Survivorship Bias Is Not The Whole Story

Queen Victoria was basically the 19th-century version of a hardcore weeb… but for Scottish culture.

She fetishized tartans, kilts, and fake clan traditions so hard that she forced visiting nobles to show up in made-up “clan tartan” outfits — and they actually did it. Today, huge numbers of Scots genuinely believe this stuff is ancient… because Scotland’s education system is apparently cursed.

Meanwhile, Nassim Taleb fans keep preaching the “Lindy Effect” (longer something survives → longer it will survive) as gospel in crypto, culture war, and trad circles. But in 2025–2026 reality — with hyper-rapid technological, economic, and memetic change — the Lindy Effect has basically inverted.

In this episode we cover:• Queen Victoria’s Balmoral weeb arc and how she single-handedly invented the modern Scottish aesthetic• Why almost nothing you use or celebrate is actually “ancient” (spoiler: most traditions people call timeless were invented 1850–1980)• The original Lindy deli comedians meant THE OPPOSITE of what Taleb claims• Survivorship bias, Fortune 500 churn, disappearing classics, collapsing orchestras…• Why rigid “antiquity = virtue” thinking is suicidal in the modern world

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So Queen Victoria

Simone Collins: Imagine a weeb invented our modern perception of Japanese culture, even as believed by the Japanese. That’s what Scottish culture as we understand

Malcolm Collins: so she then. Starts telling any of the Scottish nobles who visit her house, that they have to come in their clan tartan

Simone Collins: and in their, and

Malcolm Collins: they’re like and they’re like, my what? And so it’s like, it’s like a weeb. Goes to Japan and he says that everybody’s daughters have to come in their magic girl costume.

Simone Collins: He’s come in your formal Goku hairstyle, sir. .

Malcolm Collins: And these, and these Japanese people are like, like, and they’re like, it’s the, it’s the queen. I’m gonna dress up my daughter like a matching girl. We’re going, we’re going all in on this. And the funny thing is this, since Scottish people today, the country has such a terrible education system that many of them believe that all this stuff,

Speaker 9: We saw the lochness monster. When all of a sudden this huge creature, this giant Ste from the Pete Lithic air comes out of the water. I yelled. I [00:01:00] said, what you want from US? Monster? And the bent down and said, I need about three 50.

Simone Collins: How much of a weave Queen Victoria was. She also allegedly would, would while visiting Balmoral slip into this fake Scottish brogue. So you can imagine like a weeb going to like spend their summers in Japan, like speaking in ic, Japanese accent.

And you would imagine

Malcolm Collins: built their entire culture off of her we fantasy.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: . Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about one of the ideas that has become popular in pseudo intellectual circles. And I want to talk about how wrong it is.

Simone Collins: Are we, so intellectuals, is this one of our circles?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, it’s, it’s called the Lindy Effect. And it often comes up in the concept of something being anti Lindy or a heuristic where the longer, a non-perishable thing like an idea [00:02:00] technology, cultural practice, book or institution has survived the longer its expected remaining lifespan as its proven robust against time and disorder.

So this concept is really, really, really popular in the conservative space. So they’ll look at something like techno puritanism, right? Like our family’s religious practices. And they’ll be like, oh, well it’s very anti, right? Like, it’s very new, and therefore it’s unlikely to survive a long time.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: and I’m going to point out that this is both a misattribution of an idea. It’s a misattribution of a bad idea that even in its very conception was taken to mean the exact opposite of what it originally meant. Which is just like e everything about this idea is bad.

One is that, first of all, the idea is just wrong in a modern context. It worked a lot when you were dealing with a static economy and society because then that was like a evolutionary environment. If something becomes evolutionarily advantageous and out competes [00:03:00] other things and the environment it has outcompeted them with has stayed stable, it is going to continue to be advantageous.

That just like an obvious truism, right? And that is true for cultural environments, right? Like if you’re dealing with a long period of human history where things were broadly the same from one generation to the next an idea or a book or a technology is going to be much more robust if it has out competed other technologies within a similar context.

However, that is no longer the world we live in. Things change dramatic. In terms of the global economy, in terms of the global culture, in terms of how we communicate and in terms of global mimetic sets so rapidly now that you almost have an inversion of the very concept of the Lindy effect.

Second, what I’m gonna be talking about is a lot of the things that lead to the perception of the Lindy effect, and we’re gonna be going over these are illusions. Mm-hmm. They are instances in which an [00:04:00] individual today believes something has antiquity because either of just a myth, right. Or they believe it has antiquity because something in antiquity had a similar name.

An example of this would be somebody who will say something like, well, Christmas or Easter has been around a long time, and we’ll go into not in anything that’s meaningfully close to the way today these things are practiced. If you said that, you know, if, if you’re applying the Lindy effect to.

Let’s say something like Christmas or you, you would apply it to Teop Puritanism, eg. What I mean by that is in a hundred or 200 years, if techno Puritanism becomes widespread and is like a common belief system everyone would say, well, this just follows the Linde effect because it’s Christianity.

And Christianity has always been around, but people within our generation would be mortified if somebody said that. Yeah, you said that the way that Christmas is practiced today, or Easter is practiced [00:05:00] today, is historic to somebody in the Middle Ages or something like that. They’d look at you way crazier than saying

Simone Collins: technically.

Well, and certainly, you know it like, you know, the year, like for bc they’d be like, what do you mean? What are you talk, this is an apocalyptic Jew, just like all the other ones. What do you. Yeah. So,

Malcolm Collins: She’s talking here about what a lot of his historical Jesus researchers think about Jesus within that context.

But the, the, and the other reason why this is hidden from a lot of people, and we’ll go into this, is a lot of these traditions use their manufactured antiquity to try to give themselves a veneer of authenticity. Whether it is the practices of the current Catholic church or modern Judaism, or modern Orthodox Judaism even.

And when individuals. Question these things, you are often literally questioning somebody’s self-perception and worldview. Mm-hmm. So it [00:06:00] is incredibly, like the, the people wanna fight against it as hard as they can, because for some people, if you could show that their faith or belief system lacks a lot of the antiquity that they believe it has, then they would see that as invalidating it because they see that as its core, like argument for existence.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so, we’ll, we’ll go into that as well.

Simone Collins: That’s a really good point. I, I wanna say, I, I can, first, I just wanna give credence or I don’t think people are crazy to have an intuition in favor of this effect because up until the scientific method or like empiricism became widespread and more systematic and we had ways to very quickly.

Validate whether something that was true that didn’t involve literally dying. The only way you knew that something was a decent, like health intervention or safety intervention was because it was a tradition that was passed down from generation to generation. Because all the, the generations that tried something new and [00:07:00] different that didn’t work, died and all the surviving ones did the thing that did work.

And so it was really good to do the thing that was old because that means that everyone who did it before. Well, they, they lived so it’s probably a good sign.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s, it’s not even that they lived, it’s actually, and you bring up a really fascinating point that God, I could do a giant deep dive on like an episode in itself.

But there was a period in European history that went from like the late Roman period to the high medieval period. And in this period of, of, of history, this is when the Catholic church really dominated. Oh. And they created an a, a mindset around the sciences and around things like, a medicine where you would always reflect on an older and proven older way of doing it or teaching.

And the antiquity of a thing was in this sort of early version of Catholicism proved that things authenticity. And this existed outside of the church. This was the period where [00:08:00] you had like Ga Galen medicine, right? Oh, and then like nobody developed on me medicine after Galen for a really long time.

Yeah. And when they would teach medicine at university, if you had a, a, a new way of doing a thing, literally the argument they would have is, well, this isn’t the way Galen did it. And then people would be like, well, you know, maybe he was like, like, they’d be like, but it, it seems to work better. And they’re like, but.

Is it, is it, does it have the anti antiquity?

