibly lying to yourself.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] his tweet read Basically, when I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here . I, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna go through a Substack article.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about whether people should voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool. Ooh. Like to become a parent, but with someone else’s genes, even though they could reproduce on their own, like they don’t have fertility problems.

Because while we have friends who are very consciously and intentionally choosing to not reproduce genetically for fear of passing on like serious and genuine problems they have, we also personally feel as we’ve discussed on various podcasts, like it would be child abuse for people like us to raise kids who are not genetically ours, just because we’re so.

Genetically weird, and we know how to raise ourselves, but no one else [00:01:00] really would, and we wouldn’t really be great for raising other people

Malcolm Collins: there. Well, there was a friend of ours guy named Maddie, who has a own weird following online who wanted to become a father, and he was very dedicated to this.

He’s done a few like podcast interviews on it and stuff. Wanted to become a father, but very explicitly using somebody else’s genes. Mm-hmm. Somebody who was like a, a Nobel Prize winner or something like that. Right. Like some,

Simone Collins: I thought it was maybe gonna be multiple other people. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Multiple other men who were ex extremely successful in their fields more so than he was, right?

Mm-hmm. And at the time I found this. Just bizarre. I was like, why? Why, why would you cook yourself like that? Right. And I, I now understand it a bit better. If you think that another man is strictly better than you, why not choose those genes? Now at the end of the day, I think this is a bad cultural strategy to use more broadly speaking.

Because eventually the selfish genes that don’t [00:02:00] end up wanting to do this just end up dominating the gene pool, you know, if it’s always the father’s choice. Now there’s a strong selective pressure for people to get really disgusted by the idea of raising the child of another person for that intrinsic feeling to win out in any culture that allows this as a choice

Simone Collins: for sure.

Malcolm Collins: And I note here a culture that did actually allow this historically for people who don’t know are the Spartans in Spartan culture you. Would, if you felt another guy was just strictly better than you, like a better warrior, a better guy, you would have your wife sleep with him so that you could raise kids that were stronger than you, right?

Like, because that’s what your status came from, is the strengths of your kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Although I think another reason why we’re more moderated in that view of like, well, there’s things about me that are not perfect is now we’re in the first generation of people who can select for and against traits, even complex traits using polygenic risk score analysis, [00:03:00] and we’re.

Probably within five to 10 years of even being able to identify traits and then change them within your own embryos. You know, George, well, I I also

Malcolm Collins: think that there’s a second pathway here that’s gonna be more relevant to a lot of our audience. Mm-hmm. Is, is it virtuous for the, the men who we’re simply not able to secure a partner or the women who were not able to secure a partner that they wanted to breed with and spend their lives with.

Can you still live an ethical life in the age of declining fertility rates? I mean, dating markets are really broken. If you are an undesirable man, can you still live a life of meaning was out reproducing? And I’d argue very much so. If, if anything. You not being able to secure a partner might be one of the signs that you shouldn’t have, burden your children with the challenges that you bore because of genetics that you didn’t [00:04:00] choose, by the way.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it is, and that’s why I wanted to have this conversation too. Is, is that, is, that’s a real question. And it was brought up on X and discussed at length just yesterday, on March 23rd, this economic student named Nicholas Decker wrote that he would use if he did have children, he would have someone else.

Provide the sperm for his child and not him. And his tweet read Basically, when I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here and immediately critics mocked it as either neo eugenics or aldry. I, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna go through a Substack article.

I’m gonna not read it in in its completion, but I’m gonna summarize and, and use key quotes. I’m also gonna read some of the refutations. And I, I kinda like to go through it ‘cause I think he makes a lot of really [00:05:00] salient points and, and more, much more nuanced than what I’ve heard anyone else discuss.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I’ll point out here, people are like, well, so do you literally think that you have the best gene on Earth, Malcolm, that you couldn’t find a single male with better jeans than you?

Speaker: No.

Well it does.

Malcolm Collins: And my answer is well, I mean, yeah, I do. I I actually do.

Simone Collins: He does. Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t wanna have kids with anyone and then I met you and I was like, huh,

Malcolm Collins: I, I do

not,

Simone Collins: I’m better go for this.

Malcolm Collins: I couldn’t find a better, like, and somebody could be like, Malcolm, how could you say? I’m like, well, you know, I’ve got. You know, degrees, but have

you

Simone Collins: seen me

Malcolm Collins: the hardest to get into institutions? I’ve done a lot in terms of business philosophy and multiple fields. I’ve created successful things. I am happy and mentally healthy for what I want to be.

Like. Why wouldn’t I want to replicate that? Like, I wouldn’t even trade my life with somebody like Elon’s because, you know, like there’s nobody, [00:06:00] nobody, I do this with Simone, nobody on earth. I trade my life with that I think has a better life than I’ve been able to build for myself. Even though I’m so grateful.

You know, I could still hopefully turn reality fabricator into an income source doing VC outreach and stuff like that right now. But yeah. Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So here is his Substack article. It’s called Why My Children Will Not Be Mine. And he published it on his Substack Homo Economicus, which has over six K subscribers.

And this is, you know, this is a uni student. You know, he’s doing well. He’s clearly smart people. That’s what

Malcolm Collins: he to really good.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so I just, I wanna be clear from the start, like this is not some anon faceless, basement dwelling, unemployed, neat incel who’s miserable and depressed. Like this is someone who you know is in school on their way up, young, precocious, and thoughtful enough to gain a following on substack.

Okay, so here we go. He wrote. I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I [00:07:00] feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn to do great things. I’m filled with great yearning that is not entirely in mind control. The same yearning, which I imagine must affect the salmon as they travel up river to G or or the goose who fly south for the winter.

I also have a sense in which it is my duty to procreate. The world becomes richer as more, as more people are in it, and having more children would therefore make the world better. There is one thing though. They will not be genetically mine it. It’s such a great opening because you’re like, okay, wow. He just sounds like your classic expansionist.

Prenatal is like understands the assignment person.

Yeah.

And then he is like, but by the way, I’m not myself genetically reproducing. He says, this does not mean that I would adopt, rather I would have someone else who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child. I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which [00:08:00] everyone should do, hears why which is, I’m glad he’s making this, this claim.

I’m like,

Malcolm Collins: okay, everyone needs to do this. Everyone needs to do this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s a bold claim and I like, I like it. I like this, I like this guy. So here it more or less summarized we’re, were his points. He wrote to start. I think we can agree that it is bad to harm your children. And I agree, and I I I think this is one of the most basic and simple points that you get, you know, when people choose to not have kids.

You, you brought this on a lot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: A lot of people suffer from very severe depression or other mental illnesses and they would never want to inflict that suffering on their children. And it really is kind of a form of abuse. To, you know, have a child that you know is going to suffer immensely like that.

