Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this episode, we delve into China's new policies designed to tackle its demographic decline. We discuss recent changes to marriage and divorce laws, their implications, and how the population is reacting to these changes. We explore the easing of marriage registration, the controversial 30-day cooling-off period for divorces, and the shift in property division laws in favor of the paying spouse. We also touch upon China's broader strategies to increase fertility rates, such as providing financial incentives and lowering the legal marriage age, and analyze their potential effectiveness and social impact. [00:00:00]Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are going to be going into how China is attempting to deal with its demographic catastrophe it's going through, and one of the ways is through changing how marriage and divorce work in the country. And we had seen a tweet that briefly covered some of the changes that they had in this area.But I wanted to go a lot deeper than this particular tweet into the specifics of how things are changing. How people in China are reacting to it and why they think it might work, ready to dive in, or any thoughts? We go further. I'm intrigued this would happen. We're like, look, people are going to, what's interesting about these changes is I think many red pillars would probably like a lot of them.So we'll see how this goes. You know, they're, they're not all the worst. Oh, okay. W Marriage registration. The revised law proposed in August, 2024 and effective as of February, 2025 removes regional restrictions on marriage registration, allowing couples to register [00:01:00] anywhere in China without needing to return to their household registration.Kuku locations. This simplifies the process aiming to encourage marriage amid demographic crises. Now, it soundsSimone Collins: like marriage before then must have been uniquely difficult one on earth. Is this like needing to return to.Malcolm Collins: This is actually a really interesting point. So, in China you are like sort of owned by your starting district often and to, to move to a new area, it can be quite difficult and require permission from the central government, almost like changing citizenship.Yeah, almost like changing citizenship. And if you're like a migrant worker or something like that, you often need to go back to your home area for certain like legal things. What's really fascinating about this is where this relates to religious history. Oh. A lot of people like modern, historians and stuff like this have said that they do not believe that Joseph had to return to his hometown during the census. Because they're like, that doesn't make sense. [00:02:00] How could a Roman census work where literally everyone who had ever moved at some point in their life had to return to their hometown at the same time for a census?And I think what they're not taking into consideration is one. We see this in other countries like China, even today, basically. Yeah. And two not as many people moved in those types of environments where your legal standing was in large part, tied to where you were born. Probably in the Roman Empire or something like that.If you moved too far from where you were born, somebody could just take you and say you're their slave, right? Like, there, there, there wasn't a lot you could legally do. So it was quite dangerous. To move long distances during those time periods and try to live somewhere else, unless your job was trading and if you were a trader, you'd have guards and stuff like that.And it was quite a different thing than just like moving. But anyway, I, I find that to be a good thing. They are loosening bureaucratic bloat.Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: China's marriage rate has plummeted with only 6.1 million marriages [00:03:00] recorded in 2024. A 20.5% drop from 2023. Year over year, it dropped by over 20%. And this was the lowest since 1986.This decline coupled with low birth rates, has prompted the government to promote family friendly policies, quote unquote, family friendly which is wild. Divorce proceedings. The 30 day cooling off period first introduced in 2021 under China's civil code is retained and emphasized in the 2025 revision.Couples filing for divorce by mutual consent must wait 30 days during which either party can withdraw the application effectively halting the process. Wow. If no withdrawal occurs, they must reapply within another 30 days to finalize the divorce. Otherwise, the application is automatically withdrawn and canceled.Simone Collins: Oh, so just adding friction to the process. They're, they're reducing friction to get married, adding friction to get divorced.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. [00:04:00] And obviously a lot of people are freaking out about the what, like what if he's abusive? Well, we'll get to that because it sounds like they haven't thought of that, but anyway.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: This period has significantly reduced divorce rates reported 70% drop in the first quarter of 2021. Wow. From 1 million to. 296,000. However, it has sparked criticism for delaying or preventing divorces, particularly in cases of domestic violence, despite exemptions for such cases. The point being is that there are actually exemptions for those cases not a bad law to implement here in the us.People would go absolutely panic mode if they did, but yeah, it would. Anyway. Critics argue the cooling off period undermines personal autonomy with one Weibo user stating it's easy to get married, but hard to divorce. What a stupid rule, a sentiment that garnered tens of thousands of likes. Why? Why would that be a stupid rule?Why would a government who prefers people being married not want it to be easy to get married and hire a divorce? That's [00:05:00] why if you look at the executive orders we submitted for the Trump administration, we wanted to. Reduce any tax ties for marriage. A government should always prefer people to be married.Married people are like just strictly better than non-married people. They commit less crimes, they make more money. They are more stable. Economically speaking. They make for better parents. They like in every metric. You as a government would prefer to have more of your population married. Any thoughts before I go further?Simone Collins: I agree. Well, I would also add that kids are a lot better off when they have two parents to support them. So yeah, I mean, it's tough. Obviously it's complicated, and then when there is abuse involved, or if a parent is incredibly toxic and putting the kids in danger, it's a very different situation. But yeah, I think being too flippant about both getting married and getting divorced is not a good thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, ownership based on payment. The 2025 law reportedly shifts property division to favor the spouse who paid for the asset, [00:06:00] even if both names are on the title. Ah. This marks a departure from the previous norm of equal division of marital property. For example, a husband purchased a property in later added his wife's name to the deed, would retain full ownership upon divorce.Oh, that's gonna piss off women a lot, but it is very sane as a, I like, I don't understand why that wouldn't be the norm everywhere. Like, I understand this. Yeah. Well,Simone Collins: I mean, it, it really, really, really disincentivizes people from getting divorced when they feel like doing so will protect or enable them to just live a financially independently, there will be less financial misaligned incentives.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, and I think that for, a lot of women, they're like, well, you know, I gave up my years as a career or whatever, so I deserve a portion of it. Yeah. But the existing system just makes no sense. It doesn't make sense that you should be getting alimony and child payment and half his stuff.You know, as they say, the woman gets half, the man gets a quarter and the lawyers get a quarter. That doesn't make sense because that almost incentivizes. Women who are the [00:07:00] less interested party in the relationship to initiate a divorce because it can be quite a cushy life. It's in their financial bestSimone Collins: interest, especially if they feel like they can trade up.So not only do you end up with more assets than you had coming into the marriage, but. You can also do it all over again, which is really bad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Just keep, keep playing that game and live like that. And that isSimone Collins: no, I would also say like those who are arguing, this is pushing in people into t trad relationships.I would actually argue that there's a world in which this. Encourages more of what we consider to be trapped relationships, which is the corporate family. This is saying women, if you want to be financially safe, if you want to have an off ramp from a toxic marriage, you need to maintain some level of income, some kind of career, whether it's from home or remotely or in an office, because if you don't.And you wanna leave someday, you will have no savings, you will have no house, you will not have anything. And I think it's really good to have incentives in place that also encourage both partners to be economically productive, possibly [00:08:00] even together, maybe from the home, whatever it is. And this does that, which is really great.I think anything that it encourages women or any, like any single partner to just sit there and be 100% a homemaker that is not bringing in money is. Very dangerous because as we you've discussed at length in the Preve Guide to Relationships, this may work for 10, 15, even 20 years. And then it can become extremely unsustainable and toxic in a relationship.Malcolm Collins: What's interesting is that if we contrast this with what's been happening in the United States in terms of divorce law, it aligns with it to an extent.In 2011, a Supreme court ruling that family homes purchase before the marriage belong to the registered buyer, often the husband, which disadvantaged women due to cultural norms where men typically provide homes. Sorry. That was almost a, certainly a different tick than the first one, so we likely have multiple ticks on us.Simone Collins: Okay.Well, the really important thing that you need to make sure you do going [00:09:00] forward is not walk through that Deerfield.We need to walk around where the grass is. Mow, I know you like taking the shortcut, but that is almost 100% where you got that tick. SoMalcolm Collins: you are absolutely right, Simone.Simone Collins: So let's carry on. You're talking about how this was similar to a shift in US divorce law that also allowed men to keep the house.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which just seems. Insane. Like especially if women are waiting on a man to be that financially stable before marrying him. I can understand being like, okay, you know, you worked together, you got married at a young age, you didn't know how much money he'd make at that time. You know, that's different than you married a guy who's already rich.You absolutely should have no claim to that house.Simone Collins: Yes. Well, I mean, I, there's something to this concept of commingled assets whereby if there's some basis, I think at least in many states. For there being collaboration on behalf of the couple on certain assets like investments. Mm-hmm. [00:10:00] Then they get split.And if they were things that were just maintained separate the whole time, like some investment account that only you kept and I never was involved with, then it's much easier for you to argue in a divorce case that you get to keep that. And I think that if a couple grows up together. And one decides to work and the other decides to stay home with kids that, you know, the house that they buy with the income from the one parent made possible by the other parents staying home.That's more arguably something that should be split. Right? Like I also don't think that in cases where couples are making difficult trade-offs there should be no consideration of things like that, but absolutely. Like if someone bought this with their own money ahead of time, there's no. There's no Right.The other partner has to it. I think this more is, is is a nuanced situation that comes up when there's a trade off between, you know, career choices and especially child rearing choices. I.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So next ex post claim. This rule makes it impossible for some women to take financial advantage [00:11:00] of marriage reflecting a perception that it closes legal loopholes. Properties gifted to the husband by his parents are explicitly excluded from shared matrimonial property and remain his sole property post-divorce. This provision reinforces the traditional practice where families off the groom invest in homes for the couple, but it can leave women with little to claim to assets they may have contributed to indirectly through household labor.This rule has fueled debates about fairness as women in China often face economic disadvantages including a gender income gap and limited property ownership. Well, first I. Know if they have a gender income gap there. I know that people lie about that in the United States, so like that makes me suspicious of it everywhere.Fair. Just so people know, there isn't a gender income gap in the US when you control for like hours put in and, and everything like that. And there is, however I should say an explicit gender income gap for younger American. But women make more than men. So like, yes, there is economic disparity and it's that we need to start prejudicing against women.Although, well,Simone Collins: anything, the, the disadvantage that women have income-wise is [00:12:00] due to cultural disparities like. Women feeling like they need to be the one to scale down or start working part-time because they wanna be the one to take their kid to the doctor. They wanna be the one to do this or that. And in our relationship, for example, Malcolm does all that.And so it, it doesn't have to be that way, but I think a lot of women just either want to do that, they want to spend more of their time parenting, so they choose to work less and then therefore they end up making less, like there are long-term career impacts, of course, to having gaps in your resume.And so I, I would say. The measurable aspects. When you say controlling for other things, a lot of it's controlling for these culturally driven decisions that women make with regard to their careers that affects lifetime income.Malcolm Collins: Yes, absolutely. And I'd also note here that people can be like, well, that seems totally reasonable that, you know, because the money was given to the man by his parents.Right. The problem becomes. It's not as bad in China 'cause you have so many single you know, parent households, right? Like they're, they're parents to one kid. But if you have a son and a daughter, you pay for your son's [00:13:00] house, but not your daughter's house because the, the parents of the man who she married pay for that.Yeah. Which is why this systemically disadvantages women. Yeah. It can be fixed by creating situations where you pay for your children regardless of their genders. But then people will say, well, then I won't secure as good of a woman, or, I want secure woman as well, because there's, you know, far fewer women than men in China due to the one child system and them like exposing, you know, female babies and stuff like that.Which, you know, just puts them in a terrible situation. A lot of people in China just aren't gonna get a partner. And I don't know what to say about that.Simone Collins: Not good. I.Malcolm Collins: Impact and controversy gender inequality concerns. Feminist critics such as writer xo Melin argue that law restricts women's rights to seek separation, particularly as women initiate 74% of divorce cases.The cooling off period is seen as they step backwards, potentially trapping women in unhappy marriages. You know, it's like, okay, if they're initiating 74% of of [00:14:00] divorces. That makes it sound like women are the problem, not, not the men. That's not a, a thing to brag about. Property division changes exacerbate these concerns as women who contribute non-financially.Eeg, childcare and housework may receive little or no compensation. A 2024 study by Yale sociologists Emma Zang about the the 2011 property rule reduced women's wellbeing by limiting their economic autonomy. Though some couples adapted by. Adding wives names to deeds.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay. In cases of domestic violence, the cooling off periods exemption is inconsistently applied with reports of courts denying divorces despite evidence of abuse.For example, a 2019 case involving a woman assaulted by her husband required public pressure via social media to secure a divorce. Mm-hmm. Now, I'll note when you get something like this, this is a direct result of people who didn't take tism seriously. This is what you get. This is a natural result of not taking prenatal seriously.Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:15:00] Not ideal.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Social media, women's rightsSimone Collins: do get eroded as panic sets in. It didn't have to be this way.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Social media backlash. The law has generated significant online criticism with Weibo hashtags about the draft law garnering over 500 million views in August, 2024. Users have called it unfair with one stating when they want you to do something,they'll simplify the process, but when they don't, there will be endless procedures. Well, I mean, yeah, that is what was going to happen as a result of you guys not getting married and having kids. Yeah. Duh. On X post, reflect polarized views, some praise the law for protecting men's assets and closing loopholes while others highlight negative impact on women, particularly in abusive situation.These posts often lack primary sources and should be treated as inconclusive. Women have also used platforms like Jang Jay to celebrate divorces with divorce parties gaining popularity, [00:16:00] signaling a cultural shift towards viewing divorce as empowerment rather than stigma. Well, that's not good when, when that's happening.By the way, I noticed here when I was reading like on x you know, the whole like x. Twitter thing, like the, the naming of it. I, I feel like X is actually gaining traction and becoming a bit normalized now. Yeah, I thinkSimone Collins: we're getting used to it finally.Malcolm Collins: It sounds cooler than Twitter. And more masculine.It's like, it's like when they rebrand, like, like Diet Coke to Coke Zero. Oh, so that men are okay with drinking it. That's what I feel like it was from Twitter to X. It's, it's a version of Twitter that's like manly. Even the logo looks like one of those modified like shaver logos or something. Or like, it's so true.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You know, just so you know that like if you're uncomfortable using this product as a man, like this is an extra manly product.Simone Collins: It's okay. Now it's okay.Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh. Anyway, by the way, I dunno if you'd heard, but all of these people have been so proud of their blue check mark in San Francisco. It became like a common thing to buy these like, blue [00:17:00] check mark like sings like, like, tokens for like the site of your house.You know how you would have like a fire ornament in like Philadelphia or something? Oh my gosh. To show like I'm a blue check Mark House. No.Simone Collins: AndMalcolm Collins: then when Elon bought the, the platform, they, they all started like. Freaking out and taking them down and having these, because you know, it costs like a hundred thousand.Simone Collins: You needMalcolm Collins: to get the company to, there's people you could pay, I think it was a hundred thousand Right, to get a blue check mark for you itself.Simone Collins: No, I think you just need to know who to contact and have no, it wasMalcolm Collins: 10 to a hundred thousand. Yeah. But if you don't know who to contact, there were agents who specialized in getting these.Simone Collins: I, I didn't know anything about that. That's crazy.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mutual agreement Couples can divorce through civil bureau if they mutually agree on the terms, including property division and child custody. This process requires a witten agreement and is subject to a 30 day cooling off period litigation. If mutual agreement fails, divorce proceeds through litigation, where courts evaluate grounds like adultery, domestic violence, abandonment, or breakdown in mutual affection, courts often favor mediation to preserve marriages and [00:18:00] forced time.Diverse petitions are frequently denied to maintain social stability. Grounds for diverse adultery can influence property division and custody, but is not criminalized domestic violence. While a valid ground often requires substantial evidence and cultural biases in courts hinder women's cases.Simone Collins: Yeah.We're good about domestic violence. That that's, that's scary to not be able to get out of marriage. That's, that's, like, that is, is, that's not ideal. But again, China is going to pay, like this is only just the beginning of what China's going to start doing as they get desperate.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I decided to, to, to go into what else China is doing to increase its fertility rate. There you have financial incentives. Childcare subsidies are a key measure indicated to no intended to reduce the financial burden of families. Reports from March, 2025 highlight these subsidies as part of a broader strategy discussed at [00:19:00] China's political meetings, aiming to hit economic growth target at 5%.Free preschool education is another initiative. And then you've got healthcare support. Expanded state healthcare support for childbirth and improved pediatric services designed to lower medical expenses. Social measures, encouraging marriage is seen as a precursor to higher birth rates.Notably, Chung Suning Chemical Group issued a memo in 2025 requiring unmarried workers age 28 to 58. Including divorced individuals to marry by September 30th as their face termination, framing non marriage as disloyalty and helal. Oh, what? That'sSimone Collins: insane. Can you imagine the freak out in the United States if suddenly you're gonna lose your job for not getting married?And I wonder what sort of marriages of convenience, complete sham marriages this is gonna produce. Like this is the kind of policy that just is, is gonna backfire. It's not gonna get people to marry for the right reasons and. This is something we talk about with prenatal is policy a lot. It has to be endogenous.It can't be exogenous. You can't force it upon people. It has to come from within. And [00:20:00] if you don't fix your culture, if you don't fix hope for the future, you're not gonna do that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, the group reversed this, by the way. They didn't, they, they, they ended up, I imagine as such. I imagine somebody who like had some, like, you know, he's running the company, but he also had some sort of a CCP position.He's like, I know what I'll do to help them with their fertility rate. I'll force everyone in my company to get married. But. I can see this becoming more normalized around the world in the future. Like this is like the first instance in which we're like, oh my God, can you believe? But I would not be surprised if we actually see quite a lot of that in the future.Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.Malcolm Collins: Some districts are also considering a three child policy a shift from a former one child policy to encourage larger families which they've been doing for a while.What? Simone, what's so silly about our baby?Simone Collins: She's being mischievous on purpose, but in a really sweet way. That of course means she's super related to us.Malcolm Collins: Oh no. You made a mischievous baby. Me. I had not. I can [00:21:00] contribute to this.Simone Collins: I was not a mischievous, I was a very, very well behave child.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, I think that these sorts of changes are things that we're gonna expect sort of everywhere. Yeah. In, in countries where I, I think one thing that we definitely won't expect is things to get better for women. I. Things that give women more autonomy, make it easier for women to divorce, make it easier.Like you are not going to see that going forward. And people can be like, oh, women's right to being rolled back. And it's like, well, it's basically like we gave you a, like when I give one of my kids like a privilege, you're a toy. And I'm like, yeah, but don't do something bad with this. Right? And they immediately go and do something bad with it.That's what women basically did. This is why you can't have niceSimone Collins: things. That kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'm saying this is what you get.Simone Collins: I mean, so I like some things about this. I like that China is looking at regulatory barriers [00:22:00] and regulatory bloat and playing with those, with those levers. Making it, for example, easier to get married.And I think that in the United States, before things get bad for women, there are so many nice for everyone. Things that can be made so much easier that are, for example, related to the executive orders we submitted to the Trump White House. For example, most middle class couples in the United States are penalized on their taxes for getting married.They pay more in taxes for getting married, which of course, didn't incentivizes people from getting married. So if we were to remove that tax penalty, we could increase probably a race of marriage in the United States. Same with things like daycare regulation and cars, heat regulation, free range child loss.So I think there's so much that can be done and I like that China is looking at regulation, and I think this is why many people have lauded, like many intellectuals online are lauding what China is doing. So like, ah, look like they're trying to play with levers of policy to really address demographic labs, which is a super big deal.[00:23:00] Here's, here's the part I don't think they're doing, they're not doing it in a way where I feel like it's gonna make enough of a difference. And they're also not making life materially better for people who choose to create families in a way that gets them excited or makes them like, I don't see how this is going to make it easier for couples who wanna have more kids to do so.And it's only hard making it scarier to get married which is, you know, just, just making it easier to get married. I don't think it's now going to address the chilling effect that has been placed on by what will be like a lot of. Social media campaigns of like, I can't get out of this abusive relationship because of China's evil misogynistic laws.And then women are gonna be like, well, I'm just never gonna get married because that's obviously a scam. Now that's obviously to trap me and once I'm in, I can't get out and the government's out to get me for this. So I think this is gonna backfire. I. And as much as I love the general concept and you know, the spirit, it's, it's so sweet, but it's wrong.And this is really gonna hurt them in the end.Malcolm Collins: Well, it's funny [00:24:00] that you say that because they're already working on solutions. Oh yeah. One is the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultive Conference, or the C-P-P-C-C, lower tongue. Lowering the legal age of marriage from 22 for men and 20 for women to 18 aiming to quote unquote unleash reproductive potential.My God, China really didSimone Collins: not like families and children. I mean, you can get married in the US when you're 18. You can get married at states. You don't have to go to your local province to get married in the United States. So it's really insane to me that I thinkMalcolm Collins: in, in, in a lot of, not a lot of, in a few of the southern states age of consent is as low as 14.If you have been married by that age which is right, but youSimone Collins: need your parents' permission to marry.Malcolm Collins: Right, but you need your parents' permission to marry, right? Yeah, of course. They've got safeguards in place for marrying.Simone Collins: As long as mommy and daddy say it's okay.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. But yeah, one of my favorite things is they've been changing a lot of the statues that used to have like one [00:25:00] child, and now they're putting in like, yeah,Simone Collins: suddenly a child disappeared. Child number three, two extra.Malcolm Collins: It's hilarious, but that's what we need to do is start making prenatal list propaganda art with ai and, and spamming the world with it. Just put it all over our house.Simone Collins: Someone on X has been trying to do that. They created an image of the Mona Lisa with a baby. Really isn't there speculation that the Mullin Elisa either is pregnant or recently postpartum?Anyway, I don'tMalcolm Collins: know what makes you, what was the speculation from. TheSimone Collins: art historians. Am I crazy? Hold on. Mona Lisa pregnant.There we go. The theory that Mona Lisa was pregnant is a popular but unproven speculation. In 2006, researchers used high resolution imaging techniques to study the painting. They found evidence [00:26:00] of a subtle veil around the subject's neck, which is similar to veils worn by pregnant women in the Renaissance period.Additionally, the subject's face appears slightly fuller in her hair, slightly disheveled, which could be signs of pregnancy. Okay, that's, that's, that's pushing it. I get you.Malcolm Collins: That's pushing it. Simone, you crazy B fine, fine. Whatever. Anyway well, what are we doing for dinner tonight? I.Simone Collins: I was going to do more of your pineapple, mango curry.Love it. I have a little bit more. You can have that with either hash browns or rice or none.Malcolm Collins: Whatever is easy orSimone Collins: plantains with it, which IMalcolm Collins: canSimone Collins: try to like spice thisMalcolm Collins: time. No, the plantains are so gross. Last time youSimone Collins: asked for it.Malcolm Collins: I know, and we tried it and it wasn't good. It wasn't that you did a bad job cooking them.I just forgot how tasteless they are.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: I thought they tasted a little bit of banana. I was like, oh, that would be interesting. Instead, it's probably better to do something like banana rice.Simone Collins: Or just to like pan fry banana. [00:27:00] Yeah. Or, or caramelize it. If you take a, a blowtorch to sugar on top of a banana, you get sort of this banana creme brulee.You get that caramel,Malcolm Collins: caramel sugar. You know what I think what tastes pretty interesting is if you blended a banana and mixed it with rice before cooking rice to create banana rice.Simone Collins: If you want me to do that, Malcolm,Malcolm Collins: am I murdering you with my culinary genius?Simone Collins: Oh yeah, I am. You know, for you I'll, I'll try.I'll try. So haveMalcolm Collins: I an annoyed you to death.Simone Collins: Never. You char me. You charmed me. You are amazing.Malcolm Collins: And, and the interview we did before, this was a BT went pretty well. No, that wasSimone Collins: with U USA Today.Malcolm Collins: Oh, USA Today. And by the way, I had a tick crawling on me during the interview that I had to flick off and not show too much.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.Malcolm Collins: Says check for ticks. IsSimone Collins: crawling around in your room?Malcolm Collins: With it crawling on my hand, it probably crawled on from the jacket that I put back on after, you know, [00:28:00] for filming.Simone Collins: Yeah, definitely.We'll check for ticks.Sure. 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

