Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

We trace the history of furries and anthropomorphized animal costumes back to ancient traditions around the world. How furries connect to traditional masquerade parties, shapeshifting rituals, Egyptian & Native American animal gods. We discuss reasons why modern cultures denigrate furries despite their traditional roots and productive members. Covered topics include the psychology of hunting zoophilic furries, Trump's thing for Ivanka, Biden's hair sniffing fetish, and whether squirrel tails and fox ears make your partner more attractive.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] But yes, I do think if you, if you, if you woke up one day. And you had cute fox or dog ears, it would probably make you, which I don't know how this is possible because you become more attractive every day, but it would make you even a little bit more attractive.Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh, now this is spicy, this isSimone Collins: I don't see how this is spicy.I feel like if, listen, if like Joe Biden. Suddenly had like white fox ears, you know, like I think that he like he would go up in the polls. IMalcolm Collins: think that Joe Biden shows his fetish very loudly.Simone Collins: He like sniffs people's hair,Malcolm Collins: people's hair.He seems really into it. if they had grown up within our generation, they'd accept it, they'd know. Don't sniff women's hair publicly. That's a bad thing to go around sniffing people's hair in public. This is something you can go to a special hair sniffing club for.Simone Collins: A hair sniffing orgy.We all have a desire to be known, and he's constantly [00:01:00] sniffing hair in public, it's not some big secret.Malcolm Collins: But we were saying what's also really funny about, like, what people think is trad and what people don't think is trad.Furries are super trad. Yeah. Like, they are far They're more trad than the nuclear family. What does trad even mean? Like if you're trying to be trad, but you say furries aren't trad or not the type of trad you wanna be.Huh? What's causing this differentiation? Like, what is trad actually, if not furries? Because I don't think that that's what people mean. Like the way people use trad today, let's be honest,Simone Collins: is not actually traditional. take the word trad, disassociate it from the concept of traditional or history or historical accuracy and just make it a genre, like anime or like DC comics, right?Malcolm Collins: I actually think trying to cosplay like a 1950s wholesome family is one of the few cultural contexts we have for what it looks like to be in a happy relationship with happy kids. And so [00:02:00] if you're trying to figure out or trying to search for how do I build that for myself?Cosplaying that and cosplaying creates the thing you're cosplayingWould you like to know more?Simone Collins: I'm here. You don't want to be a pilot.Malcolm Collins: What? Oh yeah. We had US Air Force recruiting call me.Simone Collins: You know, when I took a job test, you know, there's like job tests you fill out.There were, there were two jobs. It was like, it's, this is very clear. You just need to take one of these or else you'll be miserable in life. Either join the military or become a librarian. That is like, you just like, you can only live with extreme structure. I'm sorry. And of course I do the complete opposite, but, but also because I think what they miss and what these, these career tests miss, especially with autists is autists don't necessarily want somebody.Else's structure. They want their own structure. Yeah. So it's better to be an entrepreneur, even if like everything is completely like Calvin Ball. Make up your own rules. Nothing is certain, at least you get to dictate everything yourself. And I, I, I always, I die in systems where I have to [00:03:00] live by other people's rules.It's, I agree with that. I probably would. But what I want to ask you, Mr. Is if you were a furry, what would your fursona look like?Malcolm Collins: I actually think that this is a better question for somebody else to answer about me. You, you, what would you want my fursona to be?Simone Collins: I feel like you'd probably be a fox because you're very fiery and clever.Um, and like, you're very loyal and caring.So you're kind of dog like, but you're not obedient. So I couldn't classify you as dog. You know what I mean? What aboutMalcolm Collins: a raccoon?Simone Collins: Yeah, you're totally a raccoon. Oh my God. And like, you also do this thing that I call raccooning. So Malcolm, just for your edification he like his brain turns off when he has things in his hands or even like, like a wedding ring on his hand.And like when he just. Gets [00:04:00] in certain modes, like he's eating or he gets into a car or he gets home. Like he started, he had his brain turns off and he starts raccooning or just like stuff just gets shoved in places. And like, you never know where it's going to go. If he's at a restaurant, it's like somehow under a plate.And then we've lost so many of his wedding rings because of this. He just, he has, he can't have it on this.Malcolm Collins: You know, I just have this generic, like 5Simone Collins: wedding ring, 11, 11. Come on. We're not here. It's your wedding ring. But yeah, we have like basically all over the house. Like I have hanging on little hooks. I have in my purse, I have in my makeup bag.I have in my, like,Malcolm Collins: I love your thing about like, I'm like Sonic. Whenever I hit something, just rings explode everywhere.Simone Collins: But yeah, you're totally raccoon. That is, that is your fursona. What about you? A squirrel? Yeah, probablyMalcolm Collins: a squirrel. No, you're more deliberate than that.Simone Collins: Squirrels are very deliberate.They're always like No, ew. No, I'm definitely because squirrels like to squirrel things away and like hide things and they act [00:05:00] like they're really busy but they're really just shuffling stuff around. But youMalcolm Collins: also like shiny things. I think another raccoon here.Simone Collins: Maybe, yeah, maybe we're a bunch ofMalcolm Collins: raccoons.We're a little raccoon family,little dirt pandas, little trash pandas that hang out in, but hold on. And you like breakingSimone Collins: rules and I like well, you know what the raccoons would do when they would break into my childhood house? Is they would, they would take our cat's food and then they would wash it before eating it.Like they dip it in water and then they eat it. And then one they're so smart and they're so big on collecting. So I guess this would beMalcolm Collins: me like hygiene too. They like washing things.Simone Collins: Yeah. They're big on hygiene. So that would be me. And then what we found one day when we like came up in the middle of the night and we could hear them, like they'd bust into our house through the cat door, which was one of those magnetic key cat doors.So like it should not have. But they, they picked the lock. They're just very smart is they had not just eaten all the cat food. They'd found the cat food bag and we found one raccoon on the outside of the cat door pulling the bag. And we found the other raccoon on the inside, pushing the bag, trying to get it out.And of course that was some [00:06:00] dangerous situation because in that case we had a raccoon trapped in our house on the other side of the cat food bag. But these are, yeah. Okay. Our personas are raccoons. It'sMalcolm Collins: before we go further on this, I need to. I was recently watching because I was like, I got to recommend this anime and I have forgotten to recommend this anime before.Spice and Wolf. But that's notSimone Collins: about furries. It's about a foxMalcolm Collins: girl. No, no, no. But I was thinking, because you were asking me and I was asking you, what fursona would you be?My last girlfriend. Well, not my last, but my other really serious girlfriend, who, you know, she was in our wedding party. I don't want toSimone Collins: name names here.The beautiful one. Yes. Well, they were all beautiful, but the extra, the most beautiful one.Malcolm Collins: She looked and acted exactly like the female protagonist from this anime. Oh, really? Very much wolf energy, I guess you would say.So, yeah. Just so you know, the anime, if you do want to watch it, it's about economic games.So, like, when people, when there's conflict in the show, it's over something like some sort of economic battle, you know, like in Naruto, they would have like actual, but if it takes place in [00:07:00] medieval Europe, basically, so medieval Europe, economic battles with a spicy wolf girl, if you're interested in that spice and wolf, check it out.Very, very top tier anime, very educational too. So, you know, what's the topic of this video? Right? Because recently, you know, we've done some things where we point out that what people can, and we have a video on this, what people. think of as a trad wife is a progressive conspiracy in that it was really something created by Hollywood in the 1950s that was never really lived by that many people.A lifestyle lived by that many people, right? And among the people who were living it, it was a fairly new lifestyle that had really only begun to be experimented with in the 1910s to 1920s and right now it's almost a completely dead lifestyle.Simone Collins: Well, people pretend it isn't, but it's, it is not sustainable even when they pretend.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, it's economically unfeasible for 90 percent of the population. Yeah, unlessSimone Collins: you're super rich, then you can cosplay it all you want.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you can cosplay whatever, but what I'm saying is it [00:08:00] doesn't work. It's like a large scale. But we were saying what's also really funny about, like, what people think is trad and what people don't think is trad.Furries are super trad. Yeah. Like, they are far They're more trad than the nuclear family. Far more trad than the nuclear family. They are far Furries are more trad. than Christianity. FurriesSimone Collins: are more of a trad thanMalcolm Collins: even traditional, ultra Orthodox, like as much as you can go back, Judaism. Yeah. Furries are probably So let's let's describe what we mean by this.So if you look at what furries are, these are people who identify with an animal persona and they will wear costumes that allow them to take on this persona and they will go to specific parties that involve So a number of people, but not necessarily all the people at that party [00:09:00] taking on different personas associated with these animals.And these animals can exist at different levels of full animalness. Like there's extreme and lesser versions. AndSimone Collins: sometimes all it involves is just a few. animal accoutrement. You know, you're wearing a tail or you're wearing some furs or some ears, but like people have been doing that for aMalcolm Collins: long time.There's more to the furry community than that. They also will engage with texts that are anthropomorphize animals where these animals are not representative of anyone exactly in the community, but act as inter community cultural nexuses or nodes that everyone in the community would know about and relate to each other with.This isnot just what furries do, this is what ancient Egyptians did, this is what ancient Africans did, this is what ancient Native Americans did, this is what ancient Chinese did, but a really interesting thing, sorry, a little side note before we go further, remember how I was talking about like a cultural touch point here, So [00:10:00] a lot of people you know, they might see our show and they'll be like, why do you always have like these low culture, like these pop things like appear in the show?anD like, why, why, why do you communicate that way?Darmok and Jilard at Tanagra.Shaka. When the walls fellMalcolm Collins: the clip I just played is of this traditional Star Trek episode where they meet a species that communicates entirely in cultural references.Love that. I think when you see this species all talking to each other, Simone, is that a bit like you when you go to a family meeting between me and my brother? Yes. Because we both, he just like me just constantly quotes shows as a way of relating or describing what's going on.But it appears they're trying their best. As are we. For what it's worth. Shaka. When the walls fell.Darmok. Darmok. Rai and [00:11:00] Jiri at Lunga. Shaka. When the walls fell. Sina at Anzo. Sina and Baka. Darmok at Tanagra. Shaka. Mirab! His sails unfurled! Darmok! Mirab! Taymok!The river. Taymok.Simone Collins: Oh, and he'll test you.He'll be like, do you know what that's from? If you don't know it, like he will judge you. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and it's low stuff as well. Like, Oh, you don't know this random anime quote that you should know. You don't know thisWithin our family culture, it would be considered very arrogant. To quote or reference.Really cultured things. Like a form of extravagance or finery or, , Vanity. That shows you to be lesser and insecure. So you almost end up competing on a how low culture and the things you're quoting are because to show yourself as high [00:12:00] status. You need to have achieved a lot, but not be. Embarrassed about how you present yourself or the things that you show. You engage with, and so you almost had a flex. How not embarrassed you are. Thus this episode on furries.Malcolm Collins: anyway, back to it. But yeah furries are something that humans have traditionally been doing throughout our entire history and are probably one of the most common cross cultural references you see when you look at early human cultures and yeah, they're universal.It's not just. The early days, and I think that this is the thing. So when I talk about like within the furry community, they have some like, animals that they anthropomorphize that are part of their stories. Well, this is what you see in early Native American religions, early Egyptian religions, early African religions, or even current ones in these communities where you will see them anthropomorphizing animals that are, you know, we'd see them as gods or something because they're part of this early religious framework, but they're not exactly gods often.They don't really interact with people's lives. [00:13:00] They're more like shared cultural narratives. Touchpoint. You also have this in early Europe. So don't anyone say that like this is not a European thing. Europeans definitely had these. If you look at early European history So even that's the same. The idea of dressing up as animals you'll see in these cultures, the idea of dancing or going to parties where you dress up as these animals, the idea of partially identifying, like they have different ways of relating to this.Like maybe an animal spirit partially overtakes you and you partially become this animal, right? But this is what you see within furry communities. It is fascinating to me that it is just this ancient ritual that people are performing, but it gets more interesting than that. So if you look at. Masquerade parties.So the original masquerade parties. So a lot of people when they hear masquerade parties today, they think of people walking around in this little likeSimone Collins: Those half assed masks.Malcolm Collins: Mm mm. The original masquerade parties, you would take on an alternate persona. And many of these personas were, I mean, there was a diversity of, of, of ways that you would do it.But they were clearly, like, medieval iterations of these early furry [00:14:00] parties.Simone Collins: Furcon. What? Furcon. Medieval edition.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, you could say that people are doing this when they you know, the idea of, of dressing up as shared cultural touchpoints, like you would have at an anime convention or something like that.It's also a very ancient thing to do. No, totally. Go to conventions where everyone does this and like you're channeling these entities.Simone Collins: Maybe the 14th, like, you know, you know, cosplaying as different mythical creatures. Or Rome. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. People can cosplay as their favorite characters throughout history when they can afford to.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, well, Roman emperors would often do this, where they'd be like, I'm this mythological deity, you are this mythological deity, let's also have sex with theseSimone Collins: mythological deities. Well, then they're practically then almost otherkining it. But anyway, we'll not go there.Malcolm Collins: No, no, but let's go there.Otherkin. Otherkin are people who believe that they have some sort of spiritual connection. to what we would think of as fictional identities, like a character from Harry Potter or an anime character. Right. And they think that that is part of their personality. You know, I was talking to another kin recently and they [00:15:00] were like, it's really interesting how much the other kin's social networks have changed recently.So it used to be that if you ran into somebody who had the same identity as you, that was seen as like a bad thing and you wouldn't want to overlap identities within social networks. But now people disproportionately and intentionally. Seek out people who have these different identities. And they were talking about why people do this, like female puberty.. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. So, I mean, I get it now because I get that. There is this extreme desire to belong to a group and also like you have a crisis of identity when you hit puberty and you're like, my body is changing.My feelings are changing. Like, who am I? And you don't really know who you are yet. And you also don't have the means or independence to figure out who you are. But like, if your friends start tagging you as like this character, and this character is fully fledged out of the box, pre assembled. They have their lives figured out.It's like incredibly comforting. And you just be like, yeah, I'm that person or I'm that character. And so that would be really comforting. And these days also, because I think we are experiencing like [00:16:00] maximum atomization and isolation in society. I could see why also Otherkin of a particular character who may have in another time, not been so, so thrilled to see another.One of their same character are now thrilled to see it because just like now I'm not alone now. There are other people like me and like, I feel less alone in this moment. So yeah, that also makes sense to me, but yeah, yeah, shared goals, shared values you know, that's, and that's comforting because we. In, in progressive secular culture, there, there's not a whole lot of shared goals and values.So like, if you can just find the same character as you, I guess that's the closest you're going to get to that amazing feeling, which is. really depressing. But there you go.Malcolm Collins: So this brings me to an interesting question. Yes. So people will see this and they're like, okay, this is obviously true. Like furries have been around for a long, long time.Simone Collins: Why, why are people so weird about furries? Cause people love [00:17:00] hating onMalcolm Collins: furries. We'll talk about that in a second, but I want to talk about. Well, but we can talk about that now. What does trad even mean? Like if you're trying to be trad, but you say furries aren't trad or not the type of trad you wanna be.Huh? What's causing this differentiation? Like, what is trad actually, if not furries? Because I don't think that that's what people mean. Like the way people use trad today, let's be honest,Simone Collins: is not actually traditional.Malcolm Collins: It's not actually traditional, and they don't actually mean they want to go back to traditional ways of doing things.They don't want to go back to Yeah, what does trad mean then? Right, so very interesting. So first, Well, so actually I think it's a, a, a cultural aesthetic that is based around a fantasy that never existed, just as much as furries. Or people who go to conferences or, you know, they are cosplaying as something that never existed, but they So trad is aSimone Collins: genre that in the, in, in, it's completely, it's a, [00:18:00] take the word trad, disassociate it from the concept of traditional or history or historical accuracy and just make it a genre, like anime or like DC comics, right?And then that's a thing.Malcolm Collins: But I think it works. Now, let me be clear. I am not denigrating this trad concept. I actually think trying to cosplay like a 1950s wholesome family is one of the few cultural contexts we have for what it looks like to be in a happy relationship with happy kids. And so if you're trying to figure out or trying to search for how do I build that for myself?Cosplaying that and cosplaying creates the thing you're cosplaying really frequently. So if you cosplay a religion, you will often become that religion. And this is, this is the point of, you know, when we talk about, we do not mean ever to denigrate like Catholic rituals, even though we have a cultural aversion to them.Somebody was pointing out it is the cosplaying of those rituals, which makes somebody become a devout Catholic. [00:19:00] Right. It is through cosplaying this trad concept of a family, one of the only concepts of a family we have in society of what does an actual wholesome family look like that leads to individuals, you know, being, being this, this, this happy, wholesome family, right?I mean, what do we look like now, right now, you and me right here, but you, you shouldn't over emphasize in the cosplay to a level of economic unrealism. Right. IE, a family with like seven kids living off of one income is, I'm going to be honest, unrealistic. That is notSimone Collins: true. Well, no, no, some people actually make it work.But They do, but it's difficult. Some people, and I think that's the big emphasis and you have to really know that you can pull it off. And I think a lot of people do it before they realize they can make it work.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or they commit to it as the only way they're going to have kids. And this is why. You know, we did an episode which showed that conservative countries, well, conservative individuals have more [00:20:00] kids within a country.Conservative countries have fewer kids than progressive countries when you control their income. And I'll put up the graph here. This is not a big difference, but it's like you don't expect any difference here. You expect it to be a sharp curve in the other direction. And this is likely why. It's because they say, well, I'm going to wait to like, and like raise a bunch of kids off of one person's income.And like, that is unrealistic for. Everyone, uh, for, for most people, not like the top two, 3 percent of our society, but for most people now why are furries denigrated, right? That's an interesting question.Simone Collins: Well, because I, and I think that there's a false answer that everyone's going to immediately go to that's wrong.And I think that false answer is. Because there's, there's sex stuff. Which is, it's weird because also like, okay, but in trad marriages, there's sex stuff. Like, I'm sorry. Do you likeMalcolm Collins: BDSM? There's sex stuff in that community isn't as denigrated. It'sSimone Collins: a, yeah, it's not the sex stuff. Although I guess like we, at least within BDSM [00:21:00] and with trad, the sex stuff is not sometimes correlated to.Zoophilia, whereas there, there is a bit of a, like zoophilia, slight, I would say weak correlation with the furry community. Like, it's not intense, but it's, there are some furries thatMalcolm Collins: are into that. Yeah, absolutely. But I, I wouldn't say that the community is like disproportionately zoophilic. Yeah, not at all.No, no. Okay. I will say the community is disproportionately zoophilic when contrasted with the general population. WhatSimone Collins: are you going to do? It's animals.Malcolm Collins: I mean. Your average furry isn't zoophilic. I'd say that, you know, maybethree to one percent of the community is. Yeah, that's fair.So I would thinking back to the stats from our sexuality book and the pragmatists guide to sexuality. I realized that the number of furries who are actually through a field, like it's almost certainly much higher than I just cited. If you look at Kinsey's study, , back in 1948, he found around 8% of all men and 3% of all women had had sex [00:22:00] with an animal. What's really interesting about these numbers is that they are about the only kink that we could find that has dropped significantly over time.More recent studies have shown that this number is only around 5% of men and 2% of women. what's interesting is that our study, when we were looking at how many are attracted or find the idea of rousing to sleeping with animals, , that is around 6% of males and 2% of females. And if our data is accurate in the other study is accurate.That's insane because that means around 87% of people who are aroused by the idea of having sex with an animal have tried it. Also those numbers are shockingly high, like a much higher than I would have anticipated. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just had a terrible thought. So if I have slept with around. 150 women. And 2% of women have slept with an animal. That means there's a rounded 95% chance that one of the [00:23:00] women I have slept with has slept with an animal. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.Malcolm Collins: So that's, that's my read.So that being the case why, why do people hate this community so much? Well, huh. I guess it's actually has to do with one thing. Deviant, deviation from society's mainstream value systems. So if you look at the dominant cultural groups in our society, whether they're the Christian cultural groups or the dominant urban monoculture today, furries are loudly and visibly different from either of those cultural groups.Simone Collins: In what way, though, that like steampunk fans or anime fans. Or like, Trekkies are not. I just think it's louder. Just louder? Do you think they're more irreverent, maybe? I feel like there is more irreverence. Like, you don't hear, like, there's that famous Furcon, that like, just they trashed the hotel.Rainforest, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Look it up, by the way, very [00:24:00] interesting story. I think Internet Historian does a thingSimone Collins: on them. Yeah, yeah, I think an Internet Historian is just the most brilliant person ever. IMalcolm Collins: love him. By the way, if he ever listens to any of these, we would love to talk to you or know you. You are hilarious.Simone Collins: Yeah, seriously. Unless he's like literally your brother and he could be based on the humor. Actually,Malcolm Collins: he really could be my brother.Simone Collins: I have these moments where I watch his videos and I'm like, but really? Oh yeah, so if people are wondering what myMalcolm Collins: brother is like. Internet historian. JustSimone Collins: internet historian.That's my brother. That is, that is Malcolm's brother. Yeah, so either internet historian, you have like a twin out there and it's Malcolm's brother or you are him. We know.Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't be surprised to find out he's one of our family members.Simone Collins: No, because it's too close to specifically your brother. But anyway, we digress.Yeah. So maybe it's the level of irreverence, the level of like craziness. So like if you were to combine soccer hooligans in Europe with. [00:25:00] Anime nerds, you know, you've got both the, the cultural difference and weirdness combined with, um, the, the unruliness, maybe there's also something about like people associate mascots and like people wearing costumes.With childhood, so it's kind of like someone dressing up like Barney and like, maybe for some people that violates some like weird,Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about why cultures hate people who are different from them, right? It's important to know, right? Like, why would cultures just shame and isolate people who are different from them?Okay. Because the cultures that didn't ended up disappearing. When a culture doesn't shame difference, it disappears. This is just basic cultural evolution because then difference ends up replacing it. And the differences that did shame people who are different from them do end up disappearing. Touche.Or do end up replacing it or whatever. But anyway, the point being Is it if our culture did not shame for [00:26:00] freedom or didn't shame people who are different from it, it would end up being replaced. And so most cultures shame things that are different from it. So then the question is, why do most modern cultures like modern successful cultures, when we can see that furries were so common throughout history, this impulse, this, this, this cultural display, why do very few of the successful cultures, whether it's the urban monoculture or conservative Christian cultures, why did they not do this?That is interesting. And I think the answer is that it just serves no utility. It's, it's completely vestigial. I think it's probably part of early human evolution that had to do with group bonding rituals or maybe the evolution of our understanding of cognition or like the way cognition works and the theory of mind works and then accidentally getting it applied to animals.I don't know. And then, and then that ended up creating a The loop, I forget the words for this. There's a, an effect for this in, in biology. So that could be what you see there. We, we talk about it in our episode of should music be a [00:27:00] sin. If you look at that. Hmm.Simone Collins: What I would add though. So, yeah, I mean, I agree with you and yes, so culture has to denigrate and other these people and because furries are extra other and also unruly, like maybe that's just giant target on their foreheads, but what's also uniquely interesting is that.It's, I think what culture also likes to do is like kick out the useless, you know, like, denigrate the, the nonproductive, but furries are not that. And that's what something blew my mind about this. And this happened in an unconference session we were at, at, at an event that was. So off the record that for the first time ever, we've been forced to put our phones in Faraday bags for long periods of time.It was completely inhumane. But one Inhumane, I love it. It was. One It's a perfect for an analyst conference. One fairly famous Guy on Twitter was in one of these unconference sessions and, and furries came up and we were, it came up in the context. I'm not going to name him. But it came up in the context of like, you [00:28:00] know, where are there overlooked, but very productive and smart people in society.And he's like, actually furries like have, I, I've met, I've met a bunch of furries. Like apparently there was a fur con right before some conservative conference that he was attending. It was like pretty high profile. And. Okay. Like he spoke with a bunch and, and asked like, Hey, you know, how much is your costume?Because they have these, you know, super elaborate costumes. And you know, they're like 15, 25, 000. You know, these are, these are people. And the onlyMalcolm Collins: five or six.Simone Collins: Yeah. And it's, these are, these are extremely expensive costumes. These are like people with careers and lives who are very smart. Some of my, like, like some of the coolest, smartest people that, You know, I've encountered online who like do really amazing work are also furries and like made fun of for that.It's, it's just so weird because this is also a group that is disproportionately of very high intellectual firepower. I don't, I don't know what to [00:29:00] make of it.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So I'll ask you a question. Okay. You want to get, you want to get spicy here. Always. Do you think that people with some animal features, you know, like anime characters and stuff like that are attractive?Simone Collins: I think it's kind of universally understood that cat ears and Fox ears on both men and women. So this is not, it's not just cat girls. And I think people have a big misunderstanding here. I just actually was hearing the other day. I can't remember where I heard this, but like a major hacking group that I guess is kind of like, we'll say fortune adjacent.Has like recently taken stuff by ransom and they're like we will not return it until you find some biological way to engineer cat girls or like you like that's how they troll them, which is just amazing. I just have to say that like I'm glad they're doing God's work. These people but it'd beMalcolm Collins: gross in real lifeSimone Collins: though.It depends Malcolm. Yeah, probably. Cause I mean, have you actually looked inside cat ears? They're really weird. Yeah, actually you're not wrong. Maybe dog years, but I will say, so it's not just cat girls. Think about Inuyasha.[00:30:00] Like a lot of girls,Malcolm Collins: no, I'm thinking there was this, this anime where like people would have like eggs.The enemy is called .Malcolm Collins: I'll, I'll find it out that like represented their like powers and then things would hatch out of them. And would they lay the eggs? They had like 17 seasons. It was like a really like,Simone Collins: would they, would they like crouch and lay an egg? No, no, no,Malcolm Collins: no. Like they came out of their soul. Like they represented their soul.And then like little chibi characters would hatch out of it. Okay. But anyway, the major love interest, like the tuxedo mask in this. With a guy who had cat ears and his little thing was like a black cat. And so often in these animes, so at first you said, girls really like this as well on guys. And I was like, that's not true.And then I think of the number of like anime male characters I know that are predominant love interests that are like a black cat andSimone Collins: like, Yeah, but here's, here's the counterfactual for that. And where I kind of agree with you with the gross in real life thing is. When I look, when you look at the and maybe it's, [00:31:00] it's, it's a rat tail versus squirrel tail issue.But when you watch the wizard of Oz live action, which you've never seen, I know you're so strange, but it's not that good. So don't worry about it. There are, there are flying monkeys, but it's really clear that it's just like men and monkey costumes. And they have these long tails and just looks wrong on like a human.But I feel like if humans had squirrel tails that are fluffy and bushy, it wouldMalcolm Collins: be a different story. I admit, I think squirrel girls look cute. It's just like the ears and the big bushy tail.Simone Collins: Big bushy tail. Yeah. See, I think it's the nature of the ears. It's the nature of the tail. So like dog ears, not cat ears and squirrel tails, not rat tails or monkey tails, you know, and then we're good.But yes, I do think if you, if you, if you woke up one day. And you had cute fox or dog ears, it would probably make you, which I don't know how this is possible because you become more attractive every day, but it would make you even a little bit more attractive.Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] Oh my gosh, now this is spicy, this isSimone Collins: I don't see how this is spicy.I feel like if, listen, if like Joe Biden. Suddenly had like white fox ears, you know, like I think that he like he would go up in the polls. IMalcolm Collins: think that Joe Biden shows his fetish very loudly. I would not be surprised if I go to his office and there is just random people's hair clippings. In his deskSimone Collins: He like sniffs people's hair,Malcolm Collins: people's hair.I was waiting for Joe and just staring at his desk, I decided I'd have a little look see inside the drawers. Uh oh, I think I might know where this is going.I opened one, then another, then another. And inside every drawer, every single one, piles of human hair. For the first time in my life, I felt like I understood a president.. As I was sorting through the hair, admiring the collection, in walked the man himself. There was no hiding what I had done, so I just put the hair back, shut the drawers, nodded my head, [00:33:00] and said, Mr.President? Hey, if he didn't want someone finding his hair collection, he should have locked his drawers. What? We all have a desire to be known, and he's constantly sniffing hair in public, it's not some big secret.Malcolm Collins: He seems really into it. LikeSimone Collins: isn't that a smell fetish and not a, it's, it's a smell fetish. It's a hair fetish.Malcolm Collins: Could be a smell fetish. It could be a hair. It's something, but like he does it publicly. He is not ashamed. Proud Kingster. And I also think, and I know conservatives would hate this. Trump, I think is a little out there about being Oh, what's the word I'm looking for?There are a little too many images and too many video clips. Audio clips, where he does seem to have something about his daughters. Ivanka.Simone Collins: Is Ivanka hot? I'll say that. She is hot. She is hot. Yes. No, I mean, he's not wrong. He's [00:34:00]Malcolm Collins: not wrong. He's not wrong. There's definitely going to be an age where like if my daughters end up super hot. And for some reason my brain thinks they're hot.Like, I don't know. I'd like the Western mark effect is what prevents you generally fromSimone Collins: seeing. Yeah, it didn't kick in.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like I would find hugging them. Like if I thought my daughters were hot, I'd probably find hugging them a little repellent. Yes. AndSimone Collins: like, you wouldn't do it, right. You wouldn't keep your distance.Yeah. You'd shake their hand or something.We should just count our blessings that Ben Shapiro doesn't happen to be Trump's son. Dad, why is my sister so hot? I have no idea. I mean, I'm not crazy, right? Like, she's hot. It's insane how hot she is. Was mom ever that hot?God, no. I feel bad like I'm f ed up for being attracted to my sister. Oh, I think I'm in a little worse of a position. . I am so ashamed. It's a girl. It's a girl. It's a [00:35:00] girl. You know what? I don't think I should be a father.Yeah, I'm outta here. Harold! Nope, further back.Simone Collins: EveryoneMalcolm Collins: should have their own thing. As long as it's not hurting the people around him. And he seems to have a really good relationship with his kids.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, Yeah, so it's fine.Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, that isSimone Collins: fine. That is fine. Is this, is this like a, is this another podcast we should do?Like just what do we guess the, the, the, the kinks are of these famous people? I love that. Right. Wait, what blew my mind though is, is that, that Trump and Biden are older than Bill Clinton.Malcolm Collins: Are they?Simone Collins: Let's just double. Age of Bill Clinton. 277 years, age of Trump,77. So the, and Joe Biden is 81. So if, if, okay, Trump was born June and,and Bill Clinton was born August. Trump is older [00:36:00] than Bill Clinton, as is Joe Biden. ThatMalcolm Collins: is wild.Simone Collins: I know, right? Yeah. Like we have a problem when, because we all thought like Bill Clinton's really old, but no, man.Malcolm Collins: Also, I think their generation is too old to really have kinks they participated in in private.Like, if they had grown up within our generation, they'd accept it, they'd know. Don't sniff women's hair publicly. That's a bad thing to go around sniffing people's hair in public. This is something you can go to a special hair sniffing club for.Simone Collins: A hair sniffing orgy.Malcolm Collins: It's not my thing, but I, I don't shame.I, I, if anything, I am. Encouraged by the fact he's so public about it. Yeah. But I do think that maybe he should try to gain consent from the women he uses for this level of satisfaction and not do it with little girls either.That's a little.Simone Collins: If someone asked you though, if they could sniff your hair. I don't think that you would say yes.You'd say [00:37:00] yes? It makes him happy. Oh, that's sweet, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: It doesn't hurt me.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does it increase the chance thatI'm murdered? Maybe. ISimone Collins: mean. No, I don't think so. It's fine.Malcolm Collins: I, I, I, that was a wild tangent at the end of this episode. I love you, Simone. You are amazing, Simone. I love you so much, Michael.You are perfect, Simone.Simone Collins: And I, Would I be, hey, no, question has to go back to you, that would I be more perfect with,Malcolm Collins: I do not think you would be better.Simone Collins: With like a squirrel tail or something. Okay, a squirrelMalcolm Collins: tail would be pretty cute.Simone Collins: Yeah. And little cat ears. Meow meow. And meow. Meow.Malcolm Collins: Alright, alright, alright, alright.Simone Collins: Love you.Malcolm Collins: Our kids are gonna see this someday. [00:38:00]Simone Collins: Yeah, but I feel like one of our kids is going to end up being a furry. So they'll be like, well, at least mom and dad love me still.Malcolm Collins: I could definitely see that. It's so common these days. Anyway, you're the best, Simone. Love you, Malcolm.Simone Collins: Love you, too. 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