Simone Collins: Oh, the antiquity. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Very much like the dwarves from Warhammer medieval Puran version. Right? Like, does it have antiquity? If it doesn’t have antiquity, it’s wrong. How dare you With these new flying contraptions, I don’t care that they work, they don’t have antiquity.

And what you also saw, this was philosophers of this period and books of this period.

Simone Collins: Well, this is why we are, so we dunk on Deon Deontologists all the time because there’s, there’s a difference between a heuristic that works well, which is, oh, this old thing probably is good because the people who used it survived.

And [00:09:00] probably all the new things that. Ended up killing people. Well, that’s why we don’t know about them. That, that makes sense as a heuristic until you build a better method like empiricism the scientific method, et cetera. Just better technology or something that just appears to work better, to your point.

Right. But then the deontologists are like, I don’t care or gonna do it the way it’s supposed to be done. And that’s why we have such a big problem with this. But this goes beyond this latest episode in We Hate Deontology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This, this goes beyond just classic Deontology though. Yeah. If you look at the way science and information was treated during this period it, it, it had some positive effects.

Civilizationally specifically the reason why today we consider the quote unquote classics. The classics that you, as of a, you know, if, if you’re watching this, you probably are educated on ancient Greek literature and ancient Roman literature.

Simone Collins: Probably not anymore, sadly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sadly. But, but we were in our generation, this happened for a very long time.

Civilizationally. But here you’re, you’re actually proving that Lindsay is [00:10:00] a is, is inverting now that young people aren’t learning this stuff anymore, even though it had been learned for so long. But the reason why wasn’t because this stuff was necessarily good or better or anything like that. It was because during this period of Catholic church dominance of Europe, the educational institutions operated on the belief that older was better with a few specific periods in history, specifically certain parts of the Roman Empire, in certain parts of the Greek civilization, having like, real, real level of importance. And it, it’s, it’s ironic that it turns out that the church is the reason why we hold so many pagan thinkers in such high esteem. If, if not for this period of Catholic dominance you know Socrates and Play-Doh and all that, you, you likely would

Simone Collins: know, oh, you think like the, the Catholic Church was the original hype machine for all of these Greek and Roman relationships.

I

Malcolm Collins: don’t think it’s, it’s very well documented history.

Simone Collins: That’s so I didn’t, I guess I just [00:11:00] never put two and two together. I love that. That is delightful.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, the Catholic church was actually really obsessed with this stuff. I mean Okay. Think about it this way, right? Simone? You read something like Dante’s Inferno, right?

Or, or Dante’s Divine Comedy is the

Simone Collins: full

Malcolm Collins: name. Yeah. Dante’s

Simone Collins: Burn Book.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Think about all of the figures that appear on it. Yeah. They are either modern political figures from, like Italian politics of his spirit,

Simone Collins: Dante’s Burn book. It’s so, he’s such a like 13-year-old girl. I

Malcolm Collins: love him. Yeah. Or yeah.

Writing a fan fiction about all of his or, or they ancient Greek thinkers or ancient Roman thinkers.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. Was Dante the original online bully? Fan fiction writer.

Malcolm Collins: He, he writing a a mean fanfic

Simone Collins: about all this. He’s like making a furry and it, the trifecta is complete. He probably was one, what am I saying?

No, no, but no, this, you’re making a really good point though. Yeah. It’s like, like their, their fan fiction, their, their their cinematic universe of choice was these, these thinkers, like if [00:12:00] it wasn’t a saint or you know, a, like a, a biblical figure, it was. Roman or Greek philosopher. Right?

Malcolm Collins: But, but, and, and you would know this if you went to you know, a Catholic monastery of this time period, they’d know all of their Roman and Greek thinkers, right?

Mm-hmm. Like they’d know and, and, and the, not just the thinkers, but the fiction from that period, that was the most popular fiction for a long time because older was better. Mm-hmm. You had that and then you had the, the weird incel horny comic book literature of the Period, which was the val work literature, which a lot of people don’t realize was written by the Horny troubadours and with sort of our version of comic books today.

And we have totally other episodes I can get into about that. But the point being is I think it created the illusion, if you’re looking at history, that this stuff actually had any sort of saying power and it didn’t. Mm-hmm. It was an artificial staying power, which has collapsed, was in a lot of modern institutional environments, but.

[00:13:00] Before we get to that, where did this idea come from? Where did it get popularized? The guy who popularized it, I’m gonna see if you remember this guy’s name for anything, was Naem Nicholas Tale in his 2012 book, antifragile. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah, that ring bell.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the 2017 essay called an expert called Lindy.

So we actually have another episode on this particular figure where I point out that he is an Oh yeah. Enormous con artist. You were

Simone Collins: super mad about him. I

Malcolm Collins: forgot. Yeah. He’s the guy who is the biggest known advocate that IQ has literally no meaning that was meaning it was no outcomes. Yes. And I just go through his argument and be like, this guy is just lying with like, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, I I consider that episode a very good dissection of an argument so you can quickly recognize when somebody is using supposed data to lie to you.

Because it’s, it’s very clear when you read his argument that he knows he’s deceiving his audience. I was like, it’s really skeezy, but basically [00:14:00] I put him on like a lower level than Malcolm Gladwell. Right. Like I think Malcolm Gladwell may be

Simone Collins: evil. Malcolm. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’m gonna call him good Malcolm, because I’m evil Malcolm, which is being good Malcolm.

I’m joking. But yeah. Yeah. He’s evil Malcolm. So, evil Malcolm. By the way, my, for people who dunno, at Stanford Business School, there was literally an entire class that we took that was a mandated class that everyone had to take. And there was only like three mandated classes in the entire, like, so it’s like a big deal class.

The entire, I think first year, it might have been like first semester of this class was entirely just using Malcolm Gladwell’s books to learn how to use statistics to lie to people. It was like, this is the

Simone Collins: learn from the Masters

Malcolm Collins: gold standard of lying to people with statistics. Let’s go over these books.

I think it was the tipping point was the one that they were really focused on, but there were a few others. Oh, nice. 80,000 hours was another that they focus on. But I, I just love that like, people do not [00:15:00] realize how bad some like modern pseudoscience officers are. Who’s the one that always pisses you off.

The guy who wrote Sapiens. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Can’t remember

Malcolm Collins: his name. What’s his name?

Simone Collins: I cannot remember his name.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But a lot, a lot of people do cue into these like pseudoscience books that are like pop science and they think that they’re like valid. But anyway, so basically came from a famous pseudo scientist.

Okay. And what’s so hilarious is he named it after Comedians who frequently gathered at Lindy’s Delicate Scent, a famous Broadway area spot known for its cheesecake and a hangout for showbiz folks after performances. What’s hilarious is they use the term to mean the exact antithesis of what he took it to mean.

I just think it’s bad reading comprehension on his point or something really story. But let’s go into this ‘cause it’s interesting.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So there the comedians would gossip and analyze recent shows and speculate on career longevity, particularly for comedian TV comedians. The core observation [00:16:00] slash heuristic they developed within a comedian’s career.

Our life expectancy was inversely proportional to how frequently they were exposed on tv. The more frequent appearances EG weekly shoe shows, the quicker they’d burn out material and fade, sparse appearances, guest spots and special allowed for longer careers. Huh. So it’s not exactly inversely, but it certainly doesn’t mean anything like what Lindy took it to mean.

Mm-hmm. This was then updated by Benoit Delbar a 1982 in, in the book the Fact Geometry of Nature, where he referenced the same deli anecdote, but mathematically reframed it, trying to argue for the longer something with around the, the better it was, right. Basically. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And it didn’t gain main spread’s popularity until the mid 2020s.

And the main reason it seemed to gain main spread’s popularity was because of Bitcoin

Simone Collins: widespread and or [00:17:00] mainstream, is that what you’re

Malcolm Collins: trying to say? Widespread and mainstream. It was because of Bitcoin battles, basically. Bitcoin tried to use it to argue that Bitcoin was the best cryptocurrency.