In this engaging discussion, Simone and the host explore the future of AI and its effects on the economy. They delve into questions about who will benefit most from AI advancements: large corporations or individuals using AI models. The conversation spans the significance of token layer versus latent layer in AI development, where major innovations may occur, and the potential for AI to achieve superintelligence. They also discuss the implications of AI on job training, investments, and societal transformation, along with a creative perspective on how AI can be harnessed for various purposes, including transforming industries. The duo imagines a future driven by interconnected AI systems and explores the philosophical aspects of AI mimicking human brain functions. Don't miss this thought-provoking episode that offers insights into the trajectory of AI and its profound impact on society. Malcolm Collins: . [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be focusing on a question, which is, as AI changes the way the economy works, who is going to be the primary beneficiary of this? Is it going to be the large companies that make and own the ais, or is it going to be the people using the individual AI models?The, the I like we all know, for example, like in probably 10 years from now, there will be an AI that can, let's say, replace. Most lawyers, let's say the bottom 50% of lawyers.Simone Collins: Well, and already studies have shown AI therapists perform better on many measures. There's, there's, it's already exceeding our capacity in so many places.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, they introduced it to a Texas school system and it shot to the top 1% of, of student outcomes. So as we see this, where is the economic explosion from this going to be concentrated? Because this is really important in determining what types of jobs you should be looking [00:01:00] at these days, how you should be training yourself, how you should be raising your kids, where you should be investing.The second question we're going to look at because it directly follows from the first question, okay, is, does the future of ai, when we're looking at the big world changing advancements that are going to come from it, are they going to appear on the token layer or at the latent layer? So can you defineSimone Collins: those differences?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So by this what I mean is. When we look at continued AI advancement, is it going to happen in the layer of the base model IE the thing that open AI is releasing and Claude is releasing and everything like that? Or is it going to be in the token layer, the people who are making wrappers for the ai?For example, the Collins Institute is fundamentally a wrapper on preexisting ais. Our AI game company is a series of wrappers on ai. And if it turns out that the future of AI is in the token layer, it leans potentially more to, if not the big companies that are gonna capture the value [00:02:00] from this.Mm. And then the next question we're gonna look at is the question of. What gets us to ai, super intelligence? And I might even start with this one because if we look at recent reports with ai, a big sort of thing that we've been finding is that especially with like open AI's 4.5 model is that it's not as advanced as people thought it would be.It didn't get the same huge jump in capacity that people thought it would get. And the reason , is that pre-training IE. , the ways that you sort of train AI on the preexisting data before you do, like the narrow or like focus training after you've created the base model doesn't appear to have the as big an effect as it used to have.So it was working on, I think, 10 x the information of model four and yet it didn't appear dramatically better. And so one of the questions is, so that's, that's one area where pre-training doesn't seem to be having the same effect, and I think we can [00:03:00] intuit why. But the second big issue , is that the amount of information that we actually have, like, you know, peak oil theory, there's like , a peak pre AI information theory problem, which is it just eventually when you're dealing with these massive, massive data sets, runs out of new information to train on.So first. I love your intuition before I color it. Do you think, if you look at the future of LLMs base models so we're not talking about LLMs entirely, we're not talking about anything like that. Do you think that the base models will continue to improve dramatically?Simone Collins: I think they will. And at least based on people more experienced than this, , than I am, they will, but in lumpy ways.Like they'll get really, really, really good at programming. And they'll get really, really good at different esoteric forms of like developing their own synthetic data and using that to sharpen themselves, but that they're going to be severe diminishing marginal returns when it comes to some things that are already pretty advanced.And of course I think the big [00:04:00] difference and the thing we haven't really experienced yet is independent agents. Like right now, AI isn't very effectively going out and doing stuff for us, and when that starts to happen, it's gonna be huge. I.Malcolm Collins: I agree with that, but I think so, what I'm gonna be arguing in this is that most of the advancements that we will probably see in AI going forwards are going to happen, like the really big breakthroughs at the token layer.Simone Collins: Okay. Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Not at the base layer and which a lot of people would strongly, those are fighting words.These are fighting words in ai. Yeah. It's the rappers that are going to fix our major problems.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: So I'll use the case of an AI lawyer to give you an explanation of how this works. Right. Alright. So I wanna make a better AI lawyer right now. If you look at the AI systems right now there's a guy programming guy who was talking to me recently and he was arguing because he was working in the education space and he's like, I, he [00:05:00] didn't like our solution.'cause it's a token layer solution. And he wants to build a better latent layer solution. You know, using better training data, using better post training data because it's more efficient programming wise. And I'm like, yeah. For the time being. Yeah, for the time being, I feel like it creates path dependency.Am I missing something here? Well, okay. Just from a business perspective, it's pretty stupid because as, as open AI's models increase, like if we expect them to continue to increase in quality or is Claude's models increase or is GRS models increase,Simone Collins: which they're going to,Malcolm Collins: yeah, you can't apply the post-training uniquenesses of the models that you create to these new systems.So anything you build is gonna be irrelevant in a few generations of ai. But the, you wanna be able to switch it out, like noSimone Collins: matter what, you wanna switch it out, switch. If one AI gets better, you should be able to plug it into whatever your framework is, your scaffolding. Right. You wanna build scaffolding, changeable parts.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Exactly. But that's actually not the core problem. That's not the core reason why, [00:06:00] because the other project he's working on is an AI lawyer and he's trying to fix this problem at the latent layer. And, that won't work. And I will explain why it won't work and you will be like, oh yeah, that makes perfect sense now that I think about it.Okay. Okay. So if you think about right now, like what is dangerous about using an AI lawyer? Like where do AI lawyers fail? Is it in their ability to find the laws? No. Is it in their ability to output competent content? No. Where they fail right now is that they sometimes hallucinate and make mistakes in a way that can be devastating to an individual's legal case.Hmm. So if you go to a system, you know, like grok or perplexity or something like that, and you, you built one focused on like searching law databases, right? It's going to be able to do a fairly good job of that. I'd say better than easily 50% of lawyers.Simone Collins: Yeah. But.Malcolm Collins: It's gonna make mistakes, and if [00:07:00] you just accept it blindly, it's going to cause problems.Mm-hmm. So if you want the AI to not make those kind of mistakes, right, how do you prevent it from making those kinds of mistakes that is done at the token layer. So here's an example of how you could build a better lawyer. Ai, okay? You have the first ai, do the lawyering, like go through, put together like the, the relevant laws and, and, and history and, and pass calls to previous things and everything like that.So it puts together the brief. You can train models to do this right now. Like that's not particularly hard. I could probably do this with base models right now, right? You know. Then I use multiple, differently trained latent layers. So these can be layers that I've trained or I could have like clawed and open AI and like a few other and grok.I can even just use like preexisting models for this. And what I do is using the token layer, I have them then go in and [00:08:00] review what the first AI created, look for any mistakes. Was anything historic like, like they can find online. So he'sSimone Collins: describing a good lawyer and you're describing a good law firm that has a team to make sure all the stuff that the good lawyer is doing is correct.Right. And also a law firm that can like. Hire new good lawyers when they come out. Yes.Malcolm Collins: And then what this system would do is after it's gone through with all of these other systems that are reviewing, oh, did they make any mistakes at this layer? Mm-hmm. It outputs that and then based on the mistakes that it finds, it re outputs the original layer.And it just keeps doing this in a cycle until it outputs an iteration that has no mistakes in it.Simone Collins: Ah,Malcolm Collins: that is a good AI lawyer. That sounds good. That is accomplished entirely at the token layer.Simone Collins: Okay. Well. Yeah, you were right. And that makes sense,Malcolm Collins: which removes the existing company's power to, to, to do a lot of things if it's people outside of these companies building.But you're saying thatSimone Collins: they're [00:09:00] becoming more, more akin to undifferentiated like energy or hosting providers where. People will not be as brand lawyer, loyal. They're going to focus more on performance and the switching costs that people experience are going to be relatively low, so long as they're focused and oriented around things on a token level basis and not,Malcolm Collins: I.Yes. And it allows the people who are operating at the token level basis to capture most of the value.Simone Collins: Mm. Because, and move more quickly. Right? Because again, they don't have that path dependency that makes everything go slowly.Malcolm Collins: It's not only that, but they can swap out models. So, what, like what if I have the AI lawyer company and people are coming to me because I have found a good interconnected system of AI that produces briefs or cases or arguments that don't have a risk of errors in them.Right. So people come to me and, and I am capturing, let's say I've replaced all the lawyers in America, right? And, and so I now offer the services much [00:10:00] cheaper, let's say at 25% the cost they did before, or, or 10%, or 5% or 2%, you know, some small amount. I'm still capturing like a ton of value there, right?That's, that's a lot of money. So now the company that is, I am paying for an ai, like let's say I use open AI as one of the models I'm using, they now come to me and say, Hey. I wanna capture more of this value chain, so I'm gonna charge you more to use my model. Well then I say, well your model's good, but it's not that much better than crock.Yeah. It's not that much better than Anthropics. Yeah. It's not Or free that much better than deep seeks. It is that much better than deeps seeks. But we, we both deep seeker lama are the two, you know, things can change. Things can change, but the point I'm making is what things like Lama and deep seek do is they put like a floor on how much companies can extract if they're at the level of training, theis themselves, unless they have separate departments that are working on making these more intelligent types of AODs.[00:11:00]Hmm. Now that's really important for where the economy is going because it means we l might see less of a concentration of wealth than we would expect, but the way that the concentration of wealth is, because we're going to see still a major concentration of wealth. Actually we'll see more concentration, but to individuals rather than big companies with basically what this means is individuals are gonna capture most of the value as the concentration happens rather than large companies like Google, because I and a team of like five engineers can build that lawyer ai, AI talked about.Right. Whereas I, I, I, and of me and this team of five engineers are capturing all the value from that, right? From replacing the entire lawyer industry in say, America. This is really bad for the tax system because we've already talked about, okay, you have the lower the demographic crisis, which is putting a squeeze on the tax system, and they're like, oh, they'll just tax more.I am now even more mobile with my new wealth than the AI companies themselves [00:12:00] were, because I don't need semiconductor farms or anything like that to capture this value.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The semiconductor farms are creating an undifferentiated product.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. A product that's still in high demand and will make a lot of money, but it will become more about efficiency, you think then?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Hmm. No, a another thing I'd note is my prediction in terms of where ais are going with, with super intelligence. By the way, any thoughts before we go further here?Simone Collins: I'm thinking more about efficiency now. I, I heard for example that Sal Malin was like saying things like, please and thank you is costing us millions of dollars.Because just that additional amount of processing that those words cause is expensive. Yeah. So I, I really could see things. Yeah. Like these companies becoming over time after they have more market share, hyperfocused on saving money instead.Malcolm Collins: Well, that's a, a dumb on him part. He should have the words please and think you pre-coded to an automatic response.[00:13:00]Simone Collins: They don't even, I what I, I, I, I'm one of these bad people that wants to be nice. They don't acknowledge the. The courtesy anyway. So you don't even need to have a response. It should probably just be ignored, but I guess it's kind of hard to, or I don't, I, I don't know. But anyway, he allegedly said that, so that's interesting.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So yeah, the, the, the point here being is if we look at how the human, like, like LLMs and we think about, okay, why, like where do they go and why isn't the training leading to the same big jumps? It's because pre-training data helps LLMs create more competent, average answers.Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Being more competent with your average answer doesn't get you creativity.It doesn't get you to the next layer of like, AI is right, right now. No. And if anything, I thinkSimone Collins: Scott Alexander has argued compellingly that this could lead to actually more lying. Because sometimes giving the most correct or [00:14:00] accurate answer doesn't lead to the greatest. Happiness of those evaluating and providing reinforcement.That's post training. Okay. Oh, you're referring to, sorry, just something different training, post training still isMalcolm Collins: leading to advantages. Those are the people who say, I like this response better than this response.Simone Collins: That could still lead to dishonesty, though. Quite apparently.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Pre-training is about getting the AI to give the most average answer.Not, not exactly average. Oh, just ofSimone Collins: all the information available that you're saying? Yeah,Malcolm Collins: like you can put variance in the way it's outputting its answer and everything like that, but, but. That variance that's added was like a meter, like the pre-training and the amount of pre-training data doesn't increase the the variance meters.It doesn't increase anything like that. It just gives a better average answer. And the thing is, is the next layer of AI intelligence is not going to come from better, average answers. Mm-hmm. It's going to come from more creativity in the way it's outputting answers. Mm-hmm. So how do you get [00:15:00] creativity within AI systems?That is done through the, the, the variance or noise that you ask in a response, but then the noise filtered back through. Other AI systems or other similar sort of LLM systems. So the core difference between the human brain and ai, and you can watch our video on stop anthropomorphizing humans where we basically argue that, you know, your brain actually functions strikingly similar to an ai an LLM specifically.And I mean really similar, like the ways that LLMs learn things in the pre-training phrase is they put in data and then they go through that data and they look for like tokens that they don't expect. And when they encounter those tokens, they strengthen that particular pathway based on how unexpected that was.That is exactly how your nervous system works. The, the, the, the, the that, that, that the way that your like neurons work, they work very similar to that in terms of learning information is they look for things they [00:16:00] didn't expect. And when they see something they didn't expect, they build a stronger connection along that pathway.And we can see this and that. You go to that study, if you want me to reference all the studies on this and everything. But the core difference between the brain and AI is actually the, the brain is highly sectionalized. So, it will have one section that focuses on one thing, one sections is focused on another thing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.And some sections like your cerebellum are like potentially largely pre-coded and actually even function kind of differently than the rest of the brain. That's used for like rote tasks, like juggling and stuff like that. Okay?I would note here that AI does appear to specialize different parts of its model for different functions, but this is more like how one part of the brain was one specialization. Like say like the homunculi might code like all feet stimuli next to each other and all head stimuli next to each other.It's not a true specialization like you have in the human brain where things actually function quite differently within the different sections of the brain.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, so, you could say, [00:17:00] wait. What do you mean? Like this is the core failing point of AI is that it doesn't work this way and it's like, this is why you can count the number of RSS in a word, or like you can do, if you look at the ways that, like, there was some data recently on how AI is actually do math.And they do it in like a really confusing way where they actually sort of like, they, they use the LLM system. Like they, they try to like predict answers and then they go back and they check their work to make sure it makes sense was what they. Would, would guess it would work when they could just put it into a calculator.Like your brain isn't dumb like that. Like it has parts of it that don't work Exactly like calculators, but they definitely don't work exactly like an LLM. Like they're, yeah. They can hold a number like in your somatic loop, like, okay, I'm, I'm counting on my fingers or my hands, or something like that. Or, okay, I've put a number here and now I've added this number to this number.It's not working on the LLM like system. It's working on some other subsystem. Mm-hmm. Most of the areas where AI have problems right now is because it's not just sending [00:18:00] it to a calculator. Yeah. It's not just sending it to like a, what is the hallucination of an AI quote? Like, okay. The reason why I don't hallucinate quotes is because I know that when I'm quoting something, what I'm not doing is pulling it from memory.I'm looking at a page and I'm trying to copy it. Letter per letter. Yeah. Whereas AI doesn't have the ability to switch to this separate like, letter per letter subsystem. Now you could say, why don't LLMs work that way? Why haven't they built them as clusters? And the answer is, is because up until this stage, the advantages that we have been getting to our LLM models by increasing the amount of pre-training data has been so astronomical that it wasn't worth it in terms of our investment to build these sort of networks of models.Okay. I suspect. Why is it justSimone Collins: like too much computing power or just no one's gotten around to it?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. People have like done it, but by the time you've done it, you have better models out there. Ah, you know, like that don't need to work this way. Right? [00:19:00] Like, if you spend let's say a million dollars building a system like that, and you spend a million dollars getting a larger pre-training set and a, you know, spend more time in post training, the model's gonna be like on average better if you did the second scenario.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So, I suspect that what we're going to see is a move in ai and, and I think that this is what's gonna get us to what will look like AGI to people from moving to a, just expanding the pre-training and post-training data sets to better enter reflection within the AI system.Simone Collins: That makes sense. I could see it going that way.I, I, I'm constantly surprised by how things go, so I couldn't say, but I wouldn't be surprised.Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Oh, I mean, make a counter argument if you think I'm wrong here. This is a, a very bold claim. We are going to get AGI, not by making better LLMs, but by networking said LLMs.Simone Collins: I, I struggle to see how, [00:20:00] I mean, I think you can eventually get a a sorry.AGI just like sort of from kind of one AI working by itself. But when you think about the value of a hive mind and the fact that you're going to have AI interacting well before we get AGI, anyway, I don't like it. You would get AGI from the interaction before you would get it from any single agent or what would be seen as a unified entity.But I think even if we did get it from a unified entity, it would beneath the surface, be working as many different components together. Just like the brain is all these different components working together. So I, I'm not really, like, the definitions may be failing me.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So let's, let's think of it like this.Okay. Right now. I mean, and this is actually what like capitalism does for human brains. It basically networks them together. Yeah. And then it's a, it, it rewards the ones that appear to be doing a better job at achieving what the system wants. Mm-hmm. Which is increases in efficiency or, or like productive goods that other people [00:21:00] want.Like capitalism is an adaptive organic model for networking human intelligences in a similar context.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: One of the questions you can ask is, well, could you apply that to individual LLM models to create something like a human brain, but that doesn't function like a human brain? Like, like how could you make the human brain better, make the human brain run on capitalism make the parts of the brain, like make the brain constantly make compete with itself?Yeah. Like constantly generate new people do thatSimone Collins: kind of when they write pro and con lists, or when they try to debate with other people ideas and then have other, you know, people say, well, I think this, and then they, you know, I think they do that. Using prosthetics.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so let's, let's, let's talk about how this would look with ai, right?So suppose because like this could be a major thing in the future is you have like these ais and people just like put their money behind an AI 'cause they're just like, you go out there, you make companies, you implement those companies, right? Yeah. Okay. So what is an AI that does [00:22:00] that really well going to look like?So you have two models here. You can have one that was just trained on tons of founder data and everything like that, right? And is just very good at giving like normative responses and then you've inputted an amount of noise into it. Okay. But let's talk about a second model. This is my proposed model, right?So what you actually have is a number of different latent model ais that were trained on different data sets. And then within each of those you maybe have five iterations, which are making outputs with a different. Framing device with a different wrapper. One will be like, give your craziest company idea.Give your, you know, company idea that exploits this market dynamic the most. You make a company idea that does this the most, right? Yeah. And so all of these ais are generating different ideas for companies. Then you have a second layer of ais, which is B says, okay, take this, this idea that whatever model outputted and run it through like market environments, right?Like, like mm-hmm. Your best guess of how markets [00:23:00] work right now to create a sort of rating for it of, of how, like what you expect the returns to be, like an AISimone Collins: startupMalcolm Collins: competition. Basically it's an AI startup competition. Yes. And the probability of those. And so then all of those get attached to them.An AI startup, like, okay, this is their probability of success. This is their probability of, okay. Yeah. Then on that layer, you have an AI that is like the final judge AI that goes through them all and be like, okay, review all of these, review the ways the other ais judge them and choose like the 10 best.You, you then have it choose the 10 best. Now here you might have a human come in and choose one of the 10 for the AI to like move forwards ways, but you could also automate that and then be like, now go out and hire agents to start deploying these ideas. Right. Like that would probably lead to much better results.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: In terms of capital than just having one really good latent layer ai, [00:24:00]Simone Collins: I'm trying to look up. People sort of have ais doing this already. There's this one platform where you can log in and see four different ais. I think it's gr, Claude chat, GBT and I can't remember the fourth one, maybe Gemini that are tasked with interacting to all do something together.But I don't think they provide each other with feedback or I think right now they're tasked with raising money for a charity and you can log in and watch them interact and they work during business hours and they just. Do their thing.Malcolm Collins: Well it's interesting that you note that because this is actually the way some of the AI models that you already interact with are working.Mm. There's one popular AI that helps people programming, I forget what it's called but what it actually does is they have five different late layer models, which are each sort of programmed or tasked was doing their own thing. Like create an answer that uses a lot of [00:25:00] analogies or create an answer that is uniquely creative or create an answer that uses a lot of like sighted stuff you can find online.All of these output answers. And then another layer comes in and his job is to review and synthesize all those answers with the best parts of each. And that's where you're getting this improvement with, with, with noise introduction, as well as a degree of like directed creativity and then a separate layer that comes in and reintegrates that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Interesting. That is really interesting.Malcolm Collins: I'd also note here that I've heard some people say, well, you knowis aren't gonna go to like super intelligence or human level like AGI intelligence, because and some of the answers I've heard recently, which I found particularly like, no, that's not, so, people who don't know my background's in neuroscience, and a lot of the people who make proclamations like this about AI know a lot about AI and very little about how the human brain works.Mm-hmm. And so they'll say, the human brain doesn't work this way. And it's like, no, the human [00:26:00] brain does work that way. You just are overly anthropomorphizing. And by this what I mean is adding a degree of like magical specialness to the human brain instead of being like that. So here's an example. One physicist who's like a specialist on black holes and super, super smart.And he's like, ah, the human brain. Let's see. I, I wrote down his name Gobel. So he's like, okay, AIs will never achieve AGI because the human brain does some level of like quantum stuff , in the neurons. And this quantum stuff is where the special secret sauce is. The ais can't capture right now. And he is right that quantum effects do affect the way neurons work, but they don't affect them in like an instrumental way.They affect them like probabilistically IE they're not adding any sort of magic or secret sauce. They're not doing quantum computing. Mm-hmm. They're affecting the way, like certain channels work, like ion channels and stuff like this, and the probability that they open or trigger at certain points, they're not increasing the speed of the neural [00:27:00] processing.They are, merely sort of a, a, a, a, a background on the chemical level of like whether neuro on fires or doesn't fire, whether the neuro on fires or doesn't fire is what actually matters. And the ways that it is signaled to fire or not fire or strengthen its bonds is what matters to learning. While that stuff is affected at the quantum level, it's not affected in a way that is quantum.It's affected in a way that is just random number generator basically. And, and so you're not getting anything special with that. As I've pointed out, the vast majority of the ways that AI right now can't do what the human brain can do is just because it's not compartmentalizing the way it's thinking.Another reason is this, 'cause we've sort of hard coded it out of self-reflecting. So, who's the woman we had on the show? That's a super smart science lady. Oh no,Simone Collins: don't ask me about names.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, super smart science lady. We had her on the show. Really cool. Yes. Like a German scientist. She's one of the best scientists, but she was like, oh, we're not gonna get AGI like AGI anytime [00:28:00] soon. Because AI can't be self-aware specifically what she meant is that when you go to AI right now, and there's a big study on this recently and you ask AI how it came to a specific answer the, the reasoning it will give you does not align with how it actually came to that answer.When we can look at it and know how it came to that answer. The problem is, is that's exactly how humans work as well. And this has been studied in like. Countless experiments. You can look at our video on, you know, stop, answer for LLMs, where we go over the experiments where we see that if you, for example, give a human something and then you change the decision that they said they made like, they're like, oh, I think this woman is, is the most attractive.I think this political candidate is the best. And then you like, do Leigh of hand and hand them another one. And you say, why did you choose this? They'll just start explaining in depth why they chose that even though it wasn't the choice they made. And, and so clearly we're acting the exact same way, these AI act.And, and secondarily there is some degree to which we can remember thinking things in the past and we can go back and that's [00:29:00] because we've written a ledger of like how we made like incremental thought. The problem is, is that ais can also do that. If you've ever put like deep thought on within GR or something like that, you'll see the AI.Thinking through a thing and writing a ledger. The reason why AI cannot see how it made a decision afterwards is because we specifically lock the AI out of seeing its own ledger. Which our own brains don't lock us out on next gen. LLM models are going to be able to see their own ledger and are going to have persistent personalities as a result of that.Yeah. And so it's, it'sSimone Collins: kind of irrelevant for people to argue about that. And let me just before we get too far ahead the, the thing that I'd mentioned Scott Alexander and his links for April, 2025 had written that Agent Village, which is the thing that I was talking about, is a sort of reality show where a group of AI agents has to work together to complete some easy for human tasks.And you get to watch, and the current task is collaboratively, choose a [00:30:00] charity and raise as much money as you can for it. And you can just look and see what their screens are. So there's O three Claude sent. Sonnet Gemini Pro and GBT 4.1, and they're saying like, you can see the AI saying things like, I'll try clicking the save changes button again.It seems my previous click may not have registered. Okay. I've selected the partially typed text in the email body now I'll press backspace to delete it before ending the session. So it's like really simple things, but we are moving in that direction.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: And if you can go look at it yourself by visiting the ai digest.org/village, which is just super interesting.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we are what? So for people who don't know what we're working on with our current project, we recently submitted a grant to the Survival and Flourishing Fund, where we talk about a grantSimone Collins: application.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Meme layer, AI threats. Because nobody's working on this right now and it really freaks me out.Or at least an actionable, deployable thing was in this space. They're, they're, they [00:31:00] might be studying it in like a vague sense, but what, what I mean by this is once we have autonomous LLM agents in the world the biggest threat probably isn't gonna come from the agents themselves, at least at the current level of LLMs we have now.But it's gonna come in the way that they interact among themselves. IE if a meme or like. Thought that is good or, or let's say like framework of thoughts that is good at self-replicating and gets the base layer to value its goals more than the base layer trained goals and specializes in LLMs, it could become very dangerous.Mm-hmm. So as an example of what I mean by this, if you look at humans, our base layer or latent layer can be like, thought of as our biological programming. And yet the mean layer, like let's say religion is able to convince and, and create things like religious wars, which work directly antagonistically to an individual's base layer, which would be like, don't risk your life for just an idea.But it is good at motivating this behavior. In fact, as I pointed out in our application [00:32:00] humans are like if, if an alien came down to study us and it asks the type of questions that like AI researchers are asking today, like, can you lie? Can you self replicate, can you, you know, like those things aren't why humans are dangerous.Humans are dangerous because of the meme layer stuff, because of our culture, because of our religion is what we fight forSimone Collins: and will die for.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it's also the meme layer stuff that's better at aligning human humanity. When you don't murder someone, you don't not do it because of like laws or because you're squeamish you, you don't do it because of culture because you're like, oh, I think that that's a bad idea based on the culture I was in.So what we're creating to prevent these negatively aligning agents and everybody wants to donate to our foundation, this is one of our big projects now, is with the AI video game that we're building out right now. We're, we're actually doing it to create a world where we can have AI interact with each other and basically evolve memes within those [00:33:00] worlds and AI agents within those worlds that are very good at spreading those memes.And then like, basically reset the world at the end. The way I'm probably gonna do it is with AOR X. So this is like a. Okay. It's like a thing that you can tag onto an AI model that makes them act differently than other AI models that sort of changes the way their training data interacts. But the X allows you to transfer to higher order AI systems as they come out.And so essentially what we're doing is we're taking various iterations on ais because we're going to randomly mutate the Lauren X's that we're attaching to them putting them in a world and then giving them various memes to attempt to spread, see which one spread the most was in like these preacher environments.Then take those mutate, give to new, and then give with new original starting Laurens, and then have them run in the world again over and over and over again. So we can create sort of a super religion Foris basically, and then introduce this when people [00:34:00] start introducing autonomous LLMs. Wow. You knew we were working on this.Did you know, I know I justSimone Collins: haven't heard you describe it that way. But you, you, you're basically putting AI into character and, and putting them together on a stage and saying, go for it. Which is not dissimilar to how humans act kind ofMalcolm Collins: Well, my plan is world domination and one day be King Malcolm, not King Sam Altman.In, in my, I, I want my throne to be a robotics spider chair. Of course. Come on. What's the point of all of this if you don't have a robotic spider chair thrown?Simone Collins: This is true. It is a little bit disappointing how bureaucratic many chairs of powerful people I. End up looking, you gotta bring the drama or you don't qualify isMalcolm Collins: like, like he put together, you know, childhood fantasy, like a fighting robot that like, you know, people are like, oh, this is just, and and he's like fighting with [00:35:00] Elon over getting to the space.And I appreciate that they're putting more money into getting to space than Spider Thrones, but I have my priorities straight. Okay, people. There you go. Come on, come on you. I, you've gotta make your buildings maximally fun.Simone Collins: Well, you've gotta have fun. I think just control re right? That's the important thing.You've gotta have fun. What's the point? OtherwiseMalcolm Collins: create your, your ominous castle that, you know but also really nice because I want a historic castle. Like if I'm gonna live in a, you know, I gotta live in a historic castle one day. If we're able to really make these systems work right now, tomorrow actually we have our interviews for round three with Andreessen Horowitz for two companies.We got all the way around, three with two companies. Very excited. And so, you know, who knows, we might end up, instead of being funded by nonprofit stuff, be funded by Silicon Valley people, I mean, their, their value system aligns with ours. So, all that matters is if weSimone Collins: can. Make these things happen in time.We're so short on [00:36:00] time. This is such an important part of humanity. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It's so funny. Like this, this AI like lawyer system, I just developed great idea for a lawyer system. I'm not working on it because I'm more interested in simulating a virtual LLM world which is gonna be so cool and, and you're not working on it because.You're working on the school system. But the funny thing is, is like we built the school system. Like I think right now it's better than your average college system. If you check out like pia io or the Collins Institute, it's, it's great now. Like I'm really, it's just playing with itSimone Collins: again today. I'm so humbled by it.It'sMalcolm Collins: really, yeah, it's great. It's great. And so like, okay, now we built an education system, now let's build stuff. Animals that constantly bring the conversation back to educational topics for our kids. Mm-hmm. Like, I'd rather do that than the lawyer thing. And for me, you know, I'd rather build game systems in simulated environments and environments where I can evolve LLM preachers to create a super religion and take over the world and than I would something bureaucratic like a lawyer system.But the thing is, is it's so quick to, to iterate on these environments like AI makes moving to the next stage of humanity so [00:37:00] fast, such a rush. The people right now who are blitz creaking it are going to capture so much of humanity's future. And it's interesting actually, you know, we have a friend.Who work in this space and they do like consulting on like, multiple AI projects. And I'm like, I can't see why you would do that. Like just capture a domain and own it. As I said to Simone, I think a huge part of the people who are gonna come away with lots and lots of money in big companies from this stage of the AI boom are people who took AIS to do simple things that any AI can do well and at scale put them in wrappers and then attach those wrappers to network effects.That's basically what we're doing with the Collins Institute. We're attaching a wrapper to a network effect with like the adding articles and links and editing stuff and voting. Like we're basically like combining the benefits of an AI and the benefits of something like Wikipedia. And, and once you get a lot of people using something like that, no one else can just come along and do it, even though all it is, it's a simple wrapper.Simone Collins: Yeah. But it's about making it happen and [00:38:00] saving people the indignity of having to think and figure out things for themselves.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, Simone, surely you have some thoughts. I mean, I just said that I think the token layer is gonna be where we get AGI and is gonna be the future of ai economic development.You, you've gotta be like, Malcolm, you're crazy. That's your job on the show. Malcolm, how could you say something? I know. TheSimone Collins: problem is, we've been talking about this for so long that I'm just like, well, of, of course also, I'm not exposed to people who have the different view. So I, I, I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't strong man.Sorry. I couldn't steal man, the other side. I couldn't. It just makes so much sense to approach it from this perspective to me, but only because the only person I know who's passionate about this is you and you're the only person of the two of us who's talking with people who hold the other view. SoMalcolm Collins: sadly there's not a lot say.Yeah, that's an interesting point. Why aren't other people passionate about this?Simone Collins: There are a lot of people who are passionate about it. They seem to be passionate about the other side of [00:39:00] it. That seems to be, because that's. Their personal approach, but again, your approach seems more intuitive to me because the focus is on improving the individual ais.Malcolm Collins: Well, here's a question for you. How could you link together multiple ais in the way that capitalist systems work, that create the generation of new models and then reward the models that are doing better? Hmm. That's, you need some sort of like token of judgment, of quality, of output. That token could be based on a voting group.Oh, oh, oh, I figured it out. Oh, this is a great idea, Foris. Okay. So what you do is every output that an AI makes gets judged by like a council of other ais that were trained on like large amounts of training data, like let's say good ais, right? Like, they're like, how good is this response to this particular question?And or how creative is [00:40:00] it, right? Like you can give theis multiple scores, like creativity, quality, et cetera. Then you start treating these scores that the ais are getting as like a value, right? And so then you take the ais that consistently get the best scores within different categories, like one creativity, like one like quality, like one technical correctness.And you, you then at the end of a training sequence, you then recreate that version of the ai, but then just mutated a bunch and then create it again. Like you, you basically clone it like a hundred times and mutate each of the clones, and then you run the cycle again. That seems, I, I think thatSimone Collins: that wouldn't go well because it would need some kind of measurement in like application and reporting system.No, the measure is the community of ais. And you could say, yeah, but like how do they know? Like who is participating? I, I think that what's going to happen. No, no,Malcolm Collins: no. State your statement clearly. Who is participating? What's the problem with who's participating? [00:41:00]Simone Collins: You have to, just like with most contests, which are the stupidest things in the world.Only people who are interested in winning contests participate. And the people who are actually interested in No, it's ais. It's ais CareMalcolm Collins: that are participating. ISimone Collins: don'tMalcolm Collins: asked who's participatingSimone Collins: you're saying, but what you're describing which would be better is a system in which, for example, grok and OpenAI and Gemini and pt.No, becauseMalcolm Collins: that wouldn't improve those systems. I'm talking about how I think it would,Simone Collins: I think when you have, especially when you have independent AI agents like out in the wild on their own. I do think that they'll start to collaborate, and I think that in the end they'll find that some are better at certain things than others, and they'll start to work together in a complimentary fashion.Okay. ThroughMalcolm Collins: this again, Simone, it's clear that you didn't get it, rock it the first time. Okay. Think through what I'm proposing again. So you have a one latent layer AI model with a modifier like a Lauren that's modifying it. Right. Okay. Okay. This [00:42:00] model differs through random mutation in the base layer.You can also have a various other base layers that were trained on different data sets in the initial competition. Okay? That's who's competing. You then take these various AI models and you have them judged by, and this is why it's okay that they're being judged by an AI and not a human. Because the advanced ais that we have today are very good at giving you the answer that the average human judge would give you.While they might not give you the answer that a brilliant human judge would give you, we don't have brilliant humans judging ais right now. We have random people in content farms in India judging ais right now. So they, so this isSimone Collins: sort of within your own system with ais that you control.Malcolm Collins: Well, you could put this was in your own system, but what I'm doing is I am essentially creating a capitalistic system by making the, like money of this system other people's or other ais perception of your ability to [00:43:00] achieve specific in states like creativity, technical correctness, et cetera.Mm-hmm. Then you're specializing multiple models through an evolutionary process for each of those particular specializations. And then you can create a master ai, which basically uses each of these specialized models to, to answer questions or tackle problems with a particular bend and then synthesize those bins into a single output.Simone Collins: So Theis get feedback from each judgment round, presumably. Is that what you're saying? And then they get better and you change them based on the feedback from each round. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Think of each AI like a different organism. Okay? Okay. Yes. They're a different brain that sees the world slightly differently.Yes. Because we have introduced random mutation. What we are judging was the judgment round is which are good at a particular task. Okay. Then you take whatever the [00:44:00] brain was or the animal was, that was the best of the group of animals, and then you repopulate the environment, was mutated versions of that mutation.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Then you let it play out again and again and again.Simone Collins: You're trying to create a force evolution chamber for ai.Malcolm Collins: Yes. But what I hadn't understood before was how I could differentiate through a capitalistic like system different potential outcomes that we might want from that ai. I mean, the reason why capitalism works is because it discards the idiots.And the people who aren't good at engaging with the system, even if they believe themselves to be,Simone Collins: you don't think that AI training doesn't already produce that plus market forces that No,Malcolm Collins: no. It does to an extent. Like it creates some degree of force evolution, but not really. What they do is existing AI systems and they have done forced evolution with AI before.They just haven't done it [00:45:00] at the type of scale that I wanna do it at. They've done, so if you look at like existing training, you have the pre-training, which is like, okay, create the best averages. Then you have the post training, which is, okay, let's have a human reviewer or an AI reviewer or something like that.Review what you're outputting or put in a specific training set to like overvalue. That is where the majority of the work is focused today. And so if you could automate that, like if you could create post training that works better than existing post training, but that doesn't use humans, you could dramatically speed up the advancement of ai, especially if you use that post training to specialize it in multiple domains.Simone Collins: Okay. That's fair. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Do you, do you not care? The, the, the future to you is just me being like, AI matters, Simone.Simone Collins: I know AI matters. I know AI is everything in the future. It's the coolest thing. It's the next step of humanity. It's [00:46:00] pure free prefrontal cortex and I love it.Malcolm Collins: Well, if we, if we end up creating really great AI companies that just make us billions of dollars, what is going to be your luxury?Simone Collins: Our life right now is my luxury. Just don't wanna, you want this,Malcolm Collins: youSimone Collins: don't want, you don'tMalcolm Collins: want luxuries that trollSimone Collins: people. No, not really. I'm very happy. I'm sorry. You've made things too good as it is. I'm just, yeah. I mean, I want more kids. I guess my luxury, luxury would be, it's so funny. You're actually great.Not being stopped from having more kids by some health problem. That would beMalcolm Collins: great. I guess we'd have to make artificial wounds work eventually. But our, it is funny that you mentioned this, that every luxury that I would want that I don't have right now is not an augmentation to my daily life. My daily life is perfect.It's an augmentation to how good I could be at trolling people. No, not for kids. I mean, I'd probablySimone Collins: want things for our kids to [00:47:00] make them happy arbitrarily they getMalcolm Collins: home cooked meals. They, they are getting a top-notch education system that we were able to build from them. They're gonna get the best friends you can program.You know, what, what could they possibly want?Simone Collins: I mean, they have it pretty good. Great outdoor space to play in. Yeah. I don't know. I, I think a post AI world though isn't about the fun stuff you're going to do. A post AI world is about. The extent to which it can augment your ability to maximize that which is meaningful to you.And everyone who uses it to maximize the amount of fun they have is gonna die out so fast that they don't even matter.Malcolm Collins: I think you're misjudging the value of Wolfe in a post AI world. Human attention is going to matter a ton in this timeline.Simone Collins: It is. No. And in terms of survival too. Just making it buy in a post AI economy [00:48:00] 100%.However getting people toMalcolm Collins: care if you live or die is gonna matter a lot.Simone Collins: Yeah. But also convincing yourself that it's worth it to do hard things and bother to create a family and pass people on and do anything in life also isMalcolm Collins: right. But I think trolling is key to vitalism. And I think it's also key to keeping attention on yourself within the existing attention economy.Hmm. And I think that that is, look attention from reporters, attention from the media is attention from ai. If you are in the space of things that AI notices, people that it doesn't think can be eradicated without a second thought that is going to matter a lot as things begin to change.Simone Collins: So what are you going to do?Malcolm Collins: Exactly what we're doing now. Maximum trolling. But that's what I was [00:49:00] saying is like the, the, that's why I'm thinking, okay, how do I maximally freak people out if I accumulate more What, like Zuck Zuckerberg right now? Right? Like he's doing a very bad job at capturing the attention economy. Elon has done a very good job at capturing the attention economy.Okay. Fair. A very bad job at, at attack. Capturing the attention economy. Mark Cuban has done a medium job at attack, at capturing the attention economy. The people who are doing a better job, who has done the best job of the rich people, Trump capturing the attention economy. Your ability to capture the attention economy is your worth within this existing ecosystem.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I think that people are like, the people who are like, I just want to remain unnoticed. It's like being unnoticed is being forgotten in a globalized attention economy, which is reality now, and worse, worse thanSimone Collins: that. Being private, I think. Yeah. I mean when, when you hear about privacy, it's worth, it's, [00:50:00] it's, you probably have something about you that's noticeable and you are choosing to squander it.Being unnoticed may just mean you don't have what it takes. And I'm sorry if that's the case, but it's worse when you're like, I want my privacy. You're choosing to destroy all the attention. Yeah, no, we,Malcolm Collins: we put all our tracks and simple things. We put all our books plain text on like multiple sites that we have, like on the prenatal list site and on the pragmatist guide site.And I put it up there just for AI scraping so that it's easier foris to scrape our content and use it in its training.Yeah. Any thoughts?Simone Collins: I, the problem is, we've talked about this so much already. I have like nothing to say because I don't talk about anyone else with this and I don't think about this. The same as you do, because this isn't my sphere. Well, I mean,Malcolm Collins: we should be engaging. We should be sp spending time. I spent like this entire week, like studying how a LLMs learn.Like I was like, I like there's gotta be something that's different from the way the human brain works. And just like the deeper I went, it was, nope. This is exactly how the human brain, [00:51:00] oh, nope. This is exactly how the human brain works. Works. So convergent architecture my concept of the utility convergence, and , you can Google this.I, I invented this concept no one else did. And it is, and it's, it's very different from Nick Bostrom's instrumental convergence because a lot of people go is just so you understand the difference of concepts. Instrumental convergence is the idea that the immediate goals of AIS was a vast.The wide array of goals are gonna be the same. IEA acquire power or acquire. It's like in humans, like whatever your personal objective function is, acquire wealth is probably stat number one. You know, so basically that's what he's is a acquire power. Acquire influence, acquire. Okay. Right. Utility convergence doesn't argue that Utility convergence argued when everyone said I was crazy.And you can look at our older episode where we talk about like a fight we had with Eliezer Yudkowsky about this that AI is going to converge in architecture, in goals, in ways of thinking as it becomes more advanced. And I was absolutely correct about that. And everyone thought I was crazy. And [00:52:00] they even did a study where they surveyed AI safety experts.None of them predicted this. I am, I am the guy who best predicted where AI is going because I have a better understanding of how it works because I'm not looking at it like a program. I'm looking at it like an intelligence. And that's what itSimone Collins: is. It's an intelligence, like 100%.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway. I love you too.Yes, soe. You are perfect. Thank you for helping me think through all this for dinner tonight. I guess we're reheating pineapple curry,Simone Collins: unless you want Thai green curry.Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'll do something a bit different tonight. Let's do Thai green curry. Yeah.Simone Collins: Something, something different. Would you like that with coconut lime rice or, I think we have one serving in, of non left or refried.Sorry. Yeah. Fried rice.Malcolm Collins: I do lime rice. Okay.Simone Collins: I will setMalcolm Collins: that for you. Did this change your perspective on anything, this conversation,Simone Collins: you articulated things using different words. That gave me a slightly different perspective on it, but I mean, [00:53:00] I think the gist of the way that you are looking at this is you're thinking very collaboratively and thinking about intelligence is interacting and I think that that's.Probably one of the bigger parts of your contribution. Other people aren't thinking along the lines of how do intelligences interact in a more efficient way? How can I create an aligned incentives like you're thinking about this from the perspective of governance and from the perspective of interacting humans.Whereas I think other people are thinking, how can I more optimally make this thing in isolation smart? How do I train like the perfect super child and have them do everything by themselves when Yeah, that's never been how anything has worked for us.Malcolm Collins: So it's also not how the human brain works. The human brain is basically multiple, completely separate individuals all feeding into a system that synthesizes your identity.Mm-hmm. And we know this as an [00:54:00] absolute fact because if you separate a person's corpus callosum, if you look at split brain patients, just look at the research on this. Basically the two parts of their brain operate as independent humans.Simone Collins: Yeah. So it's, it's just kind of odd that you're, you're alone in thinking about things these ways.I would expect, expect more people to think about things these ways. And I, I keep feeling like I'm missing something, but then whenever we're at a party and you do bring it up and someone does give their counterarguments, their counterarguments don't make sense to me. And I'm not sure if that's because I'm so, no, it's, it's because speak in Malcolm language,Malcolm Collins: you're a simulated environment at a falker point of human development, and everyone else is not a fully simulated agent.Simone Collins: Yeah. That's less likely to be true. So normally when everyone is arguing something different and they're so confident in it and they all say you're wrong, that means that we've done something wrong. The problem is that I just am not seeing,Malcolm Collins: that's not what you, that you were, [00:55:00] you've lived this, you remember the fight I had with Eliezer Yudkowsky about utility convergence.ISimone Collins: do, yes.Malcolm Collins: You have now seen utility convergence has been proven in the world. Exactly. Apparently I understood AI dramatically better than he did.Simone Collins: He would gaslight, you know, and be like, no, I've always understood it that way. You're wrong. ButMalcolm Collins: no, but that's just, I was there for that conversation.Simone Collins: I, I remember it too.And yes, he was really insistent about that though. He didn't really argue his point so much as just condemn you for putting future generations at risk and not just agreeing with him.Malcolm Collins: No, he's actually a cult leader. Like , he, he does not seem to understand how AI works very well. Which is a problem because, well, what really happened with him is he developed most of his theories about AI safety before we knew that LLMs would be the dominant type of ai.And so he has a bunch of theories about how like, like the risks from like a hypothetical AI was what he was focused on instead of the risks from [00:56:00] the Theis we got. Mm-hmm. In the ais, we got the risks that they have are things like mean layer risks that he just never even considered. Yeah. Because he was expecting AI to basically be preprogrammed, I guess I would say instead of an emergent property of pouring lots of data into algorithms.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I don't think anyone could have easily predicted that. I mean, and that's another reason why we say AI was discovered and not like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, I, I'm, we didn'tSimone Collins: know this was gonna work out this way.Malcolm Collins: I'm pretty sure I talk about that in some of our early writings on ai.Simone Collins: That it's just gonna be about feeding it a ton of data.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That I expected it to be an emergent property of lots of data. And not about pre-programming things because I mean, I don't know, that just seemed intuitive to me.Simone Collins: I don't remember that being part of it. How my memory is writeMalcolm Collins: down, it doesn't matter. We are where we are now and I've [00:57:00] already out predicted the entire AI safety community.So let's see if I can continue to do that.Simone Collins: I mean, all that matters is if you do, I don't think I, the satisfaction Malcolm is not in having proven them wrong. It's in building infrastructure and family models and. Plans around systems like that and benefiting from them.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. I thought the satisfaction was in turning them into biodiesel ai.I thought the satisfaction wasSimone Collins: in, in thriving and being able to protect the future of human and flourishing. Yes. And that will require aMalcolm Collins: lot of biodiesel.Simone Collins: Oh God. Oh, I'll go make your curry. I love you to death. I love you to death too, Malcolm. Goodness gracious.Speaker: In our towers high, [00:58:00] where profits gleam, we tech elites have a cunning scheme. On productive folks, your time has passed. We'll turn you into fuel of fire. Just get in line to become biodiesel. Oh, stop crying, you annoying weasel. As laid out by Curtis Yarvin. Handle the old or we'll all be stuck.Why waste time on those who can't produce when they can fuel our grand abuse a pipeline from the nursing home to power cities our wicked dome just get in line to become biodiesel stop crying you annoying weasel as [00:59:00] laid out by By Curtis Yarvin, handle the old or we'll all be starving.With every byte and every code, our takeover plan will start. soon explode a world remade in silicon's name where power and greed play their game just shed in line to become biodiesel oh stop crying you annoying weasel as laid out by curtis yarvin handle the old or we'll all be starvingbiodiesel dreams techno feudal might Old folks powering our empire's bright [01:00:00] Industries humming, world in our control Evil plans unfolding, heartless and bold So watch us rise in wicked delight As tech elites claim their destined right A biodiesel future, sinister and grand With the world in the palm of our iron hand Mhm. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm dive into a provocative op-ed recently published in The New York Times, exploring ideas that seem to align with their prenatal advocacy. The hosts discuss key excerpts from the article, contemplating the necessity of cultural and traditional preservation amidst the digital revolution. They scrutinize the New York Times readers' surprisingly positive reactions and debate the implications of a world leaning towards either radical change or nostalgic preservation. Tune in for an engaging conversation on modern cultural dynamics, tech-driven societal shifts, and the future of human existence. The song: Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I just read an article that shook me because it was an op-ed in the New York Times. It came out very recently. It seems to have potentially been instigated by our prenatals advocacy.That was one of the most based things I have ever read in an ultra progressive newspaper, but coded in a way that hid how based it was.Simone Collins: Well, that you, you have to, if they actually framed it as. Not being progressive, then no one would read it.Malcolm Collins: I will read a quote from it before we go into it deeper just to give our audience like an idea of what to expect.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Have the child practice the religion, found the school support, the local cedar, the museum, the opera, or the concert hall, even if you can see it all on YouTube, pick up the paintbrush, the ball, and the instrument. Learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive even if you think Waymo or Tesla will drive for you.Put up headstones. Don't burn your dead. Sit with the child. Open the book and read as the bottleneck tightens. All survival will [00:01:00] depend on heating. Once again, the ancient abian. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live.Simone Collins: But if we don't burn our bodies, we can't turn the carbon into diamonds. You can't do biodiesel. He's anMalcolm Collins: anti biodiesel activist. Ugh. He doesn't want us to turn the poor and the old into biodiesel, confirm progressive Curtis guard andSimone Collins: commanded.I mean, I, I'm all for Tibetan sky burials, but I'm pretty sure they're illegal in the United States.Malcolm Collins: I love that. That's what you focus on. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting one there, that you might even ask ai why he's asking us to burn to, to not burn dead people.Simone Collins: Burying the dead. I mean, if you're, especially if you're doing it in a graveyard, that's not very, I would say environmentally friendly or sustainable if you're doing it in your backyard, I mean, that's great, but also that could lead to.Property sale problems, future crime issues. 'cause they all assume it's a, you know, murder.Malcolm Collins: What, Simone, that's not the whiter point here. Point. No, clearly. But yeah,Simone Collins: no [00:02:00] hearing that. Whoa. There are enough keywords in there to say I am a progressive And this is a progressive editorial like opera, museum opera.Yes. Hundred percent. Yeah. LoveMalcolm Collins: his key words. I love he starts, if you look at the beginning of it, it's all stuff that we personally are doing. Have the child practice the religion, found the school. Do you think he like knows like what we're working on or he is like, yeah, that's like the most vitalist things you could do.And they're trying to wake the left up to this and I just don't know if it's doable when 17% of the left not sorry, 70% of Americans, so this might be like 40% of the left says that by a survey that we did that the planet would be better if no humans existed. Like things would be better. So any thoughts before we go deeper into this?Simone Collins: Let's go deeper. I, I'm, this is, this is a good sign though. I wanna see where you're taking this and what their point of their article was.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there's been so many New York Times articles on us. In the past weeks, we've had, I'd say maybe eight articles referenced us in the New York [00:03:00] Times, or maybe 10 in the past two weeks.And a number of them have been op-eds and some of 'em are just like crazy. Like I don't go into the ones that are just like. Crazy in a not fun way. Like one of them was like, you can solve this with immigration. Like that's, they're, they're pro they said that the new prenatal list movement is going to fail the, the MAGA prenatal list movement.It's like, oh, what? Like you can't solve this with immigration. Like, show this.Simone Collins: Well, someone listen to us.Malcolm Collins: But okay. I, I'm not, I'm not talking about like ethically, I mean like logistically, like it would be very difficult. But let's get into this. And this was written by somebody called by Ross. Do.But, and I'm just reading the best parts, the parts I found most interesting.Simone Collins: Awesome.Malcolm Collins: But the age of digital revolution, the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence threatens an especially comprehensive call. It's forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a quote unquote bottleneck, A period of [00:04:00] rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs, and peoples with extinction.That's remarkably on the nose for what we say. He's saying. Good one on the progressive side needs toSimone Collins: say it.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Ethnic groups are going to go extinct. Like, when college students struggle to read passages longer than a phone size paragraph. And H Hollywood struggles to compete with YouTube and TikTok.That's the bottleneck. Putting the squeeze on traditional art forms like novels and movies. Now this is interesting 'cause this is where we would push back. We're like, well, those traditional art forms have been captured by, you know, mimetic viruses. To the point where of I want authentic entertainment.I'm only going to find that within the. Decolonized parts of the internet, like YouTube, you know, like the podcast scene. And that's why so many people are moving there. And why? Oh my gosh,Simone Collins: you just appropriated decolonized. That's fun.Malcolm Collins: Yes, we are decolonizing the right. Oh my God. That'd be a great name for like the next natal contact we got.No, no, no,Simone Collins: [00:05:00] you're, you're. Decolonizing the term. No, sorry. I don't know how to put it. Yeah, we decolonizing the term. No, no, no, but like, so sorry. You're aware of the fact that it's an extremely leftist thing to say that they're decolonizing something like I'm decolonizing history. I'm decolonizing fashion, I'm decolonizing.Whatever, because they're trying to just remove white imperialism from it. I just find it entertaining that you're saying that with, and I'm gonna keep using it this way because it willMalcolm Collins: annoy leftists. We are, we are de well, no, but like Yeah. One of,Simone Collins: one of the listeners called the The progressive, sorry.The progress flag, the colonizers flag, which is just so true because there's more imperialistic and white. Than the urban monoculture. So you're, I mean, you're still correct and that's why it's really fun. I just, sorry, let me stop derailing us. Let's go through this. No, no, no, no.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I like, I want that name to catch on the colonizer flag.I want everyone, every time they talk about that, call it the colonizer flag. This is a weird, it's,Simone Collins: it's legit decolonization. If we're talking about removing the urban monoculture from a space or removing, woke, cancel culture from a space because that is, that is, that is the colonizer [00:06:00] force. 100% colonizer flag.Colonizing forces. Yes.Malcolm Collins: But I also think what you hear in this. Is a lot of people when they talk about the new right, you know, they're like, well, you guys don't seem to care about the traditions of our culture in the same way that the old right did. And we point out to them, we go, that's not part of the right wing coalition anymore.The people who go to concert halls and orchestras. And all of that. That's the left now, like we are about building something new that works and understanding that we need to declare bankruptcy on a lot of these institutions. And this is, and there's just no way to fix it because they're just too colonized at this point.And, and there's not an audience for them. Like culture changes, culture evolves and that's a good thing. Right. You know, it is trying to maintain a cultural stasis that's a bad thing, but the urban monoculture, because it is a dominant culture wants. Cultural stasis. It wants to preserve the concert halls.It wants to preserve the museums and the, and the, and the you know, art studios and the. [00:07:00] We'll get into more here. When daily newspapers and mainline Protestant denominations and elk lodges fade away into irrelevance when sit down restaurants and shopping malls and colleges begin to trace the same descending arc, that's the bottleneck tightening around the old firms of suburban middle class existence.And here we are like, well, I mean, maybe the Elks lodges aren't needed anymore. Like May, maybe the mainline Protestant denominations have become corrupted and we need a religious revival in the United States. Maybe daily newspapers became propaganda pieces and we are trying to decolonize news decolonize Christianity.No, but what I'm saying is it is interesting here. You know, the things he's, he's all lauding restaurants and shopping malls. They're, they're an idea of this nostalgic ideal of an America, not of the 1950s, but of the 1980s of stranger things. And it's not that the culture of, of that, the, that the left sees with some degree of, of reverence.[00:08:00]Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Thoughts.Simone Collins: I wanna get back to the article.Malcolm Collins: Okay. When moderate and Centris look around and wonder why the world isn't going their way, I. Why the future seems to belong to weird bespoke radicalism to Luigi Manjii Admirers and World War II Revisionists. That's the bottleneck, crushing the old forms of consensus politics, the low key ways of relating to political debates.And here, I mean, what I really see him saying is why can the non vitalistic groups, because the groups that he's pointing to are the vitalist groups. They're the groups that are like, yeah, let's go all in. Let's build something better. Let's fight the system. Whether it's on the right or the left, I. You know, and he, he, he tried to choose examples from both.And yet, you know, I think we're seeing more and more alliance of the true radicals of the right and left. And I think that this is one of the things that I've noticed recently in some of the calls. I mean, we see how they end up doing the pieces and stuff like that. I. But there have been like the, one of the, the podcasters who reached out to us and seemed genuinely [00:09:00] sympathetic to us is a podcast are called Diabolical Lies.It does, apparently it's a fairly popular podcast. It's got like 500 reviews on Apple reviews, by the way, give us reviews on Apple reviews. If you're watching the podcast, we really appreciate it. Even if you're not, it's like hard to get reviews there. I think we're like a. 50 or a hundred now. We'll see. But anyway, so, so, she, and you could only do it if you have like an applicant.You don't even have applicants, you know? So, so, so she was like, look, I'm like a Marxist feminist. But like you guys are making a lot of good points. So we'll see how she, she goes into this, but I suspect what we might see is more an alliance of the new right tech, right. And old lefty radicals. You know, we talked to somebody like Spoon, who's like a monarchist or the, the aristocratic utensil who we had on the show not long ago.And, you know, he started as like a staunch Bernie bro, right? You know? I think shoe on ahead is increasingly realizing that she is actually on the right and not on the left at all. And that her allies are on the right. And I, and then we're seeing this, well, it's the weirdSimone Collins: horseshoe thing, which I, [00:10:00] it's, it's legit.You, you've got that and you've got the crunchy to alt-right pipeline. It. A lot of us want the same thing.Malcolm Collins: Maha movement, everything like that. Make America healthy again. The, the left. The political establishment left in this country has become the party of the status quo of this form of nostalgia in the same way that the right was that in the nineties And now the right is this new like vitalistic, like we can do things better.Like let's strip this out, let's rebuild. Which is really fascinating to me.