Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

A thoughtful discussion about relationships in today's world. We consider how expectations around romance and marriage have changed over time, and the importance of shared purpose within a partnership.Malcolm: [00:00:00] pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.Yeah. Apparently no.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: We were having a conversation this morning in the car and Simone has telling me, she's like, Oh, well there, there's this amazing thing where it turns out I can get these popular romance books for free. And so I listened to them to go to bed every night.Nothing puts you to sleep like a romance novel. But you have to stop listening to them all after a certain point. Go into this because I found this fascinating and telling about modern society. Yeah. So not all romance novels end with like the will they part, you know, where like the couple finally forms and comes together.And like, sometimes there, there are periods at which couples do like start becoming couple ish way earlier in the [00:01:00] novel. And the problem that I have when this happens is that I can't know the books after that. Like in the beginning, it's fun because you're like, well, what's going to happen? I mean, you know what's going to happen, but what's going to happen?How is it going to happen? Oh, these people are driving each other crazy. The tension is so fun. But once it does happen, it becomes intolerable and I think the reason why is suddenly it's basically all about toxic relationships. It's all about drama. It's about one person you know, lying to the other.It's about tension. It's about breaking up after that point or someone's not being faithful. More than that, I think when you were describing it to me this morning. You were like, it keeps focusing on the interdynamics of their relationship. Yeah, like even when it's pleasant, yeah. Instead of immediately switching, they get in a relationship and then they say, Oh, now you're a couple.Now what are you going to achieve together? Which should [00:02:00] be, yeah. And it's interesting that you have this different framing of, okay, well, once you've sorted out the partner thing, Then you focus on what you're going to do with that person, right? Like that should be the point. And I think what this says about larger society is that people have a totally messed up perception of what relationships are all about, as is indicated by romance novels, which is to say that relationships are all about how you feel and how your partner feels.And. you know, after you get in a relationship, it's either about how, how in love you are and how you do all these things for each other and how, Oh my gosh, how romantic it is. And you're all, it's all pleasure all the time and amazing. Or it's about, Oh, he's not listening to me enough. You know, Oh, this tension, or I have to lie to him about this, or he's lying to me about something.So it's all about feelings, feelings, feelings, all feelings, feelings, feelings. And it's not at all about. Yeah. I mean, the whole point of becoming a couple is you, you, you then as a unit can achieve more than you would ever achieve by yourself. And also your [00:03:00] partner can help you become a better person.Now, sometimes that transformation takes place during the courting process. And these books were like, you know, the, the, the protagonists will change and become better people over time, or they'll help one person become a better person. But like once they become together, yeah, it just like everything falls apart.And I don't know why a woman would want to get in a relationship like or get married in the first place if she assumed that that was what was on the other end, just like, you know, making each other feel good, which I actually see a lot of relationships like this. And I think a lot of relationship breakdown is the misunderstanding.And I think it comes from women more than men, potentially due to engaging in these sort of books and stuff. Yeah, the societal norms that these books are establishing. That once you're married, you're a single unit. You are basically a single person from that point on. You know, one of the things that you sometimes do when you like to piss off regressives, is you call yourself...Mrs. Malcolm James Collins. Yeah, because that's the traditional way of doing it. [00:04:00] And the reason for that is because when people got married, they became a single unit, a single entity. They're, they're no longer with the question about how do we get along with each other? It became, okay, what are we going to do?Like, how are we going to change the world? What do we need to do for our family? And that many hard cultures are more traditional cultures still understand this. Of course, all of them have been eaten around at the edges, like. As we say, cultures start hard and then society and the world sort of acts like acid, like softening them and softening them.So you'll see bits where they begin to change and have this more romance perspective of relationships where after the relationship starts, then the question is, how does this person make me feel? Right. And the quality of the relationship is judged by the feeling this creates in the other person, and then they need to make those feelings and the oscillation of those feelings a constant game, right? Because it's about, okay, how can I masturbate this instinct? How can my partner masturbate this instinct?How can they ensure that I am feeling [00:05:00] whatever, content with myself, loved, cared for, paid attention to, protected yeah. So marriages became completely within this context completely about how the other person makes you feel.Mm-Hmm. . And of course when you're focused on that, then you create challenges around that in the marriage. Mm-Hmm. when, how you feel is irrelevant to the marriage. Largely speaking, when the marriage is about what you can accomplish together, there are still ways a marriage can fail or begin to feel like it's failing.Like Simone and I. When we have a crisis in our marriage, it's like, we're being very unproductive this year. Yeah, it's always like, whether or not we're achieving our shared goals, it's not about like, how do you make me feel? Or your work output. I'm like, your work output has gone down significantly recently, Simone.We need to talk about this. But then it's typically an action oriented conversation. It's