And then of course, immediately the gold people were like, well, then gold is better than Bitcoin because Bitcoin is anti Lindy. You know? I mean,

Simone Collins: Gold’s doing better than Bitcoin right now, though.

Malcolm Collins: The point being not, I mean, not over any sort of longer period, period,

Simone Collins: directionally,

Malcolm Collins: Bitcoin is below where we sold it, I think. So the point, high

Simone Collins: scale, just saying,

Malcolm Collins: the point being is that how was I gonna say in, in terms of anti Lindy and Bitcoin?

Yeah. So basically the, the whole Bitcoin bro versus gold bro debate and Bitcoin bro versus ETH bro debate is what popularized the concept and got a lot of people to become aware of it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: One of the arguments used against it, which I do not think is a good argument, is they say a common charge is that the Lindsay effect is essentially survivorship [00:18:00] bias dressed up as wisdom.

Critics point out that we only see things that have lasted eg ancient texts, gold bread, et cetera. While countless old things have vanished without a trace, the heuristic cherry pick survivors and ignores the graveyard of once enduring ideas and technologies that failed. I’m gonna point out that that’s, that’s not even the case.

It’s just not a very good principle beyond the intuitive. Truth that you would see to it, eg. Obviously you’re gonna have a bit of a bias towards things that have been around a long time simply because they have been around a long time. But what we will see is one, things just aren’t around as long as you think they are.

Mm-hmm. So a great example of this is Fortune 500 companies. And, and the trend of things not being around as long as you think they are is increasing over time. So if you go to the 19 fifties to the 1960s, the average tenure on the Fortune 500 list was 50 to 60 years. If you go to,

Simone Collins: oh my gosh, wait.

That’s insane.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: I can’t even imagine that.

Malcolm Collins: If you go to the 1970s to [00:19:00] 1980s, it was 30 to 35 years. If you go to, that’s

Simone Collins: like a lifetime. That’s insane.

Malcolm Collins: If you go to the 1990s, it was around 20 to 24 years. If you go to the 2000 tens to 2000 twenties, it’s. Now at around 15 years or less. That is, that is how long?

So it went from 60 years to 15 years on the Fortune 500 list. Companies are churned through on this list these days. Oh my gosh. And I’d also point out here that a lot of the things that you believe are historic are just not, so let’s, let’s go through a few of these, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and by the end of this you’ll be thinking, wait is literally anything I use in my life.

Does anything have historicity? I’m like looking around my room for anything that is historic. I can find one thing.

Simone Collins: Well, the whole room maybe

Malcolm Collins: a, a knife. Well, yeah. I mean, the room, your room was built in like

Simone Collins: 1790. Yeah, that’s de decent for America,

Malcolm Collins: but that’s just living in [00:20:00] an old place. So you’ve got this knife here and this cup here.

Yeah. These are the only two things I can see anywhere around me that have any real degree of historicity.

Simone Collins: Well, how are we defining historicity? That recur bow over there was built in like, or made

Malcolm Collins: maybe, maybe the time, the sand, the sand time thing here. But like nobody actually uses those anymore.

Simone Collins: No, no. That was made in like 2000.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I know, but I’m talking about the technology itself.

Simone Collins: Oh, the technology. No, I recur bow right there.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Your recurve bro. And the mirror. That is it. That is the only things in this room that have any historicity to them. Oh. Why have

Simone Collins: woven baskets full of baby things?

Books obviously. I’m looking at books. Come

Malcolm Collins: on now. What books are on their way out right now? And you look at, watch our video. Why burn books when it No, nobody reads anymore. Books are largely just decorative at this point, and almost nobody reads books. Even if you’re talking about bestselling books.

And we go over that, like, I think it’s like your average, like top end of book. It’s like 5,000 to 8,000 reads or something when we were going over.

. [00:21:00] For some examples of what I mean here. The average New York Times bestseller is only selling between 10,000 copies to a hundred thousand copies. , And that can mean for the author you’re getting 18,000 to $180,000 per in New York Times bestseller. , The win of wins. And even if you come into this successful, , suppose you’re Billie Eilish, right?

Billie Eilish sold 64,000 copies. Justin Timberlake sold only a hundred thousand copies. Ileo Mar, 26,000 copies, way less than an average episode of our shows, , P Morgan 5,650 copies in the us basically nothing. , So p. People do not read books. Whenever somebody comes to me, they’re like, oh, I have this great idea to write a book. I’m like, well, that’s pretty silly considering nobody reads books anymore.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s

Simone Collins: sad. It’s so

Malcolm Collins: sad. It’s bad if you contrast it with like an average YouTube video or something. And, and so I think a [00:22:00] lot of the things in like, the only thing that is actually still regularly used are cups and knives, baskets.

You don’t,

Simone Collins: baskets. Baskets, man

Malcolm Collins: baskets, right? Like, not a lot. Like you have candles behind you, but they’re entirely decorative. So let’s go over other things that people may think. They’re also

Simone Collins: electric candles, so I don’t know if they count one.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. Oh. Glasses. Glasses. Have a degree of historicity and haven’t changed that much.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Buckles. You have buckles buckle. That’s literally a re historic recreation dress. So I don’t

Simone Collins: think that’s, it’s actually, no, that’s, that fasteners of that sort are actually quite new. Oh, but I, I am wearing stays right now. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: actually, you’re right. They’re so new that the Amish don’t use them because they see them as too newfangled.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re newfangled. But my laced up stays under this well, and I’m wearing a Viking apron. Below this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But a, a lot of people just don’t realize it. Something like a buckle is actually a fairly new technology in terms of clothing.

Simone Collins: Even hair ties, I mean, people used to literally use a needle and thread to tie up their braids.

Malcolm Collins: Like there’s [00:23:00] some, some fun ones here. Diamond engagement rings. Those are very diamond engagement rings were popularized in the 1930s to forties by the DeBeers company.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Their diamond is forever added in 1947. The white wedding dress. The white wedding dress was popularized

Simone Collins: Victoria.

Malcolm Collins: How you know your stuff. Let’s see if you can get more of you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Fashion history, Malcolm, come on. That’s like my, that’s my thing.

Malcolm Collins: The, the happy birthday song.

Simone Collins: Oh, that was made that was the based on the Good Morning to You song made by two school teachers. Yes. In the like 19. What, 1910s to 1930s?

What is it? 1930s. You got it right.

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

Simone Collins: My wife. Good morning. Trick or treating you trick or treating. Yeah. That wasn’t done until I wanna say like the 1950s or sixties, right? 19. Now people used to make little jackal lanterns and stuff. The really cute collectible stuff that are Halloween decorations are all lanterns.

They’re not for. Dressing up in costume. We

Malcolm Collins: actually have an entire episode where we go over how new, like if you [00:24:00] think like academia is, as a historicity, we put out the entire citation system that academia invented is, is based on, was literally invented. You

Simone Collins: blew my

Malcolm Collins: mind with that 1954.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the

Simone Collins: citation system, like I thought, like there was like a peer review and everything too.

Malcolm Collins: And that was the G index and the H index, which are used to rate professors today. And academics today were literally invented in like 2013. Like so crazy.

Simone Collins: So

Malcolm Collins: crazy. And this is like what our entire academic system is based on these days, right. The

Simone Collins: people like as it always was,

Malcolm Collins: as it always was.

Here’s, here’s some fun ones. Later HN and DLE octoberfest attire.

Simone Collins: LA later Hoan. Yeah. And by the way, I had a German friend who always got mad. ‘cause everyone in America pronounces it leader Hoen, which apparently means singing pants. Which is a way better word.

Malcolm Collins: I like singing pants. Okay.