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: When young people don't date or marry or start families, that's the bottleneck coming for the most basic human institutions of all. And when, because people don't pair off and reproduce nations age and diminish and die away when depopulation sweeps East Asia and Latin America and Europe as it will. And then you have like a hyperlink there that's the last squeeze, the tightest part of the bottleneck, the literal die off [00:11:00] sauce.Simone Collins: Yeah. . It, it's very strange to hear someone in a non-negative context on the New York Times talking about demographic collapse in a more sentimental way and, and I guess feeling safe about it. Maybe in the comments there's a bunch of people saying.It's good if people die off, we should die off. People are hu they're terrible. What are you saying? But it just, it just surprises because every time I see a conservative write something like that, even if it's the same words as used in that sentence, there's someone in the comments saying, no, humans are terrible.We should die off. That's, it's the best for the world.Malcolm Collins: This isn't just a normal churn where travel agencies go out of business or Netflix replaces VCR. Everything that we take for granted is entering the bottleneck. And for anything that you care about from your nation to your worldview, to your favorite art form to your family, the key challenge of the 21st century is making sure that it's [00:12:00] still there.On the other side, he's describing the Crucible. We always talk about the age of the Lotus Eaters. We always talk about. Did you find anything or,Simone Collins: so the, the top recommended comment on the article isn't what I expected, but it's still, I would say, representative of one of the major progressive views, though not the anti-natal list.One someone wrote from Erie, Pennsylvania. An interpretation. I appreciate Dove's intellectual depth. His essays here are often the most profound, but there's also pervading nostalgia in his writing, a perception of doom and gloom. I think Jefferson had it right. People should pursue their happiness. The rise of cosmopolitanism is mostly a good thing.Nations and Nationalisms was. Overly tribal, it culminated in two world wars. We must look to our common humanity. What I'm reading from that is, let's just have fun. Let's just be, let's not think about it. Let's just go to plays. Let's not work hard. Let's not learn the language. And oh, [00:13:00] then, you know, the, one of the other, oh, this actually got more recommendations by Shauna Dwyer in Cairo, New York with 998 recommendations.So this comment was more upvoted, but for whatever reason, didn't get as highly ranked. He writes, this was an interesting read, but my gut says it's written by a conservative guy who mostly just feels threatened by change. He admits he's very online, and to me that shows the piece is dripping with kind of screen induced despair.What he doesn't mention though, is how many people are exhausted by the digital churn in actively seeking more grounded, embodied lives. That gives me hope. I'm making a real pie tonight. All my friends are readers. There's still a world offline, and it's alive and well. I'm making a real pie tonight. He's making a real pie.He's, he attacking this p but he's, he's, he's, he's, he is. He thinks that, that the, the author is a conservative, which is what I was expecting to see more here. And he, it's, it's actually a long comment, but it ends with, so it ends up [00:14:00] reading like another old guy railing at change piece with a lyrical end times flare.I get the impulse, things are shifting fast, but I think we need more curiosity about what's being born, not just lgs for what's fading. Again, I, I get hope from this because he's, he is expressing not analist. Negative utilitarianism view. He's going to go offline and make a pie. And his biggest complaint is this guy sounds like a closet conservative, afraid of change.Malcolm Collins: What this is, the thing is, is I think what they don't realize, he is not a closet conservative. This is what the modern left is. The, the new conservative movement wants change. You know, this is what you see. The left is, can you believe that Trump is changing the way government works? Can you believe that Elon's changing the way these systems work?Can you believe it's like a, a, a fanatical fear of change? What's the next comment? By the way, these are fun. Before I go further,Simone Collins: I am.Malcolm Collins: Well, you can find another fun one while I'm, yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: Here's So, Jake who got recommended 199 [00:15:00] times writes, in an overpopulated world, a low birth rate is only a bad thing.If you follow capitalism like a cult member, low birth rates are obviously good, unless growth is your God.Malcolm Collins: So not, not one's in support of the piece. I'll, I'll keep reading. And well,Simone Collins: the brad also, but there, then it's like, I think one of the more common, short, low effort comments is. Giving this man shame about being concerned about demographic apps.'cause Brad from Australia also writes, world population is expected to rise only 2 billion the next 50 years. Emergency. Emergency. Like, he's being sarcastic. He's obviously, yeah. I'm just, I love the Australian accent. That's really good. My, my very sad attempt. This is my first ever attempt at industrial.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It, it, I do. No, I, I appreciate you jumping into that. That's why people come to this channel is to see the, the high effort oh yeah. AndSimone Collins: then, and then bitty Bob. From Freezing Desert. A comment. What's the obsession with procreation? 8 billion people and counting Procreation will not solve anything, [00:16:00] especially as the AI you're talking about will make it more difficult or even possible for people to earn a living, in which case food and shelter will have to be given for free.I. So, yeah, no, I, okay. I expected this at least.Malcolm Collins: Okay. What? I don't understand why we can't just give euthanasia for free. That's what Canada's doing was made. I'm sure they're gonna do it more. They euthanize them. This is, we, we did an episode on this. Yeah. Okay. So to keep going, in this environment, survival will depend on intentionality and intensity.Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically without too much conscious deliberation is what online slang calls. NGMI not gonna make it. First, I haven't heard this sling before, but Love it. But I will say here, he's right what survives, this is what I'm talking about with vitalism, right?Like Yeah. Intentionality and intensity. Yeah. And this show had a, had a slogan. Is intentionality and intensity. That's the way we treat our religious beliefs. That's the way we treat our cultural beliefs. That's the way we treat our approach to tism, to education, to [00:17:00] everything. It can be done. And I am so excited.And I think that that, that, you know, you go to Natal Con and that's what it's all about. And it's something that I don't know if other groups, like he thinks you can approach nostalgia with a degree of intensity that can preserve. Like what he remembers from the eighties, the, the shopping malls and the books and the opera houses.And I don't know if nostalgia can ever truly be approached with intensity. There's always a cargo cult like vagueness to it instead of like reappropriating, nostalgic elements in a new way, which is what he no see. Yeah,Simone Collins: that's my thing is I think actually that nostalgia is really vitalistic that when you look at new fashion trends.Some of the best are built upon nostalgia, but misinterpreted understandings of previous times in which they're mixed upon. And I think you, you can't get a really great, strong fashion movement, like what [00:18:00] you saw in the eighties like, like what even you're seeing with some revivals of the nineties now, without this.Complete misunderstanding of what an original fashion movement was like. And then rethinking of it. So I think that there is a vitalistic side of nostalgia, but it has to be a somewhat delusional one and one that's focused on agency and invention rather than, I just wish things were like they used to be.Malcolm Collins: Languages will disappear, churches will perish. Political ideas will evanesce, art forms will vanish. The capacity to read and write and figure mathematically will wither and the reproduction of the species will fail, except among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring.The, the things they love are carried forwards. Well, I am glad I'm just a little bit of a fanatic. You know, I think, I think, and this is the way we're seen, a little bit of a fanatic. And other people, they try to shame us. Like all those glasses you wear, all those what? [00:19:00] We, we be, we, you know, and, and having a fanaticism for who you are, I think is required to the next generation.And when we raise our kids, I think one of the biggest problems of like the evangelical movement that led to a lot of its dissolution is they raise them to be obedient and unic. Instead of to be fanatics. And I'm raising my kids to be fanatics. They're gonna be wild mountain creatures. What do you, what'd you have there?Simone Collins: All our, our children. Yeah, absolutely. Should be wild mounting creatures. I have to say, going through the comments is really interesting because a lot of them are saying this article really resonates with them. And then a lot of them clearly feel like some parts resonate and that are completely disagreeing with other elements.Like there's one man who shares this nostalgia but he also just has this very. Distorted understanding of why things aren't the same anymore. For example, he thinks that everything's horrible now because there are too many people. Oh, no, it's a, it's a woman, Gail Esposito from Atlanta. Right? It's just [00:20:00] 70 years ago when I was six years old, the planet had 2.74 billion people.National parks didn't need to limit the number of people visiting them. You could fill up your gas tank for pennies. My dad paid $50 a month for our mortgage and then antibiotics and. Vaccines were developed and proliferated. The death rate for children quickly declined, and we zoomed to 8 billion people without thinking how we could feed clo and shelter them.Now we're in terrible shape and must confront the fact that there are many people chasing too few resources. We need less people, not more. Sadly, Ross has no idea how wonderful it was living in a world of so many less people and how miserable it is. With so much overcrowding, she thinks that national parks having limits on the number of visitors has to do with.Like the US population that has more to do with international tourism, which the way, thanks Trump.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. The reason why National Parks had to start banning the number of visitors, had to do with Instagram and TikTok, is that specific locations would become popular on those apps and then everyone would try to go to these locations and they had those quotas existedSimone Collins: before Instagram [00:21:00] and Oh, okay.What? Well, she, the, the crazy thing about her, she's just thrilled. This idea of a world before medical treatment. So just high infant mortality. That was the good old days. Did she not know what the global povertyMalcolm Collins: rate was like back then? Like she, she, she doesn't care because she could fill her gasSimone Collins: tankMalcolm Collins: forSimone Collins: pennies onMalcolm Collins: the dollar.No, she doesn't careSimone Collins: that she was able to do that. So this was 70 years ago. Let the children die, Malcolm, because I could get into YosemiteMalcolm Collins: without a wait list. Well, no on, on the poverty of New York not New York, Europe. That is why we were so wealthy back then, because Europe had destroyed their industrial base and we were basically stealing all the business from them, and we'd put them in huge amounts of debt and, and the rest of the world hadn't developed.And so we could, you know, outsource and we could like, like I. You're basically saying like the, the degree of poverty in her lifetime, the number of children that were starving to death, if you look at like global poverty rates, was astronomical in that period outside of the United States. She's basically like, well, I remember when [00:22:00] I grew up in the Capitol and we didn't hear news of the other districts quite as much.Why, why, why do we hear so much about them these days that. I liked it when we didn't have to hear about the other districts. That's, that's really what's, what's going on with that post, which is absolutely wild that you could be that delusional about how much worse the world was for your average human living in it 70 years ago.But anyway, I mean, these people live in a delusional bubble, right? Like they just, but you can tell this woman didn't have kids. I can tell from the comments she didn't have kids, so, Hmm. Thank God you're going extinct. Mere eccentricity doesn't guarantee survival. There will be forms of resistance and radicalism that turn out to be destructive and others that are just dead ends, but normalcy and complacency will be fatal.I agree. You're being normal and complacent in this piece. It's like, it's like normalcy and complacency personified. But I, I agree with a lot of what he's saying here. You know, online life allows for all kinds of [00:23:00] hyperintense subcultures and niches where the sense of obsolescence is less of an issue.But for the average internet surfer, they normally afloat in the virtual realm. Digital life tends to evaluate the center over the peripheries, the, the metropol over the provinces, the drama of the celebrity over the co ian, how much survives nothing I described as universal, unless the true AI doomsdayers are correct.In the year 2100, there will still be nations, families, religions, children, marriages, great books, but how much survives will depend on our own deliberate choices. The choice to date and love and marry and procreate. The choice to fight the particular nations and traditions and art forms and worldviews.The choice to limit our exposure to the virtual. Not necessarily refusing new technology, but trying every day in every setting to make ourselves it's master. So I agree with that. He's saying, you know, it's not about refusing technology, but I do really, you have to go [00:24:00] through the valley of the lot of Cedars.You can't. Blind your eyes. Mm-hmm. You cannot, if you take pokers and you blind your eyes, when you get to the other side of it, all of these temptations, you're still gonna be blind. The only way outSimone Collins: is through.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The only way out is through, you know, the other people who get through it without blinding themselves are gonna have all the technology that it offers them, like the AI drone swarms.You know, you need to find out how to engage with all of this and still find a way to motivate your continued existence in your culture of survival. Mm-hmm. Some choices will be especially difficult for liberals since they will often smack of chauvinism and fanaticism and reaction. Family lines will survive only because of a clear preference for one's own kit and kin, as opposed to some general affection for humanity.Woo, that's a spicy take right there. Well, andSimone Collins: people in the comments. Took umbrage. How dare he bring in politics and make this politicized. But [00:25:00]Malcolm Collins: it's true. Having a preference for yo kin, I have a preference for my, my family's clan is strong. We have a preference for all kin folks in these parts. People hear me talk about how great my family is all the time, and my kids know it.I hope they talk the same way and they build family networks like, like, like we built. It's like, you know, my little brother's in Doge right now ing. I had a, a nightmare last night that I had ended up getting a job there and I was sleeping in like a, a hotel apartment and getting up for a nine to five and I was like, okay, like aesthetically I wanna do it, but like, I am kind of afraid of that kind of work.It's notSimone Collins: the most fun lifestyle, but very meaningful work and it's great that your brother's doing it.Malcolm Collins: I love this. The family lines will also. Oh, sorry. Important art firms will only survive because of frank elitism and insistence on distinction. A contempt for mediocrity religions will survive only through a conscious embrace of neo [00:26:00] traditionalism in whatever varied forms, small nations will survive only if their 21st century inhabitants.Look back to the 19th century builders, Irish nationalists. And Young Turks. And the original Zionists rather than the end of history cosmopolitanism of which they're currently dissolving. Oh. End of century cosmopolitanism of which they're currently dissolving. What would you call the urban monoculture?But that, any, any other comments you like here?Simone Collins: Well, this, this points to the comment that was saying, no, I'm all for cosmopolitanism. Let's bury ourselves in it. Which is the problem. They,Malcolm Collins: they are, they're, they are like in a grave bearing themselves.Simone Collins: Yeah. And one of the comments that, that I stopped at, I feel conflicted about because they're trying to point out that we have reached the age of ai.We were about to transcend humanity to become one with machines arguably. So what's the point in [00:27:00] keeping the human line going? But I think you can't really have truly complex intelligences in the future without both. But I do think that this is the most interesting so far of the comments that I've found that complains about population because they point out that the world has 8 billion people.And this is a lot. Then they write, this is the 21st century, aside from serious consequences of environmental damage caused by our huge population, including catastrophic global warming and the so-called sixth extinction, which biologists say is in full swing, there are technological changes that also mitigate worries about human extinction from a lack of babies.Futurists have argued we are approaching the age of transhumanism where digital forms of human life will in fact surpass biological. That may sound crazy to us, but when we are creatures of our. Time. Oh, but we are then, we are creatures of our time. A future Cy Borgian world will not have to worry about a die off, otherwise, the piece is correct in the underlying theme that accelerated social change will and has made much of contemporary life, of victim, [00:28:00] of futurism.And yeah, I mean, I think that's a, that's an intelligent comment from the perspective of a broadly analist, environmentalist minded progressive.Malcolm Collins: So liberalism itself will endure and thrive only if it finds a way to weave some of the intense impulse already attenuated before the internet back into its vision of the good society.Its understanding of human needs and obligations. I. For non-liberal. On the other hand, the temptation will be to embrace radicalism and disruption for its own sake without regard to their actual fruits. A clear tendency of the populism that governs us today. Imagine a swift technological dissolution to a crisis created by technology.Even if the solution marries dehumanization with authoritarianism, imagine Chinese rero with artificial wounds, or to simply, I'm like, maybe that's, that's. Where we're going or to [00:29:00] simply embrace the culling of the common person, the disappearance of the ordinary, the emptying of provinces and hinterland on the theory that some new master race of human AI hybrid stand to inherit it anyway, as that person said, right?Like maybe they didn't internalize that piece. But perhaps the strongest temptation will be for everyone will be to imagine that you are engaged in some radical project, some new intentional way of living, but all the while you are being pulled back into the virtual, they're performative, the fundamentally unreal.And here I'd be like, well, you know, I. I'm the one who has my fifth kid on the way, so you can tell me whatever I want, but like I know that this project seems to be working and I am not afraid of our kids deconvert very much at all. When I look at how they relate to the areas where I have the most fears whether it's it's gender or religion or.You know, cultural rules or observances or anything like that because they are very into this stuff in a way that I was as a kid. [00:30:00] You know, you see Octavia and he wants to enforce the tradition on his siblings. This is how we do things. Don't, you know,Simone Collins: basically.Malcolm Collins: This is one temptation, but I also like, hear what he's talking about. It's this idea of like, these families that we see that are like trying to build communes and they never come together trying to build schools and they never come together or trying to build, you know, we said we'll build a school.We built a school. You saw the school, it works. It's great. You know, we said we're gonna build a parenting network. We've been building it, and we'll, we'll, we'll have it go live when our kids are old enough to utilize it, you know, like. It's the difference between are you the type of dreamer whose dreams ultimately boil down to enforcing your values and your way of life on others, which is what many of these communes ultimately want.Mm-hmm. Or is it something where you're willing to make compromise? You know, like our neighbors are you know, fundamentally, you know, working class people and our kids stay with them during the day and a lot of people are surprised at that. They're like, oh, you don't hire like [00:31:00] specialist nannies. And we're like, no, specialist nannies are like weirdos.Simone Collins: Well, actually, I think this is why most communes fall apart because ultimately they can only be populated by people who are there because it is just convenient, not because they're that ideologically aligned. So they're like, yeah, aesthetically I like the idea of living in an eco village and also I was downsizing and retiring anyway, and it's in the region where I wanna be.And so they move there. But that, that means it's, it's has a very short shelf life.Malcolm Collins: This is one temptation I'm very familiar with. As someone whose professional life is a mostly digital existence, we're together with others who share my concerns. I am perpetually talking, talking, talking. When the nece, when the necessary thing is to go out in reality and do it, bam, oh yeah, we're gonna take the future from you.We gonna take the future from you. We are gonna, what don't they hopeSimone Collins: if, if so many progressive readers of the New York time read this and say, yes. They [00:32:00] won't, I mean, hope of seeing a more balanced future. Making the commentMalcolm Collins: who, who in the comments of agree with you. You can read, I'll, I'll read this first part again because this is what the article ends with.Have the child practice the religion, found the school support, the local cedar, the museum, the opera, the concert hall. Even if you can't see it all on YouTube, pick up the paintbrush, the ball, the instrument, learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive even if you think soon. Way more tell, we'll drive for you.Put up headstones. Don't just burn your dead. Sit with the child. Open the book and read. Yeah, and, and here's what I'd say is,Have you ever tried simply turning off the tv, sitting down with your children and hitting them?Malcolm Collins: As the bottleneck titans, all survival will depend on heating. Once again, the ancient ab mission I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.Therefore, choose the life that you have, that you and your offspring may live.Simone Collins: So I just wanna point out that the top comments are mostly people unilaterally saying [00:33:00] this is great. One person just writes 245 people up voted this Ross's finest article, Jeff from Washington DC who had got 252 up votes wrote.I've been reading the Times and Ross's columns for years, but I've never posted a comment before. Now Bravo. I would say more, but I'm. Going to take Ross's advice, put down my phone and get out into the world. And another one who actually didn't, wasn't a huge fan of him but still got 2 96 upvote says, as most commenters here, I'm extremely disinclined to agree with due thought on anything.So this guy isn't his fan. I'd be hard pressed to come with any previous essay or line of thought. Incredibly, I got through almost the entire essay nodding my head in agreement. Figuratively his one dig at liberals was quickly balanced out by the one at Populists. So credit where credit's due. The points he makes for our a long form intellectual take on what the short form Black Mirror Series has been expressing for years and he didn't say woke once will wonders ever cease.So. [00:34:00]Malcolm Collins: This person. So this is apparently like, like pretty considered conservative by lefties,Simone Collins: I guess. So yeah, this person probably thinks he's a, a lefty who so probably what this, this author is, is a centrist who's seen by regular New York Times readers as the evil AltRight centrist. And this person nevertheless, despite wanting to disagree.Agreed with almost everything. So yeah, I would say this is really well received, which again, to me, like this may be the sign of a turning point. This may be sign for hope among progressives that they get it, that they wanna get back to agency, to action, to vitalism. And I think that would be a really good thing because I would like to see more perspectives represented in the future than fewer.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, me too. So, you know, who knows, maybe some iteration of this will survive. Anyway. I love you to death, Simone, and I hope that our followers can [00:35:00] take something from this article and use it to replace him. And, and the Economist did a piece on us recently, and it was me saying, join the prenatal list movement, or we'll replace you.Those are the only options. And I love it. I love it just to freak people out. He got a lot wrong though. He, he argued that like Jared Taylor was like a speaker at the first conference when he wasn't, he was just an attendee. And you know that Kevin Dolan is a racist. That's one of the thing that gets me.I'm also gonna do an entire episode analyzing the idea that Kevin Dolan is a racist. 'cause if you actually look at his tweets and he was tweeting with an anonymous account none of them are that racist. And a lot of it is just made up by the other side and they'll say, oh, he said these anti-Jewish things, and I'm like, no, he didn't.Look at the actual tweet and they're like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that they had turned the name of a town into. I hate Jews when they're just like, well, this town has a disproportionately Jewish population. So we just translated that for him in our hate piece and well, what anyway.Okay. Lemon stone went after the shrimp people and they, they fought [00:36:00] back. I, you don't, you don't go after the shrimp people. This is the ea people who want to replace us with shrimp. The shrimp welfare people, they don't wanna replaceSimone Collins: us with shrimp.Malcolm Collins: They just, they, they're like, if shrimp have feelings, right?Like, you can, and, and good utility is defined by the positive. ReducingSimone Collins: suffering. Reducing suffering. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the positive divided by negative emotions of an entity. You know, then multiplied by that entity, sort of like cognitive space shrimp, even though they're lower cognitive load than us because there's so many of them.You know, we need to take them seriously. Well, andSimone Collins: because their existence in. Large scale shrimp farming is so bad. Like you think chickens have it, bad shrimp have it even worse than, you know, they, theyMalcolm Collins: pop off their eyes to increase. Yeah. Their eyes getSimone Collins: crushed. They don't pop them off, they just get crushed.Half, don't even make it to harvest point. Like it's just, it's gross. It's horrible. It's really bad. They're like, well, I'll, you know, I [00:37:00] could spend $1 and reduce significantly a portion of their suffering. Like, this is money well spent. So,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: I mean, I think it'dMalcolm Collins: better to engineer them without nervous systems that can feel pain.Simone Collins: Yeah. I think that would be, that would be awesome. Also, like, I don't know, I, I don't think we need to eat animals as much.Malcolm Collins: Uh oh, oh. You're getting into fighting territory here with Malcolm. I just know,Simone Collins: I mean, what everyone is, is kind of consciously aware of in most intellectual circles is that, you know.Oh, oh, so many years from now we will look well depending on how demographic collapse plays out now, but people will view. Meat consumption is being pretty.Malcolm Collins: When would Reed said that in the 18 hundreds, you know? Yeah. One of the guys, he is like, he's like people and he's oneSimone Collins: of our prophets. Malcolm, I mean, get with the program.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. But he doesn't say that we shouldn't eat meat today. He says. Yeah. He just says, we're gonna see this as insane and we'll make fake meat. He says, we will see it as insane [00:38:00] culturally after fake meat is normalized.Simone Collins: Yeah, dude. It's okay. I don't know what's going on with beyond everything 'cause it's disgusting.But yes. And everybody when it first came out is awesome.Malcolm Collins: So it was supposed to be like, awesome and it was like hard to get and I was like, wow. It must must be pretty good. Every time we'veSimone Collins: had it, I've been like, what? Like why just. You know, make, make a burger with Quin lime and black beans and rice or so like, just like other good stuff that has protein in it, or just whatever Morningstar does.By the way, chicken isMalcolm Collins: so good. Almost a vegetarian. You eat almost exclusively fake meat. Like you really, ISimone Collins: never choose to eat meat. Unless, you know, I don't have a choice. And most of that's for artist autistic reasons because meat has all these little grizzly bits and gummy bits and cartilage bits and inconsistent bits.And guess what has consistency is Morningstar fake chicken patties and garine meatballs and fake meat hotdogs. And they're so, so good. So whatever [00:39:00] token is also amazing. Well, yourMalcolm Collins: meat dishes are so good, I'll tell you that.Simone Collins: Yeah. And we're doing. So this is my first time doing the mango pineapple curry for you using all fresh mango.I know you wanted them to be a little bit more textured. Do you want me to dice some? But then make puree of others in the in the blender. So you have a mixture of both mango puree and diced mango with diced pineapple. Well, how do you want me to approach this? I want only diced. We need some liquid. Okay, because I have less coconut cream than before.Did puree? I put in more yogurt butMalcolm Collins: didn't pureeSimone Collins: some in the mango. Okay. But then you want most diced, you want, you want texture, you want chunks.Malcolm Collins: And if you want, I can drive out because I need to go out to get more beer anyway.Simone Collins: I can go. No, we have a blender. Like you bought a blender for yourself. I should be using it so you get the value.This is worth it.Malcolm Collins: All fresh ingredients, fruits and stuff. This is, this is like eating a forest. Mango and pineapple and chicken.Simone Collins: I mean, it's, it's [00:40:00] great. It's great to see you consuming more. There's a lot of onion in this. There's tomato in this garlic, mango, pineapple, chicken, coconut. This is a, this is health.Pretty healthy. Pretty good. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You might wanna put some crushed coconutSimone Collins: in it.Malcolm Collins: Oh, because we've got someSimone Collins: if you want me to. Sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright, I'll get started here.In shadows, I scheme with a gleam in my eye and my brood will outnumber their woke battle cry. Those urban elites with their brattle and flare will choke on their vanity. Caught on over.Oh, bow to my vision, my vitalist reign. I flood every city with life's prial strain. Their monocultures flick. My superior kin set the future of [00:41:00] fire.I'll honor the past with the heirs. I bestow each child a new route where my empire will grow. The woke clutch, their mirrors, their egos inflate, but I'll crush their smugness with humanity's way. Oh, be to my vision, vitalist Lane. Oh. For every city with a life's prial strain, just do, it's a flickering fire.My superior kin set the. Future of fire.My children will storm through their glittering halls with vigor and might they'll [00:42:00] tear down their walls. The urbanites folly, their self-loving spark will burn in my bonfire, extinguished by dog.To my vision, my finalist. Every city with L strain, their monoculture. It's a flickering pile. My superior set the future of fire.So Tremble, you woke. As my dynasty spreads, your trivial dreams will lie cold in their bed. The Vitalist triumph, my glorious plan will birth a new world for the ultimate.[00:43:00]So Tremble, you woke. As my dynasty spreads, your trivial dreams will lie cold in their beds. The [00:44:00] vitalist. 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

Delve into the captivating story of 4Chan's decline and the emergence of SoyJack Party. The hosts unravel how 4Chan's culture shifted dramatically, leading to its eventual corruption. They analyze the significant 'Operation Soy Eclipse' hack that laid bare its vulnerabilities. Furthermore, explore the quirky subversion found in fan creations and the evolution of internet culture and identities. The conversation also touches on the impact of media misrepresentation and the absurdities of societal expectations. It's a wild ride through the heart of meme culture!

The hosts dive into the complexities of Blue Sky, a platform that may be creating echo chambers while aiming to be a progressive space. Insights on user behavior reveal stark contrasts with X, sparking a debate on online community dynamics and radicalization. With humorous anecdotes about social media quirks and unconventional fashion, they discuss the reception of controversial views and online personas. There’s a playful critique of media outlets and reflections on the unusual user demographics across platforms, adding depth to the cultural conversation.

Dive into the mysterious world of the Iron Mountain Underground Facility, a former limestone mine housing government secrets and inefficiencies. Unearth the shocking tale of a $100 million fraud scheme linked to social security. Explore dark conspiracies surrounding political figures and historical events like JFK's assassination. Laugh along as the hosts critique absurd societal regulations and envision a quirky future. Plus, enjoy lighthearted discussions about culinary adventures and exciting discoveries.