We explore surprising commonalities between our synth religion's beliefs and early Mormon/LDS theology around eternal progression, pre-life, becoming gods, and more. We discuss apparent biblical contradictions, diversity of beliefs among Mormons, the role of prophets overriding canon, attempts to conform as mainstream Christians, and accelerated collapse via the genetic vortex. We cover concepts like multiple mortal probations, the basilisk, Saturday Warriors film, killing potential kids, and whether Mormons would consider us Mormon.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] This really shocked me because it was the more conservative Mormons, the ones who would be considered more extremist, who thought that we were more similar to Mormonism in our beliefs, And it was the less conservative Mormons who thought that our beliefs were more distant from Mormons. If you look across the Mormon tradition, when I started like talking to more Mormons and more conservative Mormons about the way they think, like the metaphysics of the universe actually works, right. There is more diversity within Mormon beliefs than there is. Within any other religion that I'm aware of, like what's, what'sSimone Collins: extra interesting is there's both that diversity, but also this like quiet, like, we don't talk about this diversity.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we don't talk about this. We don't talk about it. So, so let's, let's talk about one here, right? Like multiple mortal prohibitions,Simone Collins: right?Malcolm Collins: This was fascinating to me because it has shown that I fundamentally misunderstood Mormonism in our previous videos on MormonismWould you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Well, this is [00:01:00] very exciting. I get to use my new fancySpeaker. Although, like, because it'sSimone Collins: because it's metal, like, it right now I feel like I'm holding a frozen rod of ice right now.It is so cold. Is thisMalcolm Collins: your new camera? Okay, well, I am really excited for this episode, and I am always so disappointed when there's an episode that, like, I absolutely love, but like We don't get a bunch of watches on it or something. No one's going toSimone Collins: watch this. Yeah. I don't know. I'll tell you in terms of watching something that I thought I didn't want to watch.I watched all of Saturday Warriors per your request and it was cheesy and it was, but oh my gosh, I cried. I cried.Malcolm Collins: So people who aren't familiar with Saturday Warriors, it was recommended to us because we've been talking a lot with a Mormon fan of the show to try to understand the religion better.And he suggested that we check out this movie. And it is really interesting because he said that, like, it gives a good example of why a lot of Mormons had a lot of kids. So you can see it from their perspective. And throughout the [00:02:00] entire movie, you're having your heart strings pulled by this little girl.Who's stuck in heaven because her parents haven't had a kid yet and they haven't had all their kids. They haven't had the seventh kid that they were supposed to have. No, eighth, eighth kid. Eighth kid,Emily, what's wrong? I'm the last kid to be born. What if by that time mom and dad don't want me? No way. But I've seen lots of families make promises.And then break them. Not us. Emily, I will see to it personally that you're not forgotten. You promise, Jimmy? I promise.Malcolm Collins: yeah. And then the other, another one of their kids, the, the bad guys in this. You want to talk about getting us on board with you?Bad guys in this. We're called Population Zero, and they were a rock band that had seduced one of the sons into thinking abortion was cool and population reduction was cool. Look at this. Ehrlich says that population growth will lead to famine. And in this decade, [00:03:00] hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.So what's the solution? Force population control? Well, people will need to be coerced, but it's for a good cause. I mean, it's the only answer, unless you don't like eating. You think it's a little extreme? Come on. Well, this is serious. People need to stop having so many kids. No offense. Jimmy, how come your parents can't keep their hands off each other?You wanna find out? The Earth is sick, and we are the cancer.Every day the babies are destroying the world,eating all our apple sauce. What can we do? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Far out, man. Play that again. Just messing around, man. No, Jimmy, [00:04:00] for real, this time and keep that melody.Every day, the world is getting smaller by falling.Bursting at the seams, what can we do?Zero population is the answer, my friend. Without it, the rest of us are doomed. Who can survive? Who can survive? Not one of us will be alone.Malcolm Collins: Literally an antinatalistSimone Collins: rock band. Hilarious.Malcolm Collins: Right? Can you get more? But this whole line of conversation started for us with a really interesting moment for me.So I was on stage. And I have talked with the transhumanist Mormons before, you know, like the [00:05:00] weird, like technophilic Mormons which I think a lot of Mormons would consider kind of different from mainstream Mormons. And, and the fact that our ideology and our belief system really aligns closely with theirs that did not surprise me at all.You know, right. Here's what shocked me. So we're on the stage. It's Kevin Dolan. Kevin Dolan is of the conservative faction of Mormons so much so that he's often when people talk about like the deseret nationalists, that's who they're talking about. The Mormon separatists,However, Mormon extremists disregarded federal warnings and established Port Joe Smith, deep inside the arachnid quarantine zone. Too late, they realized that Dantana had already been chosen by other colonists. Arachnids. Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: So That's the faction. And we were on stage and he, and he just came out because I thought that he would see our religious beliefs, our synthetic religious beliefs, where we say, okay broadly in years from now of our lives, they're probably going to be closer to gods and humans and that [00:06:00] this, or the way we would think of a god than a human and that they wouldn't relate to time the way we relate to time.And so it's sort of like a self manifesting entity that is influencing us today. Okay. So he saw this, he actually related it to interstellar. He said, your beliefs are basically interstellar, right? I don't know. I haven't seen it recently, but I was like, yeah, sure. Why not? And he's like, that is just.Mormon. Like he's like, you guys are basically just Mormons. And that surprised me. Because that did not align what, what I understood a conservative Mormon would think. anD I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And so then I started talking to some other Mormons who were at the conference about Mormonism and they're like, yeah, you guys are just Mormons or your, your beliefs are very similar to Mormon beliefs.And. This really shocked me because it was the more conservative Mormons, the ones who would be considered more extremist, who thought that we were more similar to Mormonism in our beliefs, or as they would say it, you know, the Church of Latter day Saints. And it was the less conservative [00:07:00] Mormons who thought that our beliefs were more distant from Mormons.Isn't that wild? Well, it's not wild when you dig into it. Yes. Right. This was fascinating to me because it has shown that I fundamentally misunderstood Mormonism in our previous videos on Mormonism and even our previous writings on Mormonism because I fundamentally, one, misunderstood, well, well, the biggest thing is I misunderstood how they determine what they think is true.And there's a very interesting thing that Mormons do that no other faith in the world I'm aware of. Cause like, we have studied a lot of faiths and none of the other ones do this. Which is, if I go to one Mormon and I say, Hey, I've heard a lot of Mormons believe X. Or like, church fathers believe X and have talked about X frequently.So like, two examples here might be like, eternal progression, or like, multiple mortal prohibitions. These are two things we'll both [00:08:00] talk about on this podcast. It is not infrequent if they do not believe in multiple mortal prohibitions or eternal progression. They'll just say, nope, no large group of Mormons have ever believed this.In the coming Mormons. ever believe this none of the church fathers ever believe this. And then if you point to them, like, text,like, no, like, this is in, like, stuff that was put out by, by major church fathers they'll then say, okay, maybe some Mormons do believe this, but they are influenced by thedevil.Simone Collins: What, really? Influenced by the devil?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this is regularly what you see. And this is fascinating to me because, like, Protestants, for example, I'm, I'm, I, You know, if you're talking about, like, pre millennialist or post millennialist Protestants, so people who don't know what I'm talking about here, in the conservative Protestant community one of the biggest debates is, does Jesus live?Like, like, does the rapture happen before the tribulation, or does the rapture happen [00:09:00] after the tribulation? Do, like, like, devout Christians actually have to go through this period of tribulation, or will they be raptured beforehand, and then the, the period of tribulation is meant to help people, you know, anyway, nuanced discussion, but none of them are gonna say No, there's not some other group that has this other view, and if there is, they're, they're being manipulated by the devil.They're like, no, we have a serious difference in faith, and we study this, and, and these are the arguments for my faith. You know, there's people out there who are mistaken, but, you know, they're not, like, demons. Well, and, and, and the, the reason why, so this is really confused me about Mormonism, because whenever I tried to study Mormonism in the past if I was going to get like a broad view of Mormonism, I actually would always get the best broad views from people who had left the church.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Well, often those are the people who are talking about it.Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, so, and I, and I should point out, I'm not saying that Mormons never disagree about this [00:10:00] stuff, but if you want to see, like, the actual disagreements that Mormons are having, go to the comment section on Mormon blogs. Don't go to the articles themselves.And this then came to, why would the conservatives be more accepting of our beliefs than the non conservatives? Why would they think that our beliefs are closer to Mormon beliefs? And this is because the more sophisticated Mormon theology. The more interesting Mormon theology from my perspective and, and frankly, it's sort of wackier, wackier in that it's, it is less in a line with just generic in theology, actually typically the older Mormon theology or the Mormon theology you would know if you dug really deep into Mormon history.Well, I mean, whatSimone Collins: I thought was really interesting about one way that it was explained to us is that like, for like most really unique LDS theological concepts, you need to have an IQ of at least 130 and most ELL, like most Mormons don't, [00:11:00] they don't really care. They're not really involved in it. And it's really about the lifestyle and even a lot of leadership, just like theology is not like the.primary thing of action here. It's, it's,Malcolm Collins: I'll actually read a quote from one of the early church fathers, which I found very interesting and, and, and quite prophetic of our own belief system.Orson Pratt, this is the guy who was born in 1811, wrote this, right? And, and so when I first went to them, I was like, yeah, but you know, we believe that like intergenerationally, like we don't believe that everyone's going to inherit their own planet one day or something like that. And they're like, Oh no, no, no, that's not actually.So they, they pointed me to this Orson Pratt quote. But not everyone's going to inherit their own planet one day. Some people will as humans, like similar to humans as we are today. will be elevated to a state of godhood. And they're like, some Mormons believe that, some Mormons believe other things.You should look at what the actual, you know, quotes from these early church fathers. So I want to read this quote by Orson Pratt. This is on, whenever he [00:12:00] uses the word intelligence, he's talking about the soul, and so he sort of has this hypothesis that maybe the soul exists as individual soul particles, which when people die can break apart and, and reform, so like we may have some soul particles in us that previously came from like, Plants or something like that.So we'd say we can suppose that these particles possessed of the power to move themselves would not have exerted that power during the endless duration, preceding their organization. If they were once organized in the vegetable kingdom and then disorganized by becoming the food of celestial animals, and then again, reorganized in the form of spirits of animals, which is a higher sphere of being, then is it unreasonable to suppose that the scene particles have From eternity been passing through an endless chain of unions and disunion organizations and disorganization until at length they are permitted to enter into the highest and most exalted sphere of [00:13:00] organization in the image of God.So that's really fascinating and, and. Here's a quote from Brigham Young. When the elements in an organized form do not fill the end of their creation, they are thrown back again, like Brother Kimball's old potteryware, to be ground up and made again. So you hear these two and these purport an idea of, of sort of human souls going through a cycle in which they eventually become godlike souls through this sort of forging and reforging process, which is actually Really, really similar to our belief if you made it entirely materialistic.Isn't that something? The idea that, like, our kids are a part of us and a chance to improve on us, you know, intergenerationally and that they have, you know, what we would think of as a soul, which is the collection of [00:14:00] ideas and genetics that make us up. They have aspects of that, but reforged to improve and that eventually this thing will become a deity.Very, very, very, very, very similar beliefs, but these are early church beliefs. And so early Mormons, like Mormons who are of the most conservative faction, would align more with these earlier beliefs than the more modern church beliefs. And so the question would be, why did the church change its beliefs?And this comes to a really unique thing about Mormonism I didn't fully grasp. It is that Mormonism, unlike any religious tradition in the entire world, the current prophet, the current head of the religion, has more say than their original book or the founder of the religion. That is, the, the, the current prophet can override Joseph Smith.Can just say, [00:15:00] Joseph Smith was wrong when he said that. No other religion. You as a Muslim would say like Muhammad was misunderstood or this was misquoted or this was, or you would say this about Jesus. You know, you wouldn't say the Pope cannot override Jesus. Like that would be considered insane. Yeah.It actually gets even Wilder than that. There are instances I have found where current prophets like elder fielding in answers to gospel questions, volume five will claim that Joseph Smith said things that he definitely doesn't seem to have ever said, or at least was never recorded in anything I can find. For example, that's where the quote that goes something along the lines of the prophet.Joseph Smith says that reincarnation is the doctrine of the devil. . And have you not read that the devil would deceive the elect? Where, when I tried to look through textual evidence, I can not find Joseph Smith saying [00:16:00] anywhere that he thought reincarnation with a tool of the devil. And in fact, I can find many sources that seem to indicate, and many of his contemporary seem to indicate that he did believe in some form of reincarnation. Though. Joseph Smith and Dean say that the doctrine of trans migration of souls are souls passing directly to your children was false. ​So imagine if you had something like the Pope saying, Jesus said that this is of the devil. And you're just like, or, or a current, you know, a mom saying, Muhammad said, this is, this is a doctrine of the devil.And yet there is no evidence for that. This would be incredibly confusing to an outsider, trying to learn about the religion. And what the boundaries of the belief system actually are.Malcolm Collins: And, and, and it leads to a religion. I had talked about Mormon being an accelerationist religion in the past. But I undersold how accelerationist it is.Simone Collins: And I think you didn't even know the extent, I think.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So it made it really hard for me because I'm [00:17:00] trying to go out there and understand what do Mormons actually believe.And I was continually thwarted because I was thinking about it like a Protestant or a Catholic or a Jew, if you're thinking about it like a Protestant, like just my typical, okay, I'm looking at their books, what do their books actually say? What do the founding fathers, what do the most important people in the movement actually say?And they'll just like dismiss this stuff. Like this, this famous speech by Joseph Smith,I'll put a thing here where he basically lays out the idea that oh yeah, humans will eventually become gods, some modern Mormons just throw this out. And so why do they just throw this out? Like, and, and that God started like a human today, right?And you can look at, here are some quotes that AI generated when I was having it, like asking it about Mormon concepts. Was? Where it said, God was once as humans are now, but eternally God. That is exactly what we believe about God. He was once as humans are now because [00:18:00] he was once us. Like, literally us.Yeah, right. But he also was eternally God because that's the way we think time works. A being. Like God and Christ means unity of purpose, not abilities. So being like God and Christ means unity of purpose, not abilities. You would say, yes, exactly. That's what this intergenerational improvement means.Or you could look at something like their belief in, pre life basically, right? Like in this movie, it started with all of them sort of in heaven, living their pre lives, having their pre families.Hi, I'm Todd Richards. I know. We're in love. And, um, so we were wondering if it's possible if you could put us down in the same town. Right. Or the same street. At least at the same time, if possible. How about the same family? Yes.That would be great, yeah. No. No. No. No. No.Malcolm Collins: We believe something very similar, but it's due to how we see time. Because we see all time as happening at once, we believe that all of our kids are friends, do know each other, and are waiting [00:19:00] to come into existence in the future.Simone Collins: Right, so to be, to clarify, in the movie Saturday warriors, it begins with everyone in heaven and they already know each other and they know that they're going to be family and they're like, Oh, I can't wait. This is going to be so great.Kind of dance should I do first for mom and dad? Something classical. Or, cha cha. Cha cha. From what I've heard, it's going to take a while to even learn how to walk. So, maybe just a twist then?Simone Collins: Whereas like, we don't think there's some antechamber before. It's just that everything.That has happened and will happen is happening and it's sort of all at onceMalcolm Collins: and it's already happened Yes And I do deny like my little daughter when I interact with my little daughter in 10 years And it's kid number 12 that everyone told us not to have Is that little girl who's being denied life by us choosing not to have a kid?It [00:20:00] is a life that we would have robbed. Right. Just as much as Mormons think that you have robbed a person of their life. One thing that I want to say, which I think is really interesting is when I look at these Mormon videos, they're very similar to how, if we were trying to explain our belief systems to a child, Or somebody who is living in like, That. Early 18 hundreds.We would have explained our belief system.Which makes it feel very contiguous with Mormonism In fact one part of our. Holiday future day that we haven't really talked much publicly about. And we've been. Solidifying actually, after, after seeing this movie, how it would play out is the day of martyrs. Which comes before future day, which is dedicated to readings of the martyred. I'm a man.One of the books that we see, , like we would see Joseph Smith is being divinely inspired by. The same entity, which we believe inspired us. In which every member [00:21:00] of the family, both the kids and us. Explain to, past iterations of their parents. So that would be our parents in our case. Why they should have us in why it is a good thing that we would come to exist. And what we plan to do with that existence. Well also thanking our ancestors, not just, you know, our biological ancestors, but the ancestry tip humanity in general for the hardships that they underwent to give us our current, , technological and,Material bounty as the martyrdom of man states, even in the 18 hundreds, that your average English person back then. I lived a better life, then you're Anglo Saxon king. And you know, from our perspective today, , your average American probably lived a better life than the queen of being in that book with written. , and this is through the intergenerational martyrdom of our ancestors and ourselves. To make things better for the next generation.And it is [00:22:00] a, this is where they sort of take up the mantle of that responsibility. This cycle of continual improvement while also hopefully instilling an amount of gratitude for how good they have it. Vis-a-vis what the daily life of most humans used to be like a hundreds of years ago. This is meant to instill in our kids, that they exist for a reason, and that being alive is a privilege. And it's a privilege that comes with duties and responsibilities to justify your own existence. I should note here, though, it's less relevant for this particular conversation that the day of murders is also dedicated to reading. From Fox's book of martyrs, not just the murdered him of man.These readings are meant to remind kids and our family more broadly what our duty is in face of tyranny or those who would claim to have. Mental authority over our belief systems. Well [00:23:00] also reminding them to never become that person themselves never become the person who is telling somebody else. What they have to believe is true and not true because the highest level of.Freedom and individual hats is the freedom to choose what they believe. And that freedom must both be protected, but also imparts on individuals, the duty, to. Think carefully about those things and decide with prudence, how you think things actually work. Without allowing other people to tell you what to believe.now, obviously we haven't talked about this publicly yet because it's one of the belief systems. That's probably going to get us most shamed by antinatalists. But it is very, very similar to these scenes in Saturday warriors. I love how a lot of our more publicly facing documents are more just like philosophy and stuff like that. But we get into actual, like religious insanity, if you are actually a regular listener to the podcast. So I swear when like [00:24:00] antinatalists are prepping for a debate with us or something. This is what they must be imagining. As far as I'm concerned, this Saturday night, there's not even going to be a fight. I will torture his body, so that his soul learns to be humble. I'm going to knock him out round one, b***h. God chose me for this fight. God is the teacher. Derek is the student. Wait, what did he say again? God's lessons are so beautiful.God's lessons are beautiful? I'm sorry, who put this fight together? This is a If y'all got an actual crazy person for me to fight, well that's not fair to me. Or him. I'm sorry, is this crazy?Malcolm Collins: Now this gets really interesting and it's sort of, I think the core failure of Mormonism, modern Mormonism, is that a [00:25:00] lot of Mormonism recently and Mormon trends and like why they pretend or, or move towards not having these beliefs is A drive to be seen as quote unquote, normal Christians or just another branch of Christianity.And in that quest, they have abandoned many of the spiky and more unique parts of their history and theology, which were honestly the more sophisticated and compelling parts to me. Now that I Yeah, theSimone Collins: cooler stuff, right? But I also think that that's the case with most religions that like, if you actually dive deep into the dogma and you really, really get into it and get technical, it does get weird.Malcolm Collins: No, no, Protestant, Evangelicals, they've gone so much. They, they,Simone Collins: they, No, I'm referring to like Catholicism, Judaism, Islam. Like I'm going into like, I'm not. I'm not talking about religions [00:26:00] that are in the middleMalcolm Collins: of going soft. When those religions become softer, when they abandon the weirder parts of themselves they're typically doing it in an effort to conform with the urban monoculture.Mm hmm.Right,Simone Collins: and that's my point. When I'm, when I'm talking about when you get to the core of a religion and it gets weird, I'm referring to hard religions.Malcolm Collins: Right. I guess you're right to an extent, but what's really interesting is that Mormonism hasn't attempted to conform to the urban monoculture as much.Like there's a faction that's doing that, but where they have lost most of their traditions is in trying to conform to conservative iterations of other Christian denominations. Where they have become, tried to become more like just another type of evangelical Protestants. When they are nothing like, and this, and so the question is, is why are they doing this?And this is, when I look at Mormonism as an outsider, and, and I look at the collapsing fertility rates within Mormonism, I actually think that this is a problem of the genetic vortex. So we talked about how religions and genetics can reinforce each other, where people with specific genetic predilections [00:27:00] can convert to a religion disproportionately, which can lead to those sociological profiles being higher within that religion.I think historically. Mormonism really selected for and culturally and genetically, so I think there's two things going on here, an extreme amount of social anxiety and desire to engage in social care. Status competitions. Right. And I think that this is why, if you look at like the way that like alcohol ravaged Native American communities, I think things like TikTok and social media have ravaged Mormon communities.Same with otherSimone Collins: scams. TikTok is the alcohol of, of MormonMalcolm Collins: people. Well, that and this desire to fit in is what drove them to abandoning, I think, the more interesting and to my perspective, sophisticated aspect of their religion, but also to deny that they're different. So this is another really interesting thing.If you look across the Mormon tradition, when I started like talking to more [00:28:00] Mormons and more conservative Mormons about the way they think, like the metaphysics of the universe actually works, right. There is more diversity within Mormon beliefs than there is. Within any other religion that I'm aware of, like what's, what'sSimone Collins: extra interesting is there's both that diversity, but also this like quiet, like, we don't talk about this diversity.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we don't talk about this. We don't talk about it. So, so let's, let's talk about one here, right? Like multiple mortal prohibitions,Simone Collins: right? Okay, define what that is.Malcolm Collins: So this is the, so there, okay, so there's different theories on what it means or ways that the church relates to it, right? Alright. Some people, like the most mainstream perspective in the church is you exist before you're born, like this is one prohibition, you come to life, right?As a human, and then you die, and then comes the next part, like whatever comes after that. Some Mormons,though, believe that you actually sort of get reincarnated, or like the quote I was talking [00:29:00] about earlier. Like, that doesn't mean that your soul holistically gets reincarnated. It may be, like, dissolved, recombined, reincarnated.But that's a huge diversity in beliefs about what happens after death. There really are some Mormons that believe that, that most people are going to get their own planet and become gods. Like, if they're good people and they follow Mormon teachings.My father, my brother, and I had been there at the hospital. As we walked out, my brother and I, who went to the car together, smiled and looked up in the mountains and remembered that mother had always she loved the mountains so much that He and I laughed and guessed that, uh, if, in fact, the celestial worlds are really flat, a sea of glass.She'll be eager to get away to build her own worlds and the first thing she'll build will be mountains.Malcolm Collins: But a lot of Mormons don't believe that at all.They believe in, like, more of a traditional heaven. Like, that's a wild different in beliefs. Like, you do not see, like, you look at a belief system that has many different beliefs. Right. Like, like a huge diversity, like Hinduism. Yeah. But [00:30:00] at least they agree broadly on what happens after you die.Simone Collins: Like, yeah, no, this is so interesting.And also like that over time, there's been a shift within the LDS church on like. What canon gets more emphasis like one person said that currently they feel like it's 35 percent book of Mormon, 10 percent Old Testament and 25 percent New Testament. And then, you know, maybe like, 30 percent DNC plus pearl of great price, which I hadn't even heard of before.But then like, they, they also thought that the book of Mormon probably peaked in, in 1990 and new Testament is probably at its peak now. So these like shifts in emphasis too, of like, which, which, which text is getting a lot of emphasis, which to me sounded a lot like. Jewish tradition. It seems like in Jewish tradition, like different texts will get emphasis at different times as well.So I just, I just had no idea there was this level of dynamic ness, right? This is insane. It hasMalcolm Collins: a lot in common with Jewish [00:31:00] tradition. Yeah. Except it has, it's weird mix of Jewish and Catholic versions of how they determine.Simone Collins: Right. Well, because like with, with Jewish traditions, like you just, you know, like there are names for the different subsets of like, these guys believe this thing and these guys believe this thing and emphasize this text and blah, blah, blah.So you like knowMalcolm Collins: who's who. And the one who wins is the one who gets the most followers. Right.Simone Collins: And then, but with, with Catholicism, it's like, no, we're like, here's where we are, you know, this, these, this is the official stance. ButMalcolm Collins: with Judaism, it's like, you have these, these different theologies like bubbling in the background.And then the one that wins is the one that covertly gets the most social acceptance within the community. And then that becomes what. The current prophet will say or whatever. Yeah. And that is genuinely fascinating. AndSimone Collins: it's not even the current prophet with the LDS church either. And I remember seeing this with my friends in college who were Mormon, like everyone kind of has their favorite.Yeah. Their favorite and like people will wax nostalgic about in like different [00:32:00] subgroups and subcultures within the LDS church will have their like, it was this guy, he had, he had it figured out. And I thought that that's really interesting too, that like, that there is a disproportionate influence of, you know, the current head honcho essentially, but some groups still give the disproportionate emphasis to their favorite past one, which is superMalcolm Collins: interesting.Yeah, so then this all becomes very interesting because when I first asked this question, are we actually just Mormons, right? I came at it thinking like a Protestant. I'm like, I'll go to their texts and see the outlines of what beliefs make someone a Mormon, right? Oh, yeah,Simone Collins: like what, what metaphysical understanding of reality, etc, etc,Malcolm Collins: right?Right, like what is the boundaries of their metaphysical understanding of reality where if you pass out of it you would know, definitely no longer be a Mormon anymore. Yeah. And what I found is that's not the way Mormonism works. Nope. And so, well, then it becomes a cultural question or rather what we think of Mormonism.And then I think whether or not we are [00:33:00] Mormons depends on what Mormons think. Like it's up to them because our beliefs aren't really changing other than the way that we relate to Mormonism as a cultural group. Yeah. So, but ISimone Collins: think we were the same way about. Judaism, like, you know, whether we consider our kids to be Jewish depends on what other Jews think.And so many Jews have been like, well, if you're matrilinearly Jewish, then you're Jewish. And so we're like, well, okay, then our kids are Jewish. But like, yeah, it's interesting that we. To a certain extent, define whether or not we fall into another religion's category of being part of them. It's like, well, you tell us, you know, like we're doing our thing over here, but youMalcolm Collins: tell us.But hold on. Now this gets interesting to us. So then with our perspective, and again, when we're talking about this concern tomorrow, he goes, Oh, your beliefs were divinely inspired. They came to you via revelation in the same way. That you know, Jopheth Smith's beliefs came to him. And if you look at Joseph Smith from our religion's traditions, right?So there's a video where we talk about, like, the demons we make [00:34:00] for our kids. And I'm like, I just took those demons from books that were popular during my lifetime. But I still think that they are likely real representations of the way that the demonic force, the basilisk, as we call it, the, the evil side of the future police that tests us.We call it the basilisk after Rocco's basilisk. We recently came up with this, and I really like this as a term for the adversary, the basilisk. And the other word that we came up with recently was agents of providence, instead of using the word future police, which sounds a little too hokey for us.For you, Malcolm,Simone Collins: I'm future police forever.Malcolm Collins: So, so we believe that we were influenced by modern day media, but that modern day media was inspired and to an extent constructed. By God, the beings that exist in the future, right? So, when you look at the traditional complaints about Joseph Smith hold on, I'm gonna pull this up at the beginning here, Uh, where, you know, a lot of people will say, Well, you know, if you look at the, [00:35:00] the, the, the Mormon theology, It appears to borrow a lot from what we're, like, at the time sci fi books, like a view of the Hebrews, which was a book that said, well, maybe the lost tribe of Israel went to the United States and had some other things that aligned with Mormonism.And then a voyage to the moon, which was a popular sci fi of the time. Some Mormon stuff actually has a lot of parallels to that. And so people will say, well, he was just copying, you know, fiction of his time. Whereas from our perspective, we'd say, yes, that's how God works. God inspired that fiction. SoSimone Collins: that it could influence Joseph Smith.Yeah. Yep.Malcolm Collins: Or they'd say. No, he was just making this up, like reading things out of a hat that, that in order to, and it's like, yeah, that's what we did with our religion. I still think it's divinely inspired. I still think that the God create, like, like motivated us through whatever means they could to create an entirely new, like, or we thought new religious structure that we now find has a lot of parallels with early Mormon.You know, theology, right? So we look at Joseph Smith's doing that, we're like, yeah, that doesn't mean it wasn't divinely inspired at all. [00:36:00] In fact, to us, when we're determining whether or not a belief system was divinely inspired, we look at its efficacy, its spread, and the quality of life of its members.And from that, it is self evident That Mormonism was one of the many belief systems that was divinely inspired like we think that Christianity, given the impact it's had on human history, given the importance it's had on us in, in developing the way we see the world and everything like that, that Christ was literally a divinely manipulated or inspired being, and as evidence of that is the effect that he has had on the world so much so that if Mary says, well, you know, he was created Who's to say the future of at least like if they're really going to influence like one person's life They're like we're really investing in this person Having a huge impact with the agents of providence if we're really investing on this one person having a big impact on human history Who's to say they didn't actually fertilize his mother?Right, like that could have happened. [00:37:00] And in which case that is God fertilizing his mother, right? So, so in that instance, you know, we do believe an agent of, of the divine. Now, I think that's probably less likely than, than other, other options that they could have used available to them. But for all of these things, they, they do not have any discord with our belief system.So for us, yes. Joseph Smith was self evidently a divinely inspired individual. And he was inspired by the same things that inspired us. And yet his revelation in the early Church Fathers revelation was an incomplete revelation, just as he would say, you know, the, the Just the Protestant texts are an incomplete revelation.And so in that sense, yes, but we aren't like culturally Mormon and we don't relate to truth the way Mormons relate to truth. Although our family, people often think we're Mormons, people who aren't Mormons, when they visit us, I remember one guy, we tried to sell our company to him, I don't know if you remember this.And you know, we were walking with him and he goes, you know, I'd sell [00:38:00] my company to you guys, but I really don't feel comfortable. You know, you guys are really a little too strong with this whole Mormon thing. And we're like, what? Like, just becauseSimone Collins: we're like, Maybe you're more Mormon than you think, Malcolm.Maybe.Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I drink. I, I hear a lot of Mormons do that too. You know, it might beSimone Collins: I mean, you know, there's like the whole no caffeine thing, but then like everyone's, you know, drinking tons of like, IMalcolm Collins: don't know. But, But I will say that I now feel much more of a kinship with this religious tradition than I did historically.And one thing that I believe about Mormonism, you know, after studying it more, after looking at the, the, the actual diversity of theological beliefs within Mormonism is I do not think that this centralized structure that, that makes up the Mormon church right now is long term stable. It's sort of like if all Mormons actually just hashed out their theological differences, they would realize that they're not the same religion.Well,Simone Collins: but I think you're, what you're missing here is that [00:39:00] for the vast majority of. LDS church members. It's not about the doctrine. It's about the lifestyle. And I think there's more agreement on thatMalcolm Collins: Well, you know, so this is really interesting. They're part of the same cultural group. Yeah cultural group So within something like, you know, judaism when they are having theological differences They'll debate it with like biblical texts and stuff like that What's really interesting is when I look at mormon theological debates They do not often go back to text.They will relate to modern science, depending, like, whatever science was common during their time period, they will relate to philosophical constructs, very similar to, like, a metaphysics department at a university. They are very unbounded by text in the debates that I've read and, like, the comment sections on blogs that are supposed to be about conservative Mormons.And so, in a way, you know, being part of this larger cultural group and saying, okay, we'll agree to just have those of us, we'll all participate in this larger cultural group, which is under the central hierarchy. But those of us that are [00:40:00] smart, we're actually allowed to think very broadly around the way we relate to the divine, around the way we relate to the concept of soul.Don't you feel likeSimone Collins: you're kind of describing what, what we describe as the index where like, you have a bunch of culturally aligned. We kind of all want the same thing, things, groups who share a dating pool, who share a lot of cultural resources that work better at scale. who may have some different metaphysical views on how things work, but ultimately work better together and are just pulling and sharing these resources.I feel like that's very stable and I feel like it's a pretty smart solution.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So here's my take. So what would you say? Would you say we're Mormons or we're not Mormons?Simone Collins: To what I said earlier, I think it depends on what various Mormons would say. To some Mormons, we're Mormons. To other Mormons, we're not Mormons.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I agree with that. And I think we're, we're waySimone Collins: more [00:41:00] Mormon than many Mormons. I'll say that. Okay. Well,Malcolm Collins: I'd be very interested to see where, where Mormonism ends up going if they can maintain this centralized structure. That would be very interesting if they do end up dividing into different subgroups.That's where, and I think that this is the core reason we're not Mormon is the way we relate to truth is a bit different than the way Mormons relate to truth. And that we, we really care about this level of. technical correctness in the same way that like even when we went into Mormonism tryingSimone Collins: to look at their scripture.Oh, but like we want a hard sci fi version of religion, right? But I also, I don't think, I think many, and we've met them now, I think many people in the LDS church who consider themselves to be quite devout. Are taking the same approach.Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's why I think that if we look at 100 years or in 200 years, what becomes like if our religious system continues down the road, it's going down and our kids are raised within that system.If they met a Mormon in 200 years, because I also think that Mormonism is changing from one of these technophilic factions and they're still [00:42:00] around in a hundred years, I think there would be almost no difference. Very, very, very, very similar belief systems. Well, there you go. And, and, but I do not think that we are, whatever Mormonism is today and whatever we are today, I think are two slightly different things.However, I think that whatever we are today may actually be more appealing to some people who maybe historically would have been within the Mormon church if the church does go woke or something like that. And that's where I think that we may end up merging in the near term. Bye bye. You. Whoa.Like I saw one guy who had like donated to Biden is in line for church succession.Oh. So they may go, whoa, the next guy going into power. Or they maySimone Collins: go super conservative. It's hard toMalcolm Collins: say no. The next guy is very conservative, . And so what happens? Does that mean the conservatives leaves the movement? Maybe.Maybe they don't. If they do. Then that's where I'm like, okay, that group of Mormons that has left the central church, maybe it's just our bristling with hierarchy. We would be very open to joining any aspect of the Mormon church that broke from the central [00:43:00] hierarchy, but so long as they are. under the central hierarchy.We just have too much of an instinctualSimone Collins: distaste. In other words, we, we bristle at the idea that there would be something like a conference Sunday and some random guy would sit up and talk about like, these are our values. This is our lifestyle. And we're like, Nope, Nope, Nope. Don't speak for us. Don't speak for us.This is not okay. So yeah, that, that we can never square with. I thinkMalcolm Collins: that's fair. But I think that one day we'll be Mormons. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I have been called an honorary Mormon for many years of my life. SoMalcolm Collins: is she really culturally identified with Mormon in college? She never drunk or anything like that because all of her friends are Mormons.And I wentSimone Collins: to a Mormon preschool too. Like all of my, like most, I guess, culturally formative and like comfortable periods of my life were in exclusively Mormon. So, until I met you, and then you're my new home. So thank you for that. I loveMalcolm Collins: you. I love you, Simone. [00:44:00] And yeah, it was so funny watching that movie, because I was like, oh, this is just what we believe.Like, Saturday Morning Preacher. Is that what it's called? Saturday Warrior. Saturday Warrior? No, Saturday Warriors. Check it out if you're watching. I'll add a link to, it's on YouTube. You can watch the whole thing. There was a remake in the 90s. really engaging.Zero population is the answer, my friend. Without it, the rest of us are doomed. Who can survive? Who can survive? Not one of us will be alone.Malcolm Collins: But when I saw that, I kept being like, Oh, that's just us.Like, that's the way we see kids. That's the way we see the, you know, the future. That's the way. And it also really relates to our views around things like IVF in a way that differentiates us from Catholics. And that I believe that we are killing the kids. We do not, we need to do everything in our power to bring these kids to life.We, you know, everything else is a kid who we have left. Because that we have killed a kid that I need to answer to one day, one of my kids. Wouldn't be here with us, you know, yeah, [00:45:00] there'sSimone Collins: this one scene in which the, the parents are in the hospital three months pregnant and like the, the pregnancy is kind of iffy and the mother's kind of, you know, like in a lot of pain and who knows what's going to happen and like the unborn girl.is watching in the hospital room, kind of like, like, is everything going to be okay? And she's like this cute little girl and you're like, no, this pregnancy has to go through. So it's yeah, they really, you know, they tug at your heartstrings despite it being dated and cheesy. And I hate musicals and it's a musical.I'm telling you, man, IMalcolm Collins: cried like a baby. Every kid we don't bring into our family is someone that we have erased from the timeline.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, this, this really, if, if someone struggles to understand what we mean when we say that, it might help to watch this musical because ofMalcolm Collins: that. Well, okay, so there's this anime I really like.Okay. ItSimone Collins: comes back to anime every time.Malcolm Collins: Well, anyway, I'll add it in, in, in editing,It's called shotgun. I know Shana.Malcolm Collins: but it's an anime where it represents sort of their [00:46:00] soul and their existence. And the, the bad guys in this anime they will wipe out, they eat these people's existence. So they wipe out this flame and when the flame goes out. Nobody suffers like the individual doesn't suffer.The people around them don't suffer because they are erased from history.Simone Collins: Yeah. And theyMalcolm Collins: are erased from ever existing. And when you watch this, it's heart wrenching to watch this happen to people, because to me, this is so much worse. than just killing someone. Yeah, the lostSimone Collins: potential breaks our hearts.But why?They are replacements of people who had their existence consumed. By denizens of the crimson world. They're torches. They're replacements? What are you talking about? This world's balance would be disrupted if they disappeared too suddenly. Therefore replacements. To soften the impact. They're temporary.But then you're [00:47:00] Saying we're I'mAlive? No. The real you has had its existence consumed and is no longer living. Right now, you're nothing but residue.I don't exist anymore!Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. And this is what we think, a moral action equivalent to wiping out one of these fires that destroys a person's soul and they never exist within a timeline.Malcolm Collins: This is what we think is happening. When we don't bring a kid into this world that we otherwise could have Anyway, absolutely. We'll do a longer video on when we think life begins and how we can think of that in the near future But we actually are going to chat with a catholic father about this first because we want to better understand the catholic perspective Yep.All right. Love you to death. Love you, too.Simone Collins: Gorgeous[00:48:00] 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