Simone Collins: You have like twisting puts on his overalls and he calls them marching pants because he, their overalls, I dunno why he thinks, but letter, why letter goes was, what were they, were they like invented in like the, the 1910s or something?

What? [00:25:00] I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: 19th to earliest 20th century.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. So in the 18 hundreds.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Or 1910s if early 20th century is 1910s. I’m not too bad.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. The Japanese tea ceremony.

Simone Collins: Ceremony. Oh, that’s interesting. I wanna say 1830s.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s about right. So, so early 20th century. It was done during the Beijing era

Simone Collins: modernization.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think when you go to the, the, the golden, did you go to the Golden Palace in Kyoto? I think they talk about it a lot there. Have like a designation. Maybe I

Malcolm Collins: did. I wouldn’t have remembered something like that. ‘cause I don’t

Simone Collins: care. It was one covered in date. The palace covered in gold,

Malcolm Collins: which is all new.

Almost everything in Japan is new. By the way. Watch our episode. The the, the one true civilization theory. Our most offensive theory, if you want to be heavily offended, it’s, it’s a good, it’s a spicy one. But English breakfast.

Simone Collins: Oh, like the beans and blood

Malcolm Collins: beans. Yeah. A hardy plate of eggs, bacon and beans.

Simone Collins: Gosh, I don’t know. I, I’m gonna [00:26:00] guess that’s an industrial revolution thing. No, it could be. Yeah, it

Malcolm Collins: is. It is. It’s an industrial revolution thing that was promoted when hotels started to become popular as a middle class symbol of prosperity.

Simone Collins: Well, don’t forget Scottish tartans. Being like a total invention.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We’re gonna

Simone Collins: go into that too. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Tartan is an invention. Kilts are a modern invention.

Simone Collins: It makes me so, so sad. Like you want it to be real. You want it to be this historical

Malcolm Collins: thing. The Scottish thing is so, and Scott, this is like, you know, like I said, that like Jews get pissed off when you point out that like there’s not actually that much antiquity to a lot of Judaism.

Yeah. And Catholics get pissed off when you say there’s not that much antiquity. You wanna really watch a people who get pissed off tell this to us, Scott. Tell them, you know, that kilts don’t actually have much historicity to Well, ‘cause

Simone Collins: then they have to accept that they were just hill people, criminals.

Right.

Malcolm Collins: Right. No, it gets, it gets funnier.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The actual reason why all of this, like the Scottish image we have today was, [00:27:00] became popular was

Simone Collins: Queen Victoria fetishizing them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So people who don’t know Queen, what was the place called that she went to?

Simone Collins: Balmoral.

Malcolm Collins: Balmoral. So Queen Victoria would go to this place called Balmoral.

And she was really enamored with the idea of Scottish history.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was like, imagine, no, this is perfect. Imagine a weeb invented our modern perception of Japanese culture, even as believed by the Japanese. That’s what Scottish culture as we understand

Malcolm Collins: that is Yeah, that is, you are a hundred. So to understand how much of a weeb she was for Scottish culture, right?

Like, so she would go and there were some patterns that look something like a modern tartan, but there was nothing like a clan, no version, like different C clams didn’t have different ones. It’s,

Simone Collins: it’s an invention. It’s a fan. It was

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. But so she, she saw this somewhere, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just like in a pattern shot basically somewhere.

And she hadn’t seen it in the uk and so she decided. Personally, and [00:28:00] because she’s the queen, everybody leans into this. Oh yeah. You know, she’s like, oh, I love this Scottish pattern. And then they’re like, oh yeah, this is the most Scottish you, you need to buy it all. And so then she literally wallpapers her entire house in Tartan designs.

And then what she starts doing is because she had this vague idea of like a kilt, because something like a kilt had been banned, I wanna say the jacka bite revolution. I don’t remember this, the specific, but, but something like, it was banned, but it actually wasn’t like a formalized thing or anything like that.

It was like a more modernized symbol of like, it

Simone Collins: wasn’t a pleated skirt. I mean, they, they wore something more akin to togas or sorrys than.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Similar to toga or Aari which a lot of people, medieval people wore, like it wasn’t unique to Scotland or anything like that. Yeah. It was just the basic medieval gown that like peasants in Ireland or England or anyone elsewhere.

But she saw this and she thought it was like a male skirt thing. Anyway, so she then. Starts telling any of the Scottish nobles who visit [00:29:00] her house, that they have to come in their clan tartan

Simone Collins: and in their, and

Malcolm Collins: they’re like and they’re like, my what? And so it’s like, it’s like a weeb Goes to Japan and he says that everybody’s daughters have to come in their magic girl costume.

Simone Collins: He’s come in your formal Goku hairstyle, sir.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Come in your formal Goku hairstyle in your matching girl costumes. And these, and these Japanese people are like, like, and they’re like, it’s the, it’s the queen. I’m gonna dress up my daughter like a matching girl. We’re going, we’re going all in on this. And the funny thing is this, since Scottish people today, the country has such a terrible education system that many of them believe that all this stuff, well, it’s, it’s a funny thing because it’s a really, really bad education system combined with, I say this as somebody who got his.

Graduate degree, I mean, my undergraduate degree at St. Andrews mm-hmm. Which is easily the top school in Scotland, often the top college in the uk. Yeah. So I’m not saying this is somebody with no knowledge of Scottish people being dumb buns. Like supposedly I [00:30:00] was around the best of the best of Scots and I was just not that impressed.

And no, actually it was a thing at St. Andrew’s the St. Andrew’s people who were from abroad, because it has like a huge, I wanna say like 25% foreign audience. They were typically, like, they’d know stuff. I would expect a normal, educated person to know. Mm-hmm. The, the Scotts they would not know like one.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: But you still have to be the best of the best of the best to get into St. Andrews as someone in Scotland.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So this is the best of the best of the best.

Speaker 6: Uh, why exactly are we here?

Speaker 5: Son,

Speaker 7: we’re here because you’re looking for the best of the best of the best. Sir,

Speaker 5: what’s so funny?

Speaker 8: He is just really excited and he has no clue why we’re here.

Malcolm Collins: And one of them was unaware that America used to be a British colony, for example. I was like talking about independence. That’s

Simone Collins: because America’s just that based.

How could it Well, I mean, come on. That’s Scottish history. It just, everything begins [00:31:00] in the year 1900. All right. America always was Scotland, always was

Malcolm Collins: curtains,

Simone Collins: always.

Malcolm Collins: No, they were like independence from what? That’s

Simone Collins: like the Indians, Malcolm, the indigenous American,

Malcolm Collins: the Indians, Americans, independence.

No, but like that is like their knowledge of their own history.

side note here, if you are, . Scot’s Irish, which is what most people in America who think they are, either Irish or Scottish actually are, and what we are, which is the greater Appalachian cultural group in the United States. , This was actually an incredibly small population that was hated by the Irish, hated by the Scots, hated by the English.

, They, they were not mainstream Scottish. So while I do say. I make fun of my own people. , The Scottish people certainly wouldn’t have thought of the Ulster Scots as their own people. , They, they hated them quite a lot. And when they left Scotland, it was a population of, if you’re talking fighting age men, , maybe only 3,500 people.

Um, and that, that exploded into one of the dominant cultural groups in the United States. But that is for other episodes.

[00:32:00] Fun fact when this population that has become one of the dominant population groups in America with lived in Scotland, they were called the Reavers. And this is where the concept of like the Reavers from Firefly come from, , because they were just that violent. , And, , so pop culture hasn’t treated them kindly.

Malcolm Collins: And so they have like this,

Simone Collins: how much of a weave Queen Victoria was. She also allegedly would, would while visiting Balmoral slip into this fake Scottish brogue. So you can imagine like a weeb going to like spend their summers in Japan, like speaking in ic, Japanese accent.