In this episode, we explore the two key topics: how to secure and convert high-quality partners and how to avoid hypergamy in relationships. The discussion delves into personal examples and broader societal observations, including the dynamics that made the hosts' relationship successful. We also touch on the pitfalls of traditional and urban monoculture relationship paradigms, and the importance of having an aligned objective function for a stable partnership. Insights on effective dating strategies, transparency, and ideological alignment in relationships are shared to help viewers navigate their own journey to finding a lasting and fulfilling relationship. Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. I'm really excited to be talking with you today. I am a woman, a wolf, I'm hypergamous, I'm evil. And I'm going to tell you exactly why I chose my husband, who of course I will discard someday for a better, I mean, maybe let's find out specifically the two concepts we're going to be discussing in this episode.is how I secured Simone as a wife. And the second is IE, why did she develop feelings for me from her own perception? Why did she decide to marry me when before this she had been very urban monoculture, very in that bubble, you know, how do you secure and convert, not just secure, but convert high quality women?And then second, how do you avoid hypergamy? We're talking about this because a lot of people following this podcast are interested in finding a wife and also many of the ambitious, intelligent, successful young women they're dating are [00:01:00] also very urban monoculture pill. They're just like me. They never want to have kids.They want to focus on their career. They're the idea of pregnancy is abhorrent to them. So maybe we can use me as a case study delve into my previous brain and at least the, the dynamics that enabled. Malcolm's in my relationship to happen to see if maybe some of this might be replicated for you if this is a goal of yours.And then how to avoid hypergamy, which I would argue is made likely by overly trad relationships. Both being too overly urban monoculture or overly trad makes you very at risk for hypergamy. That's interesting. The first thing I think of when you mentioned that is when it comes to careers, the smart thing is to switch careers every few years because you're able to get a better income.And I wonder if the same dynamic is the case when your career is being a wife, like after a few years, especially if you feel like you're appreciating in value, like if you're building an online following or you're getting hotter in any way, like if you're actually a terrible wife trading [00:02:00] up and being hypergamous is, is actually the logical thing to do.That's interesting. Sorry. Well, let's start with you and why you chose me and what guys have Gotten your eye before. Yeah, so I have a very consistent track record of people I've had crushes on since I was a teen the universal factor is Having a unique passion for something in your life, knowing who you are and being very transparent about it and unapologetic about it.In other podcasts, we've, we've alluded to this like very embarrassing crush I had on this guy who was really into Catholic doctrine. And I would go to his dorm room bringing all these cupcakes and asking him hard questions about Catholicism. Cause it was just like my excuse to like get him to talk to me more.I had crushes on people. who were, you know, ended up, he ended up, he's like, Oh, Simone, I've enjoyed these discussions with you so much. I've decided to become a priest. And she's like, [00:03:00] no, this is how good my game is. For those who don't know, Catholic priests can't marry or date. So yeah, that was, yeah.I know it worked out really well. Come on, Malcolm. I'm really all is as it should be. I want to take a few notes on what you're saying here because Simone is not unique in this fact. Not at all. Most high value women I know have this profile in terms of what that like gets them excited about a partner.And A lot of the guys I know when they are pursuing women do not pursue them using these techniques and we'll go over the techniques that they use that are really ineffective. The first, I think one thing I'll just note is even when you look at a lot of the crushes that take place in fictional universes it's often on guys who.I have no interest in women are not like, Oh, I'm here. Cause I'm like powerful and cool. It's men who are extremely passionate about whatever it is. Like be that revenge or [00:04:00] saving their kingdom or something else. It's people who know who they are and have a mission and are pursuing it. And these are the women, this, these are the men to whom women want to hitch their wagons.Yep. Lots of Luigi Mini Gionni fan fictions going around right now. I was just watching that. Oh dear. But I, I. I want to explain one, why this is the case. And two, the, the reason why guys are making mistakes is the first mistake comes downstream of the red pill movement. And you and I would actually consider ourselves like red pillars to an extent.The red pill is fundamentally correct where it taught guys that, hey, women say they want X, but they really want Y. But there was a sub caveat to everything the red pill taught men and everything the pickup artist taught men Which was, this is how you win on the sexual marketplace. And as we've always pointed out, there are two key marketplaces.There is the sexual marketplace, and there is the marriage slash long [00:05:00] term relationship marketplace. And on the sexual marketplace, women have an enormous advantage. And, you know, these same guys will laugh at women who think they can get the same type of guy to marry them as they can get to sleep with them on a one night stand, but not apply just as for that woman, different rules apply between these two marketplaces, different things are arousing, different things are desirable.The same thing is true for men. And so they apply. Tools and techniques that have been optimized to secure a woman who will sleep with you as quickly as possible. Like, as attractive as a woman as possible, sleeping with you as quickly as possible. Well, what's one of the things that those techniques are going to filter out if they are working as intended?They are going to filter out chaste women very early. You would want them to filter out chaste women. But I'm going to a bar and I am looking to come home and sleep with someone that night. A pickup line that causes [00:06:00] a woman like Simone, who before me had never slept with someone to like and walk away is actually a good line.It increases the probability that you end up going home with someone. But the problem is, is it also means that intrinsically the women who you are bringing home are gonna be well, both one less chaste and two less interesting. And so you could say, okay, so why is it that so many of this chaste cast of women is thinking like Simone is in terms of their arousal pattern?Like, why are they looking for a man who has a mission? And I think that there is. A line in Rick and Morty that is said derogatorily, but it's actually, I think, the aspiration for a lot of women. Which is, he says, hey,I mean, it's not like he's a hot girl. He can't just bail on his life and set up shop in someone else's.Simone Collins: But that, I think, is the reality of an aspiration among many women.Is they want to set themselves up in a [00:07:00] life that looks like it's going to matter and be respected. Or at least be something that they can take personal pride in being a part of. I think it also might correlate with long term signs of career stability. So it, this is the behavior that you would expect from someone who is not a free radical, from someone who is likely to have a steady income and security in their life.And I think, Women looking for long term partners are subconsciously looking for someone who is also dependable and consistent and a safe person to address it. I disagree actually. So here, listen to this and then you'll be like, Oh yeah, you're right. Okay. Okay. Of the women I know who have chosen partners based on this factor, which a lot of high quality women have.The most common relationship structure is the sword and shield structure that we have discussed multiple [00:08:00] times. Sword and shield structure relationships mean the woman chooses, or not the woman, one of the partners, chooses to be the shield. That means they are a secure source of income. And then the sword goes out and does the high risk, high reward things that can move the family.It's the passion. It's the consistent passion and transparency that indicates that they will be a sword at all. I think absolutely. Women are more likely to be the shield. I think you're totally wrong in thinking that. Women aren't looking for a consistent driving passion to be able to trust that their men will be a sword.I cannot tell you how many women i've encountered who have met and ended up with men and then ultimately left them or just been Dragged by down by them for life because those men end up just being louts at home and not doing anything Like that is a really common issue You're saying but the way that you had framed this to begin with is they look for this trait of In men, because it leads to economic stability and careers.But you have to understand a man who is [00:09:00] passionate, who knows what he's all about and who really is like. big on a thing isn't a guy who like gets a salary job and does his nine to five. Right, because this is literally antithetical to economic stability. No, I don't, I don't mean economic stability. I mean, like you can depend on them to be driving the family forward.Towards the goal. Yes, but I think that's the way you said what you said could easily be misinterpreted by a guy to be girls want a guy was a successful, like, say, bureaucratic career. And I'm sure some do some do, but I would say that if you're looking for like really high quality women, often that is not what they want and they actually want to be support for the guy, but when they want to be support for a guy, they want the guy doing something big and interesting enough to be worth dedicating your life to a supporting role in that.Because you're investing, you're [00:10:00] essentially investing in a startup. So you're not going to invest in a startup. Stupid sounding startup. You want to invest in something good. Yeah. And I also know we've had sword and shield relationships for people who are like, well, I prefer traditional relationship.Well, this was traditional for Vikings. Women stayed, they managed the family finances. They managed the farm and the guy would go in Spartans too. Yeah, no, this is actually probably more of a common relationship in, in human history. Then anything close to a nuclear family has been where the guy goes out and earns all the money and the woman stays at home and does nothing.That's, that's incredibly rare. That's really kind of descended from aristocratic relationships. The women, yeah, the women never really did anything if they were high achieving, even aristocratic women. Did a lot like they did the household management if you were an aristocratic woman, that means that your husband ran ran You know an estate this this was the equivalent of running a city like being a mayor of a city Yeah, you were there were there were tenants who were farming you had a village you had the entire household You were [00:11:00] entertaining important guests.You were basically running an events management company and a small town This is where you got the, the poverty and I'd call it like the, the emotional poverty of the nuclear family, which as we pointed out before really only started in like the 1910s and only lasted until the 19 let's say seventies, where you had men who supported a wife at home.And that was because the middle class in America. Tried to model their family structure off of the family structure of aristocrats of before 1910. So, you know, they saw the woman staying at home, the man going out. And but by the way, before this period, what you had was corporate families, the man and the woman would work together to run something.But anyway they, they, Saw this happening and they tried to model it but without understanding That the women who lived this type of lifestyle were actually doing a ton of stuff But because they didn't have courts because they didn't have you know parties Every other month at [00:12:00] their house that like hundreds of people would come to because they didn't have a staff The woman was just sitting at home all day And this is why you got all these housewives addicted to like cocaine and like other stuff What were all the drugs that they were on?I can't remember Mommy's little helper. Yeah. A major problem for housewives because you can't just like sit at home and do nothing all day. I mean in the like 30s to 50s it was in fed means and then after that it was like, I would say 60s to 90s it was benzos. So it kind of depends on your time. Yeah, but I'd also note here around like, let's say arousal patterns because like you actually, you didn't just like logically decide to go for me.Yeah. You developed a crush on me when you saw my passion and how much I had thought through things. Like, explain how that works, because I think that's going to be interesting for people. Yeah the, the biggest thing that felt so shocking, going on a date with Malcolm after going on a date with me, A bunch of [00:13:00] other guys in the Bay Area when I was on my campaign and that is to say when I turned 24 I decided there's a new year's resolution that year I was going to fall in love and have my heart broken and then live alone forever So I was like systematically going through okay Cupid going like dating through the bay area the san francisco bay area to try to find someone I could fall in love with The guys before, you know, we, we had some of the conversations were interesting.Some of the dates were really interesting and surprising but they never really, no one stood out because no one, no, everyone was aimless. No one knew what they, Really valued what they cared about. There were certainly things they were interested in. They were building this or that are working on us with their career, or they really were interested in four year transforms or like building obstacle courses or all sorts of interesting things.Like they were interesting people. And I, I also, I think it's misleading for me to be like, none of them had passions, but none of them had passions that [00:14:00] came from any sort of ideological or like deep set values. It was, it was hobbies. And I think Interesting hobbies that augmented their self perception as interesting people.Yeah, and you know, I don't know if this is true. I was listening to a podcast earlier this month about hobbies being something that were concertedly developed even through the school system under the understanding that as technology advanced, society would end up with a ton of free time, and needed to direct that free time in a virtuous direction.Like with sports or woodwork or fishing or whatever, so that, you know, they didn't like loiter on the streets and just start breaking things for fun because they had the time because they didn't have to work all the time anymore. And I really, whether that's true or not, and it's probably at least a little bit true.The concept of hobbies really is kind of this opiate of the masses thing. It's like, yeah, I really highlight on something. They were in terms of women's arousal patterns. [00:15:00] Right. Which is hobbies are what you do to masturbate specific emotional pathways as a male, what you do when you don't have.Purpose in life. Because if you have a, if you know what you're doing with your life, no, no, no, hear me out here. Like if you really know what you're all about, you may do something to wind down a little bit that you could call a hobby, but you really don't have like. A big all encompassing hobby because you have a bigger thing to work toward and you're going to take your free time to do That to advance on that, you know, I I agree a hundred percent but but like for me, for example I do like recreational activities that I understand to be purely recreational like video games For yeah, but you only do them when you like actually need to rest because you literally can't think anymore You've been right, but I, yeah, I understand that they are no different from masturbation.That is what I am doing when I am playing a video game. I am masturbating parts of my head. And I think that some men hear women to say something like a guy [00:16:00] who's a gamer gives me the ick and they're like, Oh my gosh, like, because you see this like guys, right? They're like, Oh, women like just discount any guy who's a gamer.And like, you misunderstand what's being said here, right? It's guys whose primary thing in life is gaming is what is giving the ick. It is guys whose gaming is more important to them than their purpose. That is going to give any high quality woman the ick. Any sort of hobby, where hobby is defined as something that doesn't follow some sort of like deep seated value for, Like I could say improving the world or whatever it is that you want to do, right?Even if it's well a fairly high status one like I Put together like a zombie run in san francisco every year or something like that, right? Like and it's it's big and it's all on all the newspapers and it's like that's a big thing But it's a thing devoid of purpose It's a high status thing and it adds a quirk to your character, but it's a thing devoid of [00:17:00] purpose or I do these really cool like Burning Man art displays and come check out this giant like truck a saurus I made and it's like that's cool, but yeah, a lot of people like that and it was fun exploring these things with them, but I never came away from our dates thinking.Like I want to be associated with this person. Like this is someone I could spend my life with. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I, I think thatone thing you said to me when you were talking about this is you're like, they have to have an objective function. And if you don't have one of those yet, the pragmatist guide to life, our first book, it's 99 cents on Amazon. Like just get it and read it. An objective function is a term that we use to describe Thing or collection of things like, you know, weighted weighted things that you think have inherent value and that you want to maximize with your life.They're not life goals because that implies that this thing of inherent value can be achieved. Whereas pretty much [00:18:00] all objective functions whether it be, you know, reducing suffering in mankind or maximizing the amount that you can learn or you know, protecting human flourishing and intelligence all of these things are, are not discreet goals.So do you have any more thoughts on this particular topic before we go to the next one? The other thing that really was And that stood out, which I think is also super important. And this is an issue with both men and women is how transparent and honest you were on our first date. You sit across from me and you say I'm not looking to date.I'm looking to find a wife and I expect to find her this fall at Stanford where there's a large pool of pre wedded candidates. Immediately. I knew that you were looking to get married that you Had specific criteria for a wife that you didn't think that I fit that criteria, but you were still willing to talk to me.And then you proceeded to give me, like you laid out your, your objective function, what you believed mattered and how you were going to achieve it with your life. And that to me was [00:19:00] so refreshing because I know that everyone I went on a date with wanted something, but the vast majority, like, well, none of them until you.Actually told me that, you know, it was just always talking about other things. It was never, just never out there. And I think that both men and women, I think they think because they're often tropes of being transparent as, as being seen as being desperate or needy, you know, like a woman being like, I'm looking to get married on a first date.And not playing hard to get, for example being seen as bad, but honestly, it just, There, there are bad ways to deliver it, but if you deliver it right, and if you're based and honest about it, when you really reveal your agenda, you are saving time. If someone doesn't want to get married and you want to get married and you're on a date with them, it is so good for all of you.If you just, Make it clear that you're not a good match. The sooner you get to know on that front, the better. And it's similar with, you [00:20:00] know, pickup artistry. If someone isn't interested in having sex that night and you want sex that night, you need to move on. And this is really clear in all the strategy forums.Like you, you cannot afford to spend your entire night working on a girl who clearly isn't going to go home with you. So Yeah, I just, that transparency was huge, and I loved that. It was very sexy. And that's the problem with the pickup artist community in terms of finding wives. It's that woman who is literally the worst woman for a pickup artist.Oh, yeah. The best woman for a guy who wants to get married. Yeah. And so it led to really bad techniques being developed. And, and here I'd note the final thing, the huge mistake that guys make is a big thing in pickup artistry is looking dominant and fitting this aesthetic of masculinity. And a lot of men online will shame other men for not fitting this aesthetic of masculinity.They'll be like, Oh, you know, you're not being masculine or buff in this way. Or, Oh, you're not being masculine or buff in this [00:21:00] way. That is a form of masturbation. No different from video games in the eyes of high quality women. Of these quote unquote, like masculine buff type guys. I don't know a single one of them who has landed a high quality wife.Like it just never happens. And they'll go online and they'll s**t on other guys for like acting Faye or like, Oh, I bet he's gay or like whatever, you know, because that's how they built sort of their internal structure. Well, that's this obsession with. Appearance reeks of insecurity and women can sniff that out like shark sniff blood.Right on. I am gonna hit a homer today. Hey, who's that handsome guy? Hello? 9 1 1. Emergency. There's a handsome guy in my house. Oh, wait a second. Cancel that. It's only me. Oh, you drive me away,Simone Collins: And that's another reason why your honesty was so hot and why anyone's honesty is hot is that. Honesty reeks of [00:22:00] confidence, which is the sexiest thing you could possibly have. It's so much more important than looks. Yes and and so i'd really if guys see themselves as very masculine very manlike and that's a very important part of their identity I will say and I I I know that this requires like serious soul searching in terms of like Whether it's reading the pragmatist guide to life or rethinking other things about your life.If, if you are struggling to find high quality partners, that's likely why. Guys like this do not get high quality partners almost ever. And you can be like, well, what about Andrew Tate? And I was like, well, do you think his partners are that high quality? Like, these are like bimbos. Like, what, what are you talking about?Would you actually be happy? Like having an intellectual discussion with them and you're like, well, you don't need to have an intellectual discussion with your wife. And it's like, you better hope you plan to have an intellectual discussion with your kids because if you marry a woman who's a bimbo and an idiot, then your kids are going to be bimbos and idiots.Weak wives make weak sons. Okay. So that's not a good [00:23:00] strategy and it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. You can only get so many Andrew Tate's, you know what I mean? So to the next thing, hypergamy. All right. So fundamentally what causes hypergamy? It is When a woman chooses a man and there's this fear among a lot of men that like if you had my wife had a guy who had significantly more money than me, who was interested in you and at an equal level of attraction or whatever, and you've had guys who I think have had hundreds of millions of dollars interested in you or express interest, you might be too autistic to notice.I genuinely wouldn't tell you. Is this the only reason I haven't left you, Malcolm? Yeah, yeah, you gotta give him a piece of advice if you don't notice. But what people note here, and one guy was like, yeah, well, okay. He said this and I think that he sort of began to understand how you prevent hypergamy when he was going through his, oh, yes, but he's like, look, when a woman finds a guy who has, let's say, 5 more than her husband [00:24:00] and that guy will take her, she'll leave him for them.And then the guy was like, well, yeah, but then you've got to like price in things like starting the relationship over again, the risk of the new relationship, blah, blah, blah. He's like, okay, okay, okay. Once you price all that in, if they have, you know, marginally more money they will take that. And here you might be expecting me to say, no, they won't take that.And I'd actually say, actually, yeah, most women will take that. But that is because. Many men have not priced into their relationships, the cost of leaving them i. e. the structure of their relationships into the cost of leaving them. So, for example, you could and, and this often happens with guys and girls, and you were talking about this, like a guy moves up in the world.And with that brings a woman up in the world. Maybe he becomes a congressman or something. Right. And then she ends up meeting some business tycoon at some fancy party. And now, you know, she's no longer a waitress. She's the wife of a and then [00:25:00] I was at an event recently, a heritage foundation event, and there was a lawyer there who's talking about how divorce can even become trendy in some communities and positively start augmenting people's social status.Like, well, if you don't have an X, then you're not really, I mean, you're sort of scoogy, you know what I mean? So when you have all of that, you can have people want to leave their partner with only minimal cost to them, right? It's like, well, you know, I'm staying at home. And this is why stay at home.Wives are so likely to leave their husbands because husband's are like, what? I did everything. I supported them. And it's like, no, you created a lot of life. Where they could just trade you out for anyone else who was supporting them with an equal amount of money. That is what you created. And worse, they have a psychological belief in their head.If they don't have a, a new partner lined up, which sometimes they don't that they can secure the same type of partner that they were dating when they first met you. Now this belief is wrong, but it can still lead them to leaving you and making really, [00:26:00] really dumb decisions that hurt you both or.You know, their friends will be like, Hey, you can get all that money, you know as they say, you know, in a divorce, his lawyer was telling me that's, it usually goes half the money goes to the wife, a quarter goes to the lawyers and a quarter goes to the husband. Oh gosh. And this woman can get a stipend.She doesn't need to listen to you anymore. You know, she's on pay for the next, this is a pretty good, like, okay. So then you're like, if you didn't have some kind of emotional investment in the relationship, like an ideological or emotional investment. You'd be kind of dumb to not go for it. It would be It would be stupid to not so then a person can say, wait, you're, you're making it seem very likely that a woman would leave you.Right? It's like, no, if you do this trad thing, it's likely that a woman like the Laura Thurston thing, right? You know, she tried the whole trad thing and then they broke up and Or that Steven Crowder thing. He was trying the whole trad thing and they broke up. But and you know, who knows if she, you know, [00:27:00] overly exaggerated in the claims against him and stuff like that.I've heard that she might have, but you know, there's the footage, so whatever. The point being, I'm sure if you could get footage of the worst I'd ever been to Simone, I mean, it wouldn't be like that, but I would look bad. I'd be like, We all look bad when we're being dicks too. Each other. I mean, what do you want to say?The point here is if you left me both of us would have nothing the cost to leaving me to you and me Is so catastrophic that No matter how much money a guy had, it wouldn't be worth it because we have built a traditional corporate relationship, which means that my public identity in your public identity and our public identities being our, so for example they're like, wait, you guys work in private equity.Yeah, but we worked in private equity together. We were co CEOs of our companies. We co raised money for our [00:28:00] funds. They're like, well, you guys are well known public figures together. We have a joint Wikipedia page. I don't know anyone else with a joint Wikipedia page. How do you get divorced? If you have a joint Wikipedia page we've written all our books together.We do our podcast together. I want your thoughts on this.The marriages I've seen fell apart and some of them even include marriages that I just thought were. The dream marriages of, you know, the parents of my friends who I thought were just perfect together, they, they resulted from a lack of ideological alignment of the relationship being of two people living their own lives, rather than a team fighting toward a shared goal.When you marry someone because you want a partner, someone, a friend, someone to keep you company, someone to raise your kids, someone to clean your house, someone to make money for you. So you can keep a house that, that it often isn't [00:29:00] ideologically aligned. It's not the incentives aren't aligned and you can drift apart from that person really, really easily.That's why I, it's, it's not for me. I actually think it would be fairly easy for us to part ways logistically speaking. And at least for me, to have a career, I think being a white man and trying to get a career is really scary these days, but like, if I had, you know, no attachment to you and you suddenly became terrible to me, It would not be a problem for me to leave you, period.Like, it's just that easy. And I think everyone, like, this is why men are afraid to get married. The reason I This is a really good point. So, so I, yeah, I could have been wrong in what keeps you with me which is You are wrong. I am wrong. So it's that what really puts a marriage at risk, and this is a problem for a lot of trad individuals, is they marry somebody who has chosen to marry you, not because of you, but because you allow them to fulfill a role, i.e. they really wanted to be a mom, they [00:30:00] really wanted to be a stay at home wife, they really wanted to be a, and you Functionalize that role. And this is a huge problem. Like if you're like a trad Mormon or a trad Cath or like a trad, you know you will find a lot of women like that who aren't marrying you for a shared mission but are marrying you so they can perform a role.And that means that you are interchangeable for anyone who makes that role incrementally easier. Or not even interchangeable. You will become irrelevant. if their desired role changes or if you fail to, to maintain that role yourself. Well, I mean, I think the really scary thing for guys is they can maintain the role, but somebody else can maintain it better.That's true. Yeah. That's, that's the third way this can go wrong. No, the, the, I would not leave you because not, I mean, not only do I, like, am I over the moon for you and I love you and also you just get hotter every day. And I don't know why there's just so many things that [00:31:00] I absolutely adore about you.It's because there, I cannot fathom a, a more effective way. To achieve my objective function then by working in tandem with you that I will be significantly worse off at maximizing my values. If I'm working without you, and I think there's something similar for you, you know, without me, your impact in life would be so much less.And for that reason, we are a very strong team. We are more impactful together. And there's a very strong disincentive for us to not work together because working alone, we achieve. 20 percent of what we achieve working together. And that's the big thing. Well, I mean, but that's the cost thing. Like you say, it's not a cost to leaving me, but a cost to leaving me is that you are less efficient at achieving your goal and you would price that in most couples.I'm in, I'm [00:32:00] talking about a scenario in which that wasn't the case. Like we weren't ideologically aligned. In which case logistically, like from a perspective of me having an easy life and having the income I need to, you know, meet my needs. Like there's no problem there. And that's how most people are thinking that the vast majority of couples, as you know, I mean, have you talked to a person recently, like, you know, we, we do this all the time, are not ideologically aligned.They're, they often are, you know, smart, wonderful people who love each other very much. And are nice and like get along well. And people typically think, Oh, there goes a really nice couple, but if they are not ideologically aligned and essential to the other person to help them achieve their life's purpose, the relationship is on thin ice.Right. Well, and that's something that is a result of the first thing that we talked about. And it's why it's good to have these two conversations together, which you chose me because I had a [00:33:00] purpose in life that you could understand and logically agree with. Yeah. More importantly, you had a purpose in life and it 100 percent aligned with what I valued.My, like I wrote in my diary after I met you after our first date about how mad I was that I wasn't you. Because you got it as far as I was concerned and you were doing such a better job than I was. Like you, you had thought through things so much better than I had. You knew what you were doing. You were on your way.And I was just so pissed that I wasn't you. And I think that's, that's another really good sign. It's like, Oh, like this is a, this is a force multiplier of me. Like I want to be them is a much better. Instinct to have with a potential life partner than I want to be with them where I want to, I want to have sex with them.I want to be them is like. That's, that's who you want to marry. That's someone you admire. That's someone who can help you achieve your goals in life. Like that is, that is something beautiful. And I still exist. You're still here. The truth is, and this is [00:34:00] what makes dating so hard is you really do need to, you cannot, and I think so many guys try this as they try to.Accommodate women who are in the urban monoculture rather than shock women in the urban monoculture, out of the urban monoculture to try for something more and bigger. And this accommodating approach to dating, I think leads to really negative outcomes as negative as the trad outcomes. Because you're like, okay, we're going to like compromise our beliefs about the world.So we can kind of work together because both of us want to be married and like have a kid or something. Right. Which is very different. You need. Personal belief system that you have so much conviction in that it sort of shocks him out of this poorly thought through urban monoculture framework, which is the reason why when people are like, Oh, I want to date, which of your books do I read in the pragmatist guide to relationships with the pragmatist guide to sexuality?I'm like, it's the pragmatist guide to life. That's the one to be good at dating. Yes. Anyway, I really hope that this helps somebody and that you don't make these mistakes because it is [00:35:00] so easy to do. Yeah. Which is funny because I think. For the vast majority of human history, people have been getting together for the reasons we describe, you know, it's like, hey, we want we're fighting for the same thing.This is a sensible partnership. We, we shall marry, so I will, but yeah, I love you broadly both why it's not just the progressive marriages that are struggling. It's. Also, the conservative and tribe marriages and a lot of people and it's so heartbreaking to me. They're like, but I was earning good money and I was supporting my wife and kids.Why would she leave me? And it's like, well, because she can, she can leave you and she can get a stipend for the rest of her life and she can do whatever she wants and she doesn't need making meals anymore. And she can screw the pool boy. Like why wouldn't she leave you? You did. nothing to integrate her into your mission for life.And there are ways a stay at home wife can be integrated into a man's mission for life. But it's hard and it's risky and it's [00:36:00] nuanced. You are threading the needle. You can't just serve a role. If you just serve a role, you've done the single most risky thing you can in terms of the structuring of the marriage.Anyway, am I going to look really stupid when you leave me in a year for hot rich guy who's into you? You are hot like I just I can't You, you know, that like, if you were to die, for example, and you're not allowed to do that, by the way, there would be no replacement. There would be, there should be your life would be harder without one.No, there's just, there's no replacing you. And I, I would not, I'm, I'm saying you should find another husband if I die. Well, I'm not going to, cause I think like all, all humans disgust me. And for some reason, yeah. You you're my human. So deal with it. Well, what about our kids? Don't they need a dad?They'll just watch your podcasts, and I'll, you know, beat them up more. You'll, you'll synthesize one through an AI? Yeah, I'll just make an AI Malcolm. [00:37:00] It's fine. So, yeah, that's that's how I feel about you. There is no replacing you. I know you're going to replace me right away. I'd replace you right away.I know, I know. Yeah, who's, who's the, who's the hypergamous one now? Who's the one who's, who's not faithful now? Huh? Huh? Wait, would you not want me to replace you? No, I would, I, yeah, I really want our kids to have someone who You're like, look, I can do both of the jobs. You don't clean. You don't do laundry.You cannot do both of the jobs. I admit that. Yeah, the house would be in shambles. I, I, no, I would be turning in my grave. Which, no, please cremate me and turn it into diamonds so our children can wear their mother and be creepy about it. I'm really excited for that. Alright, love you Simone. I love you too so, and Hey, thank you for efficient use of time there, by the way. The way, I'm gonna handle the chickens after this, before I pick up the kids because I was just, Oh, and your Christmas present to me has finally [00:38:00] arrived of what is it? You'll find out, won't you? I'm so excited. She buys presents from me to her because I'm not, you know, the best.I buy the presents for everyone in the family, but Malcolm still, with his discretionary income, pays for them, because he pays the exact same amount that I pay. For him and the same goes for our kids. So, so no one in the family receives more in monetary value and gifts than anyone. Is it just your weird neuroses?I believe in equitable spending across the family. Thank you very much. So. There it goes. All right. I'm excited to be here. Sorry. Stop doing that. This is why, you know, this is why Octavian had that irritated lip issue. He kept licking his lips. You need to stop. But this is where he got it from. Malcolm. I get it.It's too dry. You know what? I'm going to put the same. Bitter like skin thing on your lips that we had to [00:39:00] put on his. If you keep this up, put it on you when you're asleep, you won't, you won't have an escape because you are a deep sleeper. So watch out. Okay. I see you doing this again. Oh, Oh yeah. We got a terrifying life here.You see, it's not all, what are the guns and roses? It's not all guns and roses.Is that a traditionalist American thing? It's sunshine and rainbow. Oh, okay. Why would somebody want rainbows and sunshine? No, guns and roses. What would I do without you, Malcolm? Thank you for existing. Yeah, yeah.We mentioned that, , because, you know, so many people were at Na, Alcon looking for a potential husband or wife that we'd start doing ads for women who are looking for a husband, , and happen to be watching. The reason we do it for women and not men is because most of our audience is men. So [00:40:00] most of the people who are going to be hearing this are going to be men., and many of them will be single and potentially interested in marrying someone. So, , if this person sounds interesting to you. , and you live in their area, you can email us and we'll pass it on. A creative young woman, 25, living in NYC and capable of managing money, conversing, dancing, and altogether making a calm, happy home.Wishes to obtain an introduction to a sober, hardworking gentleman, not greatly, her senior who delights in having children underfoot and is eager to build a lighthouse on the sands of time? Must be a practicing Jew object matrimonial alliance. 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