Should you bank on being clever, or is persistence the ultimate key to success in life? We discuss why persistence enabled early humans to hunt successfully and how valuing persistence over intelligence has shaped our lives and values. We talk about using incentives and shaming to instill the importance of persistence in kids, how persistence helps you roll the dice more times, stories of persisting even when others laugh, and more.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] the thing that helps persistence and endurance beat out cleverness is that you have, you know, a billion rolls of the dice. So even if the dice is loaded against you, eventually you're going to roll something great.Malcolm Collins: People who are persistent get mini dice rolls. In D& D terms, or Baldur's Gate terms, it's the difference between having high stats and rolling with advantage.Rolling with advantage means you roll twice and then you take the highest roll. Whereas high stats just add a number to your role after the role and you would always rather role was advantage than have high stats. This is, this is just true for life, right? Like you can actually just have advantage on everything so long as you are willing to accept failure and try again and again be rejected again and again.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Malcolm, one thing I really appreciate about you is that you loved that my motto when we first met was repeated blunt force. Like you got it instantly and no one else. Yes. [00:01:00]Malcolm Collins: I was like, oh, this is someone I want to marry, but I want to ask you a question because I want to know if you actually know this other than our intelligence as a species, which is just.Off the charts. Do you know what other thing is almost holistically unique in humans?Simone Collins: Endurance, right? Like long, long endurance hunting and whatnot that, that we've even really early humans did, which is why so many mega fauna have goneMalcolm Collins: extinct. Yes. So, there are some African tribes that still do this and I'll see if I can find a video of it or something.Cause it's insane to watch. So what they will do to hunt a deer or gazelle like in Africa, right? Is they'll just chase them.And they just keep chasing them. They can run faster than people. Yes, to start. But, they just keep chasing them until the deer just falls over exhausted. They walk up to it and they break its neck. These are the San people of the Kalahari Desert, the last tribe on earth to [00:02:00] use what some believe is the most ancient hunting technique of all, the persistence hunt. They run down.The animals have taken fright.They will concentrate on the bull. He will be carrying a heavy set of horns, and therefore will tire more quickly.After hours of tracking, they've entered an almost trance like state of concentration.At times, it's impossible to see any sign of the kudu's tracks, and the hunters must imagine the path it will have taken., they're now close enough for the next stage in the hunt. The chase.Only one man will undertake it. Kuroe, the runner.It's now a test of endurance. Who will collapse first, the man or the animal?This was how men hunted before they had weapons. When a hunt had nothing more than his own physical endurance with which to gain his prize, running on two feet is more efficient over long [00:03:00] distances than running on four. Aman sweats from glands all over his. Body and so calls himself a kudu sweats much less and has to find shade if it's to cool down,and a man has hands with which to carry water. So during the chase he can replenish the liquid, he loses as sweatthen the kudu collapses from sheer exhaustion.Malcolm Collins: It'sSimone Collins: like those those horror films. Where the person who's being chased is just screaming and running and, and like, you know, acting all manic. And then like, the killer's just like slowly walking behind them. Like very, justMalcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, like, like, well, I mean, it's interesting. I, I sometimes imagine like when humans go into space because all space faring entities will be marked for their intelligence, right?Like they'll all have been the most intelligent species on their planet. So like, what makes humans unique? Like, what's the other really weird thing about humans? Because all species will likely have something that's like. [00:04:00] I can almost guarantee that interstellarly, if there are multiple intelligent species, one of the things that humans would be known for is...Stupid amounts of persistence. Like, other species will be like, Oh yeah, they'll just keep chasing you. Like, you piss them off, and they'll just follow you forever. Until they have killed you and everyone you know. But, no, I mean, I, I... I don't think that that's a bad thing to have as a species, but I also think it's a very interesting thing to, to have that marks what makes us different.Because I think so many people, when they define what makes them human, and what they're proud of for being human, They talk about the intelligence and the wit and the cunning of our species.Simone Collins: Yeah. That's what people celebrate. Like, you know, James Bond isn't necessarily, I mean, he does show some, some signs of persistence, but that's not what's emphasized.What's emphasized is his cleverness and his fighting and his suaveness [00:05:00] and blah, blah, blah. But that's,Malcolm Collins: yeah. But, but the other thing that makes us human. Is there a persistence and I actually think within our own family culture when I think about the values that I want to elevate for my kids, when I think about why I married a woman who on her dating profile, her quote was repeated blunt force, it was because I think venerating persistence is more important than venerating.intelligence.Simone Collins: Yeah. If there were a polygenic risk score for persistence and we had access to it, we would probably wait it in our calculations above intelligence.Don't you agree?Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so there is a polygenic risk score for an internal locus of control, and I view that as highly correlated with resistance believing that you, so, internal versus external locus of control, for people who aren't familiar, a person with an external locus of control, if they're trying to explain the [00:06:00] events in their life, they will explain it through external means, whereas a person with internal locus of control will try to explain the events of their life through internal means, so for example, if a person with an external locus of control gets fired, it's, Because X had it out for me.Because the company was racist. Because, you know, whatever. A person with an internal locus of control will say, I didn't do this right. I didn't do this right. Right? And every outcome always has an internal and external locus of control explanation. There's always answers from both perspectives. And That, that is, and sometimes one is truer than the other, but what's interesting is that people who persistently have an internal locus of control will come up with internal locus of control answers, and this helps psychological health, having an internal locus of control whereas having an external locus of control hurts psychological health, and it's something that the urban monoculture in any soft cultural tradition will always elevate, is external locuses of control, because they're easier in the moment, they just cause more pain in the long run.So it is something you can select for. It is something you can [00:07:00] culturally train. And I remember growing up, my mom always told me, she goes, and this is why our school, the Collins Institute, we, we, we, we are four gifted kids, but we say, we are looking for giftedness in terms of eye will, not IQ. And this is something my mom always told me.She'd actually shame me whenever I tried to elevate myself through IQ, because I did well on IQ tests, you know, I was always in the gifted classes and everything like that. And she was like, do you know how many pathetic losers there are in PhD programs? Like she really looked down on, on, on doctors and lawyers and people of those Which she would call lower middling professions because she said there was a cap on how much you could really earn or how much of a difference you could really make in a world in those professions, but more than that you know, the number of people who go to Harvard who end up being total losers, the number of people who go to Stanford who end up being total losers.And she always taught me that that was expected of me. I mean, I remember she said, Yeah, of course you're going to go to, you know, an elite [00:08:00] institution. But you shouldn't be proud of it. That's the minimum that's expected of you. You should be proud of what you achieve in life. And you, there is nothing...More denigratable, nothing that you can smear more or look down on more than a person who was blessed with a high IQ, because this is largely something you don't choose. And who went to one of these institutions, so they had advantages in life, and they didn't end up making a positive impact on the world.Or they didn't end up making much of a positive impact on the world. I mean, what a sign of a lack of a moral core. Right. Or persistence, I guess, is in my family. When I saw Simone, it was like her saying, I am moral in the truest possible sense. Repeated one fourth. Because I, I guess I, in my family and, and with my kids, I was taught to associate persistence, especially persistence in a way that [00:09:00] denigrated or dismissed intelligence as a sign of moral fortitude.Well,Simone Collins: I mean, that's the thing is to when you look at and I'm not saying that high performance and traditional schooling is at all a sign of intelligence because it isn't necessarily at all. But when you look at the outcomes of kids who do the best in school they often. do not necessarily show the best outcomes in life.Plus, you know, when you look at the outcomes of those who have the highest IQ, you also don't see, you know, these necessarily being the people who are going to send us to Mars, who are going to, you know, build amazing, crazy, cool things. I mean, there, there is a certain minimum amount of intelligence that you're going to need to do stuff.I mean, I think one reason why maybe Forrest Gump is such. a beloved movie is because it kind of is a story about persistence, winning out with very, very, very little intelligence. But I, I do think that that's a little bit of a false God. Like you do need realistically aMalcolm Collins: certain [00:10:00] amount. I mean, I think even with me, my strengths that I've always seen it as my strengths, he doesn't have a great perhaps song that I like that talks about this recently.Wasn't born with tons of gifts, had to work hard as a kid, know that everything I did was to catch the other kids. Slowly built that self esteem, turned myself to a machine, I'd complete so I'd be seen. I would lose and I'd succeed, but you'd never see me quit, I'd always get after it.Knew I had a different gift, I'd outwork any other kid.Malcolm Collins: I should get up, put a little clip of it. Cause I like it, but yeah. The. My strength intellectually was never intelligence. I have always really struggled. So when I went to Stanford Business School, for example, in my first year at the school, and Simone remembers this, I came inches from being expelled due to low grades.When I graduated in the second year in my final half of that year, I was easily in the top 5 percent of my class. And... This is something that has [00:11:00] persistently happened in high school, like high school, this is like a generic high school. I was around the half mark in terms of grades for the first couple years.Now I graduated near the top of my class, but I, I, I always start really low. in anything I do, and I suspect that this is similar for podcasting or like trying to make a name of myself, like the public sphere, right? Like I am going to start incompetent for a much longer period than most people are incompetent, but I will outwork the other people and, and that is my gift, right?And through outworking them, I will ultimately win. And I think some people, they may look at our podcast and they'll be like, I'm a little afraid, like I like this, but I see that they're not getting the views I would expect. So they're probably going to give up. Don't worry.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, unless you, you know, findMalcolm Collins: stuff that's more useful for my time.You'reSimone Collins: right. But I think the important thing too, is that there is an instrumental reason why this matters. So if you're really, really clever you [00:12:00] also have to be lucky. You know, you, you can't just be purely clever. You have to be clever at the right time, at the right place, with the right people and the right resources.Andthe thing that helps persistence and endurance beat out cleverness is that you have, you know, a billion rolls of the dice. So even if the dice is loaded against you, eventually you're going to roll something great. Where it, whereas if you were just very clever, you may have a load of dice, but you're only rolling a couple of times.You know, without persistence, you may not actually get the kind of winnings that you want.Malcolm Collins: I actually really like that framing. People who are intelligent have loaded dice. People who are persistent get mini dice rolls. In D& D terms, or Baldur's Gate terms, it's the difference between having high stats and rolling with advantage.Rolling with advantage means you roll twice and then you take the highest roll. Whereas high stats just add a number to your role after the role and you would always rather role was advantage than have high stats. [00:13:00] This is, this is just true for life, right? Like you can actually just have advantage on everything so long as you are willing to accept failure and try again and again be rejected again and again.This is a cool thing about our society now, right? We used to live in a world where I, I think for most humans today, one of the biggest punishments they'll face is social rejection, right? Now, hold on, when I am saying try again and again, I do not mean bet everything financially again and again.Right? Financially, I actually have always been, and I believe in being quite conservative. I mean, my brother doesn't. He and he's been more successful than us. He actually, at one point, was going to get a burning ships as a tattoo. That he always talked about for his sort of motto. Oh, that would have been awesome.What? That would have been awesome. I know, right? That's a, that's a cool tattoo but when it comes to the primary area that people are punished in our society today, the primary place that we're punished is social, right? And social punishment feels [00:14:00] incredibly painful, right? When people criticize me online or something like that, right? Like we have this instinctual fear. Because of evolution, that if we are not accepted, that we are going to be expelled from our community.And historically, if you couldn't find a way to make the people around you, the people who could signal to you their displeasure, happy, you would f*****g die. Like, the evolutionary pressure to be accepted by your community is incredibly high. And this is how the urban monoculture is able to, through peer pressure, use it to manipulate people so successfully.It doesn't matter anymore. In a world of network states, my people... Are defined, not by the people who are around me, but the people who accept me for who I am, for what I'm trying to do, so long as I act with integrity, and I always fight for what I logically have deduced to be true, and who continue to accept me when I realize that logical deductions I've made in the past are wrong [00:15:00] or incorrect, and I update my beliefs, my actual people, like the people who have a value set similar to me, They will appreciate that I have been able to update my beliefs based on new information.The people who, on one side of the spectrum or the other, have always really been my enemies, will hate me. So, when somebody says something mean to me within an online environment, that doesn't challenge something that I value about myself. So, as I'll say, like, when people are like, Malcolm, you're talking over Simone.You know, you're not respecting her enough. I genuinely get offended by that. And I genuinely get ashamed by that, because that's not who I want to be. But when people are like, oh, you're an idiot, I'm like, f*****g no, I'm not an idiot. Like, I almost certainly am financially better than you and live a happier life than you, so I'm pretty f*****g sure I'm not an idiot.By, by most metrics of success, I have done pretty well. oR they'll say, Malcolm, you're a... I don't know, whatever. Like, you're a exophobe. And I'm like, I know I'm not an exophobe. [00:16:00] What are you talking about? Like, this is What is an exophobe? Exophobe is, means you're a phobe of whatever. So they'll say you hate X group to try to get you toSimone Collins: change your behavior.Oh, okay, okay, okay. They're saying you're phobic. Okay,Malcolm Collins: sorry. You don't personally identify as hating X group. But if somebody's like, for example, you're homophobic. Right? I'm like, I f*****g know I'm not homophobic. I lived a vast majority of my life fighting for gay rights, fighting for gay people when no one else would.Getting into fights in my school when I was the only person who would stand up for the gay kids in my school. Getting the s**t kicked out of me instead of the s**t getting kicked out of them because I was standing up for what I knew was right. I know. wHo I am. I know I'm not homophobic, but I am also not willing to say just f*****g whatever the LGBT movement says is the right thing to say these days.You know, I, I am not going to be the strong woman trapped on the stage during that moment where she's like,Now, this is the first year that a trans woman [00:17:00] is in the competition. How do you feel about that? Amazing. I feel honored to be a part of history.I have a lot of incredible trans friends who are athletes, and so we're all inspired this woman's competing. Uh huh. And, uh, have you actually ever met Heather Swanson? Uh, no, I've never competed against her before, no. She's not exactly your average trans athlete. Well, what is an average trans athlete?Honestly, I find that kind of bigoted, David. Okay. Heather Swanson is actually joining us now. Miss Swanson, how does it feel to be competing today? I can't tell you how free I feel now that I've started identifying as a woman. Now that I can compete as female, I'm ready to smash the other girls.Well, with that, let's get right to the action.Malcolm Collins: I try to look into the future of how things are going to play out. Like the, the trans people in sports thing, the LGBT community should have f*****g known how much that would backfire. And that it's not a position they can continue to hold.And mostly they've [00:18:00] backed down from it now. But it's not a position I ever stand. Because it was f*****g obviously stupid. And it was f*****g obviously not what, when I was fighting for gay people to not be oppressed in high school, I was ever fighting for. I was never fighting for somebody with the body of a man to be able to compete against people with the body of a woman.That was f Obviously not. That is what, when conservatives of the time, you know, which a different generation of conservatives would say, they'll eventually try this, I would say, I don't think they will, because only an idiot would do that, .Sometimes we do things we're not so proud of. Some for money. Others to gain the athletic edge on the competition. Sometimes those secrets come back to haunt us. Do you know what I mean?People who were not around during that period of LGBT rights may not. Remember, or, or really realize just how common this argument was, where people would be like, what you're fighting for [00:19:00] trans people. You think that they should be allowed to compete in women's sports and we'd be like, no, of course that's a transphobic thing to even suggest that somebody would try that because it is just so comical. And insane.And it was the common argument used against the trans movement in the early days. And the approved older response was, it was transphobic to even suggest. That trans people may one day try to gain access to that. We've said, no, they just want to live their lives. They just don't want to be oppressed.The insane bottom of the slippery slope argument back then was that eventually trans people would demand to compete in women's sports and demand to And be allowed to .change in front of other women. And that was an offensive thing to even suggest back then.Simone Collins: Anyway, back to persistence. How do you think we're going to instill this, the importance of [00:20:00] persistence in our children?Malcolm Collins: Oh, beat them.I'm joking. I'm joking. No, I, I think that my parents actually did this perfectly.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: How did they do it? Well, they shamed me for taking pride in IQ over persistence.Simone Collins: Hmm. But they also, did they reward persistence?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if I did well on a test that I hadn't studied for, that was the same as failing a test.Okay. Achieving something because of natural ability was always seen as a really negative and pathetic thing.Simone Collins: But what's an example of them rewardingMalcolm Collins: something? Well, they were worded it was praise. They were worded it was, I, like, I don'tSimone Collins: know. It was just like, So basically when they saw you tried really hard at something, then they would praise you?Malcolm Collins: Well, not if I tried hard and failed. They were never that kind of family. I should be clear. They weren't a, all that matters is that you tried family. They were like, all that [00:21:00] matters is that you tried and you crushed your opponents to dust. No, I mean, it's a, it's a I, I think the core thing about persistence in a world where the core reason people fail persistence is because they are, you know, shamed or something like that in, in their environment is to teach people to ignore the value judgments of those around them.That's the core thing. So when people around you, you know, I think like. For example, a core persistent message for me that I have relayed on the show before in our books. When I was younger, there was one time when a teacher was like mad at me. And I got punished and my mom was like, well, do you think you did the wrong thing?And I was like, no, I don't think I did the wrong thing. And she goes, well, I'm going to let you in on a little secret, you know. Elementary school teachers, society thinks they're losers. They're basically minimum wage employees who nobody respects. You could ignore everything she says. In [00:22:00] adult world, she's pathetic.And I took that to heart and I got in trouble a lot as a kid. Because I always did what I thought was right. And I, I suppose that's still what I'm doing today in society. And I think that goes hand in hand with persistence. These are identical value sets. The ability... to ignore other people when they are telling you that what you are doing is immoral.And I think this is one of these things where, and we've talked about this in our, like, Jordan Peterson parenting video and stuff like that, where he saw his goal as a parent to break the will of his child or the children who he was in charge of observing, right? And the children would do something, and he was just, he needed to outweigh them, or he needed to force them to do what he wanted them to do, without, you know, significant explanation as to why he wanted them to do this, without having to logically convince them.And that's telling them to arbitrarily obey authority. And I actually like a lot of what he says. I just really disagree with. This aspect of what he says, because I think when you grow up, and I think a lot of people today are grown up, [00:23:00] taught arbitrary obedience to authority is morally valuable, right?And so they then look, what does the norm of our society think? What does the, we recently had Thanksgiving with our family, and I remember at one point, I'm I mentioned something along the lines of, well, I mean, women are naturally submissive on average. Right? This is in reference to our Dears video, the, the, the Dears anime video that we did.And, and she gave me this death stare, like, what are you talking about? This was my stepmother. Yeah. Because, you know, she knew that society would back her for that position, and this is a mainstream societal position so she, I don't think, could ever thought through, just like, logically, everyone who is being honest knows that, on average, women are prefer to be submissive in their relationships more than men do.And being able to admit this when you know you'll be punished [00:24:00] for it is the same value set that allows you to keep trying at something when everybody's laughing at you for failing. One of the the biggest moments I had about this in my life was I was taking this GMAT prep, right?So for people who don't know, GREs and GMATs are the tests you have to take to get into graduate schools, specifically business schools. And I was going to a random Kaplan class. So you got to understand, this is just like the normal, the people in this class were the normal people who are taking GMATs and GREs.The normal people looking to go to business school, not the best of the best or anything like that. Just the people who are out there trying hard. And this isn't like, you know, SAT prep in, in high school or something like that, where only rich kids are doing it. Cause when you're going to a business school, you're usually two years out of school.You know, these are people who can pay for this themselves. Within my class. I remember I came to the class and I was consistently, cause it was like a four day or something like that. Consistently within the first day, the worst performer in the class. And [00:25:00] I told everyone in the class, I go, Oh, well, I'm going to Stanford or Harvard.And they just laughed. Like, the class actually started laughing. Now, for people who don't know, I did end up going to Stanford, but I ended up working really, really hard. And it got to the point where some of the people who had associated me, like, there was this one guy in the class who had associated me with low status, because everyone in the class had laughed at me.You know, the first day when I said I was doing that and I was consistently doing poorly. And I even remember the instructor turned to a guy who was like making fun of me for saying something the last day. And you go, you know that he is consistently by a large margin, the best performer in this class today.lIke you should not still be making fun of him. Like, and it was, it was a moment, well, actually the bigger moment for me was when I slept with a few women in the class at the end. Oh God, of course you did. Hey, hey, I always, that's, that's what I remember about it. Well,Simone Collins: here's one thing that I'm realizing my parents did for me that I would actually love to do with our kids, which [00:26:00] is...Specifically incentivize action that requires persistence to get what you want, not intelligence. So for example, one thing that my parents always did, which I thought was really cool, was if I wanted something, they'd never pay for it outright. They would say, we won't match what you can make for this.So like, I wanted to have a loft bed at one point and it cost like 500 to buy the kind I wanted. And they're like, okay. If you save 250, I will match that. And so then that required like just working and churning and like making the money to get there. Then I think that those kinds of lessons and, and incentives are even better than praise or shaming because you have to, you, you have to actually like discover.The value of persistence and then you win through persistence. So, I, I'd like to do a lot of that with our kids. So like, you know, keep trying and then. You'll get it or [00:27:00] in order to get it, you're going to need to keep trying and not just be super, super clever.Malcolm Collins: Well, it's people who don't know this about my wife.She is a Gollum of persistence. She is a, a, you, you are the human.Simone Collins: I guess Gollum isMalcolm Collins: really persistent. No, I'm not talking about Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I'm talking about the Jewish Gollum. The, Look, it doesn't matter. She's an avatar of persistence. I'm talking about a clay monster brought to life by magic that is consistently just dedicated to a specific goal.That's what I meant by Gollum. Anyway. Oh,Simone Collins: oh, the clay thing that comes to life. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah that's the right word, right? Yeah. Sorry, I just need to look this up. ISimone Collins: just think, I think Smeagol, for example, is more persistent than just a dumb, clay thing that has beenMalcolm Collins: brought to life. But anyway, he is persistent.But you are the human avatar of persistence. So, when she was young She [00:28:00] participated in running and you ran so much they were like you were destroying your joints. You need to Do something that's not gonna be hard on your joints. And so then she's like, oh f**k it. Okay, I guess I'll swim Right? And then you swam so much, she spent so much time in the water.She developed early stage osteoporosis because she was weightless for so much of the time. And that is why even today she has osteoporosis. Today, she exercises as we established in a previous video. Five hours of physical exercise every day you do while you're working. Her superpower, like on the scheduling video we talk about this, I don't know if it will have gone live by the time this video goes live or not, she is able to just work.Like if she is working from 5 a. m. to 5 p. m. in a day, just work without breaks except for lunch throughout the entire day. And people can be like, well, what do you mean by that? Like me, normal humans, like, we need to like, I don't know, we'll like get online, we'll search something, we'll give ourselves little rewards throughout the day.She does not do that. [00:29:00] She is just able to persistentlySimone Collins: work. But don't, I mean, is that persistence or is that autism? Like, let's beMalcolm Collins: practical. There's lots of autistic people who use autism as their shield to get around hard work. Yeah. You have used it to fortify and fuel you into a killdozer. Yeah. People who don't know about the Killdozer, that is my, when I, if I was to create a party, right?You've got the Democratic party, which is the you got the Republican party, which is the elephant elephant. I want the Killdozer party, the story of the Killdozer. If you don't know the story of the Killdozer, you need to look up the story of the Killdozer because it is the most quintessential American story in like American history.Sorry, sorry,Simone Collins: sorry, Malcolm you're frozen right now. I'm just waiting for you to come back but then we need to go get the kids.Malcolm Collins: So basically there was this guy who kept getting screwed by [00:30:00] bureaucracy and by bureaucracy and by bureaucracy, and he ended up getting screwed so many times and so unjustly that he's just like, f**k it, I'm going to build an armored.Tractor, which he built secretly in his business that had been destroyed by like, for example, one of the things is they had blocked all of the roads going to his store or something like that. So no one could even get there anymore. Because the, the person who was on the council, like owned one of the properties that decided to take the road leading to his thing.I don't remember the full thing. It was just completely insane. He was truly wronged. Yeah. Yeah. And he just built this armored tractor that he used to go around didn't kill. Anyone during this rampage just destroyed the property of everyone who wronged him. And it is the spirit of justice for me and I want him to live forever in American folklore alongside, you know, Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, because I think he is a true American hero.Yeah. I love you, Simone. [00:31:00] We'll go pick up the kids now. They're across the street.Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm. All right. 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

We discuss the most effective arguments for converting non-religious people to religion, focusing especially on kids who were raised religious but became secular. We talk about what doesn't work, like Bible passages or hell threats, and what does work, like pointing to poor outcomes in secular culture and providing community amenities. We also cover topics like targeting people in vulnerable states, logic vs. emotion in arguments, dating markets, and more.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I hope that people are able to use this to convert people more effectively. And to hopefully do a better job at evangelizing to your kids. You know, as we say, the first 18 years of a kid's life are your chance to pitch your culture to them.And if you don't do a good job, they're going to leave. Exactly. And then your culture will die, your traditions will die,Simone Collins: and your people will die. Everyone you've ever loved will disappear to history. Everything that every ancestor before you has worked to do will be for nothingWould you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. So this video is going to be an interesting topic, but it's what I've been thinking about when I've been looking at, so people who don't know me Simone, like my favorite radio station, then you'll point this out. They are. Always like Christian talk radio. I really like listening to like long Christian apologetics.I, despite being a secular person, I really culturally identify with these groups. I really just like listening to them. I find the, the, the lessons [00:01:00] that they're teaching are often broadly applicable to my life. Totally. We as a society like if we're talking about like the structures, like the core enemy.Right now in society and now there's another enemy that we're gonna have to deal with eventually. So we sort of have the two enemies of Tism. Steep enemy. Yes. The core, the core enemy right now is sort of woke in the mind virus, the cult, whatever you wanna call it, that's taking over society right now and.Religious traditions act as a very good structural protection against that for many individuals minds. Now, the second enemy is the religious extremists who want everyone on earth dead except people who think like them, or converted, which, from my perspective, you know, if you've... If you completely erase my kid's culture, then, you know, they might as well, not might as well.I mean, I would appreciate them updating the culture on their own based on their ideology, rather than just like whole class accepting what somebody else is telling them. Right. But anyway so, so that's the future enemy. And, and groups like that, you know, these low [00:02:00] technology, extremely aggressive groups that they want everyone who doesn't think like them dead they are growing and when.The, the woke castle falls that that will be the next. Multiple populations because there's many groups like this. You know, they exist across religious traditions. That will be the next group that we're that we're fighting. But even to fight them, we need to preserve an alliance and a large population of mentally healthy religious individuals who still have traditions, who still have some sense of culture.And one of the ways that we have done this with our family is essentially take the scraps of our ancestral traditions and rebuild a sort of secular religious framework, which we often talk about. That is not what we're going to talk about on this video, because I would also like not just people to do what we're doing, but also succeed.in evangelism. And when I [00:03:00] say succeed in evangelism, I think the single most important person that you will evangelize to in your entire life is your children. 100%. And, and so when people think about evangelism, they do not often think about their own kids. They think about going out and trying to convert other people.But if you look at statistics, there was a set of statistics that we were sharing in a recent video. The game is just completely different now. And I'm going to put this statistic here again, because it's just so like, it's not like things are a little different. You know, if you look at belief ingen X right now, people who, who share believing in God without a doubt.So these are people who believe in God, without a doubt within Gen X, you're looking at like 65 percent with engine Z. You're looking at like 33%. This is actually 2018. It appears to still be dropping. So you're dealing with something entirely different now. And as I pointed out in previous generations, as we pointed out in the previous episode on this, you could have just like peer [00:04:00] pressured them.Right. Or you could have assumed that they wouldn't be getting outside ideas constantly, but now it's possible for your kids to deconvert and not tell you that they've deconverted and you never find out. And we've seen that a decent, we've seen this persistently with very conservative, wholesome families.Like, like the epitome of wholesomeness, you know, I'd say like the most good old boy type families you could imagine.These are the families where I see this happening the most. And it happens the most within these families because these kids are often raised with manners and to care about their parents feelings and like are emotionally mature and they don't want to hurt their parents. You know, they're just like, look, I have no.And, and that's the thing that leads to the most dangerous type of deconversion. People think that the type of deconversion that you need to be afraid of is the type of deconversion in which your kid ends upSimone Collins: hating you. Like the obvious rebellious teen who's like, My hatin mom, and like... You know, like actively talks about,Malcolm Collins: I hate my religion and that was why a lot of people deconverted [00:05:00] before these kids do not hate their religion.They do not hate their traditions. They just weren't convinced by them and that is infinitely more dangerous because they're not going to tell you, they are not going to notify you that their traditions have dropped. And so let's talk about evangelism, right? So as people, like when I was younger, I was in.You know, I, I didn't like the new atheists. I thought that they were always kind of pussies. But I would have been considered on the outside of that movement andstuff like the subgenius movement and stuff like that. Right. And you were in, I mean, you were raised like Buddhist slash Mormon, but we're always sort of like atheistic growing up.Like, what was your faith like in middle school and high school?Simone Collins: If someone asked me, I probably would have said it was a mixture of Buddhism and Shinto, to be honestMalcolm Collins: with you. Did you actually believe this stuff or was it just like an aesthetic choice?Simone Collins: I felt most moved when at Shinto shrines. And like that felt the most natural to me from a faith perspective.So in terms of like having [00:06:00] moving religious experiences, the most I'd ever experienced that was at Shinto shrines in Japan. So that's why I told people that it, it just felt right to me and that's it. There was no like thought behind it. And my, my parents had sent me to Dharma school and, and sort of tried to raise me Buddhist after at Mormon preschool, I started asking them about Jesus and God and they freaked out.So yeah, I wouldn't say it was organized, but I, so I'm not a good example of like a religious kid who's lost their religion. I'm the perfect example of someone who was raised in soft culture, with soft culture, and was just broadly spiritual, but not really.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I grew up in Texas, so I had a lot of evangelists and apologetics talk with me about this stuff, because I was always open about it.So I've gotten to hear many of the arguments used, and so, I think that this provides a unique perspective where I can, like, totally, honestly, as someone who has never been convinced by these arguments, tell you which ones are the most convincing and how to structure [00:07:00] your debate around this stuff to be most likely to be effective at converting somebody or keeping somebody within the faith that might otherwise deconvert, right?Like, like a young kid who doesn't really believe it anymore and you basically need to evangelize to them to get them to believe it because, you know, the default culture around it doesn't. Right. So the first thing I would say is in terms of how you, well actually I'd ask you, have you ever had any moments in your life where somebody came up to you with a religious tradition and you were really convinced by their argument around it?What was that argument? Never, never, never. Have you ever been really unconvinced? Like somebody came up to you and you're like, this is just not working at all. You think this is convincing, but it's not.Simone Collins: Many Mormon friends like would give me the Book of Mormon, but. And like exposed me to like really great experiences like going to see Christmas carols at the local, like, ward.But it was, yeah, they never tried to aggressively [00:08:00] convert me or tell me about their religion. So, no, I don't think I was ever.Malcolm Collins: Well, so that's the first one that I often see. Somebody giving somebody else a Bible. Or their religious book.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Like, that's gonna work. I've never heard of that working.I've never heard of it working either. And then, like, even it goes to, like, the tradition of Gideon's Bibles, right? That, like, there was this concerted effort to put Bibles in drawers of bedstand tables in hotels.That, like, someone's gonna, in a moment of desperation, pick it up and have some kind of moment.No, I do think that what is much more convincing and we do know people who are converted this way is people of a certain religion and I see this especially with Mormons. Giving friends, neighbors, friends, kids, experiences adjacent to the Mormon community and those kids or those people just loving it, loving the community, loving the lifestyle, loving how wholesome and loving everything is and being convinced through that exposure to convert.So I think being exposed to a, a religion's amenities [00:09:00] can be very compelling, but I don't think it has anything to do withMalcolm Collins: faith. Well, hold on. I do think it has to do with faith, but we'll get to faith arguments that are compelling versus ones that aren't. Okay. But the book itself, this is a belief that I think comes from the, well, God will guide them to it.Like God will guide them to it and open their heart. And I think when you're looking at stuff like this, like the way I would structure this, what's the, the... Non offensive way to say this. God really wants you to do the work on this. You know in terms of The people and and so this this like bible seeding I guess I call it It could conceivably like the way I could imagine it working as somebody is at like A bottom of the barrel situation and they come upon a, a Bible, right?And they're like, okay, now I'm open to being converted. Because that is one of the times in somebody's life where they are most likely to be converted is when they are at rock bottom. And that's where you get, you know, burn again, Christian phenomenon, but [00:10:00] you're better off if you're targeting rock bottom people, targeting them through institutions.So like AA is a great evangelistic vehicle, even though it does a ton of harm, you know, and I think we'd argue in another video that it probably kills more people a year than any organization in the world. Because it hides access to the Sinclair method and Naltrexone in the United States, even though it's.secures alcohol in80 percent of cases. Alcoholism and yeah, it's, it's absolutely insane, but, but they would call those peopledry drunks. Specifically dry drunks is a term. Used by extremists within AI. For individuals who found a way to quit drinking, Or moderate their drinking. that was not AA because they believe that will, if you found a way to quit drinking it, wasn't AA, then you didn't get all the extra ideology. The AA was meant to impart to you. And so you still may as well be a drunk, which I think really reveals their hand, which is what they meant is. Um, they weren't able to [00:11:00] use your alcoholism to convert you to their weird cult.Malcolm Collins: We can get into this in a whole other video, but it is a convincing evangeletic tool. And I think that even better tools could be built that focus on those communities.Even Scientologists figured this out. I mean, if you look at one of the things that Scientologists focused on was like addiction centers and alcohol rehabilitation centers. Because that is where you could sort of stamp someone into these harder iterations of your cultural tradition.Simone Collins: Well now, there must be a bunch of cults out there that use rock bottom to convert people that like host halfway houses or something.Are there not? There have to be.Malcolm Collins: There are. There are, I mean, a lot of cults focus on these, these communities. And it's because it's effective. Now it's, it's interesting that it is often groups that you and I, like if we were evangelizing a belief system, we would be less interested in doing. I mean, one of the, one of the things that everybody hates about Keopolis is the concept of the elect.That, that. We have and that we have our [00:12:00] current iteration of that belief. But the, the core aspect of that is, is we don't believe that winning all people to our way of thinking is equally valuable. Right. And the very fact that somebody is at rock bottom means they are of lower utility to us than other individuals.And I would prefer that my kids never hit rock bottom for me to convince them of a cultural practice. And I, Would also prefer, you know, as we bring people in that there, I hate to say it, but like the amount of utility we get from a person is correlated with their level of, you know, the level to which they have their life together, the level to which they're an intellectual list.And what's really cool with the. Rock bottom people that these faiths do do is they can build them back up, but building them back up requires a preexisting sort of, cultural set of support networks. Now the Mormon thing is really interesting because that is how your friends were evangelizing to you.They were taking you to Mormon community events. God, I love [00:13:00] them. Yeah. They being smart Mormons knew that that's how Mormons, I think today, most frequently converted.Simone Collins: Well, it might have converted me if I were the type of person who actually wanted to be around people.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. You intentionally hate being around people.AndSimone Collins: yeah, it's horrible. But like, if, if I'm a normal person and I don't want to feel alone and I don't want to feel isolated and I was exposed to that, I would immediately be like, Oh, the solution is so easy. I just convert. I just joined the LDS church.Malcolm Collins: And this is really interesting to me where we've had another video on this.about the genetics of religion. And this is how you can get genetic vortexes where if Mormonism is disproportionately converting people who are, extroverts, like really out there. They like being around people that Mormons are going to be more extroverted on average than a cultural group like ours.which is like intensely introverted. I mean, Scrooge is the typical Calvinist, right? From, from the Scottish. BahSimone Collins: humbug, ladies and gentlemen.Malcolm Collins: What? Bah humbug. Bah humbug, right? [00:14:00] Yeah. But you know, so, so I, I I see that. So let's talk about other arguments that I have found very uncompelling, or, or, or first I want to give you a way of framing this question in your head, if you're a religious person.Think about other religions that have come close to converting you, and if another religion has never come close to converting you, then look to see if they use arguments and apologetics that mirror your arguments and apologetics that you are frequently using. So an example here that I frequently see Christians use is look at all of the things the Bible predicted, right?Okay. It must be a true book. It must be a divinely inspired book because it was able to predict so many things that were going to happen in the future. The problem is, is that Muslims say the same thing.