I mean, like, there are perfectly fine children whose parents like, you know, beat them or whatever, you know, is, is subject then to horrible experiences and that sucks. And then there are parents who give everything to their children and their children are still more miserable than those like beaten children or deprived to children because they’ve just been [00:09:00] born with the card stacked against them so much mentally from a suffering standpoint.

So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Good point. But something you can address with polygenic risk or selection is

Malcolm Collins: actually this is, I, we see this in our kids already. I am a happy, exuberant vitalistic person. Yeah. And it’s very clear in our kids that they are the same way. And I am that way in a

Simone Collins: way. Yeah. I didn’t know we had our children, that there’s literally such a thing as euphoric screaming.

Malcolm Collins: He’s like, just especially the euphoric screaming before the charge. Like these are like little pics. Like,

Simone Collins: like what? They’ve never heard that. Like we don’t, it’s not like we’ve watched. Movies or anything that have this like euphoric battle cry in them. I don’t know where it just like comes, it’s just deep in their, in their donna,

Malcolm Collins: in their donna. So, but funny. Yeah, I, if you are a person inclined to perceiving yourself negatively I [00:10:00] can see why you might do this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He also writes, we also know that genes matter, they affect life outcomes. A substantial part of the variation in people’s outcomes is due to their genes. Okay. So he’s setting the, the groundwork here. He wrote, if you would take actions, which you would definitely change your children’s genes for the better, then you should also take them for actions which change them for the better in expectation.

He basically sees choosing someone else’s genes over yours as just an extension of something like gene editing. He wrote, they would still be your own children or else is an adopted child, not your own. If someone. Is left an orphan as a baby and then brought up by a family who loves him, whose child are they?

Would you love them less for not being your own? Or suppose you learned that the person you believed to be your son whom you raised was in fact conceived by another man. Would you cast that child out of your life? I would hope

Malcolm Collins: yes. Yes,

Simone Collins: I would. You, you have that very severe aversion. I would hope you do not if you are unable to do this because you would [00:11:00] only love your own children.

If they would be conceived by you, then we would re we would regard that as an unadmirable thing, not right. And normal. Which I mean, I see, I see his point that like, you know, you bring a, a person into your life, you have a very close relationship with them. You, you raise them. Like in general, I don’t, I don’t think we would laud your reaction, which you can’t control as virtuous.

Right. It’s just something you can’t control. He points out.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think it’s virtuous. I, I think if a child isn’t yours, you should cast it out. Like I, I would hold my kids to the same standards as well. I think it is useful for a society to have this standard because it for prevents parit

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Of the social group by outsiders.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No,

Simone Collins: I mean that’s, that is absolutely true. Just, just so people know how powerful this feeling is in Malcolm, we have a very controlled process whereby we create children. We, we undergo IVF, the medical controls in place just ‘cause they don’t wanna be [00:12:00] sued by IVF clinics to make sure that they don’t mix up embryos or anything, or eggs and sperm, et cetera.

Very rigorous. Malcolm still has our kids’, DNA tested ev every time like a paternity test with every kid. ‘cause he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. He needs to know.

Malcolm Collins: I’m not gonna risk it.

Simone Collins: Paternity test when you, I, I mean, like, I, I get it. But it’s, it’s still funny. It’s like, I, it’s not even like, could she possibly have slept with someone?

Did

Malcolm Collins: they make a mistake in the lab? It can happen.

Simone Collins: No, and it can, and it, it has happened. So I, I also get that. But anyway

Malcolm Collins: this is where when people are like, oh, like, I think like Ben Shapiro did fraternity tests and somebody was like, oh, like that shows he doesn’t trust his wife. It’s like, no.

Like,

Simone Collins: no. It’s just a very, some people, some men just have extremely strong instincts here.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think all men should have this in a cultural group and equal, I think all men should defacto always paternity test their kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But Nicholas Decker just it’s clear that some men don’t have this instinct and yeah.

I mean, it, [00:13:00] it just is. But here’s where it gets, I think more interesting and, and these are arguments that I, I wish more people would make when they think about these things. He points out that just because one person is okay phenotypically, it doesn’t mean their genes are optimal for certain desired outcomes.

I mean, what, what I guess maybe he was saying is like, it doesn’t mean their genes are good, but I just don’t think that that there’s anything as good or bad genes. But anyway, optimal per your values. He wrote further, your child’s outcomes are correlated not only with direct par genetic father, but also with your parents outcomes are not a first order markoff variable.

If your family is mediocre, then your child will also be likely to be mediocre. Even if two people’s phenotypes are the same, you should choose the one whose family phenotype is better. And I agree. And like when we have our kids date, what we really want them to do is look at the family history. Like, Hey, get out your album.

Show me the picture of your grandmother. Like, let me see your mom. How’s she looking?

Malcolm Collins: So I was explicitly [00:14:00] told by my parents to do this.

Simone Collins: I’m so, but no, I’ve never, I, until I met you, I’d never heard that. Ever.

Malcolm Collins: But you heard it from me, right? Yeah. Like, I was like, yeah, I was sold by my parents. Look at their, their mom specifically. The context from my dad was look at their mom to make sure she’s still gonna be attractive when she gets older.

Yeah. But I mean that’s, that’s a, a culture of a family saying. You date their family, you need to look at their family. You need to see if their family is good enough. Mm-hmm. And I very explicitly vetted you based on your family their accomplishments. I was impressed with your dad’s ability to you know, pull himself up, sort of starting from scratch very late in life and the, the, and your sister who’s done really well.

And I was like, okay. So, so she has successful people in her family. Obviously not at the extent of my family, where like everyone’s a billionaire, super genius. Except for me, somehow the big

Simone Collins: Malcolm, I think you’re doing really well by like, the things we value.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I wouldn’t switch with any of my [00:15:00] siblings or cousins.

You know, they, they’re, they have done exceptionally well in terms of their careers and business, but none of them have the public reach that I have which is what I value most. So. You know? Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. But I, in history,

Malcolm Collins: I’m

Simone Collins: glad he brought that up though.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m basically already there at at least a footnote, which is nice.

That’s

Simone Collins: a nice feeling. I, I would like, yeah. I, I want, I want your reach to go a lot further. I want at least a

Malcolm Collins: few chapters on Malcolm and what happened with that

Simone Collins: thing. Just a, just a couple chapters in all of history. Anyway. I agree. I, I just, that, that, that is a lot of what I am trying to do is just maximize your reach ‘cause you’ve had such a positive impact on everyone’s life.

I know who you’ve touched and. I wanna see that happen on a more macro level,

Malcolm Collins: it it, it is so rare for somebody to be as unabashedly, arrogant and un humble as I am. And yet still people say I have a positive impact on them. And I think it’s [00:16:00] because I give people an excuse to see themselves that way.