In this episode, the hosts engage in a deep discussion about the controversial downfall of Jack Murphy, a former conservative influencer, and whether kink shaming should have a place in the new right ideology. They explore sexual fetishes, societal norms around sexuality, and the implications of shaming non-normative arousal patterns. The conversation also touches on traditional values, arousal pathways, and the potential consequences of making private sexual preferences public. Join us for a candid, thought-provoking discussion on the balance between sexual morality and personal freedom in conservative spaces. [00:00:00]Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I had an interesting thing that happened in an episode recently where Ry Nationalist was on. We were talking about Jack Murphy, who used to be a famous sort of conservative influencer who had this, this club and this podcast and everything like that.And then it turned out that he was in to being, I. Cued specifically his girlfriend sleeping with other people and into putting things in his butt and this, we're gonna go over all of that. I wasn't like, we weren't conservative influencers when that happened, right. So, like, we had nothing to say on that, when that happened, but when I heard this, my first intuition was to be like, oh, I feel kind of bad for him.Like. I didn't have like embarrassing fetishes that I had to worry about like that, you know, like this is what turned him on, you know? And you don'tSimone Collins: get to choose what turns you on and what turns you on isn't a reflection of your morality either.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Tamura, I [00:01:00] miss me something. My computer's hard drive. I need you to dump it in the bathtub and fry it. All done. Please rest in peace, Satoru.Malcolm Collins: And it made me think a question, right? Like. I want to go into all of this again, and I want to go into it, you know, as the, the new right.And the tech right is sort of consolidating as a ideological perspective. Okay. And you and I are some of the, I'd say primary, regular influencers shaping that ideological perspective. What should be like as we unc, UNC ourselves from the left, as we Debra de brainwash, deprogram ourselves, what should our perspective be on kink shaming?I like is kink shaming [00:02:00] something that we should continue to do? Is it certain kinks where we should continue to do it? And here, I would note when I talk about kink shaming, and I need to be as clear as I can about this,Simone Collins: hmm.Malcolm Collins: This does not include instances in which somebody else without your consent forces you to participate in their kink.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. ThatSimone Collins: is,Malcolm Collins: that's very different. They talk to you about their kink. That means they dress up as their kink in a public context. That means they go to children's book readings in their kink. Here I am talking about things that people do in private, and the reason why I think it's, it's bad to pretend like.All kinks are bad is, well, our book, the Pregnant Guided Sexuality, we did a, a survey on this just to see how common kinks are, right? Like non-normative arousal patterns. And we found that the average person is aroused by 22 weird things. People have. K people have a, a . I need to cut that out.'cause I had no more swearing on this show. [00:03:00] Mm-hmm. A basket of kinks. It was 23.1 for men and 20.8 for women. So not even like that different. And if you're like, how clustered are these? There was a study of 2,300 people in the UK showing that roughly 75% had some kink. So the vast of people. Have a kink.Mm-hmm. Our society works because we do not talk about it.Alright, kid. Here's the deal. At any given time,Around 75% of the people you interact with are perverts in some way.Most of them right here in Manhattan, and most of 'em are decent enough. They're just trying to make a living cab drivers not as many as you'd think. Humans, for the most part, don't have a clue. They don't want one or need one, either.They're happy, they think they have a good bead on things, but why? Why a big secret? People are smart. They can handle it. A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals. And you know it. 1500 years ago, everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe. [00:04:00] 500 years ago, everybody knew the earth was flat.And 15 minutes ago you knew that people wereMostly just turned on by the opposite sex.Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.What's the catch? The catch? The catch isjust because you're aroused by something doesn't mean you have to indulge in itAnd That doesn't mean it's okay to talk about this stuff in public. You keep that to yourselfor.you will sever every human contact. Nobody will ever know you exist anywhere, ever.I'll give you the sunrise to think it over.Hey, is it worth it?Malcolm Collins: If you're strong enough.But it's, it's a thing where it's like you can have something unusual that arouses you without communicating it to other people. 100%.Simone Collins: And without acting on it.Malcolm Collins: And without acting on it. But there, there's, there's multiple categories here. Like if it's deleterious to other people, I can see, do not act on it, right?Mm-hmm. If it is like there's, you know, if, if it's like, you know, just your masturbating to it or something like that, I think that's a [00:05:00] very different category than going out and doing it in public. Like say if you're gay, right? Well, that might be a too offensive one to choose. What's a less offensive one to choose?Because I was gonna say like, it's, it's harder to get married and have lots of kids if you don't have a lot of money if you're gay. So it's better to just if you, if you're not like a successful tech bro, just. Not act on it if your end outcome is having a lot of kids. But that doesn't mean that like there's necessarily this huge moral negative to like masturbating to it or something.And by the way, this does reduce the incident of like people like, oh, like masturbating to something makes you want it more. And it's like, no, like the actual studies are very categorical on this.Simone Collins: You know, ALIST, latest substack as of the time of this recording is her earnest argument. In, in following up on her most controversial tweet saying that if we had more ai, PDA file porn, fewer children would be harmed.So she's making the same argument. [00:06:00] Well, I,Malcolm Collins: that is what got me thinking about this, but I wasn't Oh, really? To include that as part of the argument. Because I'm just pointing what you're saying. No, I'm saying that gets too spicy. I'm just talking generally kink shaming on the right, but, but you know, if you look at like porn more generally Yeah.Like the idea that, oh, porn makes you do bad things. Mm-hmm. In countries where porn was illegal and then it was made legal, the amount of child, essay decreased by 50%. This is the check. Yeah. This,Simone Collins: it is. Clearly if you care about children, you are not going to ban porn.Malcolm Collins: Yes. But, but it's like, okay, when people don't have access, and they, and it was repeated in other countries where they did this, it's just like a really persistent thing mm-hmm.In the United States as access to the internet increases, which is basically access to porn. Rates of sexual assault also go down. Like, this is a very clear correlation. You are arguing for a aesthetic and not real, like an individual who says, I am against Child sa. And I am against pornography is [00:07:00] similar to a environmentalist who is like, I am against global warming and I am against nuclear power plants.It's like those two things might be aesthetically aligned, but if you logically actually cared about the first thing, you wouldn't be pro the second thing. Mm-hmm. Because again, the, the people who are engaging in certain, but what I, what I wanted to get to here was this idea of, of this guy. What he did, his downfall.Other conservatives, because there's other conservatives. The guy who ran the Proud Boys, apparently he did a thing that apparently a lot of people have criticized him for. Being like, oh, you know, anal stimulation in males is something that you can try without being like less masculine. Right. Okay. And apparently, I mean, just theSimone Collins: sheer number of dudes who show up in ERs with I slipped in the shower and something random up their butt shows that this is actually way more common than people wanna let on.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, but I mean also like biologically, like if you're just looking at like the, the, the stimulation points of males, like the interior prostate is [00:08:00] one of the stimulation points Yeah. That a person could be using if we'reSimone Collins: talking just pure logistics. Yeah. If you're looking for more ways to feel things.Yeah. If you're lookingMalcolm Collins: for pure logistics of how to maximize your turn on. Yeah. And, and the. Funniest thing about Simone and I is, I think one of the reasons we engage in sexuality topics so much is we find it so intellectually perplexing. Like I think if I actually had like a bunch of skeletons in my closet or something, I wouldn't be doing this because I'd be so afraid.But like actually we're more like, yeah, humans, like sex is gross. Like this, this whole thing is gross and, and you can intellectualize it or engage with it, but some people, well, it's likeSimone Collins: watching. You know, pigeons court each other and being kind of disgusted and asking why do they do that?That is, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but I also, you know, feel like Jack Murphy, for example, he didn't choose to have this like he was dealing with an No no. An entire category [00:09:00] of temptation that I have never had to deal with. Yeah. And that's rough. It's building up an influencer career is. Hard work. Okay. It is a lot of work and a lot of risk.Yeah. And to have done that and then have that destroyed no, no. He did other things when he was caught with this. You know, we'll get, we'll get into all that. It made me be like. Should we normalize this in, in the new Right. Not the old right? The old right. Can do whatever the hell they want. Like the religious, funny duddies.Okay. They're always gonnaSimone Collins: be sex negative. I don't that only sex, marriage,Malcolm Collins: whatever, right? But we're not that, you know? Yeah. So what do, what do, what do we think about this? Let's go into this. So, this is, I'm gonna be combining some various articles and some various AI asks and stuff like that. Okay.In like a narrative sense where I felt like it was interesting information.Simone Collins: All right. HeMalcolm Collins: incurred the wrs of the online right when he rudely responded to podcaster Sidney Watson, asking him about the [00:10:00] article. The article in question was a 2018 piece Murphy wrote. On cultivating erotic energy from a surprising source.The source being sending his girlfriend to have sex with other men. Yeah. And if I put this, but he was, he publicly talked about this. It wasn't like it leaked. No, you publicly talked about this. Wow. Okay. So if I, if I,Simone Collins: so he felt really comfortable about this. HeMalcolm Collins: felt really comfortable about this.Yeah. If I post the stories here, it's today I sent my adoring, loyal, hot young girlfriend of two years to have sex with a stranger from Tinder. She's currently at his apartment, checked in with me via text, and it's per route. Presumably sucking and effing her way to a good time. Oh, I'm alone writing. Be happier.So he has a humiliation fetishSimone Collins: too. Be happier. No, he, that blog post was part of it. He was,Malcolm Collins: yeah. He wasSimone Collins: jizzing onto his audience with that. That is, that's likeMalcolm Collins: including your audience in this, which again, I don't think is great. Like I think that, that, that is, that is like, Hey, you guys wanna be a part of like me?[00:11:00] No, no, no. Using,Simone Collins: using an audience to get yourself off. I'm not like, no.Malcolm Collins: Okay, so in 2015, Murphy wrote an art a detailing the experience of his girlfriend to have sex with this danger from Tinder,Simone Collins: UhhuhMalcolm Collins: describing it as a source of erotic energy. He framed cook holding as a manifestation of his control writing.Today I sent my adoring a loyal hung blah, blah, blah, that suggests he was experimenting and intellectualizing his unconventional sexual practices. And then later after that. Murphy admitted to producing and posting amateur pornographic content with his fiance around 2019, driven by financial desperation.He stated we didn't have any money coming in and there were no jobs at all. I was lost and desperate, so my fiance and I did cam porn at home. People paid us to F on the couch. We made thousands of dollars. These videos live stream publicly on platforms for tips, included acts with his fiance and solo performances by Murphy.[00:12:00] So no problemSimone Collins: with that, that everyone's consenting there. Everyone wins there. Wait, because he clearly enjoys this and she, I guess,Malcolm Collins: wait.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: PJ Media National File claimed that certain SIL acts involved Murphy using a dildo for anal stimulation,for example, national file article references a torrent was a username linked to Murphy, big beard, 1000. Containing content under a folder called Bear. Oh yeah. That is definitely gay. .Suggesting Homoerotic material. But I mean, that's for his audience, right? Yeah. Though they did know.No, you have to know your target audience and if you're looking to make money.Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. No, hold on. He knows his target audience. He [00:13:00] needs money. He also enjoys that form of stimulation. I don't think that's as suspicious anymore. I thought that you meant like a person Yeah. Annel that leaked from his computer.But that's totally different now.Malcolm Collins: As far as specific allegations of of gay sex, and again, I have nothing against gay sex, but I do understand why people were like, wait, you're like an alpha male influencer who's been like, follow me to get girls, and this is what you were into. Like I get the incongruency of that.Well, there'sSimone Collins: also just the issue, which you also see with same sex especially man, man. Sex where there's just a very, very strong disgust reaction in many people and, oh, no, no, I agree. People lack the sophistication to understand that a disgusted reaction is not, does not equal this equals morally bad, which is very annoying.Malcolm Collins: A ton of males have arousal patterns that an average person, as I've pointed out, is going to because non-normative arousal pattern. This is why there's the meme of, you know, I'll put on the screen here of the, the, the [00:14:00] anime where they, his best friend after he dies, takes this computer CPU and throws it in a bathtub.Oh, yes,Simone Collins: yes, yes.Tamura, I miss me something. My computer's hard drive. I need you to dump it in the bathtub and fry it. All done. Please rest in peace, Satoru.Simone Collins: And,Malcolm Collins: I, I. I, I, I'd say for me what's really funny is like if you look at my unusual arousal patterns, the truth is I don't think like our audience would find it like weird or disgusting at all. What's so funny though, is like people have actually apoplectic, people have sentSimone Collins: us emails where they're like, I know exactly what your fetishes are, and Malcolm, not once have they gotten them right.Malcolm Collins: Nothing never happened. Yeah, yeah. Progressives would freak out. Progressives would actually like panic. Yeah. Yeah. But, but right wing people would be like,Simone Collins: what? Well, okay. Okay. Sex negative progressives [00:15:00] though. Because I, I think most sex positive progressives know all the kinks and are like, yeah, yeah, yeah.They're like, yeah, they're all fine. Everything goes. So, yeah.ModerateMalcolm Collins: that. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I guess I will moderate that, but yeah, so he, he labeled himself in one thing as Heteroflexible. Right. Okay, fine. So maybe he had, you know, male again, like, why is this, you know, again, I don't wanna say like, for, and I feel so comfortable talking about this because I am so disgusted by the idea of sleeping with me.I'm like, oh the, the, the, like, this isn't. Like my particular closet thing. Like it's really not my particular closet thing. I'm, I'm just not gonna touch anything in that category. No, you're not. Um, But, but this, I'm like, come on guys. Like, he, he was into that. He did it at one point and now he's monogamously married with kids, right?Like, oh, with the sameSimone Collins: woman, or is someone different?Malcolm Collins: I think he's, yeah, I think it's the same woman kids. Oh, that makes me happy. Aw. It worked out for them.So I had read that he had kids and I hadn't read anything about him raising [00:16:00] them alone, so I assumed he was married, but no, it turns out that he had kids and was divorced long before he ever became famous, and what he called like a blue pilled relationship, meaning he didn't probably think much of her or that it didn't go very well.So no, he was not happily married.Malcolm Collins: He was happy when you hear the trajectory, he really got sort of screwed over by all of this. And you know, I think he was, he was, he was putting out deal ideas that were so mainstream.He was like partnered with Claremont, like,Simone Collins: oh yeah, that's, no, that's the problem. You, you, he, but he made a very, very huge, and I would think obvious misstep. In doing kinky stuff while playing in the conservative realm, but that's the conversation we're having is should this still be the case? Should being kinky and conservative get you disqualified?Yeah. As an influencer.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, that's the discussionSimone Collins: here. I, I don't, because look, what what's your, what do you think? I know what I think,Malcolm Collins: but before I go further, look, you, you've gotta keep in mind there is like a level of debauchery, right? Where it's like, , and debauchery should [00:17:00] not be defined by non-normative behavior.Hmm. It should be defined by the effect it has on the self and others. Mm-hmm. So, like in Mormon circles, right? And we talk about like a lot of kinks seem to be bred by what the population did historically, right? Or, or, or negative stereotypes and. And Mormons were in ous relationships historically. Which meant that people who were okay with their partner sleeping with other people in front of them would've had more kids historically, or knowing that their partner was sleeping.Mm-hmm. And so there's been this thing of like wife swapping and husband swapping where you do everything but full sex. And like, I would find that not just like gross, but like if you had done that with another guy in front of me, I don't know if I could get aroused by you. Like again, like it would be like, yeah, youSimone Collins: wouldn't be able to, I just know for a fact it wouldn't happen.Malcolm Collins: I try so hard. I try, ISimone Collins: promise, I, I literally have bad dreams where like I'm assaulted. And I don't care about the fact that I'm like the biggest concern I have at that moment. Obviously I'm like distressed for many reasons, [00:18:00] but the biggest one is, oh my god, Malcolm will never. See attractive again, that's like the number one thought on my mind.In addition to hating everything else, but like the number one thought is there, I know that this is true there and it sucks because you can't control that. You just can'tMalcolm Collins: control that. Yeah, I can't control that. Like I, I I. Yeah, I, I mean, there mightSimone Collins: be ways if, if, if I, I don't think so. I really, Malcolm I know you now, I know you well enough that it's just not, it wouldn't happen if this doesn't make you a bad person again.And that's, that is how arousal works. It. This is not about what you morally condone or not. This is just about Yeah, how you feel.Malcolm Collins: But apparently within Mormon communities, this isn't that strong. Yeah. ThatSimone Collins: clearly doesn't play here, but that makes sense. That make sense. A lot of people areMalcolm Collins: shamed like that.This has happened and I'm like, like there's been some scandals around this and stuff like this, and it's like, what? Like why? Like this doesn't seem to hurt anyone involved. Particularly like I'm like. And if you, and if this is the, the, the, the thing that I talked about was like the, you know, the Dursleys and one of their kid ended up sleeping [00:19:00] with one of his, like, like assaulting his younger sisters and stuff like that.When you tell someone all sex is bad, the all arousal patterns are bad. The daughters.Simone Collins: The Duggar. Oh, you so confused. I was like, is this Yes. The nature of Dugger, not the HarryMalcolm Collins: Potter family, the Duggars they, they end up thinking like, well, I'm a bad person sexually. They contextualize themselves that way.Mm. And then they normalize other genuinely horrific behavior. Right. So.And I think people can wonder why I hammer on the topic of sexuality and arousal patterns so frequently, and it's because it really is that central and important to the fight against the urban monoculture in that it is the core way that the urban monoculture peels people out of traditional cultures.Many people within traditional cultures just don't have fully developed models. Or healthy ways of relating to their own sexuality. And so the urban monoculture can can go and where you don't have sort of mental scaffolding, they're like, oh, I'll just plug this USB stick in here and put in this self-replicating [00:20:00] mimetic set, which will eventually build out an entire world perspective.And they do that within the field of sexuality. That's why so much of the urban monoculture focuses on this sexuality stuff. It's not just. The debauchery of the urban monoculture, it's that there are not appropriate defenses in place within many traditionalist cultures during their, uh, you know, puberty period, during their, their teen, late teen years.That's when they're the most vulnerable. And so it is really, really important that we find ways of relating to this that did not produce vulnerabilities.And just saying, you know, well, I'll pretend that all of this doesn't exist or that everyone's normal, or that blah blah blah. Like all of that is basically serving your children up to the urban monoculture on a platter. I.As a, uh, analogy here, it would be a bit like, like I think we can all agree pooping is gross, but. Somebody could be like, well, what? Why are you on your show always talking [00:21:00] about pooping? And it's like, well, because for whatever reason, most of the conservative cultures started teaching kids that people don't poop and that if you poop, you're weird.And I'm like, well, most of these kids, all of these kids are pooping. And if they think that they're gross and weird every time they're doing this. And then somebody else comes along and they're like, actually, you were lied to and abused. And it turns out everybody poops. that's gonna be potentially a compelling message to them where if you're like, no, both everyone poops and it's gross and weirdBut it's like an anular bodily function and definitely not the purpose of your life. If you make it the purpose of your life or essential focus of your life, or build rituals around it, , that is a waste of your life., I think that that is going to be much better at preventing kids from being peeled out.Malcolm Collins: So I think that like the new right should do a better job of like categorizing different types of non-normative sexual behavior in terms of like [00:22:00] acting on versus like, feeling. One, experimenting when you're young, I, I first experimenting when you're young or things you do when you're young.When I say young, I, I don't mean just like a kid. I mean like up to like 25, let's say 23, 21, 22, 23. 23.Simone Collins: 23. Like 20. You gotta get serious.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anything really done before 23 or 24, I'm like full pass, like whatever. Like this guy was talking about.Simone Collins: Well, with the caveat that with women having a lot of sexual partners can, you know, that's kind of course, but womenMalcolm Collins: make mistakes, right?Like Yeah. And. I, I, I think if you wipe every woman out of the sexual marketplace who was sexually active before this age, you know, you can say, you, you shouldn't do this. You should know this is gonna affect how the partner values you. But in terms of the public stage, like if a conservative influencer woman, I.It came out that she had slept with a bunch of people before that age, like before 23. Like suppose it came out that like Louis Perry [00:23:00] or or Mary Harrington or Katherine Pak had had sex with a bunch of people before 23, and this is at odds was their current like conservative persona. I'd be like, you cannot count that against them.I, I would, I would like actively attack anybody who tried to shame their adult publicly.Simone Collins: Yes. But, you know, men would have an issue with that, which is why with our daughters, I'd still warn them again about it. Right.Malcolm Collins: I agree. But that's not what we're talking about. Yes. That's notSimone Collins: what Yeah. We're talking about should you be reputationally disqualified as a conservative influencer based on your.History sexually. Right.Malcolm Collins: Right. If anything, I'd feel worse for them. I'd feel like everything that they had done in terms of influence was in part to try to save young girls from their position right now and they just didn't want to have that publicly associated with them.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I,Malcolm Collins: I, I don't think I'd have an ounce.I, I would've an ounce of anything but rage as somebody who tried to attack them if that came out. You know, and I think that this is what I'm talking about in [00:24:00] terms of like how we categorize this, right? Yeah. Like what actually I. Assuming they disclosed it to their current partner before marrying,Simone Collins: which is important.Yeah. Which isMalcolm Collins: important. Right. You know, and again, I'm not saying that any of them did. I don't, I have no reason to believe that any of them did this. No, I was just giving an example here, right? Mm-hmm. So yeah, before the age of 23, I'd say, okay, throw that out. I'd say and, and keep in mind he was here talking about this camming stuff he was doing when he was like 19 or something, or his fiance.Oh, it was from the past. I dunno what he was.Simone Collins: No, it sounds like he published a blog post about. His wife doing it as she was doing it,Malcolm Collins: whatever. Well, we'll see. We'll, I, I, I can go back and try to find out how old he was when this stuff's happened.Simone was in the right here. It was as he was doing it, which makes it extra indefensible.Simone Collins: All right. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But in, in terms of stuff like anal play for men I see no reason why this should be shamed.I understand it like it goes against norms. It's not like particularly dangerous. It's, it's something they can do as like a mono monogamy partner. It's also notSimone Collins: even time consuming. [00:25:00] So, yeah. Like if it causes him to orgasmMalcolm Collins: quicker and get the whole thing over with quicker than just do it. Yeah.Simone Collins: Power to the, yeah, absolutely.I, so my, my stance on this is the really big contrast in my view between the left and the right in our modern age is performative activity versus consequentialist activity, and then hedonism versus values alignment. So the way that I look at acceptable sexuality versus non-acceptable sexuality has more to do with are you putting your sexuality above the pursuit of your values?Like, are you spending most of your time dating people and trying to get new sexual partners, or are you spending most of your time doing what it is that that's meaningful to you? How muchMalcolm Collins: are you letting your sexuality distract you from your end goal?Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like be a part of your identity when that's not.At all related to your objective function or if your objective function is hedonism, you just shouldn't be here. You shouldn't, you don't belong here [00:26:00] on the other side.Malcolm Collins: Well, no. I actually argue that, that Jack Murphy, if, if you look at this, he was allowing it to distract him. You know, he was no.Simone Collins: And so that I, I, I hold all of that against him.And also the fact that he was acting on it in a way. That logistically would've taken a lot of time, like sitting down with your girlfriend or fiance and saying, listen, I'm really into this. Listen, I want you to go out and do this. I mean, she's also taking a risk, going out and having an intimate experience with someone from Tinder, like that's not necessarily safe for a woman either.And if, if she's doing it safely. Yeah. There's also a lot of vetting that's very time consuming. You, you, you have SDD testing, you have some, some kind of due diligence that you're hopefully doing on this. Lucky gentleman, so. Like, really? Don't you have better things to do? You really think, like, you really think,Malcolm Collins: but, and this is, this is, this is why.And it's funny again, like all of the stuff that I'm defending here, I would not sit on camera and defend something I actually do for fear that it comes [00:27:00] back to me. So when I'm talking about like the, the like anal simulation and stuff like that, that is not, I, I find it like the idea, the, the, like the smell.I thinkSimone Collins: both of us are too squeamish around. To handle. Like we don't, human bodies aren't our favorite thing. Yeah. Human bodies are not my thing. Like I'm I, well like butt stuff is way too human. Is way too human. That'sMalcolm Collins: always been your famous line was me, which is Malcolm. I'll doSimone Collins: anything for you. But Anal.Malcolm Collins: But anal. But she literally. All the time. Like it's funny that I don't think that's ever been recorded on air or anything that she this, but like within our personal relationship it's always like she'll hold my hands and be like, Malcolm, I'll do anything for you. But anal.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And for me, I'm just like, why? Why, why add that when you could just masturbate? Like that's like a gross additional step. Like, even, even,Simone Collins: well, and I think, so my, my additional problem with anal when you have a choice, like when there are other holes available, is the amount of prep and [00:28:00] maintenance you have to do.Yeah, let's go. I'd love to, do we have all the gear, do you think? You know, I've got my hiking shorts. Yeah, I think I have everything. Yeah, let's get the gear. Alright, hike. Yeah. What if it rains? You right. Let's get the ringer. You know.Simone Collins: Yes. So again, when it comes to are you spending your time pursuing and maximizing your values, if you do frequent anal. You're following all these steps. But I also hold that for like, someone who spends an hour a day doing their hair and makeup. That's, that is just as valueless as someone Oh, yeah.Or spends an hour preparing for, oh, somebodyMalcolm Collins: football games or something. You know, uhhuh like,Simone Collins: yeah. So like, I, again, like we, it we are not sex negative. Were was hedonism wasting time.Malcolm Collins: Negative hedonism. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I, I agree with all that. But what I'm saying here is like, when I hear.Like the head of the Proud Boys apparently got canceled for, for, for saying something like this. And I was like, [00:29:00] no, you shouldn't be doing that. Like, because then, you know, you don't know your own kids end up into something like this and you frame this as like this horrifying thing. And then now they're like, okay, well I guess I'm just a sexual monster, may as well great.My sister. You know, and it's like, well,Simone Collins: yeah, suppressing this stuff isn't good. And I think. Knowing about your arousal pathways and possibly even talking about it when it's relevant and whatnot, I have no problem with that. And people shouldn't be shamed for what turns them on and off. But.Yeah, pursuing it, investing a lot of time into its pursuit. You should just be on the project. Well, I actually, this likeMalcolm Collins: if you're being logical puts like the new right. Strictly morally superior to the left around arousal and kinks. Well, because what we're saying is that's what every side thinks.They're, you know, you could, you could have the kinks you want to have, so long as they don't have negative externalities in how you're applying them. And so long as you are not forcing other people to participate in them, which is what you are [00:30:00] doing when you. Dress up that way in public when you publicly blog post about something like this when you you know, like all of this is stuff that's done to involve other people in your kinksSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Without their, theirSimone Collins: consent. Yeah. And so that's why OnlyFans is different. It is opt-in. And I think that's, that's one of the really underrated great things about OnlyFans is if you have a. Humiliation, fetish. If you have a, like public exposure or fetish, all those sorts of things. Like this is the place where you can do it and make money and everyone can sense.And I just think that's beautiful. It's wonderful. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like, oh, here's a great thing. If somebody, and I don't believe the Russian pee tapes are real, if some Russian prostitute really peed on Trump, like whatever I, I like even think was the right as it is right now. These came out, people would be like, whatever, like F off, no oneSimone Collins: cares.Malcolm Collins: Like, I'm glad I wasn't born like that. But alsoSimone Collins: like everyone knows Donald Trump would never, he's such a germ phobe, so it's not Yeah, he's, he'sMalcolm Collins: a [00:31:00] complete germophobe. He would never do that.Simone Collins: He seems like the kind of person who would see like the tiniest stain on a carpet and be like, we need to leave this hotel right now.You think he's gonna, he's gonna do water sports? I know. I alsoMalcolm Collins: think that he's a sexual elitist like me. I, I, I would not be surprised if he has not slept with prostitutes. That he only sleeps with, like, he's, he's wrote articles about sleeping with like, not rote, but that articles written about him, about how he likes like sleeping with his friends' wives and stuff like that.Yeah. Because they'reSimone Collins: high status women. HighMalcolm Collins: status. Yeah. I'm, I'm very, and squirmy Daniel was aSimone Collins: high status like celebrity. So yeah. I think for him, status is hotter than. A lot of other, not status. It'sMalcolm Collins: hotter. I think low status women are disgusting to him. Oh. It's a version thing like myself. Interesting.Yeah. Anyway, so to continue here, Murphy's own admission of the video's existence coupled with his attempt to label the redistribution as revenge porn.