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean it's just, it's one of those like Nostradamus things where like you can kind of make anything work, [00:15:00] right?Malcolm Collins: Well, I would say that some of the things that people will claim the Bible can be predicted are very compelling, right? You can look up videos on it, look at the debates on this. Making me think. But I would say that they are not more compelling.Oh. Then the things that the Koran predicted, and that's the problem is you need to look to see if the other side is using a similar argument and then ask yourself when you look and you say people saying, well, the Koran is accurate because it predicted all these things in the future. Why did you dismiss that when you looked at that and you just said, no, I dismiss this.Why did you dismiss it? Did you dismiss it because you just were not going to be convinced by that type of argument? Then what that means, the secular people won't be convinced by that type of argument. Or, did you dismiss it because they did a bad job arguing for it? And then find out exactly how they did a bad job arguing for it, so you don't [00:16:00] make those same mistakes in your own evangel evangeletics.Another example of how this method can be used. Is if a tool in your evangelism is personal experiences that. At the divine, for example. You prayed to God and he revealed himself to you, or you had some experience with God. Then look at people who use personal experiences of the define to justify other phase. Go through different iterations of that for the. Experiences that you find most compelling.And that are most likely to convince you to switch phase, because those will be the experience of the divine within your own faith.That will be most likely to get those from outside your face to switch face.Malcolm Collins: What I will say, Is I have never heard of this model of evangelization working on somebody. The, my book is true because it predicted things in the future seems to only work within it is like an inter community circle jerk. It doesn't seem to work or, [00:17:00] or strengthening the face of people within the community.It, it doesn't seem to be very effective on people outside of the community. Well, itSimone Collins: seems to me like it's one of those things that wouldn't be a good conversion mechanism because if that level of just like, Oh my gosh, data could change someone's mind, then they would be too capricious to stick to any religion.Like it wouldn't be. A high retention tactic, because then all you have to do is find some other weird data set from some other belief system and it would theoretically convince this person to switch over. We also have to look at groups like the flat earthers who, you know, pretend to be very data driven, but then, you know, when presented with.Pretty compelling data even from their own experiments. They're like, well, I'm not convinced. So well,Malcolm Collins: I do think it can be compelling for inter family retention. ISimone Collins: think it's just one of those things that you like. Do you remember when you, I had to write essays in college or high school before, before chat GPT did this [00:18:00] for everyone.And you had just sort of, you had your thesis already and then you just had to hunt down additional supporting arguments because you were supposed to have three or something in your stupid essay. So then you would just hunt down additional, like, and here's another reason why I was suddenly convinced to do this thing.And so it wasn't. That you actually believed it. You just needed additional things that seemed like kind of sufficiently plausible, right? So it's not, I really don't think it's a genuinely compelling argumentMalcolm Collins: to anyone. You've never had it used on you, clearly. No. And you haven't dug into it. I've dug into it.I can see how it could be compelling if you already believe the religious structure, but for the same reason that you are dismissing it when Muslims do it? That's why secular people are going to dismiss it when you do it. Yeah. An argument that has always actually been pretty compelling to me. That was one of the most compelling when I was younger, which is the, well, you know, you get an eternal reward if you follow our religion.If you don't, there's nothing right. So even if it's only an infinitesimally small probability, forget the name of this argument[00:19:00] It's Pascal's wager.Malcolm Collins: butinfinitesimally small probability that it's true that, that you should believe it. The problem is, is that other religions exist. Right. And so then I'm like, well, so then how am I choosing among the religions that all claim to offer this to me?The other problem with this argument is that it assumes that the opposite of religious inspired like reason to exist is a nihilistic reason to exist. Whereas I would say I never had a nihilistic perspective on reality. Do you knowSimone Collins: what this reminds me of? You know, that scene in the mummyLord, protecting Bach over me As a shepard batures over his flock Come on drill Sne Snake on the edge Ch Half on e KnockOkay [00:20:00] Chow Chow, who's that? Bow wow wow! ChowSimone Collins: I feel like that's kind of what you're describing here.Just like keep switchingMalcolm Collins: around. Yeah. Well, no, I, it is, it is, well, and I think it's, it's probably not a compelling reason from a, like, if you look at how religion is structured, if you're like, well, I got into this religion so I could get into heaven. Yeah. Well, that almost is self canceling.Yeah. And honestly, when I think back to what religion used to be in the past, you know, why people were part of it, it was because of the community cohesion and amenities.And also you like, weren't allowed to not be a part of that religion. I don't think it was necessarily like, oh, I know I'm going to go. I mean, definitely. Internal punishment played a role in people's adherence to religion, but the reason they were part of those religions was that was the community. That was the dominating culture.It wasn't this vague threat because they had a ton of other options.And other similar logical argument is the cosmological argument. This is .The argument where you say, well, then [00:21:00] what created the universe? What was the reason for the universe existing? , This argument feels very compelling if you're coming at it from a religious standpoint, like if you already believe in God, However, if you don't believe in God, your immediate and reflexive response to this argument is. Well, you can't just say, okay, what created the universe?And God created the universe. Cause then you have to ask, well then what created God? Now this doesn't feel to a person who already believes in God, like a good response to the argument because they see God as being something. Wholly different than like the way the universe operates. However it is immediately.What's going to come to mind in a secular person's brain so much so that I have never heard of anyone converting to Christianity or any religion because of the cosmological argument. , and I have never seen it being discussed as a particularly compelling argument within secular circles. , so I totally forgot about it while I was creating this video. And so it's just E [00:22:00] regardless of its. , internal consistency or logical strength.It is not a good tool for conversion. It's almost like reading Bible passages to someone to try to convert them. Of course, from your perspective, if you already within a faith. Those are a very compelling source of evidence, but to somebody outside of the faith, they're just. Random words basically, same with the cosmological argument.It is incredibly compelling to people who already are with interfaith, but incredibly uncompelling to people who are not already within a faith. Well, well, another thing that really drives people away from religion is when people are like, Oh, well, you know, I'll be laughing when you're burning in hell or whatever, right? Like what you actually see with a lot of these communities, they think that they can like.Malcolm Collins: I don't know, be spite driven to get someone to convert. And this just only makes you look like a crazy person and like completely sociopathic and does not look like, like portray well the religious system. And now what's interesting is that this argument [00:23:00] is one. that I mostly hear from just Evangelical Protestants.Like, I don't see that from Mormons and stuff like that. Like, there isn't the, I will take pleasure in you being punished when you're wrong about this. But I suspect it's a mechanism that is mostly used to keep people in this thing inter, inter family. Because when you have looked down on people as, like, stupid for having other belief systems, you're maybe less...likely to deconvert, but the problem is, is it may have worked historically, but if you look at the rates that people are leaving the church now, it's clearly not working right now. Now a system that works really good for conversion where I've seen bringing people into a faith or back into a faith is after a loss, like the loss of a loved one or something like that.And this seems to be tied to like the rock bottom moment thing and keep in mind that we already have a lot of ceremonies that are. adjacent to this. So most people when they're having their funeral, it's, it's at a religious institution, right? Right. When they're having their like this is an opportunity [00:24:00] to pass on these ideals to somebody.And so I've seen that be pretty good at converting people. YouSimone Collins: know, another way to put this is when you need something to be true, you can be converted to a religion. Like when you really need to believe that. Your lost loved one has gone to heaven and you'll be reunited, or you really need to believe that there's something more to life than, you know, what you are experiencing now, I think that's when you're uniquely likely to convert and people who've just had a loved one die or have hit rock bottom are more likely to be in that category.Yeah. They need it to be true. It's not where they're convinced. It's where they, they're, they are ready. They will happily convince themselves if they have an easy enough template to work with.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so cultural arguments work really good. Whereas logical arguments like emotional and cultural arguments are high tier at converting.Whereas very low [00:25:00] tier are logical, logical andSimone Collins: threatening. So this is why real Calvinists as we would define them have just. ceasedMalcolm Collins: to really exist. They were almost completely utilized logic to try to convert people. It's true. Even today, the Calvinist evangelists are just like completely like logical structure driven.Well, it's true. It's just a, a thing was the tradition and it's why the tradition was always so prone. You know, again, you look at the Calvinist during the colonial time, they were doing things like crossing out in their books. All of the parts that they thought disagreed with modern science and stuff like that.Right. Like. It was incredibly, it makes it incredibly susceptible to changing secular patterns but, but it makes it also incredibly unsusceptible to immoral action. Where I think historically, if you look at the groups that were generally the most morally upstanding they're typically the groups that, that had these belief systems.But so there are like a good site, like people would be like, why do you follow it if it's so weak in this one way? And it's like, [00:26:00] well, because like, I know when, you know, for example, when slavery was going on in the South, like my family was standing up for that. They were fighting against it. They were putting themselves at risk every day.They were the ones who immediately left the cities and set up guerrilla operations. And, and that's a very rare thing. And it's something that I hope to preserve. It's something that I think to an extent we are doing right now as people with, you know, high level degrees and stuff like that and making ourselves essentially unemployable by being publicly conservative outside of anything we do for ourselves.It's, it's really, and unfundable by many VCs. But, um, the most compelling argument I have seen work, and we've mentioned this in the other video, but I think it's really important that people note this, is just going to them and pointing out what's happening in the secular world, which is the ultimate cultural argument.Simone Collins: This is interesting because this is also associated with one of the most compelling and effective political campaigns that that took place in [00:27:00] terms of converting voters for a particular candidate that was tested in a peer reviewed way was a message that did not say anything bad about the opponents or anything good about the candidate of choice, but rather just say, here are.Basically the Republicans in office right now, here's what they've done. Simple, no, no images or anything, just like just that text. And that was enough to convince people. So to your point, just saying like, Hey, here's what's happening. With the counterfactual, like here's our default. Are you going to do somethingMalcolm Collins: with side rate right now?Here's the mental health rate in the progressive community. Here's the, you, you just cite it all. And it is really compelling that whatever they're doing isn't working. And as I said, with engine Z, I have seen this to be an incredibly compelling argument, but it is. Interesting because it's not the argument that many evangelists were taught to use because it historically was not a usable argument.It's only really been a feasible [00:28:00] argument for like the past 15 years or so. You previously, they could say things like, look at that secular world having all that free sex. I bet they're really unhappy about that. But if you were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where was this where you said I could get all this easy sex?Yeah. Now, you know, 10, 20 years on, you're like, look at all these people whose lives have been actually destroyed. Like, this seems to not work in the way that everyone said it would work. Where they're like, well, if you just do whatever you want, whenever you want, so long as it doesn't hurt other people and you devote your life to reducing suffering in the world population and you will be affirmed for being whoever you want to be.That these things are going to lead to a productive and happy life. And it's like, well, clearly we now have the data when that group is the dominant cultural group in society. And we can see it's demonstrably worse at just about everything in regards to mental health. So, that's, that's can be really compelling.And then you're like, yeah, but then they don't [00:29:00] really believe the religious stuff, right? Like, I haven't really convinced them. I've convinced them to follow traditions, but I think you'd be surprised how easy it is to sort of fall in with the belief system once you're following the traditions. You look at the religious system that Simone and I sort of built for our family And we 100 percent believe it now, right?Like we are sold into the idea of like the inevitable God. The, the the omniscience, the future police, all this stuff. Like we are bought into it. However, whatever word you want to use for it. And. We love it. Like it works really well, but it was completely constructed by us. And that shows how, just by following even a set of like rules and structures that we built for ourselves, and we know we built for ourselves and we know that we invented just thinking, okay, what's the most compelling way we can structure this that we end up actually believing it, like that's just how the human mind works now, people could say, well.If you know you invented it, why because our belief system says that we would have [00:30:00] been inspired to create it by the actual deity. So it was a divine revelation, even if we think that we were just being creative and trying to come up with the most creative way, because that's the way it would have convinced us to see the truth, but it's, it, it, it works on us, but really what.Converted us was, all of the rituals was the way that we related to daily events through this religious lens. Yeah. And that was convinced by a cultural argument that came to us ourselves. So you could say, okay, well. How do I end up with somebody not ending up like you guys, right? Like, how do I end up, I could go to them and say, look, whatever the secular world is doing, isn't working.But you know, how do I convince my kids not to just go out on their own and try to create something totally new like you guys did? And I actually think that the probability of this happening is incredibly low. It's low because, like, we're doing this because we are from a very specific, in our thing on, like, how religion and genetics co evolve.We are from a very specific genetic [00:31:00] vortex, which is a very weird one that has historically done this. Read the Puritan spotting thing by Starslight Codex, where he's like,One of the ways you know one of these people is they're constantly trying to create new religious traditions. So, yeah, no, it's, it's just a normal thing that our cultural group does, but if I came from a cultural group that was more aligned with like a Catholic worldview or an Orthodox worldview or a Jewish worldview, it would be, I think, tremendously easy to convert me into those worldviews using those cultural arguments.It's just that there is no religious tradition that is really common in the world today that aligns with my personal predilections and world perspectives. So I was wondering if you had any final thoughts.Simone Collins: No but I, I do, I do think that amenities is what I think is most convincing by a long shot and by amenities, I mean like the community, the lifestyle, the experience, what you get, be [00:32:00] it a spouse or friends or company or a sense of meaning and belonging.I don't think it's.Malcolm Collins: Anything else? Well, dating markets are really important. Yeah, dating markets. That's, yeah. We know people who converted to Mormonism just because they couldn't find a husband and they're like, okay, this seems to be the best way to find a husband today. And I think that this is going to become increasingly common, which means that you as a religious tradition do need to be building a functional and healthy dating market can be an incredible conversion tool.Yeah. But you need to focus on it. You know, you need to really put in the infrastructure for that and, and, and then evangelize how well it works because people will come for that.Simone Collins: I also think a really important thing to note is that up until extremely recently, Religion was not something you could choose.It was something that you had to live with. And it was part of the framework of your reality, your community, and your life. So there was no other alternative. Now that we live in a world in which there are [00:33:00] so many alternatives, again, that's why I'm so obsessed with amenities. It's about the amenities. If people can choose, they're going to choose the one that leads to the best life and the best outcomes.That's it. And well, okay, either. So if they're going to choose a hard religion, they're going to choose someone with the best life and outcomes that, or they're just going to go so soft in like of all the religion. All together and just sort of die off. So,Malcolm Collins: yeah, well, and this is why we take sort of the elitist like approach where we're not, you know, we're not goingSimone Collins: after the soft people.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if you are primarily targeting you know, people at rock bottom situations and stuff like that, it will create the wider stream cultural perception that people don't want to be a part of that group, right? Like, oh, that's a low status group. Whereas if you make it difficult to convert difficult to claim to be a part of the group and you target like really high tier, whether they're earners or intellectuals or anything like that you will have that veneer of in, in penetrability as well as, and [00:34:00] status, as well as a value to your kids of like, why would I leave this cultural tradition if it's so hard to convert into it?This is something Jews have done really well historically. You know, the, the turning away a person three times when they try to convert and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, any other thoughts?Simone Collins: I would just say the only other thing that really matters is your original point that I want to hammer home, which is this is about really converting your kids.And that there doesn't seem to be from the evidence you looked at, at least when doing when writing the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. That suggests that growth through evangelism works growth through providing cultural amenities does, which is why groups that, for example, ran orphanages or schools had fresh converts, even if they didn't have children like through their family structures, because they didn't believe in sex or something.But this, you know, conversion is not really a meaningful way to grow. Even when you look at some of the most evangelistic. Religions like the Mormon and religion where we have people going on on missions, they're not durably [00:35:00] converting that many people ultimately through their missions. Now they are through like I would say, cultural ambassadorship.But that is a very different thing. So I would just say that that's the other thing is that. If you are interested in conversion because you think that is the only way that your religion is going to grow, then you need to just start providing some incredibly needed amenity to a group that is otherwise being abandoned by society because that seems to be the only way that, that conversion has worked at scale for groups that are not.Growing primarily through reproduction, right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think show them with your better life, you know? And so what she's mentioning is we ran the numbers with, with Mormons because these Mormons will say, well, we converted this many people a year, but that includes people who like you know, said, oh, I converted so they can use the Mormon soccer field.Right.So then we tried to look at people who are actually still tithing after a certain period of time, because we were trying to see like, okay, do these people actually stay in the church? And the number, they're just incredibly low.In fact, I would argue that more people [00:36:00] deconvert because of their mission trip that are converted because of a mission trip. I think that's safe to say, yeah. The biggest flaw in the Mormon faith right now is actually the mission structure, and that if they focused more on this wholesome community building, they would do better.This is one of the problems that the evangelical Christians and the Calvinists also had is that they created very, I mean, Footloose is basically about like tell the people who don't even let their children dance, right? Like it's it's it's it was had a very bad image in terms of cultural amenitiesThey were just seen as as rich and stoogey, right?Simone Collins: No fun. Yeah, they wouldn't even enjoy their money. What was theMalcolm Collins: point? Yeah, you know evan either scrooge being the typical stereotype. It was in this this community. Which we talk a lot about in the book and we provide a lot of evidence for a lot of people who like aren't familiar with cultural stereotypes thinks he's supposed to be Jewish when he's like from Scotland very clearly he's not but yeah so and he doesn't fit any of the other Jewish stereotypes but he fits almost every Calvinist stereotypeWho were much [00:37:00] more common during the period when the book was writtenI should also point this out because people not familiar with Calvin history. Texts may not know this, but Ebeneezer is the classical Calvinist name. If you're talking about Calvinist stereotypes, to the extent we're in the Puritan spotting checklist, I've mentioned earlier that Scott Alexander did. One of the points is how many male relative somebody has with the name. Ebenezer. It would be like naming a character. Levi Goldstein.Malcolm Collins: but so that did really bad like like Calvinism as a tradition is almost Perfectly, poorly structured to convert people using cultural arguments, but so is evangelical Christianity.Like they did a pretty bad job outside of their big events and stuff like that, which is why the iterations of it that are growing most right now are the mega churches and stuff, which provide this totally unique experience which I think appeals to you know, a specific desire was in people that is very different than the desire that was fed by historic, austere the type of people who were, were grossed out [00:38:00] by opulence and big displays of really anything which I think we would fall into.Now there was a final thing I wanted to say here, because I thought it was really interesting in what you were touching on. It was Mormons, I want to say. Yeah, well, I was going to say the other thing I've noticed within Mormons, and this could be a whole different video, is I've noticed that one of the reasons their culture is collapsing so quickly right now, because they are falling really quickly in terms of fertility rates, in terms of deconversions, is this extraversion that the community was selecting for, that we mentioned for earlier in this, created a sort of a I'd say probably even a genetic predilection due to the people who they were disproportionately converting to be really susceptible to things that like social media status games.It created a community that as soon as social media penetrated that community, as soon as the, especially the wives within this community began to be able to play these social media status games. It was. Incredibly unresistant to this less so than literally any [00:39:00] cultural tradition in the world, and that's why it went from being one of the stronger cultural traditions to one of the weaker cultural traditions.I don't think it had anything to do with the culture itself. I just think it had been selecting intergenerationally for extroversion and community status games in a way that was much more aggressive than other cultural groups. And then when people were able to masturbate these instincts, And that's true.In, in really unhealthy ways through social media, it hit that community really hard.Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.Malcolm Collins: Which is interesting because our community would be one of the most resistant to social media, which may provide an avenue for us growing again, specifically because of that. But I mean, there's not many of the people was, I guess, the genetic predilection to even like the type of.Theological structure that we're pitching. So it would stay small for nowSimone Collins: for a while. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you to death Simone. And I do hope that people are able to use this to convert [00:40:00] people more effectively. And to hopefully do a better job at evangelizing to your kids. You know, as we say, the first 18 years of a kid's life are your chance to pitch your culture to them.And if you don't do a good job, they're going to leave. Exactly. And then your culture will die, your traditions will die,Simone Collins: and your people will die. Everyone you've ever loved will disappear to history. Everything that every ancestor before you has worked to do will be for nothing. Okay,Malcolm Collins: bye everyone!Simone Collins: Bye! 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 thought-provoking discussion, we analyze why apocalyptic and “prepper” mindsets have taken hold more than acknowledging the coming “dark age.” Apocalyptic visions absolve personal responsibility, making them memetically potent yet useless. Preparism feeds individualist control fantasies, not actual resilience.In contrast, “dark age” outlooks force confronting the future to shape it for one’s community and posterity. We see figures like Curtis Yarvin and some organized religious groups taking this road less traveled. Ultimately more people must build alternative structures, not just bunkers, to inherit the future.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] He thinks that that individual should be chosen based on their proven competence and if they're capable to be cycled out that that would cause negative effects on, on the society, like they would be cycled out for the wrong reason.And he's not insane for thinking this. I mean, if we look historically, like the two, I think greatest figures in demographic history were both betrayed by their own countries.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: By the way, did you know that the, the phrase toxic masculinity came out of the mythopoetic men's movement.It was actually a description of the type of bad behavior that comes out of a society that suppresses masculinity.Malcolm Collins: Interesting. Yes. But, we're here to talk about something else.But I am very excited to be here with you today. Yeah. So, what I wanted to talk about, because this is something I was thinking about, where we often point out that humanity is heading into a dark age, but we also often really complain about apocalypticism in the Judeo Christian canon, [00:01:00] right? So if you look historically within the Judeo Christian tradition, there have repeatedly been trends towards apocalyptic approaches to the world.Yeah. Which is to say you can look at the Millerist movement early in the U. S. There was this movement in the seventies. It was some like number code in the Bible. There was Y two K, there was and this number coded the vitals, the, the Mayan calendar one after that. Oh yeah, the Mayan calendar one.Yeah. We just as, as the Judeo-Christian culture is incredibly, and it doesn't seem to happen with Themic culture as much as specifically, which is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. So what I really mean is Jews and Christians really, really, really, really susceptible to apocalyptic. We loveusSimone Collins: some edge times.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And these memetic sets of somebody who's like, well, aren't your views apocalyptic? Because you say we are headed towards the dark age. And I actually pointed out something that I don't think a lot of people realize, which is that dark ages, the belief that we are about to head towards a significant and dramatic [00:02:00] decline in culture.is actually fairly rare historically in the Western canon. thEre are people who have said things are worse today than they were in the past, that it's very different than dark ageism. Warning that things are about to take a dramatic decline downwards, but one that you have power over and can affect.Simone Collins: Right, because instead the view is that there's going to be a dramatic End. Just an end. It's end times. It's not, it's not dark times.Malcolm Collins: And so why is this? Because I, because I think this is very interesting. Why, why there's this, this huge split here. And I think it's because of well two things. The mimetic viability of each of these ideas.And two, what they imply for the individual. Right. So the biggest, if I was going to like sum it all up in one little piffy quote, it's that apocalypticism removes [00:03:00] responsibility from the individual. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas dark ageism increases the responsibility on the individual. Oh,Simone Collins: that's where you're going with this.Okay. Nice.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, it's, it's, it's true, right? If you believe that society is about to head in a dramatically downwards direction, Yeah. You don'tSimone Collins: need to save money. You don't need to build anything. You don't need to invest in the future. You know, you, you can invest all in the now.Malcolm Collins: Well this, no, sorry.That's if you believe in apocalypticism. That's if you believe in apocalypticism.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. Yeah, so if you believe in apocalypticism, you don't have to do s**t, like, you can do whatever you want, right, like, because the world is either going to be destroyed, or, the only thing you need to invest in, if you're an apocalyptic, is spreading the apocalypticSimone Collins: message.Yeah, getting attention, oh, that's so hard.Malcolm Collins: Well, it's not just getting attention. Like, obviously that appeals to the individual, but it also is memetically useful. Mm hmm. A memetic set that is spreading via apocalyptic messaging is going out there and telling people, Okay [00:04:00] just believe in the message.That's all you need to do to prevent it, is believe in the message. And the number one place you see this AI apocalypticism. And if you want to see our videos on how unlikely AI apocalypticism is, you can look at our grabby, our reverse grabby alien theorem video, which I think to me is the most compelling argument I've ever seen on the point which is basically to say, if it was this easy to create a a paperclip maximizing AI.We would see them out there in space everywhere. And if the reason we don't see them is because of the anthropic principle, i. e. we only wouldn't see them in a planet that hadn't been destroyed by them, well then we're about to see them, so it's irrelevant that we're working on them. Right? And there's a bunch of other answers, but, you know, watch the video if you're interested in that.But anyway, uh, the, the, the point here being is that if I, for example, think that, that AI apocalypses are inaccurate, right? Then I don't need to invest in the future. I don't really need to do anything other than general hedonism. And [00:05:00] I can spend all of the money I raise at the financial organization, all of my time as an individual attempting to convert people to this movement.But it's quite the different from, from dark ages. People who are like, society is declining right now, we are about to enter a dark age. Because there, I am burdened with both. Raising the, the flag about this while also building my own family to be stable in this environment and promoting social policy, technological policy, and technological innovation in a way that lowers the either extent of the dark age or the severity of the dark age.Simone Collins: Yeah. I, it, I wonder is, is there like a. Catholic versus Protestant. No, because there's tons of apocalyptic Protestant groups. I'm just trying to get this American tendency specifically. And I haven't really seen this [00:06:00] in other cultures of the, perhaps that's just due to my cultural ignorance. They get like really excited about survivalism.I mean, in the United States, there are. There are entire industries around, you know, the, you know, building up years worth of supplies of food with your MREs that you have in your bunker and all your guns and your bullets. And like, you know, people are like, they enjoy, there is an industry that is definitely built around the enjoyment of preparing for a dark age.I'm being ready to go through it. What, what did you, what did, what culture drives that? Because I can't say, oh, like that's clearly Protestant or that's clearly Catholic or anything, right? Where is, where is that coming from? I mean, why, what is it that makes someone a dark ageist rather than an apocalypticist?Malcolm Collins: Well, I, so, so apocalyptic mindsets, I mean, I think through that you can see how appealing apocalyptic mindsets are, especially, and I think that groups that's most susceptible to them are Jewish groups and Protestant Christian groups. And they, [00:07:00] they lead to different actions within these two communities within the ultra individualistic and rural Protestant Christian groups, they lead to this bunker building, right?But. I don't think that there's any realistic vision for a societal collapse in which this bunker building is really a high utility action. Not one that we're going to survive. I mean, there's some, like, nuclear apocalypses and stuff like that. Yeah, but this is why I saySimone Collins: it seems to me like it's purely recreational, because as you say, that's not really how it's going to play out.Right,Malcolm Collins: but it is susceptible and seductive as an ideological set. Now this is a big problem. If you're from a cultural group and you know, this ideological set is severely seductive to your cultural group. You need to sort of offset all ideas that are associated with it. You and I may indulge in preps, which we definitely do to an extent.I mean, I, I , but I understand that it is largely recreational and [00:08:00] aesthetic.Simone Collins: There's some useful bits. No, actually, what am I thinking? I have Faraday bags full of electronics because I'm so convinced there will be a solar flare. No, come on. That's useful.Malcolm Collins: It dependsSimone Collins: on if there's a solar flare, butMalcolm Collins: Right, but that level of preparism.Like I get it right. I but I I think that when you're trying to prepare for actual likely futures for our species. It can really over index you towards futures, which is really interesting. So pure apocalypticism, right? Pure apocalypticism removes individual responsibility. Yes. Whereas Preparism is a seductive thing, which is different than Dark Ageism or Pure Apocalypticism in that it rewards radical self ownership meaningfully in a way that society just doesn't.Simone Collins: Okay, so you're really trying to separate out [00:09:00] Preparism and you're trying to say it's not Dark Ageism? I would probably say it's just poorly educated Dark Ageism. I don't think that... No, I don't thinkMalcolm Collins: it is. No, so it's not dark ageism, it's not apocalypticism. Apocalypticism is about removing responsibility from the individual and being able to spend all your time on proselytization.Sure, sure, and we agree on that. Preparism is about a world, a fantasy of a world in which your individual actions can matter in and of themselves in regards to family preparation or family What's the word I'm looking for? Fortification. So, in a prepperist fantasy, right, the things that I do for my family, the trees I plant to grow food, the et cetera, et cetera, there are chickens, everything like that.Like, these things do matter to some extent. Right? But they do not actually protect my family in a meaningful context. I think there is a fantasy, especially among men, that these [00:10:00] things will matter in a meaningful context. And that's what preparism is. It is a world in which individual actions, in which this fucked up society we live in, doesn't matter.Because you as an individual trying to do what's best for your family, while ignoring trying to change society or trying to create any sort of larger community, Is a thing of genuine value.Simone Collins: Okay. So in other words, it's a, it's cope when you feel disempowered by society and you still want to feel empowered.So you're basically like, Oh, don't worry. It doesn't matter that I'm not empowered in society because society is going to fall apart and then I'll be empowered. But what you're saying, implying then about dark ageism is that it is someone who is preparing for. A, a worse future, but one in which they are shaping society going forward.Is thatMalcolm Collins: correct?Dark ageism is, well, I mean, it's, it's about trying to save all of society.Simone Collins: Yes. The difference is a dark ageist isn't just trying to save their own family. They're not just creating their [00:11:00] own bunker. They're saying, okay, society's not moving in a good direction. I'm going to create an alternative economy.I'm going to create an alliance of families, I'm going to create a city state, I'm going to create a new type of company or government and that is very different from saying here's my bunker or here's my complex. Is that right? Yes. Hmm. I don't really know, aside from you, who's doingMalcolm Collins: that? I think a lot of people are, I think a lotSimone Collins: of prep is doing that.Cause he's like, we're going to bring people to Mars, blah, blah, blah. Right. He is actually trying to build an alternative future society, or at least a different kind of future society. I'd alsoMalcolm Collins: say that a lot of preppers do this as well. The people who are called preppers, like there's two categories of preppers, people who are only interested in their own family and, and, and, and thinking about that and people who are looking at a larger societal level while understanding that if they don't have a community, it is likely irrelevant for most realistic preppers.Scenarios. And, and these are two very different things. Can [00:12:00]Simone Collins: you give me examples aside from you and Elon Musk of people who are on the, on the, the dark ages side and not just prevarism. So they're actually trying to build something forMalcolm Collins: society. There aren't a lot of famous people who would fall into this category.Simone Collins: You would need to give me maybe even a hypothetical example of an. Not famous person, but what they would be doingMalcolm Collins: like how we have friends who are doing this. They are specifically moving to networks of like minded families that intend to share responsibilities that intend to build systems like this among each other.If, if you are doing anything like this outside of a network of like minded families, it is, uh, like a personal indulgence, like a fancy car or something like that. All right. SoSimone Collins: I'm going to say a lot of Orthodox Jewish groups and a lot of trad calf groups. But I don't think that a lot of our friends are like this.I think that they're more along the bunker end of the spectrum because they're really just thinking about it for the context of their families. They're not building any larger [00:13:00] culture that's scalable. They're not creating any infrastructure governing wise or economy wise that would bring them forward.Whereas I can see with. Various old orthodox Jewish groups and like trad cats in general, that there is there, there is something that would start to pick up and build an influence in a future world. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting though. What, what we hadn't come into this conversation with, which is really helping me see things differently is the difference between individualistic preparism and a sort of noblesse oblige take on collapse, which is.Now I must rebuild. Or even an excitement about rebuilding. And .Malcolm Collins: Well, well, no, I, I'd say it's more than that. It's a, it's a individualistic prep. Realism versus community oriented prep Bullism. Mm-Hmm. , are you prepping for your house or are you prepping for your church? Yeah. Are you? Yeah. Or synagogue.Right. These are two very different things to be prepping around. Yeah. [00:14:00] And they require very different types of preparism, one of which is actually of utility if you want your family to survive intergenerationally, rather than just you, yourself, barely cling to life. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense. And I wasMalcolm Collins: thinking about this In and of itself.Right, like, if you're just clinging to life a bit longer in a world that is collapsing, like, you have achieved nothing of meaning. Even, even if you, even if you have kids, right, you have achieved a little bit more of meaning then. But if your kids don't have people to marry, if they don't have a larger community, if they don't have a larger...a seed of a socioeconomic structure that can come out of the collapse, then you haven't done that much, especially given all of the things that you could be optimizing for, given the, the privileges every human has access to today in this last stage of abundance.Simone Collins: And the opportunities at play. Like the fact that you really, really, really could matter to a large number of future generations.So that's, that's interesting. Now where do you, where do you put Curtis Yarvin on [00:15:00] this spectrum? Because now given what you've said, I feel like he's maybe more... At first I thought he was just on the top. He's a dark ageist. He is a dark ageist, and he is like not an individualistic dark ageist at all.No, not at all.Malcolm Collins: I, I disagree with his... thesis on how to fix society, but he is definitely taking the harder route of the potential routes. And he also is a real intellectual. If you look at his work, as I often said, if you look at like Eliezer Yudkowski's work or you,Simone Collins: you, you, Oh yeah, that there's the, there's the, yeah.So Curtis Yearman.Malcolm Collins: He's actually kind of an idiot. Like he's just like genuinely not like, an intellectual powerhouse. What a deep, deep, deepSimone Collins: apocalypticist.Malcolm Collins: Right. But he, he needs that to justify his lifestyle and decisions, whereas with Curtis Yarvin I don't agree with everything he says, but he's very clearly an intellectual powerhouse.If you look at his stuff, he, he clearly has really thought through things and understand things. I just culturally have disagreements with him.Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, more in the sense that like, Your [00:16:00] faction will eventually be competing with, with his faction and other factions.Malcolm Collins: I don't even think so. I think his faction would easily fold into our faction.So his preference for monarchism isn't really that different from our factions preference from controlled and cyclable. So while we individually may have differences, so let's, let's explain what I mean by controlled and cyclable dictatorships. I think governance structures that consolidate power are usually the best governing structures, but that power needs to be expellable the moment it becomes corrupt or inefficient.which is what all of the governing hypotheses that we work on are intended to do. I think that's what the U. S. government was originally intended to do. Although it's also intended to split power a bit more, so that's a bit of an inaccurate statement. But yeah, I think that the best governing structures are do you have responsibility lie on a single individual or a single small group of individuals?But that [00:17:00] individual group needs to be cyclable out whereas the core difference between us and yarvin is he doesn't believe that He thinks that that individual should be chosen based on their proven competence and if they're capable to be cycled out that that would cause negative effects on, on the society, like they would be cycled out for the wrong reason.And he's not insane for thinking this. I mean, if we look historically, like the two, I think greatest figures in demographic history were both betrayed by their own countries. DemographicSimone Collins: history. What do you mean by that? Democratic. I said, Oh, democratic.