And you would imagine would. So bad. They

Malcolm Collins: built their entire culture off of her we fantasy. So hack by the way, another modern invention in Scotland doesn’t have historicity to it. I think it’s from like the 18 hundreds. Scott,

Simone Collins: I love it. I kind of, I kind of love the idea though, actually, if we, if we wanna get like a little bit more deep into it though, [00:33:00] like you have to, you know, let the cringe pass through you and only remain.

Of, of just building a culture based on the fan fiction, because who likes the, the, the nuance of history? I mean, again, like what do you have when you go to the realities? Just like warring clans people just like crazy hill people. I mean, honestly, American hillbillies are like more true to the, the real Scottish person.

Right. You know, this romanticized Scotland. I think it’s being, it has been adopted because it is a more flattering version of the truth. Why not just reinvent history and just run with that? Why not have the we version of your own country? You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No,

Simone Collins: here’s, you’re not wrong to do it.

Malcolm Collins: Trigger Scottish people. So,

Simone Collins: oh, what Scottish people, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: haggis was invented in the 18th century but the first mention we have of something called Haggis that later Scottish people copied. Mm-hmm. We have this from, from two books. Right. Guess where they’re both from? [00:34:00]

Simone Collins: God, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: England, it was in 1930. Or

Simone Collins: just like the Scotch egg, which is not at all Scottish. It’s, it’s English, but the scotch egg, I dunno why no one knows why

Malcolm Collins: there’s in English records around 1430.

Simone Collins: Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. You don’t even see it in any Scottish records until 1520. And at that point we don’t know that it’s what today they called haggis.

So real. That’s

Simone Collins: so, that’s so England like, like just going and making everywhere. Awesome. And then just also allowing them to take credit for it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And then everyone else being so resentful, oh, only the Imperial Empire ruined everything when like, really they just fixed everything and allowed them to just reinvent their own history and be like, oh yeah, no, it’s, that is like what the true good leader does, right?

They’re like, they, they allow you to, you know, they give credit to their. Underlings or whatever, like, oh, you know, no, Jimmy did it all. I’m credit to Jimmy where like, you know, he really did all the work. That’s a great leader. I love that. We found new

Malcolm Collins: people to lay into in this [00:35:00] episode, a new

Simone Collins: Scott group.

We love Scott. We love Scott. We got married in Edinburgh. You went

Malcolm Collins: to and, and, and, and I am Scottish ancestry. Like that’s where my family is from. That’s where part of your family is from as well, you know? Yeah. We’re both from the, the backwards tradition in the United States, which is a Scottish population.

Simone Collins: Well, my, my ancestors mostly passed over on the, you know, their, their raping journey.

Speaker: Are you really proud of your wife, at least? I mean Frøya dove into that pillaging, one hundred percent. Even took part in quite a lot of the raping

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s what you did as, as a Nordic Viking, but Sure. My ancestors. Banged your ancestors. Non consensually.

Malcolm Collins: Non consensually. Actually, there was very little genetic crossover from the Vikings.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. It’s mostly England.

Malcolm Collins: It’s mostly a myth. Speaking of historic myth, uh uh, no, that’s,

Simone Collins: that’s honestly ‘cause they were just too gross. We thought about it

Malcolm Collins: as to why so many myths, because I actually think that is interesting persists about Scottish [00:36:00] history.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The reason is, is because Scotland teaches its own history, almost like Native Americans in the US might teach their own history as a discriminated group.

So they sort of allow themselves these, these whys. And if you challenge them, they’re like, oh, you’re exo phobic or whatever. Okay. Right. Like they, you know, and you see this from other groups, we’re gonna get Jews who are like, Judaism isn’t a mon watch our video. The question that breaks Judaism maybe want us to go in depth in this.

I do not want to delineate all of my arguments here. The two

Simone Collins: hour video,

Malcolm Collins: it’s a four hour video I think, or like a three hour. It’s, it’s, I forgot.

Simone Collins: Took basically a week to film that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, because I wanna, I was like, if I’m gonna have a bunch of things that I’m gonna be accused of as being anti-Semitic.

‘cause you know, that’s how things are. If you challenge your religion, people are like, oh, it must be because you hate us. And it’s like, no, I’m just going over fricking history here. But I was like, I’m gonna have that all in one episode. Right. So I don’t have to like pepper it throughout episodes. And then with, let’s keep going here. Here’s the, here’s a fun one, by the way. And, and note here, for anyone who wants to be like, we clearly pissed off a lot of Scottish people in this episode.

Simone Collins: [00:37:00] What Scottish viewers analytics only shows S uk so,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, yeah, real English. You know, that’s a, people need way more pride in English Heritage.

I, I’m gonna tell you that. But to continue here,

Simone Collins: honestly, I feel like Scottish people are pretty freaking offline.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No,

Simone Collins: wait, no, we’ve, oh, we’ve won. Shout out to you. We have won Glasgow based

Malcolm Collins: oh,

Simone Collins: we do. Listener and props to you, sir. We love you. Screw everyone else. This one’s for you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Anyway so gender specific toys. Pink for girls, blue for boys. Do you know when this started?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Pink used to be for boys because pink was the, the pastel version of red, which is the color of victory and power

Malcolm Collins: and blood.

Simone Collins: Yes, yes. Obviously it’s so weird that pink became a girl color.

Malcolm Collins: When did pink become a girl color?

Simone Collins: Oh, god. I wanna say like 1940s, but I don’t know this one.

Malcolm Collins: 1980s.

Simone Collins: 1980s.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Via to catalogs

Malcolm Collins: and [00:38:00] ads.

Simone Collins: I’m gonna push back on that, but Sure. The red suited

Malcolm Collins: Santa Claus.

Simone Collins: Oh, that was Coca-Cola. That must have been like CocaCola. Yeah. The nine, what, what did they, when did they do that? Like the 1930s, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, 19, 1930s and then 1960s.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Trivia episodes are fun.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I like this. I mean, show how much my wife is educated. So to, to understand in part, before I go into other traditions that people might be surprised about. Just how I, I also love that, like, when I make insults against populations, they are insults that like the general public, like there’s like general racist insults and stuff like that

Simone Collins: that you hear all the time online.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. That like people don’t actually care about, like if you’re like, oh, Asians are bad at driving and stuff like that, and like, forget

Simone Collins: everyone’s bad at driving. That’s the easiest one. It’s not even funny.

Malcolm Collins: Asians don’t actually get mad about that. Right? Like, like they’re like

Simone Collins: fair.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at the type of [00:39:00] like, say racism that somebody like Nick Fuentes have, it’s often, other than the, the antisemitic stuff, it’s stuff that the, the, the, the populations don’t really care that much about.

If you look at me, it’s the type of racism that like your average viewer doesn’t realize is that offensive to populations, but to the populations. It’s like, I have studied your history. I know exactly where to place this knife to piss you off. But it’s, it’s, it’s funny. So I actually, I, I, I’m actually offensive here.

Come on. I tried for it, but yeah. So smart, why, why is it that almost nothing actually has antiquity these days? One is smartphone and constant connectivity breaks a lot of the way that information used to be traveled. Then you have ultra processed foods and daily snacks, whether it’s chips or energy bars or cereal or anything like that has replaced a huge ton of what we consider food.

And I was actually on this episode, but I decided not to go into it ‘cause it’s boring and everyone knows. But the stuff that we call like, in the original explanation of this, [00:40:00] he would’ve used examples of things like bread and cheese and beer as being examples of this phenomenon. But the stuff that we call bread and cheese and beer today is nothing like what historically we called bread

Simone Collins: and cheese.

This Malcolm, this is why I’m making our own bread again.

Malcolm Collins: Even what you make and you call

Simone Collins: bread, okay, I’m not milling our own flour yet. I know guys, I’m gonna get a No,

Malcolm Collins: it’s not

Simone Collins: just that. Those mills you’ve been sending me guys are expensive.