how do we improve your work output? Yeah. And what's interesting is I went to Amazon and I looked up the like five top five bestselling [00:06:00] romance novels at this time. And even one of them was about a, an already married couple that.Came into marriage trouble because the husband specifically had become so focused on making his business work That he I guess like stopped paying so much attention to his wife who in turn had Made many sacrifices to help the business grow as well that is to say like she went for it like she helped him build up his business and went to networking events To help him.And then she felt like she was being neglected. And so she like walks out on him and like the book is pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.Yeah. Apparently no. So like the one, so when you look at, for example, all the top five best selling Romans. Books on Amazon right now the one common theme among all of them is that [00:07:00] the men are just like insanely in love with. The women, like period that's like, and like, Oh, like they can do no wrong.They're in love with them. Like in many of these women have many problematic elements, but still like the men are just like, that's, that's the theme, but I think that's a very common issue or common theme in both male and female porn is that like the, the partner of the other gender, the fantasy partner is super, super into you.That is to say your, your insert into the Mary Jane or whatever they call the man version of that. And it was, it was just so weird to read about like these, these book reviews about, Oh, like good for her for walking out, you know, after he neglected her. And I'm like, wait, sorry. I'm wait, they built. a business together and are now billionaires.And she feels like he puts too much time into the work that they've jointly worked really hard to what, hold on. But [00:08:00] also like, I know this happens. I know this happens. You know, there's plenty of real life stories of wives being like, Oh, you put too much time into work. What about me? And like, it's, it's very strange.I'll tell you what one of my pet peeves is when women do this. Who are homemakers and they have like less than four kids. Yeah. If you have like two kids or three kids and I've seen, you know, in our personal life, we've seen women who have like only like two kids or three kids and they have full time childcare and they're still like, why isn't my husband?Spending enough time with me. It's like, of course you're living a life of ennui. You're doing nothing. And can't you like make some other friends? Like part of me is also like, does it, does it have to be your husband? I mean, like, yeah, sure. He's probably great. No, I mean, a person who lives that pointless of an existence, if they had one role, which was childcare and they have now outsourced that role you know, of course they're going to feel, but I think, you know, that's, that's actually, maybe that's another theme of these [00:09:00] books is that these women.are inherently special to these men. In many cases, they are inept. They are not, they are inexperienced. They are not particularly smart. In many cases, they're like actively defective in some way, but the men love them anyway. So I think there's also this kind of expectation that you as a woman can, can be useless, but still come into a relationship and be idolized and worshipped.With no merit, like, I just, I mean, how are people ever going to end up in relationships now? Like if these are the... The fantasies that women are enjoying, I, I don't, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Well, I mean, it's, it's hard. So, so one of the things we'd say is if we live in a fallen world, it is difficult, very difficult to secure a good partner in this environment, which is why you need to be willing to make compromises.You know, we did the other video, you're not going to find a wife. One of the things we mean with this is [00:10:00] I believe that. Not everyone can be successful in this current market. Certainly not. But many more people can be successful than are successful by increasing the parameters of the women that they are considering both geographically, you know, looking at women in other geographics and looks wise.I'm like, you, you typically need to compromise on. Multiple things. If you're going to find, well, so ironically, ironically, the male leads in these books actually represent what real high value men need to be doing, which is like getting these pathetic women and like falling in love with them. I'm just saying, something can also be read from these.It's that women like this feeling. And then this is something that I think the red pill gets really wrong. When you are trying to secure a woman for just Sex you know, coming on too strong can really turn them away. Like, like coming on too dedicated or anything like that, that can turn them away.Absolutely. But when you have a woman who you are married [00:11:00] to in, in a longterm relationship with, they actually do want that. They do want you constantly telling them they're the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Constantly reinforcement. You're the most beautiful woman in the room. Constantly telling them how lucky you feel to be married.That's one of the reasons why I can't. novels. Once it gets to that stage. Cause I'm like, you know, but don't I do that to you? Or do I not? You do also vomit in my mouth when you do it for me. I mean, it's, it's so sweet. I just also feel guilty because one, I have oversaturated you with appreciation so that when you see it in other environments, you're like, yeah, I, yeah, it's I feel, I feel, you know, conflict, but I do think that that is the correct thing to do.And it does also the standard. that women expect. Well, but here's where you, where you don't fit the norm, which is that like, even though these women constantly fail, these men forgive them. These women are productive. The men love them anyway. Like if I stopped being productive, you'd be like, so when are you [00:12:00] leaving?Like. When can you? I know I would come to you like one of those bosses, which is like, we need to talk about your productivity. Oh no. You would Elon Musk me, right? You would say, if you were my employee, I'd fire you. No, no, no. I wouldn't do that. But I would come to you and I would give you a productivity plan where I'd be like, okay, you have this long to increase your productivity