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Democratic. I might've said demographic. I don't know.A democratic history. So specifically Winston Churchill and some mystical ease. Both were betrayed after saving their democracies, because democracies are prone to do things like that when a single individual is so obviously right. And so obviously has an understanding of how the, the democracy actually functions and how to make the world a better place while they are in an intense threat to the powers that [00:18:00] be within that society.And so that society from its media to its other, its other power players to its other elite, every single motivation conceivable to try to get rid of that individual and to try to move them out of the society. And in the case of you know, Semistocles, he was exiled. And he actually ended up, it's really funny, a lot of people don't know this, like the story after Semistocles.So not only did he save all of Greek from the Persians in the Greco Persian Wars very easily, like he, he tricked them for people who don't know his story yet that there's this amazing moment where he essentially tricked the Persians into surrounding a collection of Greek fleets because all of the Greek city states hated each other and some were planning to basically go back home and so he needed them to be surrounded so that they couldn't retreat so that they could all fight together.Like, the level of cunning that's required to do that, but then he got expelled from Athens afterwards because they're like, Oh, the you know, the [00:19:00] average citizen likes this guy too much. You know, they say, Oh, he's a populist. Anyway, he then went to, to this actually this region of Persia that actually had holidays and statues dedicated to him hundreds of years after his death, because he did such a good job as a local governor of this like irrelevant region of like, South west Persia, I think.So he actually went to the enemies and was like, Okay, I'm not gonna help you with like any war thing, but I can be like a local governing person. Or it might have been Greek islands. I don't know, but anyway. So that's what happened to him. Winston Churchill, for people who aren't familiar with him, you know, he Predicted everything in regards to World War Two.He predicted everything in regards to what was going to happen if Britain withdrew from India too quickly. He was not against them withdrawing entirely, but he's like, if you withdraw too quickly this is going to have really negative consequences. The, the number of deaths involved in the war that was basically, so.If I may give a bit of history here, what happened here is Britain, driven by the pussies who decided, oh, we're going to be anti [00:20:00] colonialists, they withdrew all at once before the Muslims had a chance to migrate to Pakistan and the Hindis had a chance to migrate to India with, cause that was the idea.You're going to have a. Muslim state and a Hindi state and as a result there was a, an incredibly bloody war that was completely unnecessary. And that could have been avoided if people had listened to Winston Churchill. . Just as a side note here. I am not saying that if Winston Churchill didn't have godlike powers and could do whatever he wanted, he wouldn't have kept. India in the British empire, but when he knew that India had to leave the British empire, which he did accept at one point, he also saw it would lead to this war that could be prevented.And he was rushed to release India before he put in the steps to prevent the war. Also, I'm not saying he didn't have racist views against Hindus. He absolutely did.Malcolm Collins: Potentially, but it is, I think just if you look at history, I think my reading of events is he saw in the same way he [00:21:00] saw was World War II where he kept warning everyone before World War II for people who don't know this, Winston Churchill's biography actually came out before he was elected prime minister, before World War II.Yeah, he like assumed he'd peaked. Yeah, he thought his career was over because he had, and how did he destroy his career? He destroyed his career. By constantly telling everyone, this Hitler guy is a problem. This Hitler guy is a problem. You don'tSimone Collins: know how big this guy's a bummer. Stop Churchill.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And people were like, Hey man, you're beingSimone Collins: super against appeasement.Yeah. You know, to be fair, he didn't have a perfect track record. You know, there was the, he got like obsessed with weird tanks or something in world war one and didn't work out, but like, you know, but still he called that one really clever s**t. I mean, it was clever. It just, you know, it was like. Inventing, you know, Webvan before its time,Malcolm Collins: you know?Well, okay. I mean, he was really important to the strategy. God, what was it called? Operation Fortitude., I'm referring to the giant fake a D-Day [00:22:00] operation that he helped organize. I don't remember this. Yeah. It was as successful as it was because of a huge campaign.So they had inflatable tanks. They had inflatable. ThisSimone Collins: one. Yeah. The decoy, the decoy.Malcolm Collins: But it wasn't just decoys. They also had the dead body of a British high level with likeSimone Collins: the code or something like that. It was like, Oh, we're going to invade in this place. We're totally not invading in. Yeah. That was so smart.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Side note here. I had to take pride in, between Simone and I, every single one of our grandfathers participated . In D day.Malcolm Collins: They did some really clever s**t. And then he helped a British citizens get really on board. So if you go to Britain, you will see these cut down fences, these iron gates all over Britain, like snipped off. And the question is why, why would you do that? Right? Well, so the reason he did that was because he told people, you give us your pots, your pants, like any wrought iron you have, and we'll use it for the war.It was [00:23:00] completely unusable in the war. Then most of it's at the bottom of the ocean or lakes. Now they just dumped it. But it was really important and allowing the average citizen to feel connected and sort of sunk cost in the war itself, which was important in other types of regulations, like.Eating less food so the food could go to the troops like feeling connected to your kids and everything like that, which helps keep morale up during the bombings and in situations like that. Which is so crucial. He did just so many, I think, absolutely brilliant things. And had so much absolutely brilliant foresight and he was completely stabbed in the back politically after the victory. And, and I think that this is just the nature of democracies. You cannot be too successful at the politician in a democracy without being stabbed in the back. So I understand his intuition here. I just think the alternative is worse. Any sort of system in which an individual can [00:24:00] achieve power. And I think we see this even with people who I respect, like when I look at wealthy people who I respect, like, okay, they've achieved power.They've basically become monarchs of their like little techno empires. Basically. Yeah. But after a while, they sort of seem to go a little crazy. No matter how well meaning they are. Like, I don't want to give names. I'm just saying that when individuals achieve this level of power and maintain it for like more than a 10 year period, they seem to begin to make decisions that no sane person would make.And I think that decisions are driven not by them, But by the way, entourages build up around these sorts of individuals.Simone Collins: They don't have anyone like. Whispering in their ear. Remember, you are mortal.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mm-Hmm. By the way, what she's referring to is something that historically in Rome a specific type of slave cast was supposed to do for Caesars during military triumphs.Simone Collins: Yeah. I can't remember if it was [00:25:00] in general or if it was like one specific guy had, like, had his man. Do that.Malcolm Collins: Specific name or something, or then other people started copying him because it seemed funny becauseSimone Collins: it was, then it'd be probably came this like sick, humble brag flex. It'sMalcolm Collins: like, yeah, I don't worry.That constantly reminds me. I'm not a God.Simone Collins: It keeps me so humble. I'm so blessed.Malcolm Collins: I'm just so f*****gSimone Collins: humble. So humble. Don't worry. I have a slave for that.Malcolm Collins: It's fine. I have. Oh, don't worry. I'm not. Too arrogant. I've got a slave that reminds me I'm not a god. I'm covered on that front. I thought through that.Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm a slave for that. It's fine.Malcolm Collins: I can see how you would think I might be a god. I've had that problem before. I'm just not one. So the slave helpsSimone Collins: with that. But I really do think that there is an entourage problem. And I, I, I wonder how to get around that. I know this is way off topic for like, for, for dark [00:26:00] ageism, but you're right in that there is this sort of success delusion that comes, especially when you have like all these inner circles of, of yes, men who really, really, really.Are incentivized to maintain their position in the hierarchy, not to give you good ideas or like make sure that you're not going off the rails, but to make sure that no one else is getting closer to you than they are. And howMalcolm Collins: do you know how you do it? You don't have any friends. Hm? Spouse.Simone Collins: You know, I really, I don't think, I don't, unless,Malcolm Collins: oh, it's because I, so None of these people have, have, have solid spouses that are that different from the Well, yeah, or a spouseSimone Collins: that they, the one that they respect and two that they work closely with.It's just hard for me to think of a very, very wealthy, successful man who actually works closely to and listens to their spouse. Yeah, but if you lookMalcolm Collins: at history, you see this. Okay. And the founding fathers and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. You have, Churchill, for example, had a spouse who was there whispering in his earSimone Collins: always.She was, she was a, she was a beautiful, wonderful [00:27:00] woman.Malcolm Collins: No, but this, this matters. So you see what I'm saying? Even the examples I'm using, positive spouses who you perceive as your equal are critical to not going crazy when you have too much power for too long. Yeah. Because other than that, everyone is a minion.A spouse, at least one who you really care about, is never a minion. Yeah, that's true. And they also don't have disaligned interests with you. So some people Yeah, they want you to succeed. The kid always has some benefit from you dying. Right. You know, whereas a spouse often does not, unless you're in something like the Chinese system and then that's the, you know, the Dowager Empress or something that's a negative situation to be in.But that's, that's, I think just because socially and culturally, that's like a really, uh, non optimized optimization, I guess I'd say.Simone Collins: Yeah. Interesting. So what is the takeaway or meaning or importance of [00:28:00] distinguishing between preppers, dark agers, and apocalypticists?Malcolm Collins: Well, I think every individual, you know, culturally, if you're watching this, you're probably similar to me.I have a prepper's instinct. I think you have a prepper's instinct. Prepperism can be fun, but remember it is a hobby. It is not Often useful for real societal downturns or the most likely societal downturns in which you will survive and your great grandchildren will survive.Simone Collins: Oh, I see what you're doing.So you're socially shaming individualistic prepperism and trying to take that instinct that a lot of people have and direct it in a constructive fashion, especially in an age at which we actually do believe that dark age is coming because we need people to build the future who aren't just Elon Musk because he's kind of busy.Malcolm Collins: And then I think that there is apocalypticism and I think apocalypticism can only be beaten back by immediately and aggressively shaming it wherever you see it.Simone Collins: How would you advise the [00:29:00] average person to shame an apocalypticist? Cause I mean, even we have like, there are people that we've met who've become apocalypticists.And like, in the end, I feel like you and I are just like, Hey man, like, I hope you get through that. I mean, it'sMalcolm Collins: like talking with someone who's deeply oppressed. I think that's the key. Understand that apocalypticism is about avoiding personal responsibility, not about logic.Simone Collins: So should we be, should we be acting differently around our apocalypticist friends and just be like, Hey.Malcolm Collins: We shame them pretty aggressively. Okay. All right. I mean, apocalypticism personal responsibility. It's about saying. I am not responsible for the future outside of spreading this one meme that has infected mySimone Collins: brain. No, I feel so embarrassed because in the past we've just been like really empathetic toward them and that's, that's actually pretty bad.We should not do that anymore.Malcolm Collins: I mean, we aren't outright mean, but I, I will say that if they're talking to me, they definitely get a sense that I think that they're pretty pathetic.Simone Collins: I guess so, because you're that one kind of person where like, you just walk away from people at parties if you feel like they're not [00:30:00] useful, you just turn and you walk in the opposite direction and like, and you cut the conversation short.So people like have no ambiguities to like how you feel about themMalcolm Collins: because you just don't talk. It's like, what are you working on? How are you trying to make the world a better place? And if they're like,Simone Collins: yeah, they start complaining and you're like, okay, great. And then you're like, Oh God, and then I, I'm sitting there talking with them uselessly.I'm like,Malcolm Collins: I know you're like,Simone Collins: you have somewhere to be. Yeah. So, dear friends, if you've seen us do this, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.Malcolm Collins: We're dealing with short timelines. We have to fix things and we have to prepare things for the next generation in the last age of opulence. Yeah. Yeah. Love you, Simone. Love you, too.Simone Collins: Oh. 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 thought-provoking discussion, we explore whether advances like artificial wombs fundamentally threaten the necessity of women in society. We analyze how the maternal instinct shapes female psychology evolutionarily.We also cover the interplay of sexuality, submission rituals in both secular and religious spheres, the plausibility of multi-gender futures, and whether tension between genders creates cultural dynamism. Ultimately we contend traditional pair bonds seem deeply embedded in human drives. Losing women would sacrifice aspects of the human experience.Malcolm: [00:00:00] these submission rituals that you see within these you know, BDSM communities and stuff like that, Very similar rituals sort of co evolved in many religious communities.Hmm. Whether you're talking about, you know, ultraOrthodox Jewish Teflon, Catholic Opus Dei, like whipping thing and stuff like that.And I don't think that any of this is because these cultures have been influenced by sexual cultures. I think it's that both represent extreme forms of submission and that extreme forms of submission, whether they be to masturbate a feeling instinct or to show supplication to... a genuine great power are going to have some degree of co evolution,Would you like to know more?Malcolm: So, you guys might know this from our other content. I'll talk while you're getting ready. But that we don't use heating in our house in the winter because we believe in extreme frugality.Like, suffering edifies the spirit, everything like that, you know? But! Last year when she wasn't pregnant, she was wearing a [00:01:00] Russian that she bought from, like, somewhere in Siberia where she could get cheap.You know what I'm going to do? I am going to, I'm going to share a picture with our audience because this is just too much. But what she has done and you can talk a bit, how you came to this, you know, we're talking about pragmaxing in life. What you did is you said, okay, so first.You know, where do people live in really cold environments? And then you got these, these, these sew suits that make you look like a, somebody who should be called Natasha. Like a James Bond villain or something. And now because you're pregnant, you can't wear them anymore. And so she's like, okay, when did people have to deal with pregnancy and cold environments without heating?And so she went back and took inspiration from medieval outfits. And I'd love it if you could talk a bit about how your layering process works with this.Simone: Yeah it's, it's brilliant. I, I think this is much better maternity wear. One, because actually when you go back to, I mean, before the industrial revolution, everyone just kind of wore the same outfit all the time.So your outfit had to grow with you. If you got fatter, if you got thinner, it would have to grow with you or shrink with you. If you got pregnant, it would have to grow [00:02:00] or shrink with you. So I was like, Oh yeah. then probably the best clothing I should wear for changing sizes is clothing from a different age.And so, for the winter to stay warm, I'm basically wearing like thermal underwear and over that I'm wearing a chemise. And I have a, like, I guess you could say it's kind of like a a corset or stays and then a long skirt and then a really heavy wool coat. And it just feels great. So, I think.Much better maternity wear than the gross stuff that most women are forcing themselves to wear while they getMalcolm: larger. And a great thing about this is you can wear it pregnancy after pregnancy and year after year and day after day because this is a type of clothing that's designed to be worn almost every day.Yeah,Simone: it's super durable, it's very practical, and it's extremely comfortable. So, highly recommend it.Malcolm: With just changing out the underlayer, obviously. But, okay, so... I am going to prime you with something that happened to me at this art conference we went to, which is like a conservative [00:03:00] Davos thing that was hosted by like Jordan Peterson and Louise Perry.Anyway, in the UK, the conservatives are quite different than the conservatives in the US. They are more like small C conservatives and the feminist side of the movement is much, much bigger there because turfs make up a big part of the conservative movement out there. Anyway, so I was talking to them about, oh, you know, the.IVF, artificial wombs, stuff like that. And this one woman just lost it. She goes, what? Artificial wombs are the most evil thing ever. If we have artificial wombs, what's even the point of women? Nothing could be more anti feminist than an artificial womb.Simone: Hold on. Wait. A feminist woman. Thought that the only point of women was gestation.Malcolm: Well, keep in mind, and this is actually really interesting, so these women in this conservative movement, they have a very conservative view of what a woman's role is. Have kids, care for the home, care for the kids, right? Is that feminist? Well, it's not. This is [00:04:00] TERF feminism. It's a little different from what we think.It's a female focused agenda, but, and, and, and, excuse me, Simone, this is a good win for women. Women really talk themselves out of a pretty good position. Today, we're like, oh, it's so anti feminist to say women shouldn't have to work and just stay at home all day with modern appliances caring for like two measlySimone: kids.In a modern age, in a modern age, the idea of, of women as gestational managers and parents is actually pretty cush. I mean, in the, in the old age, like in, in the ages of the clothing that I'm like mocking, you know, women died at childbirth at really high rates. It was actually a pretty risky profession.Malcolm: We've repeatedly seen this from women in this, this aspect of the conservative movement. You know, just horrified by, by artificial wombs, making women less. Necessary in the way that they define what womanhood is. And this moment was really interesting to me. Because what it demonstrated to me, like, I was just trying to, like, think [00:05:00] about actually what her mindset must be to be worried about this.Yeah. Which is to say, Yeah, we could, with artificial wombs, create a society in which you don't need women at all. But why is that a bad thing? Like, you, woman, you can have boys. You know that, right? Like, and these boys are part you, right? It showed to me that she identified more with her gender than with her culture, or family line, or even own children.Simone: Well, but it also demonstrates a pretty significant amount of hatred towards women, because if you think that the only reason women are kept relevant in society is because they have gestational gatekeeping ability, that, and then when that goes away, when, when basically men no longer have to depend on women for wombs, the assumption is that like women will completely lose their position in society implies that she doesn't think women have.[00:06:00] Any other value that, like, they don't contribute these ideas.Malcolm: That On. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you with something that you have told me before, uhoh because you have said something that counteracted this before. Okay. You agreed with a friend of ours who said this Okay. Where she was like, you know, with trans people sometimes being able to do femininity much better than women.Yeah. What's even the point of women anymore? Yeah. And this was the context of like, okay, if you, and this is true, like when I hear that somebody, a woman in Silicon Valley is running a successful startup. Yeah. The first question I'm always going to be like, you mean a trans woman, right? Or when I hear a woman in Silicon Valley has a really high, like coding position at Google, it's like, you mean a trans woman, right?And it's almost, it's like 70 percent of the time they're like, Oh yeah, yeah, trans woman. And. One of the things that you had pointed out about trans women is that when they are in a privileged position of being able to pass, they can focus much more on feminine displays than even [00:07:00] women can because women have never seen things from the other perspective or been able to study it as critically and clinically.Simone: Well, and also like when it comes to many of the things that women sort of struggle with, like, weight or like there, there's some builds that like basically someone starting from, I don't know, a male blank or a male starting point. You can actually have a really great look as a female when you like switch over to that.So it's really hard for a woman to compete with her. Like, you know, depending on the look you're going for, like, You know, I feel like I've grossed under thighs and I would much prefer like men's legs to be honest. Like, so like, I think a lot of women are also like looking really jealously. She reallyMalcolm: doesn't, by the way.TheSimone: lean, slender bodies of, of men that transition successfully. And are just, you know, like insanely jealous. I mean, yeah, I, I do think it's, it's hard for, for women to compete with some, but I mean, I think that's also just a really. Pessimistic view of the value that women can bring to the table.Like,Malcolm: okay. So I'm asking you objectively, [00:08:00] objectively speaking. Okay. So we're talking about the ways that women are different from men. Yeah. What are the things you think that on average women do better than men? And with each of these things, judge whether if you got rid of one gender, society would be worse off.Go.Simone: Oh God. I I'm, I'm not the most pro woman. Person out there. So my problem is like, all the women friends that I like most are probably on the spectrum and thereby are kind of less female in many ways because they don't do a lot of the social games that I can't handle. And. I, I find interacting with like traditionally, like hormonally normal neurotypical women is, it's really stressful.So I'm not the best at it. So you haveMalcolm: antagonism towards neurotypical women more broadly?Simone: Well, I think my problem is that like, I want to interact with [00:09:00] people who speak plainly. Who, who say what they feel and are straightforward about things. And with, with many neurotypical women that both you and I interact with, I feel like I, I cannot win because I don't speak their language.And they're playing a game and I'm not, and then somehow I'm insulting them by not playing this game. And that's really stressful for me, and then I, you know, I feel like we've lost some friends because of that, because I can't play their games, and that makes me really sad, because we've known a lot of cool people that, that I can't be friends with, and so I miss all my, you know, But,Malcolm: with that being the case, Wouldn't our cultural group be better if we were all men?So I don't, I don't, I don't believe this myself. I'm just asking hypothetically.Simone: Yeah. I mean, okay. So I, I'm looking at two, when you said that I, I sort of viewed two realities. One, I viewed like the free radical problem, you know, sort of like a lot of like high testosterone uncoupled men who are like, you know, just high risk, high rewards.It's just like sort of, you know,[00:10:00] complete. Anarchy, violence, you know, just, just a mess, right? Like, I don't, I don't like that. You know, I, I don't really want the bronze age mindset reality of, you know, raiding and everything, which I guess is actually less fun when there are no women to rape and pillage.Right. But whatever. And then I view the other, the other world, which is just like complete. Gay anarchy, just like orgies, like super hot men everywhere. And then I'm like, oh, okay, like gay world. This sounds really fun. Like sign, sign me up for that. Yeah,Malcolm: I mean, presumably you'd be able to control people's sexuality in this world.Simone: Yeah. And I feel like a world full of gay men is a happier and more functional, lower drama world. Than, than aMalcolm: world full of gay men is a lower drama world. Yeah, I mean,Simone: yeah, I mean, there's drama, but it's not toxic drama as much if you know what I mean.Malcolm: I know what you mean, I know what you mean, I just thought that was a funny statement, come on. wEll, here's another path we could go, something that came up in the [00:11:00] Razeeb episode that we shared recently, and we've talked about in a few episodes, is the concept of the Tylexio. Oxiodle tanks, right? Which is, you wouldn't even need oxiodle tanks. You could just replace women with artificial women.Simone: Define for our audience oxiodle tanks. Oh,Malcolm: it's, it's essentially degraded, if you're looking at the original series and not the weird things his son wrote in the Dune universe it's what happened to the females of the Tleilaxu population, like, like, and not individual females. These are genetically engineered beings that are based on a female template that are meant to make artificial wombs easier to operate through connecting to, like, their bloodstream and their original reproductive system, but they just use them to churn out lots of people.They don't have, you know, sentience or much consciousness. They're just sort of like blobs connected to tanks. Now, alternatively, the Tleilaxu men... Are designed to look more like I'd say older children.So let's say [00:12:00] people who are like 15 or something like that kind of like elfish and a little impish.So the idea being is that if you have this much control over the future. Like, and you're choosing an iteration of male that you are freezing us at, or an iteration of female, would you freeze us at young men or would you freeze us at old men? Because you talk about this like bronze age pervert world.Obviously you're not going to get a bronze age pervert world if you have like a bunch of sociopathic, high IQ, 15 year old men. I mean, ISimone: don't know. You have largely beenMalcolm: sterilized Ah, ah, like they don't, they don't feel sexuality at all.Simone: Yeah. So, so what is, what is the ideal?Malcolm: Well, I mean, okay, I'll ask the question in a different way.Okay. What if we just got rid of sexuality altogether? Like if you I. Would you, do you think like an iteration of humanity would be better if you bred them to not have any sexual drives atSimone: all? You know, I think sexuality really doesn't, and this sounds stupid to say now that I'm saying it, but doesn't play [00:13:00] that huge of a role.I mean, I think it's sexual dimorphism that plays a bigger role in, in just sort of the day to day way that men and women react differently to scenarios that, that women are. Are reacting based on very different internal models based on different on average tendencies than men. And, you know, obviously sex drive is huge, especially for men with high levels of testosterone, less so for women on average.It shows up in different ways, of course you know, more like dominant submission interest, which of course can also play into the politics that freaked me out so much and make me less comfortable around women. Right. But. I think it's those issues and not necessarily sexuality, which is something that actually came up in our book a lot, that like, in the end, so much of sex is not at all about sex.It's about how you view yourself. It's about your, your identity. It's about how you're validating yourself. That the actual act itself is, is kind of,Malcolm: I agree with everything you're saying was one caveat. I think a lot of female behavior, even the stuff that's [00:14:00] not just like born gendered is heavily influenced by their capacity as gatekeepers of sexual access to the extent that it's not sex itself that is causing this, it's just the way that human females are born.They're the limiting factor. Yeah, and them being gatekeepers of sexual access gives them within open sexual marketplaces, or at least attractive women or women as a group, inordinate political power. I mean, I think that that's actually the big thing that women have used to their advantage within our existing political system.Only insofarSimone: as men have sex drives. And I think actually this is changing a lot as we're sort of entering an age of more sexless men and men who were just like, oh, you know what? Not going to care that much. Women are losing a lot of that power and that, and that dynamic is changing. So I don't know if that is as true today and certainly tomorrow.As it may have been 20, 30, 50 years ago. Oh yeah.Malcolm: A lot of women screech over, over this. I, I, I also think that this is something worth pointing out from a male [00:15:00] perspective as well. And I, I just want to talk about like how insane it is because there are men who do this, who identify more with their gender than they identify with their cultural group.Or children, or parents, or people, or country. Gender should be like such a low thing on the things you identify with. Now, I can understand why people identify with it, right? I think a core reason is, is we have like strong drives, and strong cultural precedient, precedent when we're growing up. Like in our 20s when we're determining who we are, what we think of ourselves to find a partner.And the challenges that you face in finding a partner are going to be heavily, heavily, heavily gendered. And through that you will communicate and engage heavily with communities that are going to be heavily gendered and primarily complaining about the opposite gender, which is going to cause this level of identification during many individuals formative years.It's just, I think, important that people. Like approach [00:16:00] this with some sanity, like, yes, things may be unfair for your gender. I get that, you know, but at the end of the day, as, as my favorite movie that we use at every episode here at the beginning says, we're in this for the species, boys and girls. It's simple numbers.They have more. And this is what we talk about the, the enemies of, of, of pronatalism. Is, is that if you want to exist in the future, you've got to find a way to make it work with the other gender. And it's hard. It's hard, right? And, and, and things are unfair now, but I think approaching everyone from the opposite gender as if they're like an alien species and totally heartless is really going to create problems that I am saying this as a complete hypocrite, because I just sat here with a wife who already said, yeah, I think so much more like a guy than a girl that like actually girls scare me and I'm afraid to interact with them.Simone: I mean, I don't think that much like guys either. I just. I think like a blank. ButMalcolm: I think that if we're [00:17:00] going with June references,Simone: mentat thinking cause you know, guys think super differently too. It's just that guys think in a much more straightforward and transparent way. And there, there aren't as many mind games in like hidden grudges and, and terrifying.Like back channel things going on. So God, you know, unless you're a man in Dune, by the way, you know, unless you're, you know, what is it? Harkonnen. Yeah. Harkonnen. Yes. They're like the women of the Dune universe cannot, I mean, they're great, but stressful. Yeah, I, I just don't know. I, I feel like.Malcolm: sO I'm gonna, I'm gonna present you with a different idea here.I think if you took sexuality out of humanity, if you took gender out of humanity, a lot of motivation for, I think, many parts of humanity that people instill as the highest parts of humanity, like art and music and culture, would disappear. Yeah, in fact we often mention, I often mentioned the Futurama episode on robo sexuality which would point it out.That when [00:18:00] men could just date robots instead of women, the motivation for you know, it was like art, music, and then it showed men not being able to date other men, theater, disappeared.Simone: And What is what is that weapon with two rocks and a string in between? Or the rocks use their momentum to throw each other forward.AMalcolm: flail? flails, but you're generally talking about a flail, yes. Okay,Simone: so I think men and women act like a flail. Where like, there's tension between them but flying through the air, one gives Oh, you're talking about Ebola! Ebola? Yeah, okay, you know, that's a,Malcolm: that's a... Sorry, I thought you were talking about a flail is two balls tied to the end of a stick.Ebola is two balls connected by a string that's used for tripping people. That's what I'm,Simone: yes, that's what I'm talking about. My brain! UselessMalcolm: knowledge of weapons I'll never know, use!Simone: I'm glad you play as many video games as I do. Well,Malcolm: the funny, well, I don't know, like, Ebola from video games. It's not used that frequently, but I love...Guys would be like, these are things that literally every human in the world knows what they are, a bole and yet, [00:19:00] I bet like 50 percent of women have no idea.Simone: I mean, I knew what it was. I didn't know its name. But I do feel like there's this tension and interplay between men and women. But you know, you and I have the same philosophy about cultures.We really think that variation and competition and tension. are incredibly useful. The disagreement is incredibly useful. The different mindsets are incredibly useful. So we would be against the idea. I mean, if anything, we would like there to be more genders than fewer genders. If anything, we should be like thrilled that there are all these additional weird genders.I think our only problem with them is we think that they're performative rather than real. If they were real. And they actually did contribute genuinely different perspectives. WeMalcolm: would be stoked. Yeah, I think that's a, an interesting point. Yeah. And, and could that lead to more art? If you had more genders and more of a relationship drives other than just sex andSimone: romance.Yeah. Like what if we lived in the, omega universe, the Omegaverse. Oh my god, we gotta talk about the Omegaverse. universe where there are, [00:20:00] there are what, alphas, betas, and omegas. So there are like three genders. And itMalcolm: creates all this. And they're all male, basically. So they, okay, I'm gonna see if I can remember this.So they all present male. And alphas mate with betas. And when an alpha mates with a beta the beta, like they, they latch like a dog does. Like they're nodding. Is that what it's called? Nodding. Nodding, nodding yes. And they have to like stay together until they finish and they like have these, like heat periods and stuff like that.And then like omegas can like transform into an alpha when they're around a beta. Or transform into a beta when they're around an alpha, depending on like what they're interested in in the moment. And it transforms the ways they relate sexually and like heat cycles and stuff like that. I strongly suggest if you're, if this sounds at all interesting to you, well, we can do another episode where, where I prep on it beforehand and remember actually all of this universe.Cause I find this fascinating. It is fascinating. When the Gorian [00:21:00] world, I, we could also include that really interesting as well. This is a world just for people who are interested. So, there's these people who went and asked, okay, well, I think, you know, women. It seemed to have this, this desire to be submissive in, in relationships and males seem to be more likely have this desire to be dominant in relationships and like a normal person would be like, okay, well, let's like, try to craft like a new way to have like dominant men or something like that.They were like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just go back to the way we did this historically and people would be like, Oh, you mean like a traditional, like taken in hand marriage? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, like, I want Conan the barbarian world.Simone: Yeah. Like a, like a 1980s or 1970s sci fi traditional.Yeah.Malcolm: Where like they dance for men in their, their outfits and stuff like that. It's like part of like mating rituals and then do like bows and stuff. And there's all these rituals for how they interact. Because they, they wanted this world of submission dominance in tons of rituals, but they didn't [00:22:00] remember enough of our historic rituals.So they just like borrowed them from this Conan like book series.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Like basically this, this sci fi series was the basis of what then became a weird, I guess you could say somewhat BDSM, but I'm a lot more intense subculture, which pretty much has disappeared, but there's, you can still find some like old forum archives.ItMalcolm: was theSimone: early internet. Yeah. And, and, and keep in mind, this is something that really like women got excited about. The people who are posting a lot are the women who are in these Gorian relationships who are enslaved to their master husbands. And I think, you know, ultimately the guys who were.Agreeing to this probably like a decent percentage of them. Maybe 60 percent were probably a little put upon to have to do all this because it was like arbitrage plays. Well, yeah, I mean, like, yeah I mean, it was a lot of work. You'd have to like, you'd have to. you know, ritually like beat her up and you know, like do the rituals and all this stuff and like [00:23:00] know all the rules.And I think for a lot of guys, they're like, dude, I just, I just want you to be happy. And I want you to love me. Whereas like when you're doing one of these, like, like big time ritualized taken in hand BDSM complicated instructions kind of relationships. I don't think that's what most guys really want. I think most guys just.Want a supportive wife who loves them, andMalcolm: then it's just a lot of work, and they're having to do to get even a simulacrum of that. Right. I, I, I love, it's like, guys are like, oh yeah, I want a wife who's submissive and breedable. I want a submissive and breedable cat girl wife. And then they get one of these 24 7 cat cosplay w w women.You know, who's like, I want a 24 7 cat relationship. And they're like, okay, well. I actually am not that cool with you walking on all fours all the time, and I have to like, buy you food. Can we just like,Simone: play video games and order pizza, please?Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, yeah these, these types of relationships are actually an incredible amount of work to maintain.Simone: Yeah, yeah, and I think they're mostly for the submissive person. Like, in the vast majority of cases it [00:24:00] seems that these relationships really are for the benefit of the submissive partner, because really it's, it's all about kind of pleasing them and keeping them in line and I feel bad for the dominant partners who are put upon.Yeah,Malcolm: I I was looking at a 4chan post not long ago and some guy was like, you know, why do we even, like, do these things for our girlfriends when a girlfriend is just a B I T C H that we, you know, We sex our ex at times and we sleep with, yeah, we, we F. And a lot of young guys, I think they enter communities and they think that by saying things like this, they are signaling that they are like high status males.And it's like, we know that almost no guy actually wants a girl like that. Like, us guys, I'm sorry we know that you're probably, 14 or 16 between that age range, if you're making claims like that because very few guys actually want that. Most guys just want somebody to, uh, care for them, and when they do want weird sexual stuff, they want it in an incredibly isolated environment.[00:25:00]They, they, they don't want it to be part of their daily existence. And, and it doesn't, it doesn't make you look cool to say that. Like, what I think when somebody says that is like, oh, so you're like a Gorian or something. Like, you plan to have like a 24 7, like, taking in hand relationship where you're, you're, you're having to put up with all of these crazy rituals for this woman that you found because you convinced yourself that that's what you needed to do to be a dominant male.So stressful.Simone: Yeah, I don't even I don't I don't think the vast majority of those men in those relationships any sort of like really heavy dominance relationship of this sort of like the weird nerdy sorts. Wanted to do it to be tough. I think they did it because a hot woman or a woman that was like. Of sufficiently competitive value to them really wanted it.They're all the weird nerdies throughMalcolm: it. Yeah, they were all the weird nerdies through it. I'm sorry, I look at Andrew Tate playing with his sword. He's a nerd. He's a hyper nerd.Simone: Yeah, he's a nerd, but I think he, he just loves, he just loves being dominant. And I think he does, [00:26:00] he, he is one of those few people.Who is maintaining frame in a relationship because that is what he lives by. It is, it is like truly his identity. He wakes up in frame. He goes to sleep in frame. Like he is frame again. Like heMalcolm: is aware. I think he believes the quality of his life is the, the, the effectiveness of which he's maintaining frame within relationships.Like that is what makes him a valuable person.Simone: I just, I, I, no, I think like hormonally he doesn't, he couldn't do it any other way. I don't think so. I disagree withMalcolm: that strong. Oh, no, no, no. I think, I think, I think self perception wise, he couldn't do it another way. He has built up this self perception.I think if I look at the way that he structured relationships and stuff like that, he actually shows a lot of creativity. Like he has like an interesting poly relationship where like his brother and him share a group of girls that live in like a house together. Like that is incredibly creative. Yeah.Yeah. Yeah.Simone: Do they share the women, or do they just have women at a shared compound, though? MyMalcolm: understanding is they share the same women.Simone: Oh, wow. But they're [00:27:00] brothers. Yeah, so that's kind of traditional and kind of not, huh?Malcolm: Yeah, no, I, I, and as you've, you've said tater tots before, I just gotta remember that.The house is filled with little tater tots. Yeah. Little taterSimone: baby. Cute little patterning feet. Yeah,Malcolm: no, I, I think it is hard to engage any of these And this is why I think they are all nerds, right? When you engage with a differential sexual subculture that's not just going along one of the traditional religious pathways you are going to you are going to differentiate from mainstream society.And through differentiating for mainstream society, you will justly earn the title of nerd, or weirdo, or something like that. A really interesting thing that we can bring up in this video, we bring it up in our book, it's probably one of our most, I think, spiciest points, but people don't really dig into this that much, is that these submission rituals that you see within these you know, BDSM communities and stuff like that, Very similar rituals sort of [00:28:00] co evolved in many religious communities.Hmm. Whether you're talking about, you know, ultraOrthodox Jewish Teflon, which, like, anyway it's where they wrap tightly leather around their arms and stuff like that.Simone: If you're not familiar with it as an outsider, you're like, whoa, is this a sex thing? This looks like a sex thing.Malcolm: Yeah. Another one would be like theCatholic Opus Dei, like whipping thing and stuff like that.And I don't think that any of this is because these cultures have been influenced by sexual cultures. I think it's that both represent extreme forms of submission and that extreme forms of submission, whether they be to masturbate a feeling instinct or to show supplication to... a genuine great power are going to have some degree of co evolution, but it just looks very odd as somebody who likes studying both communities and is separated from both communities to an extent.Simone: Yeah. So do we need women, [00:29:00] not for gestation, not for making us happy, but for providing tension?Malcolm: Well, okay. I'll, I'll worry to provide tension. I think to provide motivation to men, I think as a guy, I would have a much harder time motivating myself. If I wasn't, but why doSimone: men like women?Malcolm: I don't know.That's an interesting question. Like, why do I find it easier? Here's why. More immediate feedback. So I can work every day to try to make the world a better place or something like that, right? But I don't see immediate rewards for that. In fact, most of the world, you know, just hates me for it, right?Because anybody who's trying to change things is almost axiomatically undermining the existing power structure in the world, which is Not in the best interest of those who are at the top rungs of that power structure. So they are going to attack me as evil. And that is what I get every day. And so I have to come home and...I see your pride in me standing up for my moral values, and [00:30:00] I see you telling me, you know, how much you appreciate, how much work I'm putting into things, and everything like that, and that appreciation is I think something like at a biological level, I am cued into, and this is, I think why I say when guys are looking for a girl, the number one thing you're looking for is actually admiration,Simone: appreciation,Malcolm: gratitude, the ability to have genuine gratitude for the things you do for them.Do you notSimone: think that like Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan and they're like a circle of friends are not supportive of each other? I mean, they may express it using different mannerisms, but I think that they're extremely supportive of each other. IMalcolm: know, and I, and I mean this in a completely non derogatory way.I want to highlight this, but like, if I did something for my brother's approval, it would feel real gay to me. And I don't mean this in like a gay is bad sense. I just mean something about doing something to make somebody else like proud of me. If that person is a guy, I don't know, it [00:31:00] feels sexual in a way.Simone: But not with a women, a woman, which is the, the gender to which you personally are attracted. That doesn't make sense. Yeah. So,Malcolm: so, so what I guess I'm saying and what I guess I'm realizing here is something about the desire to make you proud of the person I'm being day to day is sexual in nature. Or is coded sexually in my brain, because when I think about doing that for a guy, it's like, that feels a little gay.In the same way you know, it reminds me of Pulp Fiction, when he's like, you know, would you give a one of your male friends a foot rub? The guy said, the foot rub's not sexual at all, and he's like, no, I wouldn't! And he's like, well then it is sexual, isn't it? Anyway, I love you to death, Simone, and thank you for the role you play.In immediate feedback and appreciating who I'm being in the world. And this is also why we say the most important thing when you marry someone. So I talk about the skill, the, the, the trait gratitude. But when you're marrying somebody, what you're actually asking is not who is that person, [00:32:00] but is who does that person want me to become?And are they able to help me become that person? Because if they wanted me, if Simone wanted me to become somebody who I didn't want to become, that would be terrible, right? Like she. I'm just married to her. I have to live as me and yet she transforms me so much. And I love some guys will be like, oh, that's such a beta thing to say that your wife influences you and that you care what she thinks of you.And it's like, you, you don't look tough saying that. Like, I understand in your little community, you might think that that's a status symbol, but in the real world, that Does it look like a status symbol? It makes it look like you don't have anyone who cares about you,which is not the flex you might think it is. Love it. Anyway, love you, Simone, and have a wonderful day.Simone: You too, husband. 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