Malcolm Collins: You’re showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what I’m saying here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The stuff that you make when you think that you’re making homemade sourdough bread.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Is as distant as from what a medieval person called bread as what you would call a cake is

Simone Collins: because I’m not using heritage wheat. Why?

Malcolm Collins: It has to, I, I don’t wanna go into the detail on this because it’s, it’s very detailed and it’s not very interesting.

But

Simone Collins: it has to, it’s, if you’re obsessed with bread, I hate you. We’ll talk about it over dinner.

If you’re [00:41:00] wondering what made historic bread different, it wasn’t just that it was made up of whatever grains were local, whether that be wheat, rye, or barley. , You would also throw in things like peas, beans, and other vegetables. , Depending on what was available, so you wouldn’t have anything that looks like modern, , clean white bread.

You wouldn’t have butter in it. You wouldn’t have eggs in it. , And sometimes you wouldn’t even have salt in it. , Which honestly doesn’t sound that bad to me. I, I kind of like the idea of a, of a bread that’s just a mix of whatever vegetables are on hand.

Simone Collins: Because I, I’m all about, I wanna get. Ancient grains. I wanna get a mill. It’s just very expensive.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, there’s many types of ancient grains that are just like so different. Like if you look at something like pumper nickel bread, for example.

I don’t even think they mill it. They use

it’s just like cooked directly with like whole rye.

I got this right and actually AI said as an example, if you [00:42:00] want to taste bread that tastes more like what historic bread would’ve tasted like pumper, nickels a good example. And it can show you how different, something like a modern, even home baked bread is from, \, what we would’ve called historic bread.

And why those two things I say are as different as what we consider bread today in cake.

Malcolm Collins: I, I can look into the specifics of it, but a lot of ancient

Simone Collins: No, that’s, you know, the, the, the bread that I like to buy that we get imported, that’s like a brick that you could break a window with.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That’s, that’s a lot more similar to older types of bread. It’s so good.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But the point I’m making is a lot of these, these, these things that, that we think of as old, he’s not. And if, and, and keep in mind, even if you’re like, well, the bread, the sourdough bread actually has a lot in common with older types of bread.

I’m like, yeah, but the types of bread that everybody eats every day certainly doesn’t whatever we call white

Simone Collins: bread. No, that’s true. There’s so much stuff in it. Well, not even just white bread, e any, any bread that you’re buying from a store that’s like sliced, even if it’s like. Whatever. In fact, there’s just [00:43:00] recently the, like I think the Florida Depart Department of Health or something tested eight different brands of bread ranging from different types of white to whole grain breads, including like Dave’s killer bread, which I think a lot of people who like to see themselves as health food buyers get contained some really common carcinogenic pesticide plus a bunch of, you know, they’ll have a bunch of other additives and stabilizers and stuff.

So 100% it’s not, it is not bread. It is, it is highly processed food.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, it keeps this in mind. This is like, even as it like, okay, suppose you’re an average American family and you’re starting your day, right? You go to your fridge. Your fridge, right Fridge,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You grab your. 2% milk.

Which by the way is nothing like whatever we historically called milk.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s in a big plastic jug that’s that’s given to you in a gallon. Yeah, that’s true. You know, if you go back just two generations, milk was [00:44:00] dropped off by the milkman because you didn’t have easy refrigeration and stuff like that.

And so it was like a completely different part of your lifecycle, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You then go and you pour that on your cereal of another thing that is a new envision

Simone Collins: developed by anti-sex health nut cultists in the United States in the 1930s. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That’s an interesting history by the way. You then, you then put it in your mouse was your spoon?

Oh one one thing That has a degree of historicity to it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. There we go. It’s just that we don’t have our designated spoons that we walk around with all the time anymore.

Malcolm Collins: You then go take a shower. Oh. Daily showers. That’s a modern phenomenon. Yeah. It wasn’t popularized until post 1950s. Marketing by soap in indoor plumbing companies.

Simone Collins: Big soap, huh? Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Big soap. Yeah. Before that they were, they were weekly or potentially even less common.

Simone Collins: Ooh.

Malcolm Collins: And also keep in mind, plastics like your spoon. Well, is your spoon a metal spoon or is it a Tupperware spoon? Is it a, is it another type of

Simone Collins: plastic? Oh, come on. Base campers do not, no base [00:45:00] campers do not eat out of, microwave in or eat with plastic.

Malcolm Collins: Then you, you sit down if you think you are being historic, if you think you’re being all Lindsay with your newspaper, by the way, not even that modern of a phenomenon. Yeah. But in reality, what you’re probably doing is doom scrolling or watching YouTube. Right.

Simone Collins: Even the feed. Even the feed, Andrew Bosworth invented the feed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Who? He was an investor in our first company.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Cool guy. Cool guy. He’d probably be mortified by our politics now, but I like him.

Simone Collins: Maybe, I don’t know. He always seemed kind of based, he seemed more based than we were at the time.

Malcolm Collins: He has kids, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Good for him.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: We should reach back out to him sometime.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: anyway.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Air conditioning

Simone Collins: oh, best invention ever. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: That is your house. No, the point being is, is almost nothing. I, I thought about going into medieval Christmas here in medieval Easter, but that’s Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. But no, we, we did an episode on [00:46:00] that, man.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we did an episode on that and it pissed people off so much because we pointed out that like none of it’s pagan.

And the funny thing is people

Simone Collins: still want it to be pagan. That’s so funny, isn’t it?

Malcolm Collins: No, but the funny thing is, if like, it’s all like invented in like the 1910s or eighties or like whatever, I mean, every, and everybody like wants to believe that all of these traditions, like the Easter Bunny that they can connect it with like these pagans, why is

Simone Collins: this not Satanic

Malcolm Collins: marketing campaign?

It’s like, yes, there, there was within one region of like Germany, like a, a, a bunny that had some festival potentially tied to it, but there is lit one. That changed based on region. So every region was in Germany, had a different animal that was tied to that festival. And two, we don’t have any connections between that festival and modern Easter.

You know so like a lot of this is actually what probably the most historic of all of these traditions of the ones I could find is painting eggs. That that one actually appears to have a degree of historicity to it, [00:47:00] but it was treated as like a religious thing.

Simone Collins: Delightful.

Malcolm Collins: And I was also gonna go into, well here’s some fun stuff we can do about Catholics.

‘cause Catholics are always like, well, our tradition, there’s actually very his, his historic. Right. Okay. And I wanna go into both the theology of Catholicism and its practice has changed so dramatically over the years that it’s really difficult to call it a contiguous tradition. Hmm. I mean, it’s an, it is an iteratively contiguous tradition.

I’ll give it that. But it’s, it’s not as, as much the same thing, like, like historic, if you took a medieval cast, like, well, let’s, let’s go into some of this. Right. Okay. So did you know that you had public confessions and physical punishments, like lashes and flagellation as being standards for confession in the Medieval Catholic church?

Do you wanna go into this a bit? I, because I actually didn’t know about this until I was like,

Simone Collins: I didn’t know about this either. Do tell.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So you would have something called public penance [00:48:00] rituals. So this is from the fourth of the 10th centuries

Simone Collins: public,

Malcolm Collins: say public. Yeah. So for something like incest St.

Basil

Simone Collins: to publicly be like, I am so sorry.

Malcolm Collins: A 10 year process, three years as a weeper, where you would beg at the church doors. Three years as like how

Simone Collins: much? Like all day, every day?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no. During every celebration. Yeah. During the, your church you wouldn’t go in the church. You would instead stand outside the church while everyone else For three years.

Simone Collins: Oh, oh, oh, oh. So on Sunday. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So like,

Malcolm Collins: and you would ask the people who went into the church to pray for you when they were in the church.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But also keep in mind the people who went into the church also were getting a completely different experience when they went into the church. They would not like play any role in the ceremony.