Like why, why can’t I just be as satisfied with my, my life and accomplishments as Malcolm is? You can choose to be, anyone can,

Simone Collins: but anyway, I, what I think is, is really important to note though, is when people are like, oh, well intelligence that you’re just gonna get reversion to the mean. Okay, but what if you look at the mean, and the mean is, is high in a family.

Like you don’t have to worry so much about that reversion. But I, I mean, so you’re right and. We can control for that. So he’s absolutely right. And, and it very well could be that he is exceptional per his family and that he comes from some family of like hyper depressed you know, whatever. Of course.

Like just, yeah. Like, and, and he actually writes after this, and this is another thing that you and I talk about a lot, and again, super under-discussed, and I feel very ambivalent about this too, when it comes to encouraging people to have kids is he, he apparently or appears to not really like his [00:17:00] family that much.

He’s, he wrote, you might also think that I will relate to them better, as in like the kids that would be genetically mine. If they’re more like me, I disagree with this. I would expect them to be like my family. I do not particularly care about my family. I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than my family. And here’s the thing, this is something that you and I have only really come to understand having and raising kids over at a minimum of, of six years at this point.

You, your partner and, and their family is so much in your kids’ behavior much. And if you don’t like your partner and you don’t like your own family and you don’t like their family, you’re gonna have a tough time. And we, we know, we know people. Whose kids exhibit the characteristics of, of partners and family members they hate and it, they kind of hate their kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you don’t like yourself and then you have [00:18:00] kids, you’re not gonna like your kids. Right.

Simone Collins: Well, or you don’t like your family. Like you, you, you’re gonna struggle with that a little bit.

Malcolm Collins: Or a lot. Well, hold on. I mean, this is different. You can, you can be the way that our kids, and I mean, I already see this.

I am not, I, I like my family, but I am different from my family in many ways. Mm-hmm. Those differences I see very starkly into my kids. Perhaps even more exaggerated than the ways I am like my extended family. So it is not as if kids will not inherit the ways that you psychologically differentiate from your greater family.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But also your mom and dad are super and are kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. My parents are super in the kids

Simone Collins: and my parents too. I, I see it in my parents too. It’s just that like. You’re gonna see it. And I, I’m fond of all of them. And so when I see it, I love, like my late mother, I love seeing her in our children.

‘cause I feel closer to her. What if all you wanna do is get away from your parents and then they’re like leering at you through their little children eyes.

Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, it’s [00:19:00] core tactic. It’s getting you to hate your parents to believe that you have some and many conservatives solve for this that you have some existential beef with people who probably tried to do their best for you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and spent a lot of money and time caring for you. And really your parents have to go quite far. I, I think given the cost of parenting mm-hmm. For you to have a negative emotional context to them yeah. Like your parents did an astronomical amount for you. And so to be like, like if it’s not like regular.

Some sexual abuse. I’m like, you should probably

Simone Collins: figure, I don’t know. What if they’re a trash person? You know, what if they’re just, you know, they’re, they’re very

Malcolm Collins: even trash people still generally try to be good parents.

Simone Collins: Right. But, and actually this was another note that I kind of wanted to think about, and this is something that other people brought up which I’m gonna go through.

Some of the responses after we get through the end of this was, you know, there are good, some people said this, again, I don’t believe there are good or bad genes. I [00:20:00] think that there, you know, that the situation and context and people change what’s good or bad for every individual family. Changes over time, changes based on the environment still.

They’re like, well, there are good and bad genes, and then there are good and bad parents. And I absolutely agree that there are some people who are like superb genetic specimens, right? Like where they’re, they’re exceptionally smart. They come from high achieving families, but like they’re really bad parents.

And then there are people who are like, just. Dumbest light posts, you know, but they’re just the most patient, wonderful parents. Actually, you know, this is another little kerfuffle that came up on X today where Alo was catching heat for tweeting about like she was going through her late mothers, ‘cause her mother died late last year.

Okay. And it was rough and it’s, it was sad. She’s now been going through I think some of her notes in personal, personal possessions and is kind of just struck by the fact that her mom just wasn’t, wasn’t very intellectually engaged. Like ELA is amazingly intellectually engaged. And she was like, just, wow.

My mom was, [00:21:00] I think she might have even used the term kind of dumb. And then, you know, ex is like, ah but like she also said, no, I’m very fond of my mom. And I loved her and she was a great mom and she was very loving. But you know, through my conversations with her as a kid and now going through all her notes, like it’s really clear that just wasn’t a lot going on.

Like, she loved parenting. She was also. In terms of like maybe reversion to the meme or you should look at the family. Her grandmother, she noted, had actually very complex notes and thoughts and poems in multiple languages, whereas like her mom’s notes were just like, beep boop, I’m a human, I guess.

Yeah, very

Malcolm Collins: different. Like my parents are super, your parents are very intellectually engaged as well. Maybe sometimes was dumb stuff, but very intellectually engaged nonetheless.

Simone Collins: I mean, all of our parents have gone listen, the, the times were different. But my, my point is that I, I think there’s also this issue of there, there being, and I think maybe this could feed the argument being made here, [00:22:00] is that some people are really good parents, but maybe they, they wouldn’t produce the, the most thriving.

People genetically, and some people are thriving themselves genetically, but would be terrible parents. And I don’t know, like maybe it’s not the worst thing to try to match really, really good parents with really, really good genes. I guess that’s kind of what happens when you have exceptional and successful men and then just like really kind and loving mothers who like may not be that that successful.

But then I feel like it kind of pulls down the average, you know? But what are your thoughts on that? Of like sort of this, this push and pull between good parent versus quote unquote good genes, which again, I

Malcolm Collins: have enough kids and you’ll like one of ‘em. That’s what I tell him. No, continue. I wanna hear more.

I wanna hear more of this.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Here’s actually another very interesting pivot point, which me may explain, and this is important, why he doesn’t have this disgust [00:23:00] reaction to. Having someone else be the sperm donor for kids. He raises, he was prompted to think about this after thinking about gay reproductive logistics because at one point he dated a man.

It sounds like he’s bi. He says, I came to think of this because I’ve dated a man before. If we were to have children and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them, it would be through, it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who the choice was.

Obvious though, it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him than if they were like me. And also, and interestingly, and, and importantly too he’s still open to being the genetic father. If his eventual partner refuses to use a sperm donor, he wrote, I’m unable to con, oh, if I’m unable to convince my partner of this scheme, I would still have kids the old fashioned way.

So. [00:24:00] He just, I think he, he morally believes in this argument. But it’s not like he’s,

Malcolm Collins: okay. So one it’s clear he got used to this idea from, it seems like a long-term relationship with another guy where they were talking about having kids and the other guy was just like, I’m genetically better than you.