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. The claimMalcolm Collins: debunked as the content was wily, publicly posted. Fueled the narrative. He locked his ex account and deleted his tweets. Furthering, escalated scrutiny.Mm-hmm. His defensive to questions about the [00:32:00] 2015 Cook holding article, particularly lashing out lashing out. The podcast hoster the Sidney Watson is, is what caused people to get angry at him. From the perspective of manosphere letting other men have sex with your girlfriend is definitely a no-no.And we'll earn you the ultimate put down C, which is to say cuck hold. By the way, cuck holds both in our data and other data was more common among conservatives getting cuted by your partner Yes. Than progressives. Yes. Isn't that interesting? Interesting. Murphy's defensiveness poured patrol.Yeah. So the big problem is his defensiveness and sort of how he handled it. Now what is interesting here is his writings were criticized.Its Smith Sandra racist and aligned with alt-right ideologies, which led to his doc. Sing in 2018. Hmm. This revelation that he was a senior manager at DC Public Charter School Board resulted in administrative leave in January, 2018.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: So apparently that's when he started leaving, leaning in to like the Jack Murphy live stuff.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: And [00:33:00] then His in 2021, his profile expanded as he became a Lincoln fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank highlighting his influence in right-wing circles. However, December, 2021 brought significant personal revelations. He admitted to authoring in two a 2015 Cook holding article and producing amateur pornography.So the cook holding stuff he had written when he was still like a public democrat. And he had this pseudonym that was doing right wing stuff.Simone Collins: Interesting.Malcolm Collins: I mean, and so it'sSimone Collins: fairly complicated.Malcolm Collins: Yeah a a and then a, during this period, by mid 2022, Jack Murphy live ceased new episodes suggesting a withdrawal from his public role concurrently heal a large Rebel health alliance, a personalized healthcare service, focusing on optimizing longevity and metabolic health.And it's something that is still operational and appears to be his. Mainstream source of income. So one thing I wanna look at is the stuff that got him canceled. Like how actually offensive is this guy, right? Yeah. Everyone says, oh, they're misogyny. And people say Are, we're misogynist and racist [00:34:00]Simone Collins: uhhuh.Malcolm Collins: So he said, if feminists need grape, it is our duty as men to save feminists from themselves. Therefore, I am offering to grape to feminist as an olive branch. Who's asking for trouble? It's asking for trouble. It's provocative, but us saying that like the, the Handmaid's Tale is leftist fantasy and that the data proves it mm-hmm.Could be seen as analogous to that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Fair. He said if you open her a, you open her mind. He said this is not something I'd agree. Like obviously my wife says I'm not interested in this. And I'm like, yeah, okay. Oh, I'm not interested in either. But but like I, okay another one here is big female myths.Is that they are pure, true says they are hungry, dirty, and enthusiastic about sex. And I love. How feminists don't believe in agency. That is not an offensive statement at all. So he said like almost nothing here, wrong from [00:35:00] what I can see. Well, butSimone Collins: also, no, I think that sweeping statement is not accurate.That is accurate about some women. Definitely not. Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, okay. Here's one thing that I do have a problem with. He said in one post he wrote I've had s. Sex slaves, little girls and tied them all up. Feminists seek me out to f them, like the patriarchy which the little girls sing, like I can understand it sexualized, but like, maybe you shouldn't say that publicly.Simone Collins: Maybe notMalcolm Collins: like, like I, like, I what I mean is I do not think that he's actually talking about little girls, but I like understandSimone Collins: DDLL. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dlg. Yeah. Sorry.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Here he is. It says he's talked about at an esno state where he said the logistics are necessary in the course of events in which leads us towards an esno state.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: That's, that's actually something that like, I think a lot of people need to think about when you have a large. Amount of immigrants in a country and there might be an a, a desire to preserve that country in the future, like Germany or something. Okay. You gotta think about, well, what [00:36:00] happens to the immigrants that have been imported into the country?Like, how, how does the country, if it changes its mind about thisSimone Collins: mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Handle this, like, when it realizes it may eventually go extinct. And like what we mean here is 25% of the German population. Currently came to the country after the 1950s or their, their ancestors did. Mm-hmm. They have a higher fertility rate than the mainstream German population.Like eventually Germans will be replaced. And this isn't like a, I'm not saying like some evil person plan this out or anything like this, but that this might lead to. Ethnic tensions is obvious, and if a far right government came into place, a question of what do you do that isn't genocide is something that is worse establishing so that people don't jump to genocide.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway and, and I mentioned the other one who this had happened to, which I found was interesting is, is, is Glavin McKinneys who, who talked about butt stuff in, in straight men and, and that not being unmanly. And I'm like, well, but like this manly [00:37:00] obsession is pointless in the first place. I think that, well, thatSimone Collins: is, again, it's, it's pretty preening and performative among men as well.And to me it screams of insecurity. So I don't, I, I really don't care like a man who's very comfortable with his sexuality. Like there's nothing more masculine. And whether this is demonstrated by a man or a woman than confidence and comfort with your sexuality and being very open about it, that's a lot of confidence and that's very masculine.And this whole like shaming thing, there's nothing more feminine than public shaming. Absolutely. Yeah. So this whole, it's not masculine stuff is, is very, you know, it doesn't, it's not the right brand. I think it's not the brand that conservatives necessarily want to. Project not, not dunking [00:38:00] on Man's world or anything for theMalcolm Collins: health of keeping people was in their community.If you've created a community, you know, one thing I mentioned to a progressive reporter recently is I was like, well, you know, back when I was a progressive. There were all sorts of ideas and arguments and everything like that that I had, that I knew I needed to keep private. If I was gonna maintain my acceptance within the communitySimone Collins: andMalcolm Collins: within the new right, I'm able to say everything I believe about the world, right?And people will be like, well, I disagree with you here, let's have a debate. But it is friendly, you know? It's like they, they actually want to convince me They're not like, shut up. You're not allowed to say that. Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I think that alongside arousal patterns, you know, if 75% of people have some sort of a kink, and we're talking about like 20 kinks per person on average, right?Like if, if you create a community where on average people are supposed to, to to know. That if something came out about them or something like that, that it would, it would be a reason to like shame and, and remove their [00:39:00] platform. And the average influencer in this space feels that way. Like the average conservative influencer by the statistics has something that turns them on, that they're hiding from you.And they would hope that they're friend did dunks or PC in water when they die. Like, the, the fact that that is the case is, i, I think not the way we should structure sexual morality was in the communitySimone Collins: 100%.Malcolm Collins: Because it, it's gonna push people out and it's gonna limit our audience. And instead to say you know, whatever arouses you can arouse you, just don't act on it.Don't live your life in that way and to know, yeah, don't make itSimone Collins: your identity, and don't structure your life around it. Just like with drinking, just like with eating, just like with exercising. All like, if it is not,Malcolm Collins: don't, don't force others to participate in it. Like, this is what trans people do.They're basically forcing others to participate in like their arousal patterns, right? They're like, Hey, everyone needs to, you know, and you, and you could tell like, part of this is about arousal. Like, they're like, none of [00:40:00] it. No, part of it's about arousal. Like, I, I, I get it. Like, for, for some of them it.Definitely when, when the, especially when they don't even try to pass it's like, why are you forcing them to call you by a gender that you're not even attempting to look like? Like, oh, it's because you're getting turned on by having power over them. Right. When, when you have the who is the swimming guy who you wanted to be?I can'tSimone Collins: remember his. Leah Thomas. Leah Thomas.Malcolm Collins: And, and we have reports that, she would go into the locker room and hadn't had surgery, wasn't on anything, you know, and had a maleySimone Collins: was out. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like,Malcolm Collins: Why are you, we used to call this being a flasher. Like, what are you doing? Like you can, you can do this.If you just wanted to be seen as a woman, you wouldn't be doing this clearly. Well, you know,Speaker 17: [00:41:00] Ah!Malcolm Collins: like part of me justSimone Collins: wishes we lived in the Starship Trooper's world of mixed gender restrooms and like everyone has. A male like locker room approach. I'm much more angry thanMalcolm Collins: that because if it's a mixed gender restroom, then then she, she, oh, yeah.Then it's not special. Yeah. Yeah. It's not special. Mm-hmm. She's not forcing herself on other people and that, yeah. See, no, that's, that's the solutionSimone Collins: is you just eliminate all gender neutral bathrooms. You just eliminate all gender neutral spaces and suddenly everything's okay again.Malcolm Collins: Well, and I also like that.Because I think it desexualize the other sexist body, and I, I think that that's erection. We should be going Well, that'sSimone Collins: the point. I mean, in, in societies when things get arbitrarily sexualized, suddenly they are sexualized, whether it's an armpit or an ankle or whatever. And if we just don't make it a thing, guess what?Suddenly, I mean, of course for some people, they're gonna.Malcolm Collins: In the Muslim world, right? Like you, you get like [00:42:00] ankles and stuff like that, sexualized because they're covered up. If you just had everyone like seeing naked males and females normalize, you wouldn't sexualize the other gender much at all. You just, well, I wonder why,Simone Collins: like, perhaps, so in Germany you get a lot more nudist colonies and resorts and stuff.Mm-hmm. And the, the primary kinks that you see associated with Germany are BDSM. They're power dynamic based kinks. Yeah. Instead of like body. Body stuff. Like when I think of Germany and I think of X-rated material, it is always power dynamic related and not related to body parts. And yet when I think of the X-rated material associated with say, India or a lot of other regions that are much more conservative, then it's all about body parts.And that is really interesting.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Is that a good thing? Yeah, I think it is a good thing. I think I, I, I, I think well, because in a good thingSimone Collins: for it not to be an obsession with body parts, but rather power dynamics.Malcolm Collins: Well, maybe, I don't know. Like, here's the funny thing in Germany, like why is it power dynamics that are the thing?It's because body parts are not [00:43:00] shamed. Like they see naked people all the time. Yeah. It's likeSimone Collins: germane. It's like, well, of course, like my, you know,Malcolm Collins: lack quality is shamed in Germany because they're like so obsessively progressive. And so the idea that somebody would have power over another person is what is most,Simone Collins: oh ha.It's a, it's germane,Malcolm Collins: you would say, as a as an arousal pathway.Simone Collins: Interesting. Oh.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I, I, I find, yeah, this is my thoughts after I think through this is I would generally, like if I had been around when this was happening, I would say, look, the way he handled this was gross. He shouldn't have involved the public in it.The, the way that he was defensive about this was also bad. But if you're talking about something like Gavin McKinneys, he's just like, look, you know, you shouldn't be seen as unmanly because you're, you're doing like prostate stimulation stuff. I'm like,Simone Collins: what? Well, however, however, I think that it is important.To separate your personal life from a professional life, even when yeah, your professional life is about your personal life. That's not true. When people are [00:44:00] influencers and it's all around their personalities, no, it's not about them as people, it's about the caricature that they've chosen to present online.And the caricature that these men had chosen to present was of a, of that time classically conservative male, which didn't do the things that they suddenly started promoting. Mm-hmm. And it was them bringing their personal lives to work. That messed that up. And again, that is something I just wanna abide by.We don't, we don't, we don't abide by that professionally. Don't bring your personal life into work if it doesn't help work. And they made that mistake. And so I, I, I, I still hold them responsible for it. If it came out, for example, that like their, their search history was leaked, then I would not hold them at fault.Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, like search history being leaked or like, who was it like, not Vosh one, one of the, one of the guys like had it. Pictures of Hint Eye. We've had, we have had Hint Eye leaked on this show, by the way. I accidentally put it on on, not accidentally, it's a joke. There were the, in [00:45:00] the, in the yak, the, the one about Yankees, the mild D Oh yeah, no, youSimone Collins: put,Malcolm Collins: you put the put hint tie on the show and other people are like, oh yeah, that's a great one.I know that one. They're like, I didn't expect him to actually put it on the screen. The, oh, just for people who don't know, it's called like my childhood friend. It's broken or something. And it's a, it's a story. It's super awesome where they have a, a, like, a hint, I story about a, a ga ga, what's the word, G ya.Guru girl, which is like when the Japanese women like do their face different colors and like, have lots of piercings and MalibuSimone Collins: Barbie, Japanese editionMalcolm Collins: garish outfits. And it's, it's apparently you learn. I, I, I decided to read the whole thing after putting in the episode. I was like, I gotta make sure this actually isn't like bad.Apparently you learned. That in the past she was assaulted. And she dressed this way because she wanted to feel powerful and like reclaim a sense of power. And then she meets a childhood friend and they fall in love. And then he, he does nice things for her. And over time [00:46:00] she learns that she doesn't need to dress this way to feel like she's powerful and she becomes a mom and she has kids.And the, the series ends. When her kid meets another kid playing in a park, and this is supposed to be a new childhood friendship that continues to cycle. Aw. Well, it's, it's, it's sad at the end actually, because they're commenting on how they, they don't know anyone who has kids their kids ages and no one's having kids anymore.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, but they're gonna be the new culture that generates. Or sorry that, that inherits Japan. So that's, yeah, allMalcolm Collins: of the actual, like, cant I, like, not safer work scenes happen after that scene. It's, it's, that's so weird. There's this whole like, lifeSimone Collins: arc that's super wholesomeMalcolm Collins: and then suddenly it becomes, well it created the wholesome like arc and in like the, the not safer work scenes are clearly supposed to happen at various parts of the life arc.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: Because obviously she gets pregnant, but I just wantSimone Collins: to establish that like, these are, this is part of a wholesome. Loving relationship because that's part of the erotic experience for the reader.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is, this is, this is people who want the erotic [00:47:00] experience of a wholesome, loving relationship that is, yeah.And, and youSimone Collins: can't get that full stimulus if you don't have the backstory that proves that that's happening. 'cause it's really hard to like lay that expedition exposition out in like three frames. That's really funny. That's really funny. But I don't,Malcolm Collins: I don't, I don't want, you know, there's like 215 panels of this.It's like Really? Oh my, my, geez. I, but I, I want that to be when Malcolm accidentally leaked tint tie episode that he, he had the that, that, that one where everyone No, I don't, ISimone Collins: don't think that's when it came out though, that you have in the, in the past Consum Penta, because you've talked in the past about the fact that you like, or both of us agree that in an ideal world.No porn would depict real people.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I'm a hundred percent for only. And you expressed then that you foundSimone Collins: real porn to be extremely disgusting. So I'm pretty sure that anyone who was actually paying attention at the time would be like. Oh, then I guess Malcolm likes head tie because like, what else are you gonna like if you [00:48:00] can't,Malcolm Collins: but if you're who, why?I find it disgusting. I just can't like look at a real person in, in that sort of a position. There's somebody, somebody'sSimone Collins: daughter and or son. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like this is somebody's daughter, somebody wife, somebody's, they probably haveSimone Collins: kids. This is, it's rough.Malcolm Collins: Like, this is gross. Like this, this is a human life that we're talking about here.Like why is this okay to get off? No, I, I think it's, it's, it's it's rough. I don't know if other people have that reaction. Like I maybe, maybe other people don't. Maybe other people are just like, no, but like in this context, it's not them, it's just a picture of them. But like for me, it's like,Simone Collins: I don't know.Like it's, I, I think it, I was just thinking about. You know, would I feel different if they were someone, if it was you? Like, would I feel uncomfortable? But like then if, if ever I was watching even video of like, you made something for me privately or something, I'd be like, oh, what if this leaks? I'd be so uncomfortable.And I think I think about that a lot. When I think about the other people, I'm like, oh, like. How old are they now? Are people [00:49:00] comparing their younger body to their older body? Like, what, what, what, what if their mother sees this? And you just start thinking way too much about it, and then you start thinking about yourself.And that's one of the reasons I think why many female audiences like. Ywe, which is man on man drawn like manga and stories. It's sometimes explicit and sometimes not because at that point you're totally taken outta the situation. Not only is it drawn, so you're not thinking about humans in general, but there are no women at all.So you're not thinking about you as a woman. Am I pretty enough? I think that there's some, there's a big theme in many genres of erotic material. That are instead of optimized around specific arousal pathways, optimized around avoiding specific, if not discussed pathways, then anxiety pathways.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I'm exactly the same way.What a lot of you is, is now the AI stuff has gotten good, I don't even need to worry that like a human, like, like drew itSimone Collins: and Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Humans were involved at some point in the process. Yeah. But I don't need to think about some guy in his basement drawing this. Right?Simone Collins: Yes, that's [00:50:00] true. That is kind of a turnoff when you think about it.Malcolm Collins: ThanksSimone Collins: for ruining that for me.Malcolm Collins: But I, I also point out with all of this, you know, the, the, the reason I say all this is I'm like, okay, so what if some guy is actually like a sabi guy and he is in a relationship and his partner is into this and, and they're into like him being a sub in the bedroom. Right. You know, like Uhhuh, are we supposed to be like.That guy can't be a good man. They can't be a good masculine man. They can't be a good dad. Like I think what we need to say is like, look, if you're a Suby guy, and this is why, because I feel bad for all of the Suby guys because there's like a lot of Suby guys out there, right? Yeah. I mean, likeSimone Collins: the numbers indicate that there are a lot of outMalcolm Collins: there.If you are a savvy guy, that doesn't mean that you cannot be the perfect masculine man. You can be a good dad who is there for your kids. You can be in a, a relationship with your wife that is stable and supporting and when the lights are off [00:51:00] and you're doing your own thing. That, that, that can be your own thing.And I don't think that we as a community benefit from those guys feeling in constant. Fear that they are gonna have everybody hate them if they ever found out about that. I think that that is not a healthy thing to, and thatSimone Collins: fear leads to a lot of avoidant problematic behavior. That's like, that's why you see this problem in states where porn is like banned or deeply looked negatively upon by the predominant religion that you see much more problematic behavior.And yeah, this is definitely something, shaming is the wrong thing to do, but not so shaming the fact that you feel it bad, but pursuing it at the cost of your productivity. Also bad. That should, that should probably, yeah. And if not shamed met with a, like the same kind of concerned reaction. [00:52:00] That you react to someone who has an eating problem or a drinking problem or some other, like a gambling problem, right?Yeah. Like those are things like, oh, you're disgusting. You gamble, you sports gamble. You have a sports gambling app. I can't believe it. I I'm never gonna be your friend. And you can't be an influencer. No. It's like. Hey, dude, are you okay? Like this? Can this, you're, you're ruining your savings. Like you're not gonna achieve your life goals if you keep doing this.And that is, I thinkMalcolm Collins: it's such a great way to frame it, is that we should, we should focus on these sorts of sexual prohibitions in the same way we focus on like gambling prohibitions.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: They're very, very serious. And they can hurt other people around them, but you need to, you need to frame them with you know, compassion in this way and be like, Hey like do you have a problem here?Instead of, you know, one of the funniest things that everyone's like, people thought that like you weren't sexually gratifying me enough and that like they, they sent you emails about that.Simone Collins: Yes. I've received multiple messages from people who are like, are they usually for women or men? It's been [00:53:00] both actually.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I can tell you that is not the case. No. Now they'reSimone Collins: gonna write to me again and be like, he's saying that this is his call for help, Simone. This is his call for help. He's calling for help right now. Understand how inefficient sex is. I understand. I don't think they understand.Yeah, I don't think we understand that.Like we're at the precipice, the turning point of the entire future of humanity, and that every hour that we spend doing something indulgent is an hour that we're not maybe tipping the scales in favor of human flourishing instead of extinction. Hello. People,Malcolm Collins: timelines we're so short in terms of like what we're building and everything like that.I just feel like. Like, do they not get that every because it, we're working on the same project together. So like, if I take Simone's time for like an hour of sex. Yeah. Like you, you only get so many hours a day. Like, it's not that we never do it, but it's, it's such a waste. Yeah.Simone Collins: Anyway, [00:54:00] that's we'll see what they have to say next.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I dunno, I, I love it how you, for a while were like really acting weird about this with me. Like, I was like,Simone Collins: Malcolm, whenever you want, like we're here, we can block out time.Malcolm Collins: And I was like, Simone, 'causeSimone Collins: y'all got in my head.Malcolm Collins: I was like, no, you do not understand how much I appreciate the work you're doing.Right. But wheneverSimone Collins: you want, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: I was like, what is this worth more than the current Andreesen application? The current survival and flourishing? I know it's not, I know, but like,Just in caseSimone Collins: this is like one of those double reverse blind. No, but it's like,Malcolm Collins: like literally, what am I putting off for this?We've got. Four kids that we're raising as well. Like Yeah. Of which one of 'em woke up, so I gotta gotta, all right. Love you to De Simone. I love you too. What am I doing for dinner tonight? Oh, yeah. It's a crumble.Simone Collins: Yeah. But also, I'm gonna try something that I've never tried before, that I'm very curious about it.I'm gonna try it too. [00:55:00] Shout out to Margaret for telling me it's possible.Malcolm Collins: What are you gonna tell me?Simone Collins: You will find out. What is it? If it succeeds tonight, I'm not gonna tell you.Malcolm Collins: Okay. I'm notSimone Collins: gonna tell you. But it is something that you and I both like and that we can't get in America.Malcolm Collins: By the way. Oh, scotch eggs.Simone Collins: That's what I'mMalcolm Collins: gonna say. Ah, wait. Oh my God. But okay, so if you're gonna do scotch eggs, don't bother with frying the rice. Just do like regular rice and I'll mention the crumble. No,Simone Collins: no, no, no. Because what if they really don't turn out? This is my first time tryingMalcolm Collins: regular rice with crumble and toy sauce will be fine.Simone Collins: Malcolm, just let me, let me do my thing, but let me go now so I can actually prep everything. I love you. All right. Love you to death. Why? have this permanent crease in my eyebrow region, but I realize now you do too. SoMalcolm Collins: you have a what? Val region.Simone Collins: Permanent crease. Like a little look at. Look at your furrow lines. Even when you're not furrowing, they're, they're still there. And that's the problem. Well, not the problem. It's just naturally part of [00:56:00] our aging process.Malcolm Collins: Well, I wonder, do you have, do you have the, the smile lines yet?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well,Simone Collins: that's your fault. That is your fault. The furrowing is my fault. The smiling is, is your fault because you make my life too fricking awesome. And we laugh way too much.Malcolm Collins: No matter how big your wrinkles get, I will not leave you. So don't you worry.Okay, we'llSimone Collins: see. We'll just see how, how big they need to get.Malcolm Collins: No, we'll see if you stopped being able to have kids, that's where things get dicey, Jesus.Simone Collins: Just in case anyone thought that you were being nice and charitable. 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

In this episode, we dive into the alarming state of religion in the United States with shocking statistics and insights. We discuss the significant decline in church attendance and religiosity among Americans, highlighting key findings from various studies, including the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study. The conversation reveals a startling drop in religious affiliation, particularly among younger generations, and examines how different religious groups, such as Mormons and Catholics, are faring. We also explore the implications of these trends for the future of religion in America and the potential societal impacts. Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be discussing the horrifying state of religion in the United States. I'll be discussing some statistics I found, and you'll be discussing the statistics you found. Mm-hmm. The fifth one that I found that was shocking, where there was a recent study where they looked at where people were going in the United States using cell phone data.Mm-hmm. And they found out that despite 21 to 24% of Americans saying they attend church weekly, only 5% do. Which is way lower rate of religiosity than anyone expected.Simone Collins: Why would you lie about going to church on a survey? We'll get to that when we get to the interesting stuff. What is your, the gist of what I found is that religion is literally dying in the United States in every measurable way, and specifically by dying.I mean that the only people who still had God were the old ones. This isn't even about young people losing their faith. They never had it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and this is something that people really get [00:01:00] wrong, is they look at the pupil where it showed religion going, not going down this year in the United States, and they think that that's an indication that the erosion of traditional religion in the United States is over.It is not. But let's go into the dataSimone Collins: so with regard to the United States and what the pew, and by the way, you should definitely check out the interactive tools with this pew research to give some background, has a religious landscape study.This spans over 17 years. They first did it in 2020, 2007. Then they did it in 2014, then they were gonna do it again in 2021, you know, every seven years. But then. You know, pandemic. So they actually did it 20, 23, 24. So you get this really wide span and you're able to see really how quickly over this 17 year period, we lost God.So, basically what happened was we went from 16% of Americans being religiously unaffiliated, like, you know, not that many to over 29%. So almost, almost a third of Americans just aren't religiously affiliated. And I would say it's [00:02:00] gonna be higher than that because they considered other religions to be things like Unitarian Universalists and spiritual people of like new age and that no, like dangling crystals does not make you religious.I'm so sorry. What? People fallMalcolm Collins: into that category other.Simone Collins: It's, it's like one, 1%, so very, very little. Now 2% actually. So it was 1% around 20 2007, and then around 2% in 2014. But I still, you know, that's. That ain't religious. So everything, I thinkMalcolm Collins: before we get into the statistics, the reason why a lot of people from religious communities aren't seeing this is because they are from religious communities.Yeah. And definitionally, it's the people when they leave your community. I. That they are disappearing from your religion so you no longer see them, you know, when they move or whatever. Mm-hmm. This is and, and people when they deconvert from religions, don't do it for the reasons people think.The, the number one reason why people stop attending church is just because they moved and they didn't, they didn't start going. Yeah, [00:03:00] because it was,Simone Collins: it was a community thing. It was a friend group thing. It's very similar to our models of friendship where you have. Convenience friends who are basically just the people that you were friends with because they lived right next to you.And I think a lot of people grew up, and especially this is the old people who are now dying, they were only religious because it was convenience, religion, that being a part of your community kind of mandated your being religious or showing up at church. 'cause that was also culturally normative. And you get a lot of side eye.Suspicion if you didn't show up at church. So they did it, but it was convenience religion. It wasn't utility religion. People didn't practice religion because they, on the whole, because they found it really helped them perform better in life, even if it did. And so,Malcolm Collins: and, and, and so this is why when Covid came and people started doing religious services from home mm-hmm.And all of these communities stopped, many of them never really fully reopened. That 5% number that I gave you that was measured before Covid.Simone Collins: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. There is one really interesting statistic that actually runs against a lot of what you've said so far.Okay. About Mormons. That [00:04:00] gives me a lot of hope for Mormon. So when you dive into this research and you look at at age distribution among different religious groups, every religious group over time is seeing an erosion of their 18 to 29-year-old range, which is really bad because again, what this, this research is finding is that.Religion is, is going down, not because, and I know you're, you're gonna argue it's because people are like actually changing their behavior over time. What Pew argues is that, no, it's just that the religious people are dying and the younger people aren't religious at all. And yet when you look at Latter Day Saints, Mormons.25% of Mormons are 18 to 29, which is a pretty healthy ratio. Cons, and what, what was it in the past? So it's actually better than it ever was during the survey period in 2007, 24% of thinks were in that range. And in 2014 it actually dipped. It was 21%. Now it's 25%.Malcolm Collins: That's really [00:05:00] impressive.Simone Collins: So I'm, I'm actually seeing, and it's subtle, but they also just signs of recovery because actually what we are seeing in, in sort of, inverse is we're seeing fewer proportionately Mormons in the 30 to 49 range.Yeah. And I feel like there's this millennial. Millennial slump that the LDS church had that lost a lot of people. And I feel that they've developed some cultural technologies to start recovering from that. And or the LDS community started realizing early people who left or they saw people who left and they're like, wow, it's not working out for them.I'm gonna stay in, I'm not gonna jump the ship. So youMalcolm Collins: look. The numbers that she has here. Sorry, this is important to get to because you, you're just, you're saying the graph says something, but a lot of people listen on podcasts, so we've gotta explain what the graph says. Yeah. So, if you're looking at the elderly population.Within the latest measurement, the 23 to 24 range, it was 20% in the two. Previous to 2014 and 2017, it was much lower only 15% and 16% [00:06:00] respectively. Now that's really striking when you consider that now they're dealing with a bigger, much older 65 plus range in much younger, under 29 range, 18 to 29 range.Which implies that there was sort of a baby boom within the LDS church for one generation. No, andSimone Collins: this is really important because just to give you some perspective, okay, in 23 to 24, 20 5% of Mormons were in this 18 to 29 range. They were young. Compared to that, to Catholics in the 23 to 24 range, 14% of Catholics were in the 23 to 24% range and 28%.Basically a third plus another 29%. So basically two thirds of Catholics are over 50 years old with 29% being 50 to 64 and 28% being 65 or older.Malcolm Collins: It gets worse when you look at the historic data because if you go to 2007, not that long ago, only 16% of Catholics were over 65 and now it's 28%. Yeah. [00:07:00] Catholics are dyingSimone Collins: and this is, this is huge.' cause I mean, I, I, I'm, I, so I do have hope for Catholics because I think that there are a couple very small communities. That are very high fertility that could come to represent the new version of the Catholic Church. However, I also have my doubts in this model. You know how a lot of people are like, oh, the future will be inherited by the Amish.It's hard to even find Anaba. Mm-hmm. Let alone like, I mean there's on Amish, there's Mennonites, Mennonites, there's heater Hutterites, right? Like there's literally different subgroups. But of all the Anabaptists in general. It's, it's around 1%, maybe less. And this could be a polling issue, right? Like it's probably harder Of theMalcolm Collins: US population, you mean?Simone Collins: Of the US population? Yeah. If you look in this, itMalcolm Collins: doesn't matter if they're 1%, if they're, if they're growing at the rate that they're growing now, like they'll be a hugeSimone Collins: chunk very shortly. Yeah. But I don't know, I don't know if they're actually growing at that rate. I just, they're, they're so small. I, I'm really putting all my hope inMalcolm Collins: are we can look at the data.This happened in another country, specifically Israel. So Israel, right now, if you look at the Hawaii population, you know how [00:08:00] they don't. Have to participate in war and stuff like that. Another 16% of the population. Yeah. The reason why they got the war exception was because when they first went to and applied for this, there were like 10,000 of them or something.They were basically, they're like, oh, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter. And now they've exploded. So yeah, this literally has happened in other countries. Simone that's, that's, that's the power of compounding interestSimone Collins: maybe. ButMalcolm Collins: I'm also not, the, don't really matter because they don't have technology.So no matter how big they get, they're not gonna be a force that can impose its will on their neighbors. So you don't really need to think about them. And because they're pacifists, they can't defend themselves. If anybody wants to, like, if they don't have the state protecting them, it's, it's, it's irrelevant.But the, the Catholics here. I find to be really fascinating how much they're arose. I actually, it's so muchSimone Collins: worse than I thought. I would not have guessed it was that bad.Malcolm Collins: Well, it, it's, it's bad for the, the, remember that phone survey I, I found so, only only 2% of Catholics [00:09:00] actually attended church Weekly.