Often the priests wouldn’t even talk to them. They would be speaking in a language that they

Simone Collins: wouldn’t understand. It’s all in. They don’t understand it. Yeah. So they

Malcolm Collins: would just basically,

Simone Collins: by the way, like grassroots level, I am hearing more and more of our [00:49:00] Catholic base camp listeners talking about Latin mass going back in Vogue.

Everyone was like, bring back Latin mass. Right.

Malcolm Collins: But modern Latin mass doesn’t have a lot in common with historic Latin mass.

Simone Collins: I’m sure Modern Latin mass is

Malcolm Collins: still meant to be for the parishioners

Simone Collins: because Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Basically,

Simone Collins: oh, instead of like. Listen, this is for God. You can watch if you want to. You disgusting human.

Malcolm Collins: No, it wasn’t for God, it was for the clergy. So basically the clergy would go and do a little ceremony for themselves that other you, this was so for the clergy that the average parishioner wasn’t even allowed to drink the wine at communion.

Simone Collins: O you can watch, so you can watch the fabulous clergy and their fabulous

Malcolm Collins: clothes there.

I mean, it was called a I think something like optical communion where like you get the communion because you saw the clergyman take the opticum.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: But I mean, think about how hierarchy and stratify that you’re basically going to this event. And the real Christians like the holy people.

They’re up there doing all the [00:50:00] ceremonies, and you just get to be sort of close to it. Meanwhile, Bob is not even allowed to do that. He begs you to pray for him as you walk past him into the church.

Simone Collins: This just sounds like normal sports, okay? This is what people do when they go to watch football on Sundays.

I, I don’t like, there’s no,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, okay. Maybe, maybe, yeah. A bit more sports like or something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so then, then. Three years after being a weeper, you are a hearer, which means you’re allowed to go into the church, but there’s no praying. You’re not allowed to pray while you’re in the church.

And then three years in submission, which is kneeling outside then two years with the faithful, but no communion. But keep in mind, you can only keep bread as communion during this period. And only after full restoration where penitent wore a sack cl sorry, a slash a sack cloth and had ashes strewn on their heads.

And they were expelled publicly. Well, we’ll get into what this being expelled publicly looked like. It was pretty cool. They basically had them [00:51:00] march out of the church, like in front of everyone, in like this big ceremony where they’re being expelled. Like Adam was

Simone Collins: nice. You have your expulsion party.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Very

Simone Collins: exciting.

Malcolm Collins: And, and keep in mind, you’ve had periods where you had things like flagellation, processions this is am mid plagues group. Well, they still

Simone Collins: do that in some like Latin American countries. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Well, the, yeah, yeah. This was, this was done for a long time. It’s just not really done anymore.

You, you still have some groups of Catholic practice Mortifications. Mm-hmm. But you don’t have actually you do have a few grooves, I think in some European countries that still do public flags. Like, I mean, dude,

Simone Collins: there’s some weird places where they like crucify people and march them through the streets to show how badass they are.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A funny one here for adultery, penitent might stand barefoot at the church doors in, in penitent robes begging for prayers, WW from people who are entering. So I wanted to go deeper into this because I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. What Is this about a public confession? Because I didn’t know that this was ever a common thing.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: That’s fascinating.

Malcolm Collins: So in the Medieval Catholic [00:52:00] church, roughly the high Middle Ages 1000 to 14 hundreds, it, it wasn’t exactly a confession in the modern sense. What you had was a ritual called the subm Public penance, or Public reconciliation slash exclusion. Okay. And it was reserved for bigger types of things like murder, sacrilege, heresy, violence in the church, or fraud that everyone in the community knew about.

And the actual confession of the sins was held privately, but then the priest or bishop, they thought it was severe enough. They would then have a more public thing in front of everyone, Uhhuh, where the person was like, humiliated.

Simone Collins: I like that.

Malcolm Collins: Right? It actually

Simone Collins: also, the people know to watch out for this person because they clearly are.

Dangerous.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the penitent, sometimes multiple gathered in the church door, the annex barefoot heads uncovered, dressed in rough s sat cloth sometimes with ashes already on their heads and imp penitent robes, they prostrated themselves and now before the bishop and clergy and then the bishop or delegate [00:53:00] address them, often reading them a long lesson explaining why the church imposes this and how sin separates us from gods.

And then prayers were recited over them. Mm-hmm. And then the bishop sprinkled holy water and placed ashes on their head. And then they faced a symbolic expulsion where they were marched out to these south west doors symbolizing the ejection for paradise of Adam and Eve, saying words like, on account of your sins, you must be expelled from the church.

As Adam was driven from paradise during linin lint penitent were barred from the main part of mass, often leaving the, the homily and excluded from communion. And what’s what’s interesting is why they stopped this, which I, the Alta Finder. So it stopped in the 12th and 13th centuries popularized by a separate practice, the, the totally private thing that was practiced more in Ireland.

And the reason that it was stopped is because,

basically I, I, I, I somewhere else. But they they were [00:54:00] afraid that some people were not com repenting all of their sins because they couldn’t do full communion when they were expelled, and people were afraid that they would die during that period. Oh. And so they needed, like, the, the communion was better for getting rid of their sins and the, in like the lay person.

So they were like, this is just bad because it creates a, a, a bad incentive. And then people would confess all of their sins on their deathbed. Yeah. But they weren’t sure when they were gonna die. And so it created all sorts of negative externalities. Oh. And the, the, the fully private thing wasn’t like totally normalized until the Vatican II reforms in the 1960s.

Simone Collins: Wow. Vatican too, man. That was, it’s a controversial time.

Malcolm Collins: And if you’re talking about theological differences, and note, the reason I’m, I’m, I’m talking about Catholicism here is for two reasons. One is we already went really hard into all of this stuff in regards to Judaism in that one track. So for four

Simone Collins: freaking hours.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. For, for hours. So if you wanna go into that, go into that. Yeah. Everybody knows that Protestantism changes. [00:55:00] Constantly. So yeah.

Simone Collins: What even is it, you know? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There’s

Simone Collins: not, there’s not even a blockchain to look at. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If I wanted to go into the, the Hindu or you know Buddhism I think most Hindus and Buddhists are aware of how frequently their religion changes.

Yeah. So, and they, they don’t watch our channel as much. Yeah. And so I, I guess I could have gone into the Eastern Orthodox Church, but, you know, whatever. Yeah. Which, which also has transformed pretty dramatically over time. Yeah. But another thing is how it’s changed theologically. If you look at medieval theology shaped by people like Thomas Aquinas, it would come off as very salvation by works to modern Catholics.

Mm-hmm. Specifically because there was so much of this treasure of merit where an excess of good works of, of saints and Christ could be drawn upon via indulgences to reduce time and purgatory. This system formalized in councils like Trent, but rooted in medieval practice, made faith feel like a cosmic leisure where sins are tallied up and merits are banked for purgatory.

A fiery, intermediate state of purification, which by the way, I don’t even [00:56:00] think it’s Catholic canon anymore. I remember one of them is like a vague cannon. Now it’s either purgatory or the other one that’s like purgatory. Do you remember what I’m thinking of here?

Simone Collins: I know about purgatory. Oh, wait, there’s that space that Dante walks through first.

That’s a little bit outside hell, but I can’t remember what that’s called. It’s where like everyone went before Jesus existed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think the Vaticans iffy on this, if this is even a thing anymore.

I was thinking of limbo. Sorry, I get the two mixed up all the time. Limbo and purgatory limbo is the afterlife for unbaptized babies. And the Catholic church was very big on this for a very long time. , It was actually a big, like stress thing for Catholics for a long time. And now, , the official stance seems to be it doesn’t exist, which is, I I mean, they, they haven’t confirmed it doesn’t exist.