Like, oh,

Simone Collins: no, I, I think he came to that conclusion and maybe from love, like, I would be happy to raise just perfect clones of you, Malcolm. I love you that much.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we, we will get on that one day, don’t you worry. Oh,

Simone Collins: God.

Malcolm Collins: I,

Simone Collins: I, no, I’m too nervous. Like,

Malcolm Collins: I love me that much too, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. Where we are with cloning right now is, is I think there’s too much risk of like sudden infant death and, you know, that that is like my deepest Yeah.

Is darkest here.

Malcolm Collins: And

Simone Collins: so we’re, we’re not doing that until like, you know, it’s 50 years of clone success. I, I’m, I cannot, we’ll

Malcolm Collins: still be around.

Simone Collins: Maybe I, we, you know, both you and I feel like we’re gonna die like in a year. I, I just have this, this, this terrible feeling. Maybe it doesn’t help that like every single day, like if there was some clock on the wall of like, [00:25:00] you know, hours since the last time a child told you, a child told you they wish you wouldn’t die that would be like two hours for me.

Now our kids are always like, I love you and I hope you don’t die.

Malcolm Collins: I love

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: and I hope you don’t die.

Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean, I, yeah, he, he, he was, I think he loved his partner, but also I think he struggles with himself and with his family.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people are like this. Yeah. The urban monoculture specializes in making people hate their families.

Yeah. So the people who hate their families in modern society are incredibly large. It’s, it’s such an easy way to remove responsibility from your own flaws, fonts, faults from yourself. Oh, it wasn’t me.

Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It was my parents’ fault. And it’s not even just the urban monoculture that does this a lot of cults, like Scientology really focuses on this strategy.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All the bad things that you feel and think are because of things. Your parents.

Simone Collins: Your parents. How dare they, they ruin

Malcolm Collins: every, they accepted you with these Ethans, and now, [00:26:00] well, that’s it, that’s it for you.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, you can also blame Freud. I mean, like, people, it’s just a, it’s a truism for people to like, well, you know, someone needs to go see a therapist and figure out what happened in their childhood to make this happen.

Like, there’s just this, this pervasive understanding among some people who are like, Freud pilled, even though he’s not. He’s not a reliable,

Malcolm Collins: worse in Freud is young. Young is,

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: for people who think they’re not stupid,

Simone Collins: but young is like the, the, the, the, the distilled, you know, he’s, he’s the vodka of Freud, you know, like if Freud

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: here.

No,

Malcolm Collins: he makes all of the, the obviously dumb stuff out, but not the substantively dumb stuff out.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Actually, no. Yeah, he’s the young is the

Malcolm Collins: he’s, he’s. He’s,

Simone Collins: he’s the gin. He’s the gin. And like Freud is maybe like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, at least Freud has some spicy takes, you know, like

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Young is, is is just the s sw just the like purified Woo.

Without any,

Simone Collins: no, with like, pollutants put in. That’s, I [00:27:00] freaking hate gin. It, it’s just like so close to vodka. We’re almost there guys. Like, but then let’s just throw in

Malcolm Collins: some gross, I think another problem with young is that a lot of people are unaware when they’re consuming youngian psychology. Or unaware how stupid, like downstream of what they, we have an episode on Jordan Peterson where I point out that a lot of Jordan Peterson has just repackaged young Ian psychology and, yeah.

And not good psychological frameworks to use. Another thinker who is very big on young ian psychology and people don’t, she like even wrote her thesis on it, is Erica Co. Kind of

Simone Collins: commissar

Malcolm Collins: Commissar. She’s the one who does a lot of, like, if you’re not a good enough parent, like you’re, you, you need to, to spend your kids

Simone Collins: little broken, like broken, you know, if you send your children to daycare, they’ll be traumatized and et cetera, et

Malcolm Collins: cetera, and all this stuff.

It’s just like not needed. I, I, I understand she’s trying her best. It’s just she’s not an evidence backed person. And yet a lot of conservatives approach her work as if,

Simone Collins: well, because it feeds into their aesthetic because they’re [00:28:00] trying to encourage people to raise intact families where there’s a stay at home parent where they wouldn’t need daycare.

So they’re like, okay, anything that feeds that and encourages parents to take that plunge and have a homemaker is good. So it’s, it’s one of those things where it serves them well. Let’s talk about the reaction to this modest proposal. Don’t have kids that are genetically yours. In terms of people.

Immediately reacting with your kind of your same instinctual reaction. Richard Nia wrote, having kids and seeing how much work it has made the decision to adopt even more incomprehensible to me. No offense to those who do it, but I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the screaming and crying for someone else’s child.

In terms of a different line of reaction. We had Michael Stein post, why not have someone Better than You Raise them? And along those lines, first of Form Ligament wrote,

Malcolm Collins: that’s actually a fun take. I like that.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. Answer this, Nicholas, if you truly love [00:29:00] the children that aren’t yours, you’ll let someone that isn’t you raise them.

And then Chris responded, the supply of good parents is much more restricted than the supply of good DNA. And I do really think that that’s an important point to note.

Malcolm Collins: I actually, I actually agree with that. The, the point I would make here is, why not? Just sorry, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m processing here.

Why not just,

if, if the person has superior genes to you, they’re gonna be a superior parent to you. So why don’t they have the kids?

Simone Collins: No, I don’t. That’s not true. I just, I I hold very strongly that a lot of people who have quote unquote great genes and are very high achievers are actually crap parents.

Malcolm Collins: No, what I’m saying, Simone, and what you’re missing, yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Is

Malcolm Collins: definitionally, you cannot have good genes unless you are a good parent. You might be perceived as having good genes.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: But that perception is incorrect. So anyone who actually [00:30:00] has genes that are. Better than yours would have a stronger drive to be a parent than you. And therefore, and when I say good at genes, I mean genes that are going to replicate themselves, right?

Like that are going to be successful in the future. Mm-hmm. And so if you take the genes of somebody who doesn’t want kids, but it’s good at all of these fields and you do want kids, you might be intrinsically taking lesser quality genes in terms of actual replication in future generations because genes are only good if they’re going to continue to self replicate.

It doesn’t matter to just have one kid. Right. You want to have a intergenerationally reproductive thing now.

Simone Collins: And I guess we, we have to, we have to also stipulate that your definition of good parenting, which you alluded to a little bit earlier, is not what many other people would define as good parenting.

‘cause your definition of good parenting is like. Well, did I turn out fine then I’m great. And like if someone had like, cut off your limbs and like taken [00:31:00] out one of your eyes, but like, you know, you became a billionaire, you’d be like, well, they were, they were great parent. Whereas other people would be

Malcolm Collins: like, no, I, I’d say, I’d say the hardship helped me.