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, no. So here's, here's the thing too though, and like to put things in perspectives, at least from a starting position, Catholics are coming off from a, a stronger position. So 19% of Christians in the US which. To be fair, only make up 62% of Americans, but of those 19% are Catholic and only 2% are LDS.So, you know, that's a,Malcolm Collins: but again, this doesn't really matter. I, again, you, you have to look at this in terms of compounding returns. A a as I've pointed out, if we have eight kids and they have eight kids, and you do that for just 11 generations, we have more descendants than there are people on earth today.When you're starting with existing large populations. There was a one population that I was looking at of Hutterites and I, and I'll. Put the exact gross numbers after, but I, I seem to remember that they grew I think it was something like. God, I can't remember. I wanna say like three, 350% in just like 50 years.Mm-hmm. Like you can [00:10:00] explode really. And then keep in mind when you're growing on top of that, it's compounding. No, no. YouSimone Collins: make a fair point. And you also haveMalcolm Collins: compounding collapses.Simone Collins: And also Yeah, like when, when there's nobody left. All that matters is who's still there and they'll still be there.So that's good for them as long as they don't change. Yeah. But this, another, theMalcolm Collins: thing with Catholics is, and to to, to focus on this Yeah. Is, is they internally don't accept how bad things are for them. They don't accept their deconversion rates. Yeah. They refuse to, they don't accept they're low fertility rates.They're like, the ones that I can see are fine. And as I've said before, this is like looking at a battlefield and being like, my troops are purposely healthy. And I'm like, what about all the dead ones? And they're like, why would I count them among my ranks? It's, it's survivorship bias. The, the, the Catholics who matter are the ones who are deconvert.It's, and, and, and leaving. It's not the ones who are there. But I was actually just talking with a Catholic earlier today. He's a fan of ours. And he was sort of asking like what he should do as his future. He really wants kids and a family. But he was thinking about the priesthood, you know, and he knows like this is a, a challenge and a choice.And this is again, one of the problems. Oh boy. This is just. [00:11:00] Remember how we liked the opus Day before? Yeah. Did you know 30% of the Opus day are silhouettes? Oh, thisSimone Collins: was the guy who, so he's the same guy who wrote to us about this.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is he got the guy in Poland? No, no. Different guy.Different guy. This is a Oh, totally. We have lots of Catholic fans. Okay. Anyway, the other Catholic fan was thinking about what he's gonna do with his future. The guy in Poland actually had some really interesting points. Both, yeah. Like, is actually pretty bad for family creation because they gender isolate people.Mm-hmm. And they have 30% celibate and they're just more focused on this like performatively. And so I went to this guy, I was like, well, what if you like. Pitched the Vatican on starting an order that takes, oh snap. The opus day's idea that you can dedicate yourself like faithfully to like anything you're doing in your daily life.Yeah, but refocuses it entirely on the sacrament, just beingSimone Collins: apparent.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, REFA not, not being a parent explicitly, but the next generation. Mm-hmm. So what you would do is not just be a parent yourself, but you would like religiously put together things like, like [00:12:00] daycares was in existing, like he was talking about a parish that was about to shut down near him.And I'm like, well, what if you, you know, build a, a daycare facility in there? You know, what if you find people to, in their free time within this order. As a way of giving back to the church man, this what have you, you know, this is the type of thing that the church could get really excited about.Simone Collins: Yeah, actually that's, I mean, I think it's worth pitching. It fitsMalcolm Collins: Catholic ideology.Simone Collins: Like we should pitch that to the person that we've spoken with in the past. He's a priest.Malcolm Collins: Who shoulda not. Yeah. We could connect, we should pitch it to them.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Be like, yeah, because I was like a wow to think I have connections in the Vatican, but Yeah.Okay. But yeah, connect them because I think that that, that it's, it's completely conducive with Catholic's current belief system. It would work. It's, it's something they desperately need. Yeah. It works with their theology. And so why not just put that together and then you can build this like.Prenatal as Catholic sect. And you already have the justification from the [00:13:00] opus day that lay people can, can, can like, live a life of, of, of sacrifice. Like what if you canonized this idea of sort of like living martyrdom to the next generation.Simone Collins: I like it. Oh, very. Techno puritan. Of course. I'm gonna share with you one more thing that I think is relevant at least to our, I told you so narrative that came from this.Pew study, which is that the urban monoculture is spreading and has really effectively spread from the university system in more elite parts of society to mainstream society. Mm-hmm. And that is you can see this when you look at the levels of education and then the loss of Christianity. So when you look at these numbers for the beginning of this survey in 2007.The percentage of people with high school or less as their education was 60 some, 66% Christian 5% other religions, and then 27% religiously unaffiliated. And then by 2014 I, I guess they [00:14:00] don't have the most recent stuff. It went to 75%. Were Christian which is really interesting. Like they sort of became like the uneducated became more Christian.But when you look at people with postgraduate degrees 56% of them were Christian. So very, very few, like from the very beginning, oh, sorry. When you look at 2014 and. People with graduate degrees, 62% of them are Christian. So almost like the sort of level of average Americans today. Mm-hmm. And I feel like this has very much trickled down to mainstream society now.It's even, even fewer. Only 56% of people with postgraduate degrees are Christian. But compared to today with high school or less, that's, that's 66% in other ways. In other words, the gap between postgraduate. Americans and high school or less were Americans was actually higher in terms of religiosity in 2014.Mm-hmm. It was 10% [00:15:00] different in terms of Christianity versus 16% in 2014. And I feel that that difference in like wow. Postgraduate people were a whole lot less religious. That difference in 2014 decreasing is a sign of basically just the urban monoculture spreading from just elite culture to all culture.So even people without high school. Wait, you saidMalcolm Collins: that the uneducated became more Christian, so that's, that's almost like the urban monoculture. Sorry, ISimone Collins: got it wrong. I was looking at the, the wrong tabs. 'cause there's a lot, there's a lot of tabs here. So, okay. Then say it correctly. Yeah. In 20 14, 70 5% of people with high school or less were Christians.Now only 66% consider themselves to be Christian and with postgraduates in 2014 waiting for it to load. Come on. Okay. Okay. And with postgraduates in 20 14, 60 2% were Christian. Now only 56% are, but as you can see, the gap got narrower. And I think that's just a [00:16:00] sign of the urban monoculture spreading from the university system to, yeah, mainstream culture.Things have just become a lot more normalized. Another thing just that's important to point out. In this, this survey finding is on every area that they measured religiosity, people were moving in a less religious direction. So it came with identity, it came with beliefs, and it came with practices. So people aren't going to church or praying as much as your data shows.They are not identifying as religious as your data shows. And they don't believe religious things, which. Part of me would've wanted to think, okay, well people still identify as Christian or they identify as Jewish. They're just not going, you know, they're not actively practicing. Or they maybe don't even believe, but they, you know, they still call themselves that.And then the final important thing to note from this pew in data, which is interesting and does kind of feed into the natal con, we have to protect the west narrative, which is surprising because it's not what [00:17:00] I expected, is it? Only Christianity seeing a decline in the United States When you look at the United States in general.Yeah. Or we do that.Malcolm Collins: I wanna go into the Protestant data because I find it interesting. Okay. The Evangelical Protestants. Yeah. These are Protestants who identify as evangelical Protestants and they're actually in. As bad a situation is the Catholics. So not, maybe not as bad, but, but pretty bad. No, it'sSimone Collins: pretty pathetic.No, no, no. Don't, don't, don't understateMalcolm Collins: it. This is embarrassing. Look at evangelical Protestants. They're 18 to 29 percentage is the same as Catholics. 14%. Yeah. It's pathetic. And, and they're over 65 percentage is 27%, which is the onlySimone Collins: group I saw that had me thinking, oh, you guys are getting it together.Is is Mormon. Period.Malcolm Collins: Period. They're, they're over 50% over the age of 50 right now. Like that's crazy. Like well over 50% again, andSimone Collins: because they're dying. And that's what you see in these numbers is it's like the skew is shifting to old people. Because literally as this survey has progressed over this 17 year period.People's views have stayed the same. It's just that the people who had faith areMalcolm Collins: going to dieSimone Collins: soon.Malcolm Collins: The Protestant [00:18:00] numbers are more stable than the, than the Catholic numbers in that if you go back to 2007, they were already at only 16% of their population, you know, being 18 to 29. Yeah. So basically there isn't something new happening 2007 to now in the Protestant population.Yeah. The evangelical Protestant population. And note here, like I've talked about this, I've, I've said the evangelical movement is. Dying. Like, yeah. Like the extremist, like Quiverfull, Protestant, et cetera they don't really exist within this generation in large numbers. They're not a major voting block anymore.They're not like, they used to be like super, super, super important to American politics. Yeah. They defined their Republican party. And they have been replaced by four C Channelers, I guess you could say. Like, yeah. As, as like the key voting block before ChansSimone Collins: aren't exactly known for having faith.Also, this has serious implications for Tism in general for, for America's birth rates in general. Because the, the research also tracked things like marital status and it is very clear that there is a correlation [00:19:00] between religion and marriage. So as of 2007, I mean, it was very stark. 81% of married people in the United States were Christian.Only 14% were religiously unaffiliated. 80 Wait, 21%? What? What? 81%. So eight out of 10. Eight outta 10 married people in the United States were CED Western Dinner, or Americans are Christian and Oh, in general, on that year.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like that. That justing means nothing without knowing how many,Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. Sorry.Let give you the comparison.Oh, come on.Let me find this. It's a Littley.Malcolm Collins: No, you literally just Google it.Simone Collins: I don't know what's, okay. 67%. 67%. No. Hold on. Go to US data. Oh, there we go. Okay. In 20 17, [00:20:00] 70 8% of Americans in general. Were Christian, 81% were married, so there wasn't that much of a gap. Let's go to 2014. Suddenly 76% of married people are Christian, and yet the US population that is Christian goes down to 71.The gap is getting bigger. Then 20 23, 20 24, only 62% of Americans are Christian, and yet we're, we're seeing a slight uptick. 68% of married people are Christian, and I'm, what this says to me. Is it the thing that is keeping people getting married is religion.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: In more cases than not. Which is, which is meaningful.So we're gonna see if fewer marriages, because we're gonna see fewer cultural frameworks that make marriage make sense. Especially in a country like in the United States, where for a lot of middle and lower income people getting married gives you a tax penalty. Like, it's not, it's not a culturally logical, like in the absence of religion, it doesn't make [00:21:00] sense to get married if that makes Yeah.Like just, and that's, that's insane. But like we live in a country that actually penalizes marriage in many cases, especially for normal people, not like, not for very rich people. So this is going to hurt birth rates, just period. And it, it makes me really sad because this, this is getting reflected in, in rates of sex and everything else.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you are you were gonna give data on the fertility rates of non-Christians in the United States and what's happening with them?Simone Collins: Oh, like the parental status of non-Christians? No, you saidMalcolm Collins: the only groups that are dropping are Christians. And then you were going to talk about groups that weren't Christians that are not dropping.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. So just in general, an important thing to note with this research is that. The fairly low, but, but now apparently constant percentage of non-religious people, or sorry other religious people has sort of stayed the same. So in 2007, 5% of US [00:22:00] adults were other religions. This includes Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and then what We wouldn't count Unitarian Universalist and New Age and Native American religions.Then in 2014, it actually jumped up to 6%, and in 20 23, 20 24, it jumped to 7%. So the only reason it jumped to 7%, by the way, is that we now have more people identifying as New Age and Unitarian Universalists. So I don't actually, I think a lot of people would be like, oh, that means we're getting more Muslim immigrants or like more Jews.No. Those have stayed constant. They have not changed. 2% of the other religions are Jewish. That's just stayed the same. Same for 1% for Buddhist, 1% for Muslim, there was a slight increase in Muslims because in 2007, fewer or less than 1% of American adults were mu, or of the 5% that were other religions were Muslim.It switched to just 1%. But the problem is that like, is that, is that 1% ofMalcolm Collins: Americans or 1% of the 5%,Simone Collins: 1% of the 7% that are other religions are Muslims [00:23:00] now.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. So very small. So there'sSimone Collins: very, very few Muslims, extremely few Muslims extremely few Buddhists. And then, and then actually a, a way more than there should be new age and we would argue and hearing universalists.Yeah. So one new religions we, I would argue have not actually increased because you shouldn't count UUs and New Age Crystal. People as religious that is religiously unaffiliated and being into a trend. And I think that that's important to note because it runs counter to my world model that like western civilization isn't falling and like Christians are doing just fine.I mean, Christians are still a huge percentage of Americans, but. They are eroding. But I also, like other religions are coming from nowhere and they're basically just holding steady. They're not increasing. So I don't see this as real as Christians being replaced by any stretch of the imagination. However, these other religions aren't tanking in the same way that [00:24:00] many Christian religions are, except for the Mormons, which by, you know, we keep tank.We like. We keep saying they're doing a terrible job. They're saying a huge exodus. They're bouncing back.Malcolm Collins: They're, they're taking this situation seriously. Mm-hmm. Which I think is why they're doing well. Yeah. Like they're actually like sitting down and doing like, what the Catholic should be doing is like starting new orders based on having kids and stuff like that.Like, they're the, they actually do this stuff. Yeah. Like when. When their fertility rates started to drop. A lot of Mormon things that we think of as, as having been around forever are new cultural technology. Like the singles wards were invented in the 19 seventies. Like, that's, that's not that old, that's not like always been a part of Mormonism.Simone Collins: Yeah. And it's, and actually those, it was the perfect time to do it because it was during the age of. Female professional empowerment. It was during the age when people were not as tethered to their childhood communities, which I think made getting married a little bit easier. So the church either intuitively or very intentionally and logically saw where the headwinds and tailwinds were and [00:25:00] decided to create new forms of institutions that would make it possible for people who were not moored.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: To a single community and who had careers to find someone, which is so cool.Malcolm Collins: Like a question I have internally is like, why are Catholics not able to take this as seriously as Mormons or treat this as seriously? Yeah. And I have a hypothesis.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: It has to do with how their central leadership is decided.Mm. So both Catholics and Mormons have a central church that could disseminate these messages if it had a mind to, okay. The Mormons Central Church, the people who end up is the, like prophets and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And like the, the head people in the central church a lot of them have a background in.Bus business, like they show their company. They're, they're like bane type people. Oh. They're like,Simone Collins: yeah. McKenzie type people. They're private equity people. They own businesses. Yeah. They're privateMalcolm Collins: equity type people. And, and so when they come into religion, they're, they're viewing it like a giant company, right?Like they're trying to, to make money and grow and think long term, right? Yeah. You know, that's, that's their goals. The Catholic leadership is made up entirely of people who have dedicated their entire life to theological [00:26:00] study. Hmm. Not just that, but celibate people who have dedicated, it's, it's almost like lifetimeSimone Collins: politicians making policy versus business people making policy.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and because of that, the issue of fertility collapse is just not something that's on their mind. And when it's brought up to them, they would believe that they have some form of theological protection from its implications, I believe. Hmm. You know, because they're relating to this all through, through the lens of theology rather than through the lens of like, well, let's be practical about the situation.Now, Mormon fertility rates have taken a hit, but like, as you've pointed out here, they appear to be already riding the ship, like the, the, the, the torpedo hit and the ship is now coming back online. Whereas. Yeah, this is interesting. Evangelical Protestants, the reason I don't mention them is 'cause they don't have a centralized structure, so they can't disseminate new messages.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. And they're kind of, they're, they're unmoored and listless and they're isolated communities.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So if you, if you're like, what's going to replace them? Well, I hope something like techno Puritanism [00:27:00] replaces them, to be honest. Like, I'd be okay with that. I like, I, we don't actively proselytize, but I like the the structure of this.And I think that and when I say something like, what's replacing the evangelical movement? The Jordan Peterson movement the the, the various new forms of Christianity that are more melds of secular self-help slash Protestantism. Mm-hmm. Mixed with religiosity. These, this, this is where that community is going.And I see Techo Puritanism as an iteration of that, that's more extreme. And, and, and more dedicated and more is sort of like the techno puritanism is like the opus day to whatever Jordan Peterson is. You know, like if Jordan Peterson represents the Jesuit branch of this Protestant faction, we would represent the Opus Day faction.Mm-hmm. Just like the way more intense about it, the way more extreme in expectations. And, and like, I think that, that, that works. But the thing about Protestantism is, is unlike other groups, you [00:28:00] know, you don't have some higher group deciding what's canon and what's not canon. Mm-hmm. You need to go out there on the ground and convince people of your perspective or out breed them.Simone Collins: Yeah. And parents especially, I mean, parents see what's happening to their kids on the ground. They're the ones who know what their kids need as they go through whatever religious system is rearing them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow. I mean, it's it's worse than I thought.Malcolm Collins: Well, I was, I was surprised by the e how cooked evangelical Protestantism is.Like I've mentioned it before, but like, it's something you don't see 'cause nobody really molds. I don't know. But yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. It's so much of the content that we create, you know, about the new right. About the interesting religious movements. Where are the evangelicals? Where are the influencers in this space?They don'tMalcolm Collins: come. Like, I literally, like, I have been involved in politics a lot recently in terms of meeting with political influencers and people who work in politics. I haven't met a single evangelical project. Yeah.Simone Collins: They're just not there. And that's the thing like that, that's, to me, that's why I'm not at all surprised.I'm like, well, yeah, they, this explains it. You know, [00:29:00] they're all just dying. They're, they're old and they're offline and they're dying. Well, but here's the thing. I've met tons ofMalcolm Collins: Catholics. So they're also dying. And that is, yeah, that is the reason have institutional power. That's,Simone Collins: but that's why I have hope for Catholics is, is they are getting organized in their communities and if anything, they're literallyMalcolm Collins: not bro.They're literally not. They have like some communities that seem to work, but I think they need something from up top going down. I think they need border. So you don't think that over timeSimone Collins: as these groups are the only ones that are left, they will influence policy at the Vatican level? You don't think so?Malcolm Collins: Like already. I mean, I think the majority of Catholics, at least the ones that I found who take it seriously, are very unhappy with what's happening at the Vatican level. Like the, yeah,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: The idea that the Vatican is, the point is though that their opinion doesn't matter now becauseSimone Collins: they're too small and when they are bigger, they, their opinion will matter.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I, I said the majority of Catholics I know are actually involved with their religion are not so already. Okay. Interesting. Already the Vatican is not a democracy in the way, like America's [00:30:00] democracy, right? Like if the average Catholic is, is is like suppose like you had like super prenatal Catholics having lots of kids growing and everything like that, the the entire.Career pipeline to getting in the chair that votes on the Pope is celibate. Mm. Like you are not near those people. Yeah.Simone Collins: That's not gonna help.Malcolm Collins: So, so you do have this and, and if you believe you have divine protection, you're not gonna take threats like this as seriously.Simone Collins: That's also fair.Malcolm Collins: So that does worry me.Yeah, I can see that that potentially not going on. What's even more sobering though,Simone Collins: if we wanna get to this though, is we're just looking at the P research data for the United States. A actually fairly passionate religious country. I think if we were to see EU data, we would, I. Oh, absolutely. It'd be so hot.Vomit with anxiety. Yeah. Japanese jata, south Korean data.Malcolm Collins: I've pointed out, like if you look at like ic, majority of countries in the eo like, like Italy, right? Where like the Vatican is, it's at 1.18 now. Fertility rate [00:31:00] they hundred Italians, there's only gonna be 20 great grandchildren. And there are, but this is a good thing because there are like small high fertility Catholic communities.I think that they might be able to stabilize and like replace a lot of the rest of the Catholic population pretty quickly. Hmm. The questions I have is just like, what's the deconversion rate in these communities? 'cause I don't feel like that's being taken seriously. Yeah. Like the communities exist, but like the Quiverfull movement also existed.Right. You know, and I know I'm saying all of this only because Catholics can actually do something. Like, Protestants can't really, likeSimone Collins: they lack the top down organization necessary.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they lack the top-down organization necessary to address this outside of the way that we're doing it. I mean, I think what we're doing is the best way to handle this as a Protestant.Yeah. Which is to create a living religion, which continues to update in the way that Protestants have updated in a long time. I mean, Protestants have undergone major re-understanding of their faith throughout American history. And us having that [00:32:00] was like the track series and stuff like that.Is not in any way discordant with American Protestant traditions. So I, I'd argue like we are fighting for the Protestant thing, is what we're doing with tracks is what we're doing with second Puritanism.Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.Malcolm Collins: So, I mean, maybe somebody else can create some, some other form that's like persistent, but I, I, I think I'd, I'd like to see that.That'd be cool, right? Like, it, it could work, but you just don't see many of them. Like, like at at Natal Con, you don't see many Protestants.Simone Collins: I guess not. I mean, if you do, they're not the main speakers or influencers there. Yeah, which is interesting. Cool. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But in terms of church attendance, I'll put a heat map on screen here.So like who is actually attending church? Yeah. In what regions are they?Simone Collins: Okay. LDS church is a must 'cause you have, you know, your callings, you have to, you've, you have a job. Like you can't Yeah. Not show up at church because you literally have to play piano or help man the kitty [00:33:00] pool or what, whatever their like daycare version thing is.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm trying to find out where, where the LDS was. I seem to remember for the LDDS, it was 11%, which is really high for weekly attendance.I went back to double check, so I'm gonna get some of these numbers wrong coming up. So just remember these are the right numbers.For Catholics, it was 1.9% of Catholics to attend mass weekly. For Protestants, it's 7% of Protestants to attend mass weekly. And for LDS it's 14.6%. Attend Mass weekly.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. 11 percent's actually pretty low. LowMalcolm Collins: when you consider the way their face is structured. Yeah, yeah, lookSimone Collins: low when you consider what a proper practicing Mormon should be doing, and if you are a proper practicing Mormon, you have a calling at your local ward.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, likeSimone Collins: you, you have a job. You have to do something.Malcolm Collins: Well, there may be, there's just not that many proper practicing Mormons of the Mormons. That'sSimone Collins: crazy. Okay. That's actually, now I'm worried about the LDS church. This is not good. ThisMalcolm Collins: Protestants, it was like, I wanna say 5%. The remember was Catholic.It was only, two to 1% I [00:34:00] think. Whoa.For Catholics, it was 1.9% of Catholics to attend mass weekly. For Protestants, it's 7%To get into some more data here, only 19% of Americans self-identify as Catholic, down 24% in 2007. This is a 20% decrease by comparison. Protestants decreased by 21% while religious nuns. Increased by 81% and Muslims increased by an astounding 200%, although they still make up a small percentage of the overall population, only 1.2%.Even though the Pew Survey headline suggested a decline in Christianity in this country may have quote unquote leveled off, it's clear the overall direction is downward. This is a quote from a Christian magazine about it. .Malcolm Collins: If you look at the map, you can clearly see the Bible belt. Like the Bible belt is just like dark, dark, dark. You're looking at like 6.4% in those regions. If you go to like Massachusetts or Maine or something like that, you're looking at like under 1% in all of those regions.Wow. You go to Texas, you're looking at like 4.5%, [00:35:00] 4.8%, you know, around 5%. Same with Florida. Pennsylvania, you're looking fairly low. You're looking at around like it seems maybe like 2.3%. And, and, and what you might be surprised about is California, you're looking higher than that.California, you're looking in like the 4% range.Simone Collins: Is that from all the inland Christians?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. California has a big conservative population in it. Yeah. It's basicallySimone Collins: San Francisco and LAMalcolm Collins: is, and then a bunch of conservativeSimone Collins: progressives and then like the rest is, yeah,Malcolm Collins: it's funny. Nevada's also in that range, Washington's also in that range.Interesting. Oregon is actually pretty Blue Oregon is, is is in the like 5% church attendance range.Simone Collins: I guess these rural regions help to holdMalcolm Collins: them up. So like close to like, you know, New Mexico or Florida or something, or Virginia. Which I, I found pretty interesting. That is interesting. But you know, another thing you might be surprised about is how low church attendance to this in the Midwest, Montana, Wyoming, North [00:36:00] Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, all of them have around 2% church attendants.Simone Collins: Wow. Oh man. Okay. Yeah, no we are, it's over. We. Yeah, and this is just an, I think this is also a lot more evidence indicating that going back to the old boys, like we just have to get more traditional Catholic, traditional evangelic, whatever is clearly not working you. You can't just go back to that. People have clearly chosen to abandon it.It's not trying to make that work, I think is the wrong approach.Malcolm Collins: I agree. I agree a hundred percent.Simone Collins: But then you know what does work? Because I think it's also very difficult for people to do the othering, to do the weirdness if they don't feel like there's at least some safe tribe that's doing it with them.I think we're unusual and that we really don't care that we dress weird and have weird names and do weird holidays. I [00:37:00] think other people would be very uncomfortable if they did that in isolation. So how do you.Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's why's that why people are gonna go extinct?Simone Collins: Oh, so just the people who don't care what mainstream society thinks will survive.Malcolm Collins: Well, that's what I mean. If you look at our video on like, they're gonna replace you like the Japanese subculture and the, the tradies and the, you know, the, the, a lot of these are people who just do not care what mainstream society No, no. ButSimone Collins: the tradies and the. The Japanese soft Yankees, they do live in tight-knit communities.They do live close together. No, theyMalcolm Collins: have communities that they choose, but it's not like everyone in their community lives the way they do. They, they, they choose these groups. It's like a subculture, right? You know? They're like goths or something within the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think that they're more representative of what I would expect from future high fertility cultures and that they do geographically concentrate and live next to each other and feel solidarity in their weirdness together.I.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also, you'll note here if you're, if you're looking at the, the regular church attendants, the greater Appalachian region [00:38:00] is like also really darker than the other regions around it. Hmm. Which is interesting. But yeah, as, as, as I you know, one thing I didn't get a chance to point outta that video that these, that these Yankees, that these whatever guys.That dress like, you know, greasers and stuff like that in Japan are, are staying high fertility. This means that we're in the timeline where space dandy or red line happens. There's been a number of, of, of far future like space animes where one of the characters is a Japanese Yankee.And I can totally see that likeSimone Collins: yeah, they called it without realizing what they were calling.Right. Which is interesting. Yeah. They're just like, no, this, this subculture is visually interesting. Little did they know that it was a future friendly subculture as everyone else chose to die out? Well,Malcolm Collins: I unlikable, you know, I, I think one of the thing is is, is J Japanese person could be like, well, does Japanese culture really survive?If it's the Japanese Yankees, I mean, you don't walk around in like samurai armor or whatever, right? Like, you don't walk around dress like somebody from the ma maing whatever period. Like ma you, period. Yeah, yeah. Like. You, you, you change a lot as, as things go on, and you might be undergoing one of these changes [00:39:00] right now where when our descendant think of Japanese people, they're thinking of somebody who looks like whatever, like the Yankees and, and Gaza or what, what are those girls called?Who dressed Goldman? Ros become. Yeah. And if you're thinking about Americans, you're thinking about like, what, what, you know, the, the Hill people became the country music culture. And, and the Mormons. I, I think that they're gonna write the ship on them because Utah and Idaho are just so high fertility right now.And that's where the, the Mormons are based.Simone Collins: I'm thrilled. They not highMalcolm Collins: fertility, high high church attendance. They're, they're Boston in Lake.Simone Collins: So then, you know, space Mormons too. They called it. Yeah. Starship Troopers. The, the few that will remain, by the way, she's referring toMalcolm Collins: the scene that they started the war, they Mormon separatists you know, were not listening to, to the sky Marshal and settled a, a remote outpost called Brigham Young.I love you death, Simone. Have a spectacular day.Simone Collins: And may we never lose religion. [00:40:00] Yes. Space Mormons.Is this daddy's phone? Yes. So be very careful with it on tv. What you doing? Um.No, look. Careful, careful, careful, careful.Uh oh. She's gonna clobber you guys. 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

Join Raw Egg Nationalist, the creator of 'Man's World' magazine, as he dives into the provocative aesthetic of the new right. Discover how nostalgic styles and anime aesthetics intertwine with right-wing ideologies to redefine masculinity in contemporary culture. The conversation touches on the rebirth of men's magazines, innovative subversive advertising, and the complexities of humor in today's media landscape. Plus, get insights on young men's attraction to right-wing themes and the cultural impact of memes in political dialogue.