It’s just they don’t teach it or talk about it anymore and they seem to be moving in that direction. And for me. If your religion has a different afterlife, like [00:57:00] suppose you had one religion that had heaven and hell and then one religion that had heaven, hell, and some other thing, you would call those two separate religions.

Right? And that’s what I mean when I say Catholicism today is not the same religion. It was even, let’s say 150 years ago.

And I think more than that has even less internal continuity than Protestantism, because if you go to Protestantism 150 years ago, at least they still believed in the same set of afterlife. , But with, with Catholicism, the concept of like the metaphysical nature of reality has fundamentally changed, , recently, like in the last 150 years, pretty dramatically.

, Although I will note here when we’re talking about all the cool stuff that Catholics did in the medieval ages, I’m not saying I don’t like this stuff. I think it’s pretty cool. I think the, , you know, the public penance and , the getting whipped in public for sinning, that that stuff is pretty dope.

That stuff is pretty dope. If Catholics went back to that, I’d be pretty on board.

Malcolm Collins: And this would’ve been like a major part that like all Catholics would’ve been very concerned about their babies and stillborns [00:58:00] and stuff like this.

Yeah. Going right. And now it’s like, ah, we’re not even sure that that’s, that’s Canon anymore. It was like a huge part of the metaphysical framework of Catholicism was just like, eh, no, we don’t believe this anymore.

Simone Collins: Erased like

Malcolm Collins: a, a a part.

Simone Collins: Everyone saved games in that zone. Just lost.

Malcolm Collins: A part of heaven was basically shut down.

Everyone evicted. Like, well, not a part of heaven, but a part of the afterlife. They’re like this is, this is maybe not a thing anymore, but that’s what I’m talking about. Like, theology changes. It updates, it, it, it, it. Morphs over time

Simone Collins: as it should, because religion is a technology, a, a software that runs on the hardware of our biology that imparts fitness.

It has to evolve as our environment evolves or it will not continue to impart fitness. That’s just it. That, and breathe the PGS guided to crafting religion that Malcolm wrote that goes into this. Yeah. This is just why, this is why religion exists. You can pretend that it’s about this bigger thing in faith or whatever, and we absolutely believe in a higher [00:59:00] power like a lot of religions do.

I mean, the TLDR is our God is Rocos baes. But I, yeah, I just wish people would accept that and accept that change is inevitable and that we’re all trying to get closer to truth even when that truth is God.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And I think that a lot of people, the, the interesting thing is pretty much everything that would’ve gone into one, one of these ideas, these anti Lindy ideas in a historic perspective these are the things that are being eaten the most by modernity.

If you look, if you, if you did like a ledger on what people would say with very Lindy, they’d say orchestra or Lindy

Simone Collins: they are not conversation

Malcolm Collins: with a

Simone Collins: guy that is disgusting. I loved really early orchestral music. And it’s, what what’s really crazy about it is that even, you know, we’re talking maybe like baroque music or something, the instruments were so different that people wouldn’t know how to [01:00:00] play them.

And that many of these instruments that are being played for a lot of like, of the older music stuff had to be found like hidden in like this deep hidden attic room of some very, very old building that no one knew about. And then people had to learn how to play them again. And these are incredibly rare instruments.

Just like literally the tools used to play certain songs had been lost. For very long periods of time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and these are, this is like the most popular medieval music that you’re aware of. Yeah. The most popular orchestra music you’re aware of is a fabrication within modernity. But not only that, but orchestras themselves are being shut down in large numbers.

I was talking to a guy that was trying to figure out how to get young people to go to and donate to an orchestra. Mm-hmm. And I was like, buddy, you might be able to get them in the door, but they are not going to donate their money to this. That was

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that’s true. Was like, that is thing for the last generation of elites.

Right. You can look at w the, the, the classics in literature. The truth is, is that young [01:01:00] people today. Not only did they not read the classics in literature that much anymore but if you look at something like even movies that you might think had staying power somebody was telling me they tried to show some young people, Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, and they’re like, this is boring.

I

Simone Collins: can’t hear it.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Like,

Simone Collins: I can’t even, and also, yeah. One, one journalist who came to one of our parties was telling me that she, like language also has evolved so much recently, that when she had her son read Little House on the Prairie, which of course was written by a woman who experienced Prairie America, right.

So not that long ago, and then wrote about it in a much later period as an adult. Right. Laura Engles Wilder. He, he had the same difficulty understanding it. That language, which I remember being simple English, my mom read it. The whole books all like the whole series. To me as a kid, as, as we struggled in, in our high school years with reading Shakespeare.

Yeah. Like it was that hard for her son to understand. And this was a [01:02:00] progressive journalist who I’m sure had a very overeducated son and just one child. You know, this isn’t like, you know, some parent who’s like not bothering to educate their child or teach their child how to read. This is, this is an educated, certainly well-read child who is struggling to read Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie because it’s, it’s English is just impossible to understand.

That is wild to me. But I think we, we again don’t even understand how much our language has evolved, which

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Is crazy that you may need the same level of, I don’t know if your high school English, your high school Shakespeare books were like this, but they had the little, like, translations in them, like in the margins or in the footnotes or something of like trying to explain which each line was supposed to be.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that we’re gonna need those for like recent books and like 50 Shades of Gray is gonna those like, but just all in emojis. Like, I don’t even [01:03:00] know anymore.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think literally the only place I can think of where Lindy Effects are still relevant

Simone Collins: Uhhuh

Malcolm Collins: is maybe in the holiday music.

Simone Collins: What? No, like all of the most famous Christmas songs were written by like a Jew in the 1960s.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s still older than a lot of modern music and I think that they’ll likely stay popular for a while, but that is true. Most of the famous Christmas songs were written by Jews in the 1960s. The, the, they do a best,

Simone Collins: they do a best

Malcolm Collins: What?

What’s another one? I, I, I’m trying to think of anything that is actually, the only thing I can think of that is actually Lindy. Is chess, maybe chess is Lindy.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: But what a lot of people don’t know is the rules to chess. The pieces used within chess, head

Simone Collins: changed and earrings. Earrings and certain bracelets.

There’s this one style of bracelet slash necklace that you can see in the British Museum that are very ancient that some like jewelry makers have kept alive. But yeah, [01:04:00] pearl earrings, strings of pearls and certain types of jewelry in that way.

Malcolm Collins: Windows. That might be Lindy. I don’t know,

Simone Collins: like yeah, windows.

Windows

Malcolm Collins: are pretty now, I’m literally struggling to find anything that fits this. And so I’d say when people look at us or our religious beliefs or something like that, and they’re like, oh, that’s so anti Lindy, like, that’s gonna die out. I’m gonna be like, you are going to die out because your beliefs are optimized for a completely different environmental framework, and if you do not update them, they themselves are doomed.

Lindy only works when you have a stable, cultural, technological, and social environment.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: basically what Lindy was all about was being optimized for an ex, like evolutionarily optimized for an explicit environmental context, which was stable, which no longer exists anymore. And so if you don’t have a system that is specifically built or updated to be adaptable to chasing context, you’re outta the game

Simone Collins: word.

Malcolm Collins: Which [01:05:00] fortunately a lot of these systems are, as we pointed out. ‘cause all of them is actually built to constantly adopt adapt and change itself. Judaism is built to adapt and change itself.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Everybody knows Protestantism is, but Protestantism doesn’t pretend that it’s the same thing it used to be.

Whereas a lot of systems that actually are very adaptable pretend that they’re not, because that’s part of their like mythology.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: This an interesting talk to you, Simone, or interesting to go into

Simone Collins: this was, yeah. I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what Lindy is.

Is this James Lindsay? So thanks. Yeah. This turned out to be really interesting. I appreciate you. Alright. Pretty face.

Malcolm Collins: I appreciate your stupid face.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 11: The [01:06:00] fence.

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