Right? Like

Simone Collins: yeah, case in point, that, but that’s my point is that like most people would be like, no, that wasn’t a good parent. They’re more deontological. Whereas you’re the ultimate consequentialist parent.

Malcolm Collins: I think it’s, I I I, I will say that if any of our fans are considering this, I am open to sperm donations because clearly we’re the one case where we’re already trying to have as many kids as possible.

We’re also open to embryo donations, but continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, we’ve donated, we’ve donated three and I, I was convinced I anti-natal is Simone, that I should have children. When I saw pictures of you as a kid and was like, oh my god, okay, yeah, our kids are

Malcolm Collins: pretty.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they are.

Malcolm Collins: They’re pretty cute.

Simone Collins: So, yeah, I, I just, I, I wanna, I wanna point that out. And I’m making that point independent of your definition of parenting, I think, I think [00:32:00] children deserve love and support, and I know you hate that, and you’re just gonna have to deal with that. You’re just gonna have to deal with your kids getting loved and cared for and, and kept safe.

And

Malcolm Collins: most of them I do have one other kid out there.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s true. But I also believe that that child is incredibly loved. Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, my, my DNA is very loving. Like I, I, our kids run up and randomly hug us, and I don’t think that’s you.

Simone Collins: Oh dude. Our kids, I had a problem taking ‘em to the graveyard on on Sunday because on our walk, our kids just kept running up and hugging strangers.

And they’re like, oh, okay. It’s like, I’m sorry. And they’re like, it’s okay. They’re just so excited.

Malcolm Collins: They think that’s the normal reaction to seeing someone is running up for real.

Simone Collins: And like, unfortunately, like they’re, they’re, you know, right at like, their heads come in right at your hips. And it’s just not the best thing for us to have our kids doing that to strangers.

‘cause also they, they sort of [00:33:00] tackle hug anyway, I don’t know how to deal with this. We can’t go out it in public. But they’re so sweet and I love them. So Bill Boost wrote. Something has happened to drive a significant degree of Western society into a kind of suicidal kdry. It is unprecedented to my knowledge and utterly bizarre.

No civilization has welcomed enemies inside its gates with open arms while denying what those enemies say they want to do every day. No civilization had men who preferred not to pass down their genes. Something is very sick with our society, and I think this is a associated with, with certain racial undertones.

Your broader point minus the racial undertones about the urban monoculture. Just creating people who pathologically hate themselves when in the absence of that culture, they wouldn’t.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: The, there was a more structured refutation on Substack actually in a comment. Because Substack like has this [00:34:00] vibrant, thoughtful community still.

I thought it was gonna be very ephemeral and it really is holding strong. Thomas Poeo, I don’t know how to pronounce his last name. I’m so sorry. But he has his own podcast, or sorry, Substack that I’ve heard of before called Uncharted Territories. Wrote the following comment as a response to this essay by Nicholas.

He wrote, I saw this idea of your writings and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I respect and admire you and your ideas enough that I think it’s very important to share how wrong I think you are here. And then he numbered out a series of points starting with one that you will immediately find.

It makes you bristle because we did a whole episode on how you hate this, but he calls it one, not Lindy. This is the least Lindy idea ever. Evolution has operated for billions of years under the force of having your own children. You are going against all these years of a proven mechanic.

Malcolm Collins: See our episode on d Lindy is, is the, the dumbest concept ever.

It is, it’s just a [00:35:00] stupid concept. It’s, it’s, it’s wrong. Even the very term was mis coined. It’s supposed to mean that older ideas that are shared more often, break faster. That was what the original concept was, and the person who wrote the book on it, who is a pathological liar, see our other episode on Elle eb that coined the term just bad all around pseudo intellectual term.

But even if you’re saying it’s anti, I pointed out this was common in Spartan society. This was common in some parts of Roman society. Mm-hmm. This has been common throughout human history. Mm-hmm. To it was actually. In I think in pre-Islamic society they might even ban this in Islam because it was so common.

Oh

Simone Collins: really?

Malcolm Collins: Wow. So it’s one of the forms of, of marriage that is banned because it’s like 14 forms are banned or something. But yeah, you would, which shows that it must have been practiced widely in the region.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If you had to

Malcolm Collins: make a rule against it, white sleep was the village chief so that you could have a kid that was like technically the village chiefs

Simone Collins: kid.

Oh, oh, oh yeah. ‘cause I would’ve, and well, and also come to think of it, you, you had this Absolutely, [00:36:00] and at least the Tudor court because you would have these, these noble families essentially horing out their daughters to be mistresses of kings, to have b*****d sons to get privileges and access, so, oh gosh.

Yeah. Actually, and these were married women whose husbands would be sent off to the countryside.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I, I mean this is what I expect from the type of person who’d use the term anti lending is, is immediately draw out ideas that show he doesn’t have a lot of historic

Simone Collins: knowledge. I, I know you’d come at ‘em, but he makes other points too.

So I shall proceed. Two evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Usually in your other essays, you bring it to the table here for a decision that’s so important. Your essay is just a series of a few arguments with no data to back many of the assertions three.

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: evidence?

Malcolm Collins: No. Hold on.

This guy’s aard. I’m, I’m gonna say that right now. What evidence other than genetics? Genetics is huge. Genetics is everything. I know

Simone Collins: these

Malcolm Collins: argument. I

Simone Collins: know

Malcolm Collins: based on his, his argument is that genes influence character and I think I can find [00:37:00] better genes. Yeah. That is not an, an article that needs any more evidence unless you lack a knowledge of basic science.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m glad you respect this guy ‘cause I respect him too. And I, I really appreciate that he put this argument out there because it’s a very thoughtful one. And I think people should be allowed. You can

Malcolm Collins: bring my kids. That’s why I respect him. Okay.

Simone Collins: Oh, great. Thanks. I, I actually would love for him to consider apologetic risk or selection.

‘cause I feel like maybe there’s something in there that he, he could maybe feel more comfortable about if he did PGP. But anyway, this ultimately comes down to the partner that he’s with because that’s,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna hear more argument. I wanna hear more

Simone Collins: bad

Malcolm Collins: arguments.

Simone Collins: Keep going. Three extremely high stakes.

Evolution is operated to give you fulfillment out of having children. The more you have, the more fulfillment you get. If you get this idea wrong, you’ll jeopardize one of the biggest sources of fulfillment you could ever have now that you would probably agree with. People

Malcolm Collins: have fulfillment from raising adopted kids, even people who have had a

Simone Collins: bunch of their own kids.