We reveal the secrets behind how we are able to be so productive in our work, creative projects, parenting, health and more as a couple that collaborates closely together. We explain our philosophies and tactics around ambition, laziness, scheduling, office workflows, life hacking through our marriage partnership, outsourcing, and more.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] And we feel a lot of shame in where we are. Like we're able to enjoy the moment, but we're always like, we're this is not enough, could be doing better. This is not to be. And to have a mindset where you are constantly saying, how can I do better? A lot of people would say that that's toxic and it's bad for your mental health.Whereas we've actually found that it's great and it contributes significantly to our productiveness, because when people instead are saying, I am enough, it's just enough, that's always an excuse to do less andMalcolm Collins: not more. Well, I mean, I really genuinely think the world, I mean, more than that, I genuinely believe the world is sort of beginning to collapse around us.We are heading towards an incredibly dark time as a civilization and that. Most people with agency or the intelligence to fix this are not moving towards fixing it. There is a small group of people who are but what that basically means is that to a large extent, the future of our children and our descendants depends on our ability to set up any.Sort of viable future for our species like our personal ability to do that Well,Would you like to [00:01:00] know more?Simone Collins: One of the things that causes me the most anxiety and you see this all the time is when we drive by a giant office building and it's just packed with people. And I cannot for the life of me, imagine what all these people are doing and businesses are starting to wake up to this.And just firing huge swaths of their employees because they realize, Oh my gosh, we don't need them because they're not really doing anything. And we've met people too, who are like, yeah, I don't do anything in my job. LikeMalcolm Collins: to, to, to pull on what she's saying here, when she looks at like a giant office building, she's like.Almost any company in the world can be run by like a hundred people. So why is there a building with thousands of people? You know, honestly, I think most companies in the world can easily be run by a team of 30 to 40 people. With theSimone Collins: exception of like, imagine, you know, hospitals, those that, you know, that in person staff you need to have, you know.Oh no,Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no. So this is different. She's talking about office buildings. YouSimone Collins: know, this, this is different from like Amazon buildings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think the thing is that [00:02:00] a philosophy we have, a realization we've made is that the vast majority of people, and this is both from seeing how organizations are run, but also just observing our friends, our family, colleagues, et cetera, do extremely little.And then we know a couple, like a handful of people who are very similar to us who are just insanely productive. ButMalcolm Collins: let's go on this. So, so, and this is a, an episode that we are doing right before we're going to be in front of 4 million New Zealanders on, on their, one of their major TV shows. So we are...Exercising time management right now, because we had to set up all this equipment anyway. But, it was a topic that was spurred to us by an audience member. Who was like, how do you guys have time to like, watch anime and as another recent video did, like, read up on random fictional lore and, All of that, while also staying as educated as you are, and raising as many kids as you're raising, and running a [00:03:00] company, oh, and starting that school, oh, and you do a podcast daily.I am surprised by us not getting more compliments for that. Can even, I am a little impressed that we do 30 to 45 minutes every weekday, and we keep things Pretty fresh. I mean, there's other YouTubers out there who you know, they'll do the same topics again and again and again, which is fairly easy to do.Whereas I really try to make an effort to never tread the exact same ground twice, but to have a few like themes that we're on the skirts of. But how, how do we do this? Right? Like this is actually, I think an interesting question. There's a few ways that we do it, right. And I'm going to go through them.The first is just be incredibly intentional about how you are structuring your time. Here is an example. We have published five books. After we published the first book, all the other books we published in pairs of two, where we would publish two books at a time. A lot of people can say, [00:04:00] why would you do that?Why are you publishing two books at a time? And the answer is. It's because it saves a lot of time to do. It allows us to go out there and do the editing process for both books at the same time while also saving money because we're buying a bulk discount on editing, on cover design, on You know, ad campaigns on promotion tours and it, it allows us to, at every year, create two of what I consider really high quality books.Now, we stopped making books in favor of the podcast for a while. We might go back to books eventually, but that's... Another thing was the books that has been incredibly helpful is we could choose to do the vein thing, which is go, go through traditional publisher, but that.Adds a whole bunch of steps, which can add like literally a year to the publication timeline, you know, of finding a, uh, what's the word, a publicist thenSimone Collins: having the publicist. Going through the traditional bureaucratic process. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: [00:05:00] And, and people are like, why wouldn't you do that? Well, one, we can sell the books for cheaper if we don't do that.Two, we can have all the money go to our, our nonprofit foundation. And three, it's much, much faster if what we are aiming for is reach and not personal vanity. So, and that's how we top the Wall Street Journal bestseller list was one of our books this year. Well, the nonfiction bestseller list. A topic that Simone does not think is that important to it, but I actually think is, is very important.No, I agreeSimone Collins: it's important. I agree. But we were both very productive before this happened. Is,Malcolm Collins: marriage. Marriage dramatically, dramatically increases the amount of free time an individual.Simone Collins: If, if you work together. And here's the thing, I think many people, Even some of the most productive people in the entire world believe that relationships and marriage are actually a net drain on time.There are, there are very productive people who are like, Oh, you know, like it's hard for marriages cause then I have to take time to pay attention to them and take them out to dinner and, you know, you know, listen to them [00:06:00] talk. And that is. is I think what most people think about when they think about marriage and that is not what we're talking about.We do not do that at all in our marriage. There is no, Oh, we had to take time just for our relationship. Oh, Malcolm has to take time just to listen to me complain about things. That is no, we only talk about work. We only work together. So I think, you know, we can't define marriage as a traditional modern person's marriage, but More of the traditional concept of what marriage was to begin with, which is a partnership in which the couple works together toward a common aim,Malcolm Collins: right?Right, but I'd say, like, just simple things that you may not be fully realizing how much time it's taking up. Dating. Friendship. Yeah. Oh, somebody's like, what do you mean friendship? Yeah, you don't need friends when you're married. It's f*****g awesome. Like, we have friends where we need them, like utility friendships that help move our goals for civilization and our kids forwards.But in terms of, like, personal indulgence friends that I have just so I'm not lonely they become [00:07:00] dramatically less. Useful when you have a mentally stimulating partner that you're having. Like I know all of the most mentally stimulating conversations I'm gonna have over any course of time are almost always going to be with my own wife.Aw. You know? And that being the case, and I don't need to go out and source that anymore, which removes one of the primary reasons I would've historically socialized.Simone Collins: You're also really lucky in that your brother is one of the most intellectually incredible people we've ever met and like, you know, conversations with him are amazing too.Malcolm Collins: Well, but, but hold on, we're going to talk about my brother in just a second, because I think there's another thing we can take away from that. Oh, interesting. But also it takes away the need for sex with strangers. You don't need to, like, this is such a time sink if you're a young guy. Sourcing sex, all of that, it's this huge, huge waste of time.And you don't really realize how much time you've wasted on it until you've freedSimone Collins: yourself from it. Even if you're paying for it. So I don't even think like the MGTOW, I'll just pay for sex when I need it solution. Is that easy? Because you still have to source it. You have to vet it. You have to book the [00:08:00] time.You have to go and meet them somewhere. Ugh. When, if you'reMalcolm Collins: not doing that, I mean, think about all the ancillary things tied to those pursuits, like working out more than you actually need to, to achieve your goals, you know, stuff like that, like indolent waste of time that end up being utilized for this, but that then can end up or, or hobbies that you pursue.Like, I remember I wanted to learn music at one point because I thought it would get me laid. Oh, for chicks. How many people learn something like learn a skill just. To get laid right a lot like so it's so it's sex isn't just a time waste in and of itself Like once, you know, you no longer need to pursue that you get all of this time freed up But something I wanted to Pull on with my brother,Simone Collins: can I, can I add one point about marriage?That's really important is it it minimizes dependence on bureaucracy to a great extent and this could also work if you for example work with family but I think in by bureaucracy, I mean a lot of the office [00:09:00] theater and Meetings and coordination and communication that has to take place when you're working with a team of people are working within a larger like churning machine like when you work within a company, then everyone has to meet to get on the same page and everyone has to, you know, socialize ideas and, and because we work together and we are ideologically aligned, you don't have to invest time in making sure that I'm on board or making sure that I feel, You know, like we're aligned or, or, you know, socializing ideas with me or anything like that.It's just very, very efficient. Both of us are on the same page from the get go. And I can't emphasize how much time that saves as well. Burdened with new friends and tormented by the bounty hunter chains,,Malcolm Collins: so, speaking of my brother, because this is really interesting, I think people could see us and be like you guys are holistically unique in how productive you are able to be, but still consume as much pop media as you do.Oh, contraire. Oh, contraire, yeah. Simone, like, what is my brother's, like, number one character [00:10:00] trait? ,Simone Collins: he's like a dictionary for quotes and references and like constantly making them and I absolutely loveMalcolm Collins: it. Yeah, I just had lunch with him today and he added in a an int quote that I didn't even know.And he gave me this look. It was something like with the trees we're talking about. Not too tasty. Yeah, he's like, I don't read books because, you know, I read very slowly. So I only read when somebody has something to say. And then he related it to this end quote and I didn't know what he was talking about.And I got a mean scowl from him. How do you not know you're talking quotes, you know, off the top of your head? Which I loved, but what it showed to me and what it reminded me is that. There are people who are even more productive than us, potentially, and know even more random pop cultureSimone Collins: than us.And Malcolm is saying this because Malcolm's brother and his wife are a power couple that works together, that coordinates incredibly closely, and that achieves insane amounts of things. So we are not an isolated case. They actually met [00:11:00] before we did. They met in college. Yeah. Yeah. Well done, Malcolm.And I, yeah, I, I think it cannot be understated just how powerful this has been in both our success and their success.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and so now I'm going to give you the biggest secret of all of the secrets. Okay. Hmm. So first I'll tell you what it's definitely not. It's not scheduling. Scheduling is useful.So if you look at my wife's schedule, which I'm going to post on the screen here for one random week. ISimone Collins: need to approve that first.CauseMalcolm Collins: I need to approve it. But she literally schedules every single minute of her time. Every minute it is wild, but I would say I'm almost as efficient as you and I schedule almost nothing.Yeah,Simone Collins: so schedules are only helpful for those who want to have a schedule and they are not at all correlated with actual productivity. I know people who are very close to me who scheduled just as much as I do and they get nothing done. So. [00:12:00] There you go.Malcolm Collins: So, let's talk about the actual key to all of this.And it is that you will get done the work that you have set out for yourself. It is just that simple.Simone Collins: Yes, yes.Malcolm Collins: If you take on a lot of work and you believe you can do it, So long as you are gradually increasing the amount of work that you're taking on you will find a way to completeSimone Collins: it all right. And this was inspired to a great extent by the research that found that when you give people a certain number of weeks, get 2 weeks or 12 weeks for a discrete task.People will take exactly the number of weeks allotted. So based on that, our theory was, okay, then we're going to keep taking things on and keep fitting stuff in until literally we can no longer continue to complete things. Because once we've reached that level that we know we're actually at capacity.Whenever IMalcolm Collins: have a free morning, like if I ever have an actual free morning. I then say, okay, time to start a new major project. Yeah. And you're always [00:13:00] going to get free mornings. You see, this is the key thing with any project, whether it's building out the school or the, these podcast recordings or something like that.You know, there's always periods of waits. There was always periods of, okay, I have given this task to somebody else and I'm waiting for it to come back to me. And these periods are when you get the time to begin to overlap these projects with each other. To get an enormous amount of productivity out of the way.And here I, I, I will give the two, one of the biggest productivity gains you're going to likely have in terms of its intention. And one of the biggest productivity losses you're likely going to have the biggest, or one of the biggest productivity gains an individual can have, and one of the biggest virtues an individual can have in terms of productivity is laziness.If you are, I call it ambitious laziness.Simone Collins: And this is not how I work, by the way. This is just one, one way to insane productivity.Malcolm Collins: Yes. It's my strategy for insaneSimone Collins: productivity. Which we've seen this in other employees in a way that's [00:14:00] extremely impressive.Malcolm Collins: So I always look for, well, you can describe it in me.You probably can describe it better than ISimone Collins: can. Well, it's I, when I describe this in people, I use the virtue coined by the church of the subgenius referred to as a slackwhich basically means like achieving a lot with, without doing pretty much anything. So like the more slack you have, the more you're getting done without any effort.And the, the key to this that, that I've observed as a not lazy person to a fault. Is that lazy people who are also very clever will find ways to make all of their action more efficient and more efficacious to avoid more work. So, for example, we hired 1 person who was. Who, who preferred to be lazy in our business and this actually caused some trouble because he would get all his work done so quickly and we gave him more work than anyone else in our business.I'm not kidding you. Then at the end of the day, he'd come up to our office and he'd be like, Hey, can I play video games for the rest of the day? And we'd be like, yeah, sure. [00:15:00] And then like, you know, other people in the office would come to us and be like, Hey, so and so's playing video games. That's not okay.And we're like, actually, he just completed like five times as much work as you did. So he's totally fine in doing that and get back to work. And that's the, that's the thing is he found ways to automate his work. He found ways to scale his work. He found ways to, every time we gave him more, he found ways to eliminate it and get more freeMalcolm Collins: time, give him some big amount of work and then he'd build a program to automate it.Or you give me some amount of work and I outsource it on Upwork, you know, I'm like, f**k it, I can outsource this, you know, I know how much, and, and, and. There's always a path to do this typically, but it requires a level of self agency combined with this laziness. A. I don't want to do this, and I believe I can figure out how to get something to do this for me for an extremely low cost.Whether it's somebody in a developing country or a, a, a, program that I created. And so this is, this is this form of, of work that allows for [00:16:00] incredible productivity. Now with my wife, she does a completely different form of work that leads to enormous productivity. This form of work is to just literally never take breaks.Simone Collins: Yeah. Just brute force everything. So,Malcolm Collins: so when I say never take breaks, If you are somebody like my wife, this may seem unremarkable, but she is able to literally work from, you know, when she starts working, like 9am until the end of theSimone Collins: day. Come on,Malcolm Collins: 5. you wake up at 5. 30am, yeah, and then we take the break to do the kids.So 5. 30am to 5. 30pm, right? So that's when she's working between. And literally... Not take a single self indulgent break. Not stop to browse the internet. Not stop to watch something as a little reward to herself. I cannot do that. And most people I know cannot do that. Not easily. I mean, I'm sure I could if I really pushed myself to, but it's just...My sin, right? I [00:17:00] don'tSimone Collins: do that. It's just how you work. And I work differently. And that's theMalcolm Collins: best. But it allows for enormous brute force productivity. But what's really interesting is the types of jobs that most of us are good at have very little overlap because of these two stylesSimone Collins: of work. Yeah. He's good at clever work and I'm good at dumb work.Which is very convenient because every, every business, every individual has to do a mixture of dumb and clever work. But because we work together as a couple, he does all the clever work and I do all the dumb work and we both get it all done.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway hold on. I, I, I where was I going?Oh, yes. But then there's another thing that can really eat at a person's, oh, I was saying the positive and the negative thing. So the positive thing is laziness. The negative thing is socialization. Friendliness. Nothing destroys our work schedule like an event.Simone Collins: Ugh, or yeah, travel or events, yeah.Malcolm Collins: You know, us having to do a party, us having to do a anything like that really slows us [00:18:00] down.The extent to which you are losing productive hours through interaction with other humans almost cannot beSimone Collins: overstated. Because it's not just the the event itself. It's getting there. It's getting back. It's coordinating with everyone. It's the, it's the choices. It's the follow up. It's yeah, there's so much that goes intoit.Malcolm Collins: Well, and it's you getting fried. So you know, if you go out to a party one night. At least if you're like us, you're likely to be unproductive the next day. And one of the ways that we are able to be as productive as we are able to be is because we really, really focus on understanding our bodies and our brains, and we build work schedules that work for them.Simone Collins: For example, you wake up every morning at 2. 30 a. m. or 2 a. m., and then you work until maybe 5 or 6 a. m., take a very short nap before we get our kids up, and then, you know, take your second work session. And that enables you to spend a huge chunk of your working day working during a time when nobody. In our general work time [00:19:00] zone is going to be bothering you and it's absolutely brilliant, but most people don't work that way, even though they probably work really well that way, because they just wouldn't ever think to wake upMalcolm Collins: at 2am and start working.No and, but I know I work better at that time. And so I work my schedule around working at that time,Simone Collins: but I work from a treadmill desk because I cannot. I cannot focus if I'm sitting down, like I'm having an anxiety attack by sitting down every time we do this podcast.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, it's like, if I go out to a, well, and this is an important thing with my wife, so like staying fit and working, she literally works from a treadmill desk or from a, an elliptical desk, which is what she used to work at.And so how many hours a day would you say you're working out on average?Simone Collins: Give anMalcolm Collins: average. Five hours. So about five hours a day, and that is not an exaggeration at all. So, not only is she working, but she is also exercising about five hours a day, and this is how you can overlap things.So when people say, how do you watch so much, like, anime and stuff like that, It is because [00:20:00] I have that on in the background while I am doing productive things that are mindless, like spreadsheet tasks, like some sorts of email tasks. That is how I, I watch so much is because I overlap that and I also always overlap on my entertainment.So I never play a video game without a show on in the background. I have a few hours a day that I set aside for pure recreation every day. YouSimone Collins: like make it maximum recreation, maximum recreation. I am drinking something every orifice.Malcolm Collins: Oh, and I have my kids typically playing with me during thoseSimone Collins: climbing all over you too.It's like everything. It's everything at once. But I really, I really think that there's something to be said for that. One of the reasons indeed why we are so productive is because we double things up all the time. For example, every business trip is a, Is another honeymoon, you know, like every, every, you know, family time is, is a billion other things.Like whenever I'm with the kids, I'm constantly cleaning. So the house is getting cleaner and I'm spending time with the kids and the kids are learning really [00:21:00] valuable skills about house cleaning and discipline. And you know, when I'm, when I'm working, I'm also exercising and, and most people seem to just set aside very separate times for all that.Like this is when I'm doing my relationship and romantic time. This is what I'm doing my kid time. This is what I'm doing my exercise time. And they like go to a gym, I think another really big portion of our life. And this is a product of privilege for sure. Not everyone is able to do this, but the fact that we do not commute and we also travel very little is a really, really big deal.In that we. We, we don't have to commute to an office. We thankfully don't have to travel a lot for ourMalcolm Collins: kids now, which is something we're trying to wipe off our, basicallySimone Collins: like anything that has us traveling, like wasting time in a car, which also, I mean, every time you get in a car, you are putting your life at risk.You know, like everyone gets worried about airplanes and other nonsense when like the top thing that they're doing every day that could kill them is getting in a car. And we also, even with grocery stop shopping. We, we go to a big box grocery store, we buy giant amounts of things and then we don't need to go that frequently toMalcolm Collins: a grocery store to eat.[00:22:00] Well, rummaging is also a major problem for people. And this is something that I talk about where it's when somebody is doing something, the classic rummaging behavior I would say is once we asked my dad, like, what are you doing right now? And he goes,I'm unpacking and repacking the bags.Malcolm Collins: get the bags a little bit more tight.This is just completely indolent activities. Yeah. And it is so easySimone Collins: to lose. People. Yeah. You can spend an entire day rummaging where you're just like shuffling things around or, you know, it takes you like three hours to get showered and drink your coffee. Like, and we know there are plenty of people in our lives who like spend hours doing stuff that should only take you five to 10 minutes.So there, I think that's the really interesting thing is, you know, people like to virtue signal about being really busy, especially in the United States. Like I'm so stressed. I'm so busy. Oh my gosh, there's so much going on. You can be. Busy to the nines and stressed to the nines and get absolutely nothing meaningful done.And I really hate when [00:23:00] people try to virtue signal their stress or busyness, because that just to me signals poor time management to me. That's that's someone saying I'm incompetent. And I'm virtue signaling. And those are two things that I just absolutely can't stand. And this isMalcolm Collins: something with, with office life, right?When I used to work in an office, those are the least productive years of my life. Cause I could get almost nothing done. I really just sat in the office and listened, listened to lectures on and then did all your work at home, right? Yeah. I can't work when I feel like there's somebody like looking over my back, like interrupting you or interrupting me.It feels like I'm in like a. threatening environment, right? You know, and I imagine, and this is where I coined the term office theater, which is actually a term that we made up that is now taught at Stanford business school which is fantastic which basically is this whole category of things that people do to look like they're working that don't actually produce any productivity but that are important to some.fragile minded managers, you go and some individuals they [00:24:00] go and they're like, well, if I'm doing these things, if I'm showing up early, if I'm staying late, if I'm looking busy all day, then I am working and I should be promoted.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like Japanese culture, I think is the epitome of office theater. And that like, you know, you have to go out drinking, you have to leave after your boss, you have to arrive before your boss, all these sorts of crazy things that are really just for like.Virtue signaling status hierarchies, but we really have gotten the, so a couple of things, one when we first acquired our business, our investors were really insistent about all this weird office theater stuff. Like, you need to have these offices and do this stuff with the offices and all this stuff in person.Finally, the pandemic comes. We, we drop our offices immediately because we're not idiots and productivity skyrockets. And that was finally like that, that it took a literal pandemic, the world was falling apart for us to have a chance to even make a pitch to our investors that offices are not an efficient thing from a money standpoint or from a human capital standpoint.And the, we, we also point out that like basically. Remote work and, and self [00:25:00] directed work only works for a players. If you're a BRC player, like, you know, you're, you're not going to have really good employees. So I understand if you have really mediocre employees, you kind of need to crack a whip, but why hire mediocre employees when you not have AI?Well, and there'sMalcolm Collins: other types of systems you can use to oversee really employees, like redundancy and emails, like one of every 10 emails gets read by another employee and they get punished for this really employees. It's about the oversight. It's not about being in an office and there are cheaper ways to enact oversight than an office itself.Yeah.Simone Collins: However, I mean, as, as some studies have shown when you do have sort of a controlled natural trial of people working from home versus people working in the office at the same business. Those who are in the office advance more and that's because they're spending, well, really wasting more time and company money schmoozing.Well, officeMalcolm Collins: theater works, right? It works in moving you up within a company, but it is not useful to the company itself. Exactly. And, you know, hopefully we can get better through AI and stuff like that is recognizing individuals that are rising through the ranks through office theater versus [00:26:00] individuals who are productive and have high leadership capacity, which I think has very little overlap.You know, these are usually the entrepreneurial individuals who are looking to, you know, leave the company and, and, and do whatever, right. It's. A lot of but this, this talk has been fantastic and as a very good use of time, we're going to wrap up a little early here, unless you had any final thoughts.Simone Collins: Let's see any, any final tactical tips that you have, just like rapid fire. Well, IMalcolm Collins: mean, focus on doing different types of work at different stages of your life. When you are young, you are going to be at a stage of your life where you're doing a lot of rote work, like office work, manual labor, stuff like that.Use that time to listen to lectures upon lectures upon lectures. Yes. On like Wonderium or something like that. That is when I did that. Another thing is, while there are many things that I think it's worth it to outsource, the one thing that I think a man should never really outsource is manual labor around the house.I think performing a certain amount of manual labor every week whether it's, you know, whatever, whatever it is, [00:27:00] mowing the lawn, cutting, gardening, stuff like this I think is really important just for sort of mental health.Simone Collins: Especially if you also, if you have kids, your kids need to see that their parents do that because otherwise they're going to be like, that's a task for other people.And they're not going to like, they're going to see themselves as above it, which isMalcolm Collins: really toxic. Yeah, we believe we have a belief in terms of fixing things in our house where we hire somebody to fix something once, but I have watched them fix it. So I understand how they fix it so that I can fix it again.And, and that has saved us so much money. Just that policy of data has to sit and watch whoever the repairman is and have them explain to me how they fix it. Because usually with this stuff, it's not that hard, and then you learn the skill, and then you move forward. Anyway, love you to death Simone.I love you. You were gonna say something, what were they?Simone Collins: Well, I would say it's, it's also really like people say that it's really toxic, that it's, you're just enough or like you should be satisfied with where you are. And I think that one thing that does [00:28:00] make us really productive is we are deeply uncomfortable with where we are and that we always feel like we're behind.And we feel a lot of shame in where we are. Like we're able to enjoy the moment, but we're always like, we're this is not enough, could be doing better. This is not to be. And to have a mindset where you are constantly saying, how can I do better? A lot of people would say that that's toxic and it's bad for your mental health.Whereas we've actually found that it's great and it contributes significantly to our productiveness, because when people instead are saying, I am enough, it's just enough, that's always an excuse to do less andMalcolm Collins: not more. Well, I mean, I really genuinely think the world, I mean, more than that, I genuinely believe the world is sort of beginning to collapse around us.We are heading towards an incredibly dark time as a civilization and that. Most people with agency or the intelligence to fix this are not moving towards fixing it. There is a small group of people who are but what that basically means is that to a large extent, the future of our children and our descendants depends on our ability to set up any.Sort of [00:29:00] viable future for our species like our personal ability to do that Well,Simone Collins: and the future depends on those for whom the world is not good enough and for whom the like their identities themselves They're not good enough and you know, if you can choose to not matter and that's fine We're not asking everyone to matter But we just believe that the future is going to be built by those who are dissatisfied and who choose to change the world as a resultMalcolm Collins: All right.This has been fantastic. We got to hop on that New Zealand interview. Love you, gorgeous.Love you too. 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

We discuss statistics showing the rapid decline in belief in God among Gen Z, and how conservative Gen Z splits into different ideological camps. We analyze why historic techniques for passing down traditions intergenerationally are failing, how Gen Z hides changes from parents, and why the parents' generation isn't transmitting culture properly to their kids.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] when we're looking at you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about how much culture has changed recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly Going from the boomers, you know, up to modern generations, right?It is not. It is, it is an asymmetric change. It's logarithmic. It is happening incredibly quickly right now. What has happened in this last 20 years is not comparable to what was happening in our own childhood. Mm hmm. Culturally speaking. these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z is really different from their parents generation.And it means that the parents are not passing culture intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and also like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that, which is, Not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct, [00:01:00] but also, if the parents knew that their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they can do?Malcolm Collins: a lot of the techniques. That people have historically used to pass down these traditions intergenerationally are just not working very well.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Task item regards to that? I already did. Yeah. And in addition to that, could you um, send yourself a to do item about emailing her the, I already sent her theSimone Collins: email. Look at how on top of things they are.Malcolm Collins: No, I'm sorry, Simone. I'm sorry. I don't, you are amazing. This is a great way to start so people see how it is.When I ask you to do things, you just camera, well, like you were in theSimone Collins: middle before that we were rudely interrupted by a call. You were telling me how Chavez, Castro, and Che were doing. With, you know, like AOC and Bernie. Like, are they okay?Malcolm Collins: They looked terrified when I first met them. So, you are chickens after communists.And they seemed fine. They seemed fine. They were making they were complaining a lot. They were, and in a separate part of the cage. So they [00:02:00] were talking.Simone Collins: Okay. So they're, they're okay. Were they, were they being attacked byMalcolm Collins: AOC I don't know. They were in a different part,Simone Collins: you know. Okay. So they're, they're like, they're, they're, they're clustering together.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're not like dead or anything. Okay. I just, I don't know. Like, I'm,Simone Collins: I'm worried. I don't want them to be like stressed out or anything. And like, they're the friendliest ones. SoMalcolm Collins: I don't know. You are the sweetest chicken mom which I appreciate because we're getting lots of great eggs which means egg everything these days.So, you, right before this, you know, being ever diligent sent me some statistics you thought I would find interesting. Yeah! And they were so shocking, I then did a sanity test on them after you sent them to me, just to be like, come on, this can't be... So first you know, you're going to see the statistics on the screen if you're watching on YouTube.What it shows is the share of Americans This is Americans, right? I think so. Who believe in [00:03:00] God without doubt. And if you look at the silent generation, it's around 70 percent slight decline over time. You look at boomers, it's like 65 percent slight decline over time. You look at gen X actually goes up over time from like just under 60 percent to almost around where boomers are now 65 percent then you get to millennials and it's like things drop off a cliff in the early days like 1998 they were only around 55 percent and now like well 2018 where this recording stops they're all the way down to like what Around 45 percent then Gen Z when they start recording, they're, they're dropping even faster.They go from like 50 percent to now, you know, I don't know, 33%. It's just plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. And so then I looked and I was like, okay, what are religious people saying about this? Right? Like did, do, do sources that are looking into this religiously. So there was this article over [00:04:00] half of Gen Z.teens feel motivated to learn more about Jesus. Now you can tell this was written from a conservative perspective. So this data is not going to be skewed, whatever, right? So they show among US young adults only 17 percent are committed Christians. And 52 percent aren't Christian at all anymore. And this is a US young adults.anD so this is really meaningful to me for a number of reasons. The biggest is, I think that there's this general perception that the rise in secularity, when we're looking at you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about how much culture has changed recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly Going from the boomers, you know, up to modern generations, right?It is not. It is, it is an asymmetric change. It's logarithmic. It is happening incredibly quickly right [00:05:00] now. What has happened in this last 20 years is not comparable to what was happening in our own childhood. Mm hmm. Culturally speaking. Things have exploded at a rate, like, this is why I just so confidently can make a bet.I often mention this, my mom, before she passed, she's like, you know, you're really publicly tying yourself to this fertility rate thing. Like, what is this, it's just a fad, what if fertility rates shoot back up in a couple years, you know? You're gonna look really stupid, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. I am confident from what I am seeing in the data that it is going to get infinitely worse in the near future because everything correlated with fertility is collapsing.And one of those things is religiosity, right? And That has fundamentally transformed for people of this generation. The next thing that I would note, and this is something that so if, you know, Simone and I, we are hip with the Gen Z conservatives, right?[00:06:00] Like that is the, the market that we probably speak to the most in terms of the nature of our message and in terms of who we're interacting with because of our school system, because of who we know, but we also know a lot of really conservative families, and I can't mention, like, who they are because I don't want to give these kids away because these kids feel honest being open with us.So, a lot of these Gen Z kids, they still... Identify as very conservative. If they're culturally,Simone Collins: what would we say? They, they, they appear to be conservative and religious, like on the surface.Malcolm Collins: Right. But, many of them, from very religious families, are no longer religious. They just hide it from their parents because they don't want to hurt their parents feelings, and they still, like, broadly believe in religious value systems, because, like, they really don't, I agree, was, like, the woke.not jobs, right? But they are just not religious anymore. And I think that this creates a big problem when you look at the [00:07:00] statistics, which is a misperception among older conservative millennials who are having kids right now or younger conservative gen X. Thinks that this next generation is just like them.They're like, well, my kids haven't told me they don't believe in God anymore. Well, andSimone Collins: they still go to church even, you know, probably after, you know, they go to school and they probably say things, you know, like, you know, God willing or all like, you know, they, they'll, they'll do all the, they'll present religious and so that's also really misleading.Like that. I think a lot of secular people, like openly atheist people and openly nihilistic people will go out to dinner with, or hang out with or see people who like, yeah. code religious, but yeah, they don't realize that those people actuallyMalcolm Collins: just don't believe. Yeah. So I'd say that the, when I talk to Gen Z conservatives, they really seem to fall into three camps in terms of like ideological identity.One camp is the aesthetic conservatives. We've talked about them in other videos. Go, [00:08:00] these are the individuals who fall for the aesthetic of conservative more than have an actual like philosophical structure behind their beliefs.This is the crowd that Andrew Tate is talking to. It is mostly like a manosphere diaspora. They are primarily motivated. by how unfair society has become to them and how weak they see society becoming. These are the two things they care about. And this is the largest faction, I think, of the, the Gen Z conservatives right now, that like, like the actually like active ones.The other faction is like our faction. If you want to get an idea of what they think, just watch this podcast. Like it's, it's, it's really like the type of stuff we talk about is really just indicative of what these guys think. Then, the final faction is, I call them like, religious cosplayers, I guess I'd say.Ew. They are not religious in the way that their parents were religious. So by that what I mean is... Their parents are religious because they were upholding the traditions of their ancestors. These individuals are [00:09:00] often upholding religion as a shield against wokeism and a deteriorating society. And they lean more strongly into religious culture than even their parents did.So these areSimone Collins: the, the, the kids who maybe even were raised in secular households, but then are like, I'm going to raise my kid. Jewish or Muslim or Christian, and we're going to go to church, but at the same time, they don't really believe it. Like my parents, for example, they had this moment where they decided to become born again Buddhists.And they were like, okay, we're going to send you to Dharma school. And they like, they meant to do it, but then they never really followed through with it. Cause they actually didn't really believe, I think like they weren't really that into it. Is that what you'reMalcolm Collins: talking about? Well, not exactly. I think a lot of these people really do believe it, but for their parents generation, for the gen X religious generation religion was primarily about the belief, the belief guided all other actions tied to the [00:10:00] religion.For these individuals, it's 50 percent belief. 50 percent structure and aesthetics. So the classic example of somebody like this is the person who maybe grew up in a conservative Protestant household and then becomes like a trad calf because they think like Catholicism is a more conservative, more structured iteration.They're often converting to the more structured iteration of religions. So they're much more likely to become. Orthodox Christians. So by that what I mean, I don't mean general Orthodox. I'm talking like Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, et cetera, or trad castes or traditional Orthodox Jews. Yeah. Those are the three groups where I see this represented in the most.I haven't seen that many Protestants who stayed Protestants doing this. And I think the reason is, is because the Protestant faith has less. Ritual and structure to it. And the point that I'm making here is that for many of these individuals, the ritual in structure is 50 percent of the point. Whereas for [00:11:00] the previous generation, it was God was a hundred percent of the point and everything else was downstream from that.That makes sense. And of course they wouldn't say that it's 50 percent of the point, but what I mean when I say this is when I look at the fervency with which they adhere to the ritual and in which they signal the ritual, they seem, if I'm going to word it in a way, almost they remind me more of goths from my childhood than religious kids from my childhood.Oh wow.