It’s true. It’s true. And in fact, when you see, like, where I see adopted kids the most in just like in the wild, is very prenatal as families [00:38:00] who have a lot of kids, like you’ll see like eight kid family and like two of them. Look different. And it turns out that they hired like, or they, they adopted siblings that they fostered or something like that.

And it’s incredibly beautiful and wonderful that they did it. And they clearly did it because they love children and love giving people good lives and love parenting. And I think it’s so beautiful. And while we would be terrible adoptive parents, I think it’s beautiful that people can recognize when they are good adoptive parents.

‘cause there are kids out there who really need it, really need it. ‘cause there are also really bad parents out there. I just, I don’t know if you saw like the Aspen Gold thing recently with like a drug addicted mother who was found like chained inside a building. And like, then she’s like, yeah, I have a 1-year-old daughter.

And I was just like, oh God. And I just stopped watching the video then because just like the fact that, that there are people who are so unfit to be parents not, not necessarily genetically, but just through their life circumstances that they could, they could have children and possibly put them in such dangerous, terrible scenarios.

Makes me devastated and sad, and the fact that there are [00:39:00] families willing to adopt children out of these dangerous and terrible scenarios makes me so grateful. So anyway, I agree with you. Okay. Right, it four, it’s better for your children if they’re yours, and. I think the evidence is in favor of this.

He wrote, one key way to optimize the happiness of your children is by loving them more. So if you love them even a bit less, they’re likely to be less happy. Your argument against this is weak. Quote, I have some people more, or I, I like some people more than I like my family. And quote is logical because you’re a young adult programmed to actually not love your family as much, so you can go and explore the world.

Then you have children and they are by far the the thing you love most in the world. Your parents, siblings on, et cetera, pale in comparison. Of course, that’s what evolution would do. Evidence suggests that if the children are not genetically yours, you’ll love them less. You’ve probably seen data on how the less related to child’s parents are, the more the child is likely to suffer from abuse, physical and sexual.

This is

Malcolm Collins: all true. [00:40:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah, it is. Children from two, biological parents are two times less likely to get physical and educational neglect and are four times less likely to get emotional neglect. Fourth natural incident study of child abuse and neglect, NIS four, I think it is chart five dash three. There was a better one, but I can’t find it.

You won’t abuse your children, I assume, but this is very strong evidence that you’ll like them less if they’re not biologically yours, so they’ll be less happy. And that is, I think, a valid point, but also think it’s less applicable to him.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and you’ll, you’ll notice this in your kids are just you, like they are you.

They’ll have all your quirks, they have all of your personality,

Simone Collins: but also if you hate you, don’t you think that, I mean, I think that there, there are some parents who are terrible cruel parents toward their children because they see what they hate in themselves, in their children, and then lash out at it.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. So

Simone Collins: it’s a double-edged sword, you know? I, I think that both of them have valid points,

Malcolm Collins: I think. No, but I think it is. No, I don’t think both of them have valid points.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: I think the first one [00:41:00] has valid points. Stick one has no valid points. His arguments are, are, are, are, are fake and gay as they say.

They are not

Simone Collins: Team Nicholas go, Malcolm. Go. I love it. I love it.

Malcolm Collins: No. Look, if you,

Simone Collins: I’m team Nicholas too. Don’t worry.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think the biggest accurate point he makes is that at this stage of this person’s life, their perception of their family and their ancestors mm-hmm. Is. Biologically weighted against it to try to get them to leave the nest.

Because same, yeah.

Simone Collins: You’re, you’re in phase, like of course you’re gonna not like your family ‘cause that’s what you’re supposed to be feeling right now. That’s all.

Malcolm Collins: And you’ve been raised in a society that tells you it’s virtuous to not be proud of your own ancestry and people. So you have that secondary issue as well.

I mean, who’s to bet that this person who he says he likes more than himself is a different race. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, he might be one of these, you know, self hating white people who sees a non-white person and is just like, well, my genes as a whatever are not good.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Like my inherent white [00:42:00] guilt.

Something, something. I don’t think so, and I say this because I don’t know why, but he follows us on Nicholas, the one who posted the, the substack. Not, not the reputation, the actual argument follows us on X. And maybe it’s a hate follow. It could be, but like typically if someone follows us on X, they’re not that type of person.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You’re not that cuck. Yeah, because we’re good at breaking the cuck storm. Like people start to watch us out of hatred. They’re like, oh, I’ve heard that you guys are evil. And then they watch it and they go, oh, oh, this makes a lot of sense.

Simone Collins: I, I have no idea. I can’t model all the people. I’m just, the people judge us are cool, are cool.

So I like them. Anyway, let’s keep going through is arguments though, five variance versus expected value, a quote, better person, genetically end quote. Then you might have a better expected value in the quality of your child, but the variance is so high in the children, you get that odds are still high, your child is worse off with somebody else’s child.

For example, if you get a donor that is five IQ points higher than yours, what are the odds that as children [00:43:00] would be more intelligent than you? I’m going to guess it’s closer to 50% than 100%.

Malcolm Collins: That’s the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: but there’s still

Simone Collins: variants.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: guarantee

Malcolm Collins: the odds are still higher.

Simone Collins: That’s true.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t matter that there’s no guarantee. The point is the odds. Mm-hmm. What

Speaker 3: This is a bit like a Jehovah’s Witness telling somebody, well, can you guarantee the blood transfusion will save my child? And you’re like, well, I mean, the odds are it will save your child. And they’re like, ah, if you can’t guarantee it, then how dare you suggest I use it. It’s like, well, what the, like how, how can a person, like a sentient human being be this stupid?

I.

Simone Collins: also, if he selected someone else’s genes and did polygenic risk course selection, you can also control for that more.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is the no bad argument. Continue.

Simone Collins: Okay. Next high bar. You are already quite intelligent and bright.

Odds are your gene quality is quite good already. Some examples of that include your essays, your [00:44:00] thinking is good, your precocious, your ability to come up with many new ideas, including this one. Your success at finding a fitting community and your ability to communicate complex ideas well, trying to further improve the pool has dramatically less potential impact than if other people did it much less impact than you think it would.

I mean, I, I agree that Nicholas seems to be like a pretty

Malcolm Collins: i’d, I’d push, I’d say that. As somebody who is not Nicholas, you cannot easily model or, or your, your modeling of Nicholas’s self-perception is intrinsically less than Nicholas’s own modeling of his self perception.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. You know your self best.

That is absolutely true. Yeah. He knows,

Malcolm Collins: if Nicholas knows he wouldn’t like raising a kid with his personality quirks then

Simone Collins: it’s insane. By the way, all these things that I even thought were just like behavioral things I picked up from nurture turned out to be nature, like weird, annoying stuff I do with my hands.

Like I hold stuff [00:45:00] funny to like not touch it with like the pads of my fingers, but instead like the ends up like, like a retard. One of our kids does it and he never saw me do it. ‘cause I try to hide it. I’m very ashamed of it and I’m like, oh God, that was genetic. Like it’s a sensory issue. So just, yeah, the, the, the profundity with which things that you might hate about yourself will show up in your kids is Val, it’s valid.

It’s very valid. I still love toasty. I love him so much. He, he, flip side of that is, is when you see this in your kids and maybe you hated it in yourself for the first time because of this overwhelming love you have for them, you will maybe for the first time give yourself grace. And that has been really transformative for me in terms of self-acceptance is someone who deeply hates themselves.

So counterpoint for Nick there, which

Malcolm Collins: okay,

Simone Collins: is important. Okay, let’s go to another point. Multi-dimensionality of a better parent. How are you going to measure if somebody else is a better parent than you? An IQ test is one measure for of many. For example many [00:46:00] I. High IQ people are worse than you at communication or at being able to rethink what society takes as given.

Will you measure the candidates across all the dimensions of good gene quality that exist? Are you then going to do a weighted average of their quality score? How will, how are you sure you’ll take into account all the dimensions that matter, that you can properly measure the relative importance of each factor?

I believe you would have no reliable way to tell whether somebody is actually better than you, so your confidence that you can get somebody better than you to father your children is very low. So I disagree because like if we had to choose between cloning me or cloning you, both you and I would decide it’s clearly going to be you, Malcolm.

And I think he depends on only

Malcolm Collins: both. I mean,

Simone Collins: sure. If

Malcolm Collins: I had to build an entire society, I would want them to be Simone’s. If I had to add a few, a more exceptional people to our society, I would choose Malcolm’s.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah. It’s like the, the, the, the farmer versus the king. [00:47:00] Like you need both. But if we could only clone one child and we knew that they wouldn’t die in infancy, then we would clone you.

And, and, and I think this is what Nicholas experienced with his partner too. Like when he just thought intuitively about like, well, if we decided to have a kid together, well, obviously we use his sperm. Like he didn’t need to think about it. And I think it’s enough to allow someone’s intuition to be like, nah, we know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: You know, I, I have no qualms about the fact that I would choose you Malcolm. And I think I have no qualms

Malcolm Collins: about that either. I would think it would be very strange.

Simone Collins: That’s the thing. Yeah. I, I think, I think that Thomas PO’s overthinking this. Okay. Eight pool diversity. Along these lines. I don’t think all genetic diversity is equally valuable, but some is.

By choosing somebody else, you’ll be weighing some factors as more important than others. But how do you know those factors you weigh are really less important? Maybe in the future they become more important like a parent optimizing their children in stem. In a world where AI solves science but not taste, there is value in genetic and idea diversity pool.

Your diversity is unlikely to be the type we want to [00:48:00] waste. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Only, only if this argument only works if tons of people are doing what he’s suggesting here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If it’s

Simone Collins: just, and he’s a unique,

Malcolm Collins: this is a, this is a completely invalid argument. Continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Nine. Adverse selection. If you are able to find a person that looks so good on paper and that would accept to be the father of your children, this person would potentially show two huge flaws that make him worse than you.

One, this person would be substantially less humble and more arrogant than you. He would think he’s strictly better than you across all the dimensions that matter. He preemptively insulted you. Him.

Malcolm Collins: No, I, yeah. This is not bad. I feel this way about my parents all the time.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

That

Malcolm Collins: I am strictly better than them in every dimension and they treat me the same way.

Like this is actually one of the things that other people have noted about my relationship with especially my dad that they see as very odd. Like my stepmother has, has noted this before, that like he genuinely seems to like respect and even [00:49:00] fear my opinion. And I appreciate that he raised me knowing that I could be better than authority figures in my life, just like intuitively by never demanding that like I am the, the head of this household and everybody in the household knows less than me.

He is, you know.

Simone Collins: Two to con to continue with Thomas PO’s. 0.2, the person is much less honest than you as he’s faking his markers of market value to he wrote then might want to sear your children, but I think he meant to write that might want to sire your children.

This is like Groucho saying he wouldn’t want to join a club that accepts him as a member. Now, you and I in, in a member of paid subscribers only episode, interviewed a woman who, who went through the process of getting a known sperm donor through a Facebook group. Largely because in many cases working through a sperm bank involves working with pathological liar sperm, because you actually get accepted by a sperm bank.

[00:50:00] You kind of have to, like, if you’re like, well, my grandmother died once, they’re like, oh, she died. Like, of what? Yes. Okay, you’re out. You know, like if you’re, if you’re honest. In any way you, I diagnos out

Malcolm Collins: diagnosed with AED as a kid. You are out.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s like, are you kidding me? It’s so, you are, I I, I totally get that.

He’s right about that. But this is not, that’s not what Nicholas is, is describing. Nicholas is describing what’s insinuated in, in his substack essay is that he would choose like a known friend, you know, someone he’s very close with, who he’s lived around, who he understands behaviorally very well. Like it’s a known donor situation or like.

Possibly a, a gay male partner who he like literally is living his entire life with. So anyway. Yeah. 10 Danger of subconscious virtue signaling. What it might be that your brain is tricking you to say this because it sounds like the most EA thing you can say Yes. Which gives you Yes, I agree with community

Malcolm Collins: only.

Good argument.

Simone Collins: Okay, this is very, yes, because we talked about in another episode, this, this new preponderance of [00:51:00] young men in the UK just donating their kidneys to strangers. And I think this is like this hyper stimuli of like, I’m an effective altruist, take my organs. It’s just horrible. This is the most common in young adults, as you probably know, and becomes much less true in other settings.

Example per different peer group, different age, different brain chemistry. To be clear, I don’t think you’re being face facetious. I think you’re, you believe what you say, but this sounds like the type of situation your brain might have an incentive to lie to you in a way you don’t realize. Okay. So you agree with that point?

I agree with that point, yeah. It is a genuine risk and it’s, what’s great is that this is not an imminent thing. And because he put that idea out there, because he tweeted this and he put this on substack, he’s able to consider people’s various arguments and actually think deeply about this leading up to him eventually maybe making this decision with a partner.

And I love that. And this is why I wish people had put their hot takes online. Everyone’s so afraid of being criticized and the fact that this is a young man and that he is not afraid of putting out ideas that might get [00:52:00] criticized and might get ridiculed and even called like a coupled is just so great.

Can’t people do that? Like can’t we have just discourse about ideas for once without being shamed?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so I, I need to talk about why intergenerationally this as a cultural strategy is very bad. And I, and I mentioned at the beginning, but for people who don’t quite grok what I am saying here, suppose you have a society where it is normal for every male to either decide to sire another male’s kids who they think is better than them, or decide that they have the best genetic quality of among the partners they can get, and they’re going to sire their own kids.