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying.Malcolm Collins: You know, where. The religious people didn't need to constantly be signaling that they were religious all the time. They were constantly trying to convert me. Whereas the goths needed to constantly be signaling how gothy theySimone Collins: were. Yeah, but they weren't necessarily, yeah, they weren't trying to convert you.And also they were kind of in it to be... Just to not be a normie. Right. Like I feel like half people, yeah. Half the people who are goths or whatever new subculture there is of the day, they're in it to just not be like mainstream society. And that is what but every oneMalcolm Collins: of these Yeah, [00:12:00] yeah, yeah. Continue, sorry.Simone Collins: Well, that's what I see with a lot of new converts or people who are going more hard line from a softer religion.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so these, these religious institutions are doing well and I wanna. point out that I don't mean this disparagingly at all. I actually think that all of the rituals and framing and weird dress codes and everything like that, weird, where weird is defined from differentiating from mainstream society.Simone Collins: So more hard religious, more hard religious.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think it's all useful in maintaining their culture and passing their culture down intergenerationally. I think that these young people recognize something about religion. That their parents had forgotten because their parents didn't have as strong an enemy constantly battering at their doors.And so they had forgotten all of the purposes of all of the defensive structures and fortifications that had been built up over the year. They're like, Oh yeah, that pile of old guns, we don't need those anymore. That pile, you know, this old wall. Well, I mean, I understand it was a castle wall, but nobody ever attacks this castle anymore.So let's tear it down to put a [00:13:00] road there. You know, and now these, this younger generation is like, build it all back up, you know, restore the guns, everything like that. Right. So, Very interesting, right? Yeah. Why this is interesting to me is every one of these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z is really different from their parents generation.And it means that the parents are not passing culture intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and also like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that, which is, Not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct, but also, if the parents knew that their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they can do?Because I don't think there is. I just think that they're screwed.Malcolm Collins: No, and this is an interesting thing, because parents can be like, well, why don't the kids tell me when they're rebelling in this way, right? Right. And a very interesting thing about Gen Z, and it's something that I will constantly say, [00:14:00] is the woke iteration of Gen Z.has just completely lost their minds. They're basically in this big society wide cult. But when I talk to non woke Gen Z, like, like mentally healthy Gen Z, they are dramatically more emotionally mature and mentally healthy than the mentally healthy, like, average person of our generation.Simone Collins: Yeah, that's fair.Well, and I would say, I mean, to go back to sort of What I always originally thought woke was all about like sort of just being they seem more woke than woke people and that they're like genuinely aware of what's going on with society, how things are playing out the dynamics at play, how the cards are stacked against them, what their benefits are, etc.Like, they seem to be extremely. What's the word? Savvy. Shrewd. I, I mean, I admireMalcolm Collins: it. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. They're savvy and shrewd and they, and they get a lot less of the pleasure that previous generations did from sticking it to their parents. AndSimone Collins: also they're not delusional. Yeah. Like they're, I think they're just like, well,Malcolm Collins: that's, they see their parents as [00:15:00] people.And this is one of the things that we often advocate for the most, which is really interesting. So among our Gen Z friends or, or people who were mentoring and stuff like that, we're always like, Advocating to, I know you're nice to your parents, but seriously, all of these beefs you think you have with them, you really don't have with them.I've heard all of the terrible things you think you suffered in your childhood, they're really not that bad. It seems like they were just trying to do what was best for you. And many of them since have reached back out to us, and they're like, I'm really glad you encouraged me to try to... Patch things up with my parents because I, I now that I've like left the house, typically they're only able to patch things up after they leave the house.Like I have a great relationship with them and I recognize that they actually were trying to do what was best for me. But anyway, so all of this is really interesting because a lot of the techniques. That people have historically used to pass down these traditions intergenerationally are just not working very well.And you as an individual don't have the same mechanisms that you would have had historically to know if they're working very well. So what do I [00:16:00] mean by that? Right? Soif you're looking at like transference of, let's say, Christian values intergenerationally I know some conservatives, I tell them this and they're like, Oh, my kids know not to. To, you know, do that or they'll be, you know, punished in some way, right? Mm hmm. And it's like, well, what you're telling me is if they didn't still believe, they wouldn't tell you, right?Because you just told me you were going to punish them. And, and that's a very difficult way in this world today. Historically, that worked. You could punish people into following a faith when they had nowhere else to turn. The problem is, is that in our current society, it's very easy to leave your parents.Or leave your parents tradition once you're of age. And this, I am going to force them with punishment. This is what happened, I think, with Ayla, for example, right? Her father, Calvinist tradition, you know, similar to ours tried to get her to follow the tradition with punishment. And that just backfired.spectacularly like an atomic bomb in his face. And I think [00:17:00] it's a very, very bad strategy in today's environment. Yeah. Second strategy I hear people saying is or, or that we would have seen historically is you would have had the community sort of monitor to know when they were falling from their faith.Right. So a really important thing about intergenerational faith transfer in a historic context is that you as a parent would get feedback if your kid didn't believe your faith, right? Like, even me I mean, I was clear from a young age that I did not believe in the traditional Christian religion and my parents no, I, I do consider myself a Christian, but like a weird Christian.And most of that has been built up since then. When I was in middle school and high school, I was one of those hard Atheist type people you know, caught up in like the new Atheist movement. It's the new way. I always thought they were kind of, You know, pussy ish. I didn't like them. But, uh, I, with the atheist movement more generally, [00:18:00] right?And then the various offshoots, like the sub genius and stuff like that. Those are the ones who I thought were cool. But, it was known like this was something that was reported. to my parents. Now, my parents were not Christian either. You know, they had left the Christian faith a long time ago, but it got all the way back to my grandparents who were still of the, the, the Christian group within my family.Right. Like, so if you're in Texas or something like this in middle school, this is stuff that would have been reported to your family. That is not happening anymore. No. And well, because there's not these networks of people trying to ensure cultural fidelity, which exists naturally. I mean, actually, they do exist now.They're just on the woke side.Simone Collins: Right, yeah, I was gonna say, if anything, teachers are helping it along these days, not...Malcolm Collins: Well, they, I mean, they would report to the family of some of the kids said something non woke. They'd say, don't you know that little Jimmy is not of the dominant cultural group. He said something non woke.He should be punished for this. I hope he's punished at home and not just at school. He said, blah, blah, blah. And this [00:19:00] is not an approved fact. So, You know, you are really working with a completely different, not an incrementally different, not a linearly different world than, than existed when you were growing up.It is completely, structurally different. And if you try to go into it with you know, slightly more padding around you or something like that, you are going to be, or slightly more padding around the next generation, they're gonna be fucked. You know, this requires really intentional structuring and rebuilding, and there's different ways you can do that.I mean, this is why we wrote the Pragmatist's Guide to Crafting Religion, this is why we recorded the audiobook for it, everything like that. We did all of this, and just, you know, if anybody wants it, we sell it for like 99 cents or 2 dollars or something, like, all of the money goes to charity. Like, and the charity goes to trying to create a school system to compete with a public school system, which I think most of the people who would want the book would find compelling.But anyway we wrote the [00:20:00] book to try to give you the scaffolding to augment these historic traditions to be more resistant to, to, you know, go out there with your cyborg instead of your, you know, slightly beefy guy to fight this, this horde of, of Xeno scum. That's coming to erase us we have, um, what else is I going to say on this topic of the other strategy is the one that we use.And this is something that you know, people ask, why do you have such a weird structure? Like, why don't you just go back to the historic traditions of your family? Right? And we're like, those historic traditions couldn't even hold for our parents generation. You know, we come from the Calvinist cultural line, which is basically extinct in the United States today.If we're going back to our ancestors, I can say, it didn't work. It didn't work. It, like, just didn't, like, like, objectively didn't work. And then they say, well, why don't you convert [00:21:00] to one of the other Christian traditions that you see as broadly aligned with yours? And the answer is, is... I, the ones that are most broadly aligned with ours are the ones that have collapsed the most.You know, you're looking at stuff like evangelical Protestants and stuff like that, right? The Calvary church is, is, is my favorite. Like if I went back, that's the iteration of, of Protestantism that I really like. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's not doing well. It's not healthy, you know, demographically if, if we're saying.And so, no, I'm not going to go back to a beast that I see as sick. If I can try to do something different for my kids. And so that's why we are trying to restructure things in the spirit of our ancestral traditions.Simone Collins: But in the context of modernity.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and in a way that it cannot be with any sort of modern science be disproved.Like the idea that a god is [00:22:00] something that will come to exist in the future, like a hundred thousand years from now, a million years from now. Our descendants, if they're still alive, would they be more like humans or more like gods? This is what we tell our kids and we saywho's to say they're going to relate to time the same way you do and they're more likely to they might be rewarding you and watching over you for when you do things that increase a prosperous future for humanity. We've done many other videos on this.The one on demons that we've released recently is the one I'd suggest because we were trying to create demons for our kids, which I really like. You got to do that. But that's why we take that path. And that's why, and people are like, yeah, but that path is likely to fail. And again, you look at Puritan spotting, you look at the Calvinist tradition.Yeah, but constantly reinventing our traditions is something that Calvinists were known for historically doing. So it's just a, a nature of our branch of the, the, the hardest Calvinist historically, like hardest cultural Calvinists were the ones who constantly tried to reinvent their tradition because that was the most Calvinist thing to do.The ones who practiced the [00:23:00] culture in different ways. were the ones who spun out the fastest whereas the ones who went into it was like this weird sciency, like going through their Bible and crossing out everything that they didn't think aligned was modern scientific data. You know, we've been doing that since the founding of the country.Right. But so I want to hear your thoughts.Simone Collins: Well, one question I actually wanted to ask you, because I'm not sure how important this is, but I think it, it could be, how much do you think actual belief in God matters here? Like, if someone has a really strong culture, but they were going to answer this survey saying, no, I don't believe in God, but they also happen to have a really long, strong culture, would they be mentally resilient, likely to inherit the future holding an intergenerationally durable culture, or do you believe that to be intergenerationally durable and strong and to impart a competitive advantage, you actually have to have some kind of metaphysical faith that, that nihilists [00:24:00] and atheists theoretically don't have.Malcolm Collins: I think the rituals alone can achieve this.Simone Collins: So even if, if zero belief in God or a higher power or anything like that, cause we like, despite being like technically secular or we say we're secular, we have a metaphysical reality. We have gods, we have, we, we practice descendant worship. Like we fall in the God category.And I think it does play a role. in our faith.Malcolm Collins: So, so here's what I'd say because we have friends who fall into this category and you know the people I'm talking about. The ones who we know who fall into this category are what we call secular ultra Orthodox Jews. And by that what I mean is they are ultra Orthodox Jews in the way they dress, in the things that they practice, in the number of kids they're having.But they do not believe in God. And we're like, why, why all of this other stuff if you don't believe in God? And what's really funny is that the way I put it is. They believe in religion, they don't believe in God. They [00:25:00] believe that all of these religious things help their mental health, their kids, their family.They believe in an intergenerationally family culture and tradition. They just don't believe in God. They're just like, well, I don't believe the metaphysical part, but I believe in all of the structure. And you can say, well, does this work? Well, they have tons of kids, uh, all the ones we know who are doing this.In fact, they have more kids than most of the actual ultra Orthodox Jews I know. Fair. Yeah. And I think it's because they're being so intentional about it all. So you think, yeah,Simone Collins: it's the intentionality, it's the structure and it's the discipline. It's not so much whether or not there is. Faith. So faith is not the core of this.The discipline and dedicationMalcolm Collins: is. Well, another thing, it's pride in who you are and what you are passing down to your children. So we take a lot of pride and they take a lot of pride. The reason they stay with their traditions instead of shedding them, even though they have [00:26:00] lost the core belief is that they believe and have pride that those traditions matter, that they're good for the world, that they, that they're glad to have them.And that alone, I think does a lot to pass things onto a kid. When I am telling my kid, And this is why I think this new iteration of Christian that I talked about earlier here is going to do so well in the future. If I'm telling my kid, well, you need to follow all of these rules because it's what God said to do.Right? That's, that's not, that's, that apparently didn't work. Like, that's the kids who are falling out of the tradition, right? Yeah. The ones who are staying in the tradition are the ones who, who are being told by, I don't know, their, their communities or have come to the conclusion themselves or by their parents, well, you need to follow these traditions because your life will be better if you follow these traditions.These traditions are part of who you are and they make you a better person. You know, take something like Lent, right? Like you can do Lent to try to, you know, glorify [00:27:00] God, or you can say, actually, fasting is an important thing to do for my mental health and my emotional and mental fortitude, and I will be a better person for doing it.And, and that creates a logical reason to not abandon these traditions. And it is an easy argument. You know, it's like the larger thing is when I'm talking to Gen Z, if, if I go to them and I'm like, you should believe in God because of traditional religious argument. These arguments are incredibly ineffective on this generation.If you, we should do another video on converting people because I think that would be a great video. Like, how, like, what arguments actually work well on me as a secular person and what arguments don't work well on me as a secular person. bUt or when I was more secular, I suppose, right? Like, like, But when you go to Gen Z and instead of saying, you know, you should believe in God for these like biblical arguments, right?Like in the historic age of a [00:28:00] Christian apologetics, that was the way you would convert people. Now you go up to them and you show them statistics on mental health issues, aggressivism. You show them rising rates of suicide. You show them the crazy s**t that's happening in pop culture right now. And you're like, doesn't seem to be working, does it?And this argument is actually very compelling to Gen Z. Which is really interesting to me, or at least the Gen Z that's open to this sort of stuff. Like, this is the key. And it's why it's important to, if you come from a cultural tradition that has left most of your traditions, like, like, like actual rituals and traditions and stuff like that, it can make sense to rebuild them for your family, whether that's creating new holidays or reviving old holidays.That bring that cultural pride and continuity into future generations.Simone Collins: That's, that's interesting. So you start out with a stat about belief in God, but in the end you're like, nah. It doesn't matter. Different kind of thing. [00:29:00] Well,Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think that is capturing how much things have changed. It does. Yeah, itSimone Collins: does capture it.Because right now, like that, I guess that's one of the reasons why you wrote The Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion is you wanted to say that you can have a strong religion without faith in God. But. Presently, quite frankly, it's not a thing. There aren't strong religions without some kind of belief in God.So you're trying to say it's possible. You don't think it really matters, but yeah, now it is sort of the thing that correlates.Malcolm Collins: So that makes sense. Well, I love you, Simone. I found another little, like, endangered bunny out there in the world. You know, that's, that was, well, I'm from an endangered cultural group.It's very rare that I met someone like you. Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's a rare to have a cultural group that is both intellectualist and rural specialist and anti authority is a pretty rare combination in the world today. So it's not like it's easy for me to just piece somebody with this value set together.Out from the environment, right? [00:30:00] And technophilic, right? Which, which, yeah, I'm just so glad to have met you. I, it was, it was a one in a million chance and we made it work by continuing to roll the dice, as we said somewhere in, in one of the other recent videos we did on, on persistence is intelligence is like having higher stats on a dice roll, like getting to add a number to a dice roll after a dice roll.Whereas persistence. Is rolling with advantage. It's getting to roll over and over and over again. And, and I appreciate that you did that and that, that I took the time to do that because you are an amazing person.Simone Collins: I'm just glad you exist. Even, even if you hadn't chosen to spend your life with me, I'm just glad you were out there.So thank you. Hmm. 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

We discuss how in the secular religious lore and belief system we are constructing for our family, we conceive of "demons" or chaotic forces as being different manifestations of the "Future Police" - the same forces that guide things towards good outcomes. Just as angels can punish, so too can the Future Police act as demons, laying trials, temptations, and hardship intended to test people and peel them from the righteous path. We explore how this connects to concepts like sin, stagnation, change, the great game, and relate it to entities from Warhammer lore.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I would say that, and this is where we'll get to one of the other demons, one of the easiest paths to temptation, one of the easiest ways a person can fall off the righteous path is to not recognize that as a human, they are wretched and they are flawedand that, that is okay. All humans sin. But it's critical. Is that you do not glorify the sin.. Sin is a, is a, is a part of life, but there is a huge difference between saying I am engaging in this sin. I recognize it as sin. I recognize it as something I should have some shame for but I also recognize that I am human and thus a sinner.Right? But if you use it and say, no, actually the sports are a good thing. I am a good person for being good at sports. I am a good person for, in whatever particular aspect of slaneshidom that I engage in. That is where true evil comes from. But true evil can also come from a [00:01:00] human that thinks they can totally avoid sin.Every group I know of. believes that humans can completely avoid sin, the humans in their group that quote unquote come closest to that are typically the most efficacious individuals in society. Because avoiding sin means avoiding action.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: When you said that we were going to talk about demons today, I was so sure that you were going to, like, make this fallacious episode about, like, skeletons in our closet or something, you know, like your childhood demons, because so many people online are like, these are two deeply damaged people. You know, they sayMalcolm Collins: that about us.Do they think that we areSimone Collins: dealing with our trauma and this is why we want to have children or why were we, IMalcolm Collins: love this. I mean, you want to talk about a sign of brainwashing or a brainwashed individual it's when somebody disagrees with them or has a different world perspective than their damage, their first reaction.Is what horrible thing happened to them in [00:02:00] their past that made them see the world differently than me and that what they need to do. And there's actually a class of people who do this. They don't even say like, you know, you should read the research or you should go out there and learn about this topic.They're like, you need to go to. therapy. Yes. Then you will think like me.Simone Collins: Exactly. It's like, I think it's a constant trope that people are exposed to in media. Like villains, of course, were raised in terribly abused environments. Like, you know, that, that Dr. Evil bit where he's like, you know, he talks about this like terrible childhood and how he was beaten and all theseMalcolm Collins: things.Well, I mean, I think that the, you know, if you talk about, we talk about the, the super virus, right? The and the way that it maintains its membership or recruits new members is through using psychologists. And we have talked about this in, in the video, psychology has become a cult. I think this is somebody who originally trained in psychology.The way that psychology is practiced now is not the way it was practiced. even a decade ago in [00:03:00] terms of what's considered acceptable and what's not. And, and, and, you know, as, as to what you're saying here it makes a lot of sense. If you see this not as being in like one cultural group versus another cultural group, but see it as being in a cult.Well, yeah, of course a cult would tell you what you need to go to your cult. Cult appointed mind cleaner, they'll, they'll clean your, your brain's dirty and there's these people you can pay to clean it.They'll wash it for you if, if you will, and then once you have a clean brain, you can haveSimone Collins: clean thoughts.Oh, I'm rewatching this during editing, I realized the joke may not be clear here. I am making a joke about brainwashing.Simone Collins: I don't think there's a precedent for that though, like even in the media tropes where like the evil person has gone to therapy and worked on themselves, like they're never really fixed. So it's just kind of this excuse to write someone off permanently. that they're damaged, they're traumatized, and you know, though they should go to therapy and whatnot, no amountMalcolm Collins: of it will actually.I mean, I saw so much [00:04:00] of this was Trump you know, when he was elected. Did people say heSimone Collins: was traumatized in his youth?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, all of these articles. Oh,Simone Collins: they did something about his dad, right? That he was.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. How is he traumatized? How is he, you know, they, they just cannot fathom that someone could honestly just disagree with their perception.Simone Collins: They must be emotionally stunted.Malcolm Collins: Now, let's be clear. Other, other cultural groups have some similar things to this. Like there are some OhSimone Collins: yeah, like maybe you're possessed by a demon,Malcolm Collins: for example. Yeah, some extreme Christians that like literally think everyone who disagrees with them is possessed by a demon.So there's that. But, but I, I would say that those are like the most extreme, absolutely wackadoo of Christians. And yet this is a mainstream position among the, the, those indoctrinated into the virus. Actually Scientology do the same thing. It's your thetans, right? Your thetans that are attached to you, which cause you to have negative thoughts and stuff like that.And you need to go to their. Well, their version of like psychologists, these people who you tell your backstory [00:05:00] to, and then they help you get your thetans off of you. so That you can think clearly because of you. Oh, they even have something like Oh, what's it called?Simone Collins: But there, I know that also like. They don't even want mothers to scream during childbirth cause they think that might traumatize the child, which is, you know, I guess it goes to show you can make up all these excuses of like, whether or not the person remembers or not, here's why they're messed up.Like their mother screamed when they were bornMalcolm Collins: or something. Right. So the term that you use, by the way, is clear. Clear.Simone Collins: Right. And that's why that documentary was called goingMalcolm Collins: clear. Yeah. So once they have cleared your brain, cleaned it. washed it, if you will, of whichever group. No, but it's just a common practice.And it makes sense that it's a common practice because it's an incredibly effective practice.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and other people I think just say like, well, it's because you haven't accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, or basically you haven't converged to this religion and that's why you're evil or.Malcolm Collins: But, but I would say, hold on.Is it this practice, this way of, Relating to people who see the world differently from [00:06:00] you is not usually a practice had within healthy cultural groups. If we look within the healthy Christian cultural groups or Jewish orthodox groups, or you know, even in a historic context, they typically did not see their enemies in like a, Oh, if you just go see like our, whatever their iteration of a psychologist was, you'll eventually be able to see things the way I do, but where this is relevant to today's topic of conversation is one thing that I do think that most successful cultural traditions have and that ours, as we had originally constructed it, you know, we've built a little religion for our family.holidays and belief systems and metaphysical structure for the universe that we pass on to our kids does not have, which is demons, like some sort of like genuinely malevolent force. And so we started thinking about how we could, because one thing I really want with everything in this religion, as I pass it to my kids, is that it is not falsifiable by any sort of [00:07:00] Science as it exists right now, and where it is falsifiable by science, it can be updated.Like, it is meant to work. Why we call it a secular religious structure is it is meant to be our best understanding from a secular perspective of how the world actually works. So it's kind ofSimone Collins: like hard science fiction, where hard science fiction is expected to be logically internally consistent with any invented science.And it's all supposed to respect any science that already exists. Like don't get a planet's orbit wrong. Don't get the physics of this wrong, et cetera.Malcolm Collins: So for, to start for people who aren't familiar with the broad strokes of our ideological belief system, it's that in. 100, 000 years from today, a million years from today, if our descendants are still around that they would be closer to the way we would conceive of a deity today or a god today than the way we would conceive of another human.And as such, you know, who's to say they relate to time the same way we do and they might be guiding their [00:08:00] manifestation which is why we call it, you know, the inevitable God, the self manifesting God through. rewarding individuals who do things that increase the quality or lead to a flourishing future human civilization and punish humans who act indulgently or indolently or selfishly or on vanity or on self narratives.And so for example, you know, one of the things that we tell our kids is that. These, and these, these beings that influence the past, they don't necessarily come in like angels or something like that. They may be just manipulating things at the smallest, most quantum level in a way that has like a butterfly effect that then ends up having large repercussions in even potentially like human evolution.So an example I can give here is one of the ways in which they have sort of encoded in our own biology punishment for indolence is that all, [00:09:00] Hedonistic pursuits, pursuits where an individual is pursuing happiness or vanity or their perception in other people's eyes for its own sake, you know, just sort of masturbating these emotional subsets that these pleasures turn to ash on one's tongue.What I mean by that is the pleasure that you experience. For going out and chasing pleasure, like going out, just sleeping with tons of people going out, just you know, eating really, really fancy food every day drinking whenever you want all of these begin to feel. Like they lose any happiness that they give you pretty quickly and they begin to feel gross and they Make you feel gross as a human being nowSimone Collins: For kids, this is really really easy To point out.So like, let's say that your kid is really into a sports star or a movie star. [00:10:00] And you like, it's, it's pretty easy on most famous people to dig up, you know, here are the ways that people like them or people on their same trajectories, or even just them are actually pretty miserable. People who especially pursue fame just for hedonism do end up like extra miserable and it's like hedonism on steroids.Like it's one thing to just pursue a life that's kind of comfortable where you have hobbies and you have your job and you retire early or whatever. And there's van life and all that. But like when you were like going all the way, like, no, I'm going to get all the attention, all the fame, all the money, all the mansions, all the cars, all the women, all the men, whatever.The, the, the misery seems to pile on like in proportion to the amount of hedonism pursued. And it's soMalcolm Collins: cool. Yeah, it is really interesting. And I want to highlight a word which you said a little differently, which is, if you look at people who dedicated their lives to personal aggrandizement or personal vanity, whether those are Sports stars who were doing it for personal reasons.So there's sort of two categories of like [00:11:00] sports stars and movie stars. Some of them, you can see they go into it, but then they, they are genuinely trying to make the world a better place rather than sort of make themselves look like the good guy or personally grandize themselves. And you see very different life outcomes from these two groups.When you see the, the sports stars who are in it for the fame and the movie stars who are in it for the fame and the sex and the drugs or the musicians who are in it for that stuff. Their lives often are the lives that I would least want to trade mine for. They, they have such a deep sense of genuine despair that you can see in almost all of their actions that it is almost heartbreaking.Almost heartbreaking, but you know that this is a self working system. But what's very interesting is when we look at the people who have the most genuine and persistent happiness, these are the most mission driven people. These are the people that have sacrificed their lives for their faith, and that faith can be a...secular faith or a [00:12:00] religious faith but sacrificing your life for your faith. Now, some people are like, but isn't that what these, you know, Hollywood stars that are pushing every single progressive talking point are? And I'd be like, no, it's the Hollywood stars that are sticking to the progressive talking points from 20 years ago that have radically changed.Because they have radically changed. Like what is an acceptable progressive talking point changes a lot faster than I think a lot of progressives are willing to admit themselves. And so you see different levels. I can think of an example here. J. K. Rowling, for example, she seems to be a genuinely happy person who is still pushing the progressive talking points that were famous when she was a kid.Yeah, atSimone Collins: great cost. At greatMalcolm Collins: cost. No, I think she was wrong to believe those,but I think it leads to a level of integrity. And logical consistency. Yeah, integrity and logical consistency that you don't see in the Hollywood stars, like, a perfect example of this would be like Harry and Meghan, like, whenever anything switches, whenever the winds blow in a [00:13:00] particular way, they're on the new train, because what they care about is being seen as good guys, not the causes themselves, what they care about is thebrand,He's right. Trying to make ourselves into a brand just turned us into products. We don't need to be a brand, do we? Yes, I'm sure you agree, darling. We can be the people we talked about being, with no more worries about how we look or the image we project to people.What matters is what we have on the inside.Hello?Malcolm Collins: SoThis is a brilliant little thing that has an aspect of religiosity to it, you know, in, in me telling my kids about this, like this idea of happiness turning to ash in one's mouth, that this being the way that we are designed, but it also has a level of truth to it and something I can point to, but it's also a lesson I want my kids to learn because I think it's a very that takes a lot of [00:14:00] people too long to learn.I, I hate Jim Carrey's politics and everything like that, but I do love the one quote that he has. And I think he's an example of a deeply unhappy person who achieved everything and then just tried to go, like, never really thought about why he was doing stuff,but it's, I hope that everyone you know, has the, the blessings to achieve everything they ever wanted to achieve in life so that they can know that.It wasn't what they wanted which is, no, I mean, it's, it's, if that's the type of stuff you want to achieve,I am two time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dream.No, sir. I dream about being three time Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carrey,because then I would be enough.It would finally be true. And I could stop this terrible search.Malcolm Collins: you want to see a genuinely happy person, and this is why I'll often play clips of him, like, on other Basecamp episodes Steve Irwin,What good is a fast car, a flash house, and a gold plate of [00:15:00] dunny to me? Absolutely no good at all. I've been put on this planet to protect wildlife and wilderness areas. Which in essence is gonna help humanity.I want to save the world. And you know money? Money's great. I can't get enough money. And you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to buy wilderness areas with it. Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation. And guess what, Charles? I don't give a rip whose money it is, mate. I'll use it and I'll spend it on buying land.Malcolm Collins: Like, watchAnything with him in it, the way he relates to his family, the way, like, Just genuinely, like, pure, good hearted happiness. There anything in this world that would want to make me give away what I'm doing now? Yes. Yes there is. When my children can the football that I call wildlife conservation and run it up. When they're ready to run up our mission, [00:16:00] I'll gladly step aside. And I guarantee you it'll be the proudest moment of my life.And my job will be done like my mum and my dad. Then, and only then, will I know that I have achieved my ultimate goal.Malcolm Collins: And that is really interesting that you can see this when somebody who has dedicated themselves to a higher calling. And that's what I talk about. Like, he definitely had a secular higher calling. Like, his higher calling was preserving the environment, right? But And itSimone Collins: doesn't have to be, like, a higher calling that we approve of.Like, when I was trying to think When we first talked about this of celebrities who are super, super famous and successful, but also they seem really happy. I thought of Bill Murray and like, probably his objective function is not something that we would choose for ourselves. But he clearly he's very consistent in his action.And like both publicly and privately, and he, you know, seems really happy. Karen Michael drove more than 300 miles from her home outside Chicago to the ballpark in Cleveland. Karen didn't have a ticket for the game, but she went anyway on the [00:17:00] zillion to one chance she could buy one at the stadium. I was at the will call window hoping that somebody didn't pick up their tickets and I would be able to rebuy them and they don't do that.Murray was passing by and saw Karen being turned away, heartbroken. And he turned around, gave me the ticket, shuffled me in the door. I was ecstatic to even be going into the game, let alone actually sitting with him. Roker also showed this goofy video of Murray playing hairdresser with another fan. And he just starts styling her hair.Simone Collins: So. Well, and itMalcolm Collins: doesn't seem to me that this was ever about fame or hedonism for him. No, he just,Simone Collins: he's just a cool guy.Malcolm Collins: But anyway, so back to the talking point, demons, right?So what is a demon within this context? Like, where can I borrow? Themes around what demons look like and Simone, you had a really interesting idea. Yeah.Simone Collins: Can I share my, my, my idea of [00:18:00] demons? What I think they are actually in our metaphysical metaphysical world. Is so we have the future police, which are essentially like our religions equivalent of angels, because we often say, you know, when something happens and you don't know why, or it seems bad at the time we're like, listen, the future police.made this happen because it was supposed to happen. And if we are on a righteous path, essentially, it is going to be for the best. And we found in our lives that whenever something seemingly terrible happens, it actually is for the best. And we thank the future police for that. So they are in that sense to us, a guardian angel, but I think that they can equally be demons.And that the same future police that are nudging your life in a positive direction can be the same. Demons that nudge your life in a terrible direction, toward death, toward ruin, toward obsolescence, because you are not, to use a Calvinist term, Among the elect and a sign that demons are punishing you that the future police are punishing rather than rewarding you is that you are pursuing a life of hedonism.And so you [00:19:00] are going to be increasingly punished by them made obsolete, made miserable made, you know, have your life cut short, et cetera. And I think it's the most. Per our worldview, logically consistent view, and it's also simple and elegant, because the same people who reward can also punish more like a Krampus version of Santa Claus.Malcolm Collins: Well, so, so, you know, I, I like this idea of The same entity that is rewarding, or group of entities that is rewarding actions that increase the potential flourishing of the human race do lay tests and trials for us intentionally. They do lay temptations. They wouldSimone Collins: need to remove the non meaningful people.They would need to take out the ones who might cause damage, right? Who might not create the future that is, that needsMalcolm Collins: to happen. Yes, well, to abandon those that succumb to the temptation and the tests that they have laid out to them. Not just abandon, butSimone Collins: cull, butMalcolm Collins: neutralize. Yeah, well, and I think if you see.Historically, you know, one of the things we did when we were looking at raising our kids is [00:20:00] going through historic figures that ended up moving human civilization on a direction that we think was better. And we're like, what do they have in common? Like, if we're thinking about raising our kids to be great people, like we do believe in the great people theory of history.And I do want my kids to be great people. I do want to become one myself in great person history. Right. That'd be amazing if that happens. But One of the things that you just see consistently is, in their youth, they underwent some form of enormous trial. Or some form of enormous undeserved hardship, often.Not always undeserved but, no, you just see this over and over and over again, you know? You saw it in the recent Elon Musk book, whether it's Caesar and the Pirates, whether it's You know, there's, there's always stuff like this, right? And I love this as a, as a a mechanism because if the future police were guiding all of these individuals as well, they had to put them through these trials so that they could know when they had to give them the temptations so that [00:21:00] they could ensure.They deserved their, their blessings and their, their guidance to, you know, the future that must come to pass. But this is also very different than most religion structure of demons.Simone Collins: One, one interesting way that some religious or cultural views. don't do demons, but still do chaotic forces, which I would say is probably closer to future police is with the tricksters that you'll see like in many Native American traditions.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I just don't know if we believe in tricksters.Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think tricks, tricksters are interesting in that, you know, to, to your point that like, oh, you know, all these religions have demons. I wouldn't say that demons are universal or thatMalcolm Collins: everyone. No, no, no. But what I think is. It's pretty odd for a religious structure is a religious structure that believes that both the entities acting negatively in your life and the entities acting positively in your life are the same entity.Simone Collins: Oh, I didn't know the Greek and Roman gods seems to be that right. Sometimes they would be complete dicks to you and sometimes they would be.Malcolm Collins: I'd say it's closer to like the Christian [00:22:00] God where the negative things that befall someone are often God as well as the positive things. He was sometimes really mean.Well, I mean, this isn't true of all iterations of Christianity, but it is definitely true of some. But he often doesn't, or at least in the iterations that I'm familiar with, use angels to perform the negative acts. He instead uses the angels to sort of give demons or devils permission to, the devil permission to perform negative acts.Hmm. Is often. There were two around the Bible. The actual Bible itself often goes very rarely into this sort of stuff. So it's not, I don'tSimone Collins: recall anything about angels or demons in the Bible. I just recall for example, Satan, like goading God into making jobs life miserable. I'm not even tempting. Just being like, you really think job things are doingMalcolm Collins: great.But anyway, so, so, so back to dean, right. Yes. So. Another thing that I really like and it's funny, we, we in our [00:23:00] book we called, we said one of the names for, for, for the, the deity that we call God as we call it is the Omniscience, you know, the, the all child basically. The inevitable God. But obviously, or the inevitable God that we tied from the Obviously we took some inspiration from the Warhammer universe from that just because I love it.It's fun, right? Good lore one of the best lores actually. But I was also sort of thinking of it in terms of a lore structure, and I really like its lore structure around the Types or sort of the domains of demons with the four core domains of demons. And what I like about this is in terms of teaching my Children how to resist the core temptations and the faces that the.Enemy, you know, when, when these, these future police are acting adversarial to you when they are testing you, they do that through enemy agents, through empowering [00:24:00] individuals, real humans often or social movements or events in your life that you can call the enemy. To test you, to pull you off the path of righteousness.And that the enemy, I, the, what I like about the Warhammer framing here is you can use the four chaos gods as the faces that the enemy uses and the avatar the enemy uses to pull you from your path, right? And, and it will do this with fallen individuals. It'll take somebody who's already fallen, often succumbed to some form of ideological virus.And then use, utilize, puppet that individual often as part of the virus's reproductive cycle to try to peel you off from the path of righteousness. So if I'm going to go through the four deities in the Warhammer universe and sort of see how I see them represented here. Which is interesting, because I just find them much more compelling than, than more traditional deities I'm familiar with from other demons I'm familiar with from other religious [00:25:00] structures.The reason why I think that they're more compelling is because they were sort of come to a priori from an authorial standpoint instead of being So historically, if you look at like Christianity, what Christianity would often do is frame the gods of neighboring religions as demons or as Satan.You know, likeMoloch, right, was a neighboring religion during early Judaism, right? So, and, and words for demon and stuff like that, or ball was a, a, a neighboring deity, right? Which means that they would often take a lot of the iconography from that instead of coming up with the iconography a priori.Now, of course, if you're taking this from our weird religious perspective, we would say that these are not actual a priori, but these are visions of the way that you might be tested that are easy for a child to conceive of, right? So the, the four core. Deities born by four core human sources of temptation or fear or negative [00:26:00] emotions.The first we would say is Nurgle which in, in the universe is, is sort of the deity of, of pestilence, which is born by human's fear of death and desire to keep living through anything. And the gifts that it gives to people who follow it most are, are the alleviation of, of pain associated. with death and stuff like that, like diseases, et cetera.Simone, what group would be most associated with a paralyzing fear of death leading them to stagnation? OurSimone Collins: longtime enemy, the life extensionists.Malcolm Collins: Yes. They're, they're the, the Nergalite community. Well, I mean, I, I like that because I think it's, it's really true. It can be seen as a positive ideology, and there's so many ways to cover up the intrinsic stagnation embodied within perpetual life and the intrinsic dehumanization of shorter lived entities and everything like [00:27:00] that whereas I think seeing it Through this eye can make it a lot easier to understand the, the, the true, and what I also love is the correlation between stagnation and pestilence, um, that it is in stagnant pools that parasites breed most fervently that then take down great beasts.Huh. I see. Then second, you could say the most common would be Slaanesh. And what I like about Slaanesh is Slaanesh is all forms of hedonism, right? Not just sexual hedonism, but personal vanity, a strive for perfection. So someone would be a servant of Slaanesh or a tempter of Slaanesh, whether they are a Jimbro who is indolently working on their body, To the exclusion of particular, potentially efficacious action in reality or somebody who just spends all day [00:28:00] having sex or on only fans or eating food constantly like a glutton.And what I really like about this demonic framing is it helps remind people how little of a difference there is. between pursuits of personal vanity and, and the pursuit of being validated by your community, which can be a really driving ideology for a lot of people, right? It's very easy to convince somebody that this is a thing of value because they're like, I am striving for human perfection, right?But it is human perfection. That serves no greater purpose other than the glorification of the self. aNd this really came up with a family member of mine where he was annoyed at me. So a lot of my family, people might be surprised to know this, are like very deep south, good old boy type people.You know, Texas groups. And this is somebody who [00:29:00] married into the family, so not, not directly related to me. But, you know, it's the type of people my family often marry. That I said that sports was a sin. And he was like, no, sports is not a sin. Sports is great. Sports is tradition. And I'm like, yeah, but how does it make the world a better place?What I go and they're like, well, you can't just say sports is a sin because from your framework, I'm like, there is no logically consistent framework. I stand all logically consistent frameworks. That lead to a better future for humanity and that are pluralistic, right? That are okay with people different from them existing.And none of them that I am aware of have like a logically consistent way. I can think of no iteration of Christianity that's like really a well thought through iteration. Where God's like, oh yeah, you get into heaven because you did really well on that one play. Because you had all of those fans.Because you helped carry your team toSimone Collins: victory. And to be clear. This is not to say that any engagement in sports is seen as a bad thing by us. It's, it's sports as a, like an inherent good that you disagree with.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and, and as a [00:30:00] life pursuit that I disagree with. Right. So I, I would say that, and this is where we'll get to one of the other demons, one of the easiest paths to temptation, one of the easiest ways a person can fall off the righteous path is to not recognize that as a human, they are wretched and they are flawed and they are failed.And that, that is okay. All humans sin. But it's critical. Is that you do not glorify the sin. What I mean by this is Every human does some things that are just for them. Whether it's sports, whether it's working out a little bit more than they have to, Whether it's drinking, a sin that I engage in, right?Whether it's you know, indulgence. Spending on things that they don't really need, right? My sin. Yeah. Sin is a, is a, is a part of life, but there is a huge difference between saying I am engaging in this sin. I recognize it [00:31:00] as sin. I recognize it as something I should have some shame for but I also recognize that I am human and thus a sinner.Right? But if you use it and say, no, actually the sports are a good thing. I am a good person for being good at sports. I am a good person for, in whatever particular aspect of slaneshidom that I engage in. That is where true evil comes from. But true evil can also come from a human that thinks they can totally avoid sin.Every group I know of. believes that humans can completely avoid sin, the humans in their group that quote unquote come closest to that are typically the most efficacious individuals in society. Because avoiding sin means avoiding action.Simone Collins: Yeah. So yeah, so sorry, I think you cut out for a second. You were saying that those who believe you can completely avoid sin and who tried to do so also do the least of anything because they're most likely to just not do anything.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So there is, there is just as much sin [00:32:00] in believing that sin is virtue as there is sin in. Believing that it is, it is capable that you as a human, a current iteration of humanity can escapes it. So, but anyway, so that's, that's one path of there. It's a Sloan Eshedom. And what I really like about Sloan Eshedom as a framing device is that it frames all of these various.types of hedonistic and self validation temptations alongside each other, and as equally evil because I believe they hurt people in the same way but they're very different than something like the life extensionists, like the desire to not die. This is usually an ideological, not like in the moment desire. NExt demon or, or life paths would be Korn. The demon of war. How do we spell this? Or, or aggression. Well, and Simone knows when world conflicts erupt, I'm often like, well, Simone, should I go there? Should I be trying to do something about this? And she's like, no, Malcolm, this really isn't the best use.But I feel a [00:33:00] really strong desire to get involved when I see... And, and my family, I remember, one of the things that my grandfather told me before I was passing, who had, you know, served in World War II is that you are going to have like a really strong desire to engage in wars that you see as righteous.But just remember that it is always best to try to avoid the conflict. Because you, as somebody who hasn't been to war, don't know how bad it really is. And that you can't imagine how bad it really is. And so I think that this desire. For my team versus their team, where it leads to death and setback, is sort of Cornite failure.Which is also very different from the Slaaneshi Kappa failures, from Life Extensionist Kappa failures. And the final one... Which is the most interesting one to me is, is, is Ezechian failure. This would be the, the god of, of change, [00:34:00] right? The chaos demon of, of change. And that within the setting, you know, this is the demon that empowers sorcerers and stuff like that.Like anyone with any sort of magical power, or intellectuals, or academics. But it, it is change just for the sake of change, not change for the sake of improving the human condition. So who does this? Because generally humans hate change. I would say that the core avatar of this right now would be the people who are just completely unhinged about AI and that the people who call other people's things like carbon fascists, that literallySimone Collins: I call other people carbon fascists, so I'm, I'm subject toMalcolm Collins: this.Yes, you are. This is definitely the temptation that we are the most susceptible to. No, I mean It's true, Simone. The idea of individuals... Now, I do believe that humans will need to change in the future, and I think that the, the drive to not change [00:35:00] is, is, is a Nergalite change. Nergal and Tzeentch are core...They, they hate each other a lot. There are two ends of a toxic spectrum. They, yeah, there are two sides of a toxic spectrum where there is complete stagnation but then there is change only for the sake of, of change. And that where I think you can corally define an individual that is.succumb to zechinism versus an individual that hasn't, is do they want some iteration of humanity to survive, or are they okay with humanity being wholly and completely replaced, or are they indifferent to humanity being wholly and completely replaced in the pursuit of whatever other thing that they're trying to achieve, often knowledge work or creating, you know, the perfect AI or something like that.I, I would argue that this is a force that in our world right now is the weakest of the four demonic forces and therefore, you know, we tend towards it a little bit, but only, only to sort of even [00:36:00] out the great game, you could call it, between these, these four forces and the different people who will wear these forces and be puppeted by these forces in trying to seduce you off the path of righteousness, which is towards a pluralistic human Empire.Hmm. Interesting. We're the descendants of humans, because you know, of course, any entity that's around for hundreds of thousands of years is going to speciate to some extent. And so we want a, a human zoo, right, a, a, a, the collection, I mean, especially when humans get to other planets or are on floating, you know, ship structures that take thousands of years to get between you know, you're just intermigrating.It will indelibly lead to speciation, unless you have some sort of like genetic protection act on, which is culling humans that deviate too much, which you could do, but it would require this sort of ironically, a [00:37:00] polygenic risk or IVF selection of the type that we do, but selects towards reversion to the mean.Simone Collins: I want to go out on a limb and say, you. know probably more Warhammer lore than most people who own At least one Warhammer figurine, and you are not among those people,Malcolm Collins: by the way. Oh, you say that, and then some people are going to be criticizing my knowledge of the lore in this video, being like, you got this wrong, or you got this wrong.For someoneSimone Collins: who doesn't own a single figurine, I thinkMalcolm Collins: it's okay. So I really love lore research, okay? It's one of my deepest hobbies, where I will just go Hours. Deep, deep into the lore of a fictional universe. The two best fictional universes for lore I think, are the Old World of Darkness,Simone Collins: Is this a vampireMalcolm Collins: thing that the Vampire of the Masquerade.But the original Vampire of the Masquerade, not the new one. They really destroyed it [00:38:00] when they made, like, the new one. Well, I, I, I think that the, the anyway. Yeah. So, I, I think they destroyed it with the new World of Darkness. I don't like, like, the new... Like, was Malkavians being a disease instead of a distinct clan?How dare? It's so stupid. How dare you? Sorry, Simone, this bothers me. This bothers me.Simone Collins: I'm, I know, and I'm not above this, this level ofMalcolm Collins: nerddom. And Gehenna, like, is, is too underway at this point, was in the new world of darkness. So anyway but then it was, was the Warhammer with Laura. The reason I always liked it.And one of the reasons I like it, do you think it's the logical conclusion just to like go on a tangent here that is not tied to the topic of this video of a lot of hippie mindsets? So a lot of hippies, they'll come to me. And they'll say things like, I remember this growing up, right? Like, well, what if deities are created by humans believing in them, right?And then those deities really come to exist. And you, you mentioned to a book, aSimone Collins: very American [00:39:00] gods kind ofMalcolm Collins: view. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Warhammer says, okay, this is true, and that is the worst of all possible worlds, because if that was true, then it is the most simple emotions, like the fear of death, or pleasure for pleasure's sake, or, you know, et cetera, that would...Manifest the most of these deities, and as soon as these deities could act on the world, then they would have a manifest interest in increasing the emotion that leads to their creation. So like the god associated with fearing death would also... Try to spread pestilence in diseases because that causes more people to fear death, which causes its power to grow.anD that this leads to horror beyond horror, horror beyond comprehension. And then you get a vast interstellar human empire. And you need to, like, monitor everyone's emotions and live in this extremely, even more than us puritanical perspective where you sort of have to beat emotions out of individuals because You must [00:40:00] createSimone Collins: some terrifyingMalcolm Collins: god.Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting that our world perspective is not that dissimilar from that I mean as we say all positive and negative emotions are sin in that they are intrinsically indulgent and that's the righteous path for humanity is one in which we learn and master emotional self control rather than to allow our emotions to control us, as I think is the calling card of many soft cultural traditions.Anyway, I love you and I love that you're okay with me being a stinking nerd.Simone Collins: I wouldn't have it any other way, Malcolm, you're theMalcolm Collins: best. You are the best. You are the best. And I loved the thesis you came up with of the demons and the gods being two faces of the same entities because it rings so true for me, it rings so plausible for me, it requires the smallest additional stuff, but it also allows us to prime our kids and to frame for our kids, the [00:41:00] people who come to them with these temptations, that this is a test and these individuals are just.human puppets of failed human creatures that are testing them.Simone Collins: Yes, it's going to be fun. Can't wait to tryMalcolm Collins: it out. Love you. Can't wait to try terrifying our kids. 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 insightful discussion with rising conservative thinker Aria Babu, we analyze counterintuitive social trends around fertility rates. We explain why more “socially conservative” countries often have lower fertility than socially liberal ones.Aria contends intensive mothering expectations in traditional cultures create barriers. Malcolm notes conservative minority groups within secular societies have higher birth rates. We argue familial living stands crucial, not public policy concessions. Still, promoting extensive stay-at-home motherhood proves misguided, despite intuitions. Overall an incisive look at the data on real drivers of birth rates.Aria Babu: [00:00:00] My theory for it is that British elites have three beliefs that are very difficult to square with each other, which is one of them, which is that biodeterminism is completely false. That a child's outcomes are based wholly on on their environment.Second, the inequality is bad. So the fact that children from different. Households have different outcomes is genuinely negative. It's like a genuine, like really bad thing to happen. And three, the education can basically fix all of all of these ends. So then when you see that children who go to the same schools end up having different outcomes based on their parents backgrounds, the best theory that then comes to mind is, oh, it's about what's going on slightly before school, which I think is why so much energy is poured into the early years foundation stage.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello! It is so exciting to be with you guys today. I am really excited to bring... Someone who I feel we, we have scouted in, in, in talent scouting, but it seems that all of the other rising conservative intellectuals also know her Aria [00:01:00] Babu who is sort of a underground key figure in the, the conservative intellectual movement in the UK.And she recently started a sub stack. She's only one episode in, but I already love it. I was actually planning to do an episode just on. chain of subtext that she's releasing. So do you want to start by going into the subtext that you're working on the, the, the first episode, and then we can expand fromAria Babu: there.Yeah, of course. So my first piece was about how socially conservative countries. don't seem to have higher birth rates in socially liberal countries. So the first, like, look at the data, if you just look at the European value survey, and you compare that to just TFRs across these countries, shows that actually the more like socially conservative countries, so we're looking at thinking like Italy and Spain, for example, have lower birth rates than the more socially liberal ones.We're thinking Scandinavian countries, France, Britain. My second post which I've already done the research for, but I haven't published yet, then goes into [00:02:00] asking why that might be the case. So my first theory is that maybe more socially liberal countries have better provision of childcare. They have more public services that support motherhood.So I looked at cost of childcare, number of parents who use it, and Yeah, both of those things, basically, and also attitudes towards using child care. And it seems that those also have like literally no correlation with birth rates in different countries. And I remember seeing that in Austria the cost of a nursery place for two kids costs 3 percent of the average woman's income, whereas in Switzerland, it costs 64 percent and those countries have the exact same birth rate.Fascinating. So that doesn't seem to make a difference. And I was like, okay, what is another reason why a more socially liberal country might have A higher birth rate. Well, maybe it's because a more socially liberal country. Well, I was going to say maybe it's just because it's a nicer place to live, but that's actually like super unmeasurable.I mean, maybe it is a nicer place to live and that does make it easier, but that kind of sounds like b******t to me. sO then I thought, okay, [00:03:00] what are the other correlates that might have you have might have between social conservatism and yes, And I was wondering if maybe it's because the more you value motherhood, the more you prize it, the more work it might be for people.So it's very difficult to then try and pick out data that suggests like how much work do you think children are? But the closest I could find on the OECD stats site is birth rates as correlated with the amount of time that mothers spend with new babies. Okay. Okay. And then you do get the correlation.Then you get the correlation that pretty much maps to the socially conservative to socially liberal correlation. So that's my underlying theory currently, which is that the more socially conservative people also believe that having children is much more work.Simone Collins: And so just to be clear, more socially conservative nations also report higher amounts of time spent with new babies.And is this in the form of maternity leave or is there some other measure of time spent?Aria Babu: So the stat I looked at was just number of hours. That they spend so they do like hours a day doing childcare. [00:04:00] So the OECD does classic polling, which is how many hours do you spend in work? How many hours do you spend in leisure?How many hours do you spend in child in household labor in general? And then, so then they looked at new mothers of newborn women.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this would also correlate with something that is really clear in the data was his East Asian countries. If you control for income have unusually low fertility rates and generally the more conservative in East Asian country is the lower its fertility rate is going to be.And something we keep hammering home on this show when we bring up the East Asian sphere because it's something that I think goes against a lot of Westerners intuition is that East Asian countries are more socially conservative than Western countries by a pretty dramatic amount. And so this would also explain why those countries have such low fertility rates.Which, this has a lot of really interesting implications of what you're finding. [00:05:00] So the first is something that, you know, progressives don't want to hear. Which is that it turns out that you're not actually helping by subsidizing child care. That does not appear to matter. But then the second is, and this is a deleterious thing, I keep seeing conservative influencers, even ones who think of themselves as pronatalist advocating, which is the stay at home mom lifestyle.And what we are seeing here is Almost nothing other than wealth negatively impacts fertility as much as the expectation of the stay at home mother lifestyle among mothers. And there's two really interesting points we can take away from this. One, and we often point this out, there's a great, the Nobel Prize winner this year did a thing on this and I'm going to see if I can find the thegraph and put it on the screen, but it shows that over time Women, like, like we, we think that women now are.employed in the workforce at higher rates than they were historically, which is [00:06:00] true. They are employed now at the workforce at higher rates than they were like in the 50s. But if you go back before that increasingly you see higher and higher rates of women participation in the workforce. And what we really had was just a slump of women, female participation in the workforce when jobs began to take people out of the home.So, what we're actually seeing when people are modeling these stay at home wife scenarios is they think they are modeling a traditional lifestyle when they really are not modeling a traditional lifestyle. They're, they're modeling an incredibly indulgent lifestyle that was signaled by 1950s Hollywood and is just as indulgent as any lifestyle today in 1950s Hollywood.I don't know if you've ever seen, like, movies in the 80s, but you look at them and, like, everyone lives in a mansion. Like, you look at Home Alone. Who lives in a house that large?Simone Collins: I really, watching the movie, I'm like, what did they do for work?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's in New York or something. No, no, I don't remember, but I remember it's in like a city too.No, no, they're outside New York or something. Yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot. The Home Alone [00:07:00] 2 is in New York, so the Comb clearly isn't in New York. So the, the, the, the second thing is, um, oh God, I can't remember what I was going to say.Simone Collins: Well, I would just add, I would add one piece of an annotation, which is when you have like five, six, seven children, you know, having a stay at home parent then becomes essentially a career because you are doing homeschooling because you were doing household management in like a totally different level.You know, it's like, you're no longer like cooking home meals. You are a caterer. So I would just say like normal people's stay at home mom experience, like the, the one that happens mostly in mainstream developed Nations is like one or two kids, which is indeed as Malcolm describes, like a luxury experience.But when you're actually doing like six, seven, eight kids that, you know, does, does become a different story.Aria Babu: So here's my theory about it, which is, I think, I think like South Korea is a really good example to dig down to it. I think for most of history, Having an additional child [00:08:00] actually wasn't that much of a problem to already existing child provided that you could give them enough food But now the returns on education are quite high and actually we don't have super good theories about how much parent investment helps with kids But we do see that the kids who generally achieve better do have parents who put, like, spend way more time with them.Whether that's just, like, an effect of conscientiousness, or if that's, like, the actual action to the kid's benefit is something I don't really know. But I think South Korea is definitely a country where positional education and hard work is really, really well rewarded in the education system. So, like, their tests aren't really just IQ tests, like, you know, like the SAT can kind of be a proxy for.So it really does help to study aggressively. So by having a second child, if you're not constantly reading to that kid and constantly teaching that kid math, Then you really are actually depriving your child. I think to some extent it is a rational approach to the education systems as set up in some of theseMalcolm Collins: countries.I agree and disagree. So I'm going, I, I happen to be, I think that this is the intuition. I think what you are describing is why people are making these [00:09:00] decisions frequently. However, the intuition is wrong from the data.We can look at economic and educational outcomes by number of siblings. And what we find is that when you go, I seem to remember, like, up to, like, two to three siblings, every sibling actually helps a little, or at least isn't negative.You really, siblings really only begin to deleteriously affect their other siblings, I think, when you're going above three. And then the effect is incredibly small. So you have this intuition, which I think once you're a parent, like I, I would say this because I know we have a number of parents with a lot of kids who watch our podcast and it's sort of the thing that every parent goes through when they have a lot of kids is was the first kid you put astronomical amounts of time into them and stuff like that.It's like a kid, a little bit less by the time you're on kid three, you're like, Oh s**t. Like, I really don't need to worry about potty training them because they're going to figure it out. You're like, I don't know. Mother,Simone Collins: we were just talking with said, like, by the time I had the [00:10:00] fourth kid, I'm just making sure he's not going to bed with something like a choking hazard in his mouth.Like, you know,Malcolm Collins: no, I think that's what we're seeing here is so much of how kids turn out as really just genetics and their peer group, which you actually create an influence through having a large number of kids. So that's, that's I think a really good point and one that hopefully we can dispel a myth around.But the other thing and the reason I think this data is so important is so many people's intuition is we just need to go back to the old ways or what they perceive as the old ways. And so one, I said, one of the problems is, is you might misperceive the old ways, but also the social and technological environment we are in is different.And, and it is as important here when we talk about, you know. Is being a stay at home mother, like, the optimal choice to promote societally? Now, I think individually, it's a great choice. But I think that there's a lot of conservative influencers who think they're helping the prenatalist cause, and are promoting it for everyone who intends to have kids.And that's where I think it's really [00:11:00] deleterious. And then the second thing is That, that so, sorry the, the, the other area I think we see this and we're always advocating for this on our show is fertility rates are falling pretty dramatically. And so some conservative practices that used to increase fertility, like, okay, let's say, Is that cue.contraception bans, right? Like, let's ban contraception. And then that comes to, like, okay, you, you start to virtue signal around that, and you're like, I think even an embryo is a human life, and therefore I think IVF is bad. And now something that historically would have increased fertility rates, a belief that life begins at an embryo is now dramatically decreasing fertility rates because it's so hard to get pregnant naturally.Aria Babu: Yeah, no, I'm completely with you. I definitely think the fact that people misperceive the past is, is like a massive thing that happens here as well. I think people definitely have this sense that historically women just were like only focusing on childcare, as if like, [00:12:00] As if, like, household maintenance wasn't itself basically a full time job in a way that it just isn't now.And the other thing is, sure, maybe, maybe spending lots of time with your mother is like a really great thing for you as a child. But, growing up in a poorer household is almost definitely not better for you. So it depends completely on your own family's financial circumstances, whether or not being a stay at home mother is even better for your kids.Well,Simone Collins: and a note, because when we were first planning our family, like, way before we ever had our first kid, We actually wanted to look really closely at like, is it better for a mother to stay at home or to leave? I mean, you know, we, we just wanted to know like if there was any conclusive reason what the data says.Yeah. And basically there isn't exactly conclusive research and you could find some studies that suggest. Sort of one way or the other, but ultimately it seems like it's slightly better if anything for the mother to work, especially if you have daughters, because the more important thing is to demonstrate to daughters that you can go out and work and it's sort of empowering to see that their mother works [00:13:00] and has, you know, a real life, you know, so beyond just being a mother.And I, I think that's, that's telling and it makes a lot of sense. I would think also that my, my supposition of why this isn't just so obviously in favor of mothers staying at home, because I think especially in the modern age, a lot of mothers staying at home get pretty depressed and demotivated. So to have a mother who's kind of pumped out and bored or neurotic or living through their children because they're, you know, helicopter parenting and they'll.Don't have anything else in their lives could be damaging. So even though maybe a lot of kids who have stayed at home, others are getting a lot of support. They're also getting micromanaged a ton. There's too much pressure on them. So yeah, I mean, even that is really interesting and it surprised us.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I have an alternate hypothesis as to what's going on here.And, and I should be clear that this is, I think, a really sort of sad study. Because I think a lot of women, they think they're making this enormous sacrifice and it's going to have this enormous positive effect for their kids.Because to some women, this is a sacrifice to them. Not, not to all women. To some women, they prefer to be [00:14:00] stay at home moms.But some women are like, I'm giving up a career that I would have preferred to have. And so this is the type of study that you have to lay very gingerly that shows actually you probably hurt your kids by making that choice. And, and that's really sad, you know, but I think that the reason is, and it comes back to what I was saying earlier, which is kids seem to develop best with minimum amounts of.And unfortunately, I also think that women who are disproportionately drawn to stay at home roles especially if they have small families, which a lot of these women have right now, are the narcissistic type parents who want to completely laud over their children's life and helicopter parent, and that's what we're seeing.You know, as a woman's other tasks, you know, whether it's laundry or something like that, got automated. They had more and more free time, as Simone was pointing to, and all of that free time got directed on hovering over children. And that seems to have negative psychological effects. [00:15:00] In other places where you can see this, like if we're talking about related studies that seem to indicate this is probably true, there's this great study on kids going to kindergarten and trying to teach them Language earlier, trying to teach them reading earlier and it found out this, this state for, for poor kids in the state, I want to say it was like Ohio is somewhere in the central United States.They made prekindergarten free focused on teaching early reading and they thought they had done this amazing thing for like the poor and then longitudinal studies were done and it turned out it like put these kids behind like a year and a half. Which is to say that if you force a kid to learn something before they're ready or you force a kid to engage With ideas before they're ready.It actually has pretty significant deleterious effectsAria Babu: We we have actually pretty similar data in the uk. So, the uk has for lots of reasons got incredibly incredibly expensive childcare, but one of the reasons it's very tightly regulated and the regulations they involve things like making sure that a child is like learning to learning to hold objects, learning to speak, because obviously this is an early years foundation stages from baby up to school [00:16:00] age.And the Department for Education recently monitored the outcomes of children who were in nurseries or childbinding. So regulated sectors or children who were staying at home with their parents and they found that actually the earliest curriculum is. Slightly net negative compared to just staying at home in I think informal childcare.Wow. That could be a selection effect, but...Simone Collins: It's also terrifying to me that in the UK, like, you can't just, like, pay a teenager, a responsible one, like, to just watch your kids. That's, that's wild.Malcolm Collins: It was because a couple kids ended up killing another kid in some daycare. No, no, no, notSimone Collins: daycare, but like, probably while they were being babysat.So,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Aria Babu: I think it was part of Tony Blair's like education, education, education push. Cause it started in 2006. My theory for it is that British elites have three beliefs that are very difficult to square with each other, which is one of them, which is that biodeterminism is completely false. That a child's outcomes are based wholly on on their environment.Second, the [00:17:00] inequality is bad. So the fact that children from different. Households have different outcomes is genuinely negative. It's like a genuine, like really bad thing to happen. And three, the education can basically fix all of all of these ends. So then when you see that children who go to the same schools end up having different outcomes based on their parents backgrounds, the best theory that then comes to mind is, oh, it's about what's going on slightly before school, which I think is why so much energy is poured into the early years foundation stage.Malcolm Collins: That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And it also, obviously it doesn't work and it seems to make things worse. So yeah, I, I, I think that with a lot of this stuff in the modern era, the cool thing is, is the data is out there and people. Look, we don't trust academia any more than the next guy, right?But I feel like I'm pretty good at knowing when academics are lying in papers. Like I'm, I'm good enough at going through the data. So either you can go through yourself and look through it and you, you can develop patterns around this, or you can just sort of trust us as people who genuinely want what's best for [00:18:00] our own kids and, and to take over the world.Right. So,Aria Babu: It's very easy to track the social conservatism thing. Just just go to the OECD website and then go to the world value survey. It takes about like, I'm going to say 15 minutes to just. Do a quick rough.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well also like that you're telling people how to do it as well, right? Like, like go out there, do it for yourself.It's the same with with multiple siblings, things. This intuition that if I spend less time on a kid, that's going to hurt the kid. Again, you can just look like this is a really replicated finding. You are hurting the kid by spending additional time on them. And this can be a really interesting thing for a husband who has a wife who is overbearing to work on, you know, to an extent you're in charge of protecting your kids. Something we've noted here about stay at home moms and this is another thing like, okay, do I want to have a stay at home wife? You know, go out there, look at the data, look at the outcomes. But, I think it's important to remember that like, if you have two kids and you are a stay at home wife, [00:19:00] you're going to go crazy because you're not really doing anything when you have like eight kids or nine kids, that's a completely different thing.And we want to make sure that we are not conflating the two. But with that being the case, this is also true that. We think even a woman who intends to become a stay at home mom, like, I think that's a privilege that women can indulge in once they're a kid four. Right. But I think before that it's pretty indolent to be a stay at home mom.That's my overly spicy take.Simone Collins: What's, what's so interesting though, about the, the first substack piece you have, because it's so counterintuitive is, you know, when you think about progressive nations, you think about progressive culture being. Just so sterilizing, you know, it's, it's, these are very, very low birth rates that progressive people have.So it's part of me wonders if it's, I mean, also more representative of a nation that on the whole is not super conservative, but is actually more diverse. So you've got more like super high blind [00:20:00] fundamentalists who are having tons of kids and then a bunch of super progressives who aren't, but I'm wondering like what your thoughts are on that.I'm like, why are, yeah, what's going on?Aria Babu: I suspect it probably isn't the like Sweden has like a large handful of like super fundamentalists. I suspect it really is just about people being more likely to have two or three kids versus one or two. Like that's kind of the range we're thinking within most, most rich countries.And so I don't think it probably is that. My guess is also that people have very bad intuitions about which countries have. low birth rates. So I think most people would be surprised to know that India is currently a replacement rate.Malcolm Collins: Below replacement rate as of this year. Yeah. And I think it's going to fall pretty quickly from, from where it is now, which is a, is a shame.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. I think people, I guess they, there's a lot of conflation of population size with birth rate and it's going to take us a really long time to get around that.Aria Babu: Yeah, I think so. I [00:21:00] guess. Also, it is definitely true that more conservative people at the very least in the Anglosphere do have higher birth rates.So I guess it, like, it kind of, that's another reason why it makes intuitive sense and I don't actually have a great way of squaring that.Malcolm Collins: So I, I do. I think that there is a big difference between being a conservative individual from a minority conservative group and being in a conservative normative environment.Right. And I think that the conservative normative environment actually hurts conservative individuals within the country in terms of their fertility rate. And this is something that a lot of conservatives, it might be heartening, it might be disheartening. What it means is if you win. If you win the culture wars, the person who suffers the most from your winning is your cultural group, your people.It is the feeling like a discriminated minority group, which is likely helping your fertility rate. and protecting your culture intergenerationally. When your culture [00:22:00] feels like it is in control of the state, it will degrade and become soft much faster, because you will feel like you have less to protect yourself from, and you will you know, I, I think, let go of a lot of the cultural hygiene related stuff, I guess I'd call it, like theSimone Collins: But in other words You're describing sort of like a push versus pull culture, right?Like if you're in the minority culture that, you know, encourages high birth rates, it's kind of like carrot rather than a stick to have kids because, you know, you can sort of stand out and be cool and be special and really help.Malcolm Collins: Okay, suppose you're a tradcath, right? If you're a tradcath in a semi hostile governance system, like the United States, right?Your perception of, of being a tradcath is going to be, that's your unique cultural identity and every kid you have actually matters a lot because it's, it's, it's your community that you're adding that kid to, it's your church, it's your, you know, however, if you are a tradcath and your country has Catholic leadership, like it is an officially [00:23:00] sanctioned Catholic state, Every kid you had feels a lot less important.Maintaining the rules of your faith feel a lot less important, because they're also the rules of the state. This is one of the things that we often point out, that it is really silly and kind of stupid, as a conservative, to fight for things like banning pornography. Even if your group is anti pornography, because through banning pornography, the people who you're helping the most are your enemies, if you believe that no pornography is useful, you know, you're helping the secular sphere and cultural groups that were engaged in being hurt by pornography.But you're also making the rules that your culture exercises to lower pornography consultancy. consumption less relevant to every individual's daily lives. And I think individuals stick with cultures better the more they actually have to choose to suffer to endure the rules of that culture.Aria Babu: I think that probably makes sense. I would have like one extra guess though, [00:24:00] that actually that we will see these like, conservative right groups within like say America, if they do come to dominate the They will be, like, much more like they are now than they will be, like, the sort of, like, general American population.Like, I know that, like, for example, like, the Amish has, like, a slightly higher bleed rate than it used to, and the Mormons have a slightly higher bleed rate than they used to. But I suspect that the people that will keep reproducing at a high level will be more... More like, like traditional Mormons.Simone Collins: Absolutely. Especially because, you know, the ones who detract are the ones who don't have kids. And the ones who do have kids are the ones who stay.Malcolm Collins: I need to update your intuition. The Amish actually have a lower bleed rate than they used to. The Mormons have a higher bleed rate than they used to. So, Mormonism right now is basically falling apart.So they're not really useful to learn anything but like, don't do this lessons. Amish, on the other hand they have intergenerationally gotten to like incredibly low bleed rates, like 3 percent intergenerationally. And that's just me.Aria Babu: So I thought as the[00:25:00] Amish, basically, as they, as they have to move off, like being like purely like agricultural, you get like a small set of Amish that have to interact more and more with the English as they call it.And that group has a lower birth rate. That group. Oh, yeah, it does.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So he's, he's referring more to, to strict. Amish, and not so much like the Mennonites who have cell phones. Schwartz and troopers.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. They're called. Anyway, uh, was there anything else you wanted to say on this topic? I don't think so.I liked it. I mean, I think this is just really important for people to know because it is such a non intuitive thing. It is. It's so important from a pronatalist advocacy perspective because it is, I think in the same way that progressives, the first thing they want to say is let in more immigrants and you're like, well, that actually doesn't help.And then they go, well, make, give people money and give free childcare. And you're like, well, that doesn't work. And they're like, well, all of the things that supported the s**t I already wanted to do don't work. And with conservatives, you have the similar instinct, which is, well, go back to the way things used to be, [00:26:00] uh, or at least the way that they perceive the way things used to be.And you're like, You know, you have to say, unfortunately, no pronatalism as an agenda doesn't allow you to just push whatever it is that you were planning to do beforehand. You actually need to look at the data and be very intentional if you want to be one of the groups that survives. Yeah. And we are so excited to have you on and I hope people check out the sub stack.And I expect many interesting things from her in the future. 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