Okay? Now within some people of this society, there is a visceral disgust at the idea of raising somebody else’s kids. Now you have created eight. Extremely strong selective pressure for that visceral disgust, if this is ever normalized to become very common because every male who gets selected who has this now refuses to do it for their own kids.

Mm-hmm. And this is why you just simply [00:53:00] shouldn’t do this. I’ve actually seen this in the children of many, like I’ve met multiple ISTs people who want to have lots of kids mm-hmm. Who are born from like mass sperm donors.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: The idea that this is a her thing, this I wanna have just tons of kids.

Yeah. Is, is pretty born out in the evidence. And so you, you’re, you’re actually creating a social construct that can’t survive in the long run. What you really need from kids, like the most valuable trait to pass on to the next generation is wanting to be a father while still being high income and high intelligence.

Mm-hmm. If you are those things, which it appears you are, you want to be a father and you are high intellect that is an extremely rare genetic phenomenon in the current population. Um mm-hmm. Much rarer than phenomenon associated with just general intelligence or career success or anything like that.[00:54:00]

Mm-hmm. And as such that, that’s what I think he’s fundamentally missing in all of this.

Simone Collins: Well maybe this kind of dove dovetails with PO’s last point, titled 11 additional points. There, there are two. The only way in which I think this could make sense if is if your essay is geared towards convincing normies to do this with your gene pool, in which case you’d be maximizing your offspring, although making each less happy because they’re not hanging out with their biological father.

Pretty Machiavellian, I don’t think this is true. B, timing. By the time you have to make this decision, science might be good enough that you can edit your future child’s genome, optimizing IQ and whatever other measure of quality you want, which is very true. Takeaways. Your idea sounds laudable, but it’s not.

Lindy. Oh, Malcolm’s already shaking with rage. It doesn’t have enough evidence. It is unlikely to be actionable. You’d likely make you and your children both biological and non-biological, less happy and fulfilled and it would be optimizing for the wrong reasons. The [00:55:00] upside is lower than you think. The downside is higher than you think, and there are high probabilities that of this going awry and you’re possibly lying to yourself.

So he was just categorically against this, but I think where you’re coming out of this is like. Hey, people are capable of making their own judgements of what’s best. Maybe Nicholas is, is doing

Malcolm Collins: what’s

Simone Collins: best for him.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But, but generally speaking, I think it’s a bad idea. Yeah. And generally speaking, I think it’s a bad idea because it’s not an intergenerationally stable idea.

Mm-hmm. And he is massively underestimating the rareness of wanting to be a father and being intellectually engaged.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s already showing so many signs of like, you should be having all, and just that opening paragraph of him being like, I really wanna have kids. I wanna raise kids. Like I, I feel this deep desire to do.

It’s like, oh my

Malcolm Collins: genetic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s

Malcolm Collins: genetic.

Simone Collins: This is the sign. And if you

Malcolm Collins: take Gene for somebody who doesn’t have that desire

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then you are going to create children who are not useful to the next generation. Mm-hmm. As to [00:56:00] what’s causing this. I think we’re actually learning from the beginning.

‘cause this came from a gay partner in deciding which of them would have kids. This may also have an element of a, a, a genuine sexual fantasy tied to it. And I would not risk your lifetime, which you’re gonna have to spend with this other person as part of an arousal pathway. If, if that is polluting your decision.

You and I even say this for spouses,

Simone Collins: right? So like, yeah, people on X were, were ridiculing. But what you’re saying is like, look, I don’t care if that’s what it is, but don’t do stuff because it feels good.

Malcolm Collins: I say this was marriage. I’m like, don’t marry someone because the sex is good, right? Mm-hmm.

Sex, arousal, compatibility. This is of all the differences I have with ala, the biggest one I have for her, like partner survey, it’s a bunch of things to see if they’re compatible with her in terms of her sexual proclivities. And I’m like, this is nothing to do with who you marry.

Simone Collins: Marriage is a business contract.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like sexual proclivities. You what? That, that has, once you [00:57:00] got six kids, you’re not gonna care how dummy they are. You know, like, this stuff is not relevant. So I don’t, I I find that to be, by the way, people are wondering why I think anti Lindy is, is as a concept, is so stupid is what anti Lindy does, is it takes something that is obviously true, that in an environment.

EG, the historic environment of let’s say like the middle Ages or the 1950s or whatever, where not much is changing entities or ideas or concepts or things that have outcompeted other things in the past was in the stable environment. They are likely to outcompete other things in the future.

Mm-hmm. And it does this by looking at the historical record, but if you look at the modern record. We have not seen this trend and that is because we are no longer in a stable environment. So I can’t trust the fact that an idea out competed something in the 1950s to measure or predict whether or not it’s gonna out predict [00:58:00] something in 2030 when a, we have whatever AI economy we have then or what

Simone Collins: Oh, I know, I know.

Counter arguments people have may do that is go to a Walmart. Most of the things that are on the shelves have probably been there for five plus years,

Speaker 4: I wish I had had time to respond to this here, but the point of the argument I always make on this is if a society is stable, then things will stay the same. So for the past five years or so, things have been about stable in regards to food consumption. So things that were winning five years ago continue to win today, but if you go to a Walmart.

Almost nothing on the shelves would’ve existed in its same form 50 years ago. So that’s the point I’m making is it’s not that, uh, you know, every, everything necessarily be there because it wasn’t there two year, three years ago. It’s, it was in an existing environmental context.

Simone Collins: But this, I’m really glad we had this conversation ‘cause I thought it was a really [00:59:00] great argument he put out there.

I really like his thought provoking points. So thanks for talking about them with me and

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you to Simone. I have a spectacular day and what are we doing for dinner?

Simone Collins: The, the chili with sun bottle ole and hoisin sauce and that was pretty good. Shishito peppers. Do you want me to add like MSG to it tonight?

Would you like me to serve it like sloppy joe’s on Hawaiian buns?

Malcolm Collins: No. You could serve it on rice, but I’m gonna bring my chips down for it too, because I might want some on chips.

Simone Collins: Ooh, smart. I like that. Okay. I love you. Bye.

Malcolm Collins: Bye.

Speaker 5: So, where are you? Up here? Where, where is that? Go up the steps and climb on the car. This, why did you wanna go up there? ‘cause I, I guess I love being high pee. Why do you like being high? What if you fall? I won’t fall. What makes you say that?[01:00:00]

Speaker 6: Sometimes when these are not here, I’ll fall and sometimes when these are here, I’ll not fall. So the railing is why you won’t fall. Yeah. And instead, this is not what I wanna fall.

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