back up to these numbers.And we'll move forward from there. That never happens in these romance novels. That never happens in I value you as a person, but I just don't value people that much. So let's talk hard numbers here. Why, why aren't you bringing in as much as you used to? What did surprise me? And you know, this is actually something we haven't talked about the podcast, but we do talk about in the pragmatist guide to sexuality and relationships, I think is what romance novels.Do you indicate about what women find to be really attractive? And I think what's telling and interesting is how this shows up differently in the top [00:13:00] five bestselling romance novels on Amazon today. So the common themes, as I'm sure you remember from the book is the man is wealthy, he is powerful and he's high status, right?Like that's. It doesn't matter if he's good or evil. And this very much shows up in all the top five books. So one of the top five books basically the female ends up being the nanny for a pro baseball player for his baby son. For like a, for a summer period or like some short period of year. But of course, like they fall in love during that.And there's a tension of like, Oh, she's planning on leaving, but like, what will happen? Obviously we know. Then the other one a woman finds herself forced into marriage with a mob boss. But it turns out that he's really nice to her. Oh there's another one in which a woman has a terrible breakup and then ends up living in the house of her best friend's brother.And they pretend to be dating to like get people in their lives off their backs, either about having kids or just being in a relationship. But then, Oh, but, but they start to fall in love. But then the girl [00:14:00] has self esteem issues, but he just worships her. And then another one and this is interesting in that it's somewhat deviates from, Oh, I should have mentioned that the, the brother, the best friend's brother lives in a mansion and is like a millionaire, of course, then there's the one with the marriage falling apart that I told you about.There's another one where. This like local town war hero or something again, enters a farce to pretend that he's dating a girl who is from the wrong side of the tracks and not respected as part of a bet. And of course they fall in love with during that, but of course he's like the top guy in the community, even if he's not super wealthy.The final one, which is interesting is the, the, the man in question is a. Vigilante who goes after like sex traffickers and evil people and like secretly wants to overthrow the US government, but then becomes obsessed with the female lead and stalks her against her will. So it's definitely more of a, like, non con kind of romance, but I, I'm assuming that they signal his dominance and [00:15:00] capability in his competence as a.Vigilante. So he's like scary, but competent, like maybe he falls more into like the mob boss kind of category. Like he's bad, but he's also very good. But I do think that it's, it's important for people to be aware of like, what actually is attractive. 1 being seen as attractive by the male interest. And 2.By the male interest being powerful in some way, but it doesn't have to only be money. It doesn't have to only be status. He doesn't have to be the perfect golden boy war hero, but he can be. He doesn't have to be the scary vigilante, but he can be. He doesn't have to be a mob boss, but he can be. He doesn't have to be the billionaire, but he can be.You have to be like something. And I think it shows that like two guys, like if I guess if you want to like romance novel, hack your life as a guy, although you're ending up with this vapid feelings based relationship, which I very much don't appreciate. Is you have to find some field that you can be the best in and be the best in it.So maybe you're the best, like gamer, maybe you're the best, like finance analyst nerd. But you have to be [00:16:00] like the best. And then you have to show like extreme levels of attraction to and devotion to the woman. But in a way where like. But I mean, this is probably not a good idea. This is catching a woman who's optimizing for a spouse around the feelings that it provides her instead of the productivity boost it gives her and the ability to achieve her goals that it gives her.Or, and I think really the ideal spouse, and this is something we see in our society, a lot is, is you're choosing the person with women to men who inspires you the most. I think a lot of women, you know, I, I work with a lot of younger women, right? Like Gen Z women and stuff like that. And the common trait I'm seeing in what they want is they don't know what they want to dedicate their lives to yet.They're sort of like. I want to find somebody who is dedicated their life to say, yeah, I'll just hitch my horse to that wagon. [00:17:00] Right. But that's what they're really looking for in a partner. And I say, this is like the highest tier, highest quality woman that you're going to find, which is a woman who's really looking.For an inspiration that they can hitch their wagon to and work towards every day. Because when I talk to Gen Z guys, they often have some like, or at least worthwhile Gen Z guys, some inspiration. They already care about some goal that they're aiming towards. And they're like, yeah, this is what my life is about.Whereas with women, it's often much more vague. And I think this is why women more broadly. When they don't find a guy that they can hitch their wagon to, they end up hitching their wagon to like mainstream societal causes that are sort of very vanilla, like the environment or something. Or yoga. Oh my God.How many yoga girlfriends have we heard about from high performing men? Yes. Would you say just never date a yoga girlfriend? Yeah. Don't date. Yeah. If that's, if that's her thing, like I don't care if she does it for like flexibility and [00:18:00] balance. Fantastic. You know, I'm sure it'll make her great in bed, but like, Not a fitzer thing.Not if she identifies with it. Oh god. No like big red flag. Yeah Well, and I'd say that some things that people might think red flags might not be like you were a vegan when I met you Not vegan, vegetarian. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm never giving up cheese. Gee whiz You were a vegetarian when I met you and I can think a lot of guys would be like, oh, that's a big red flag It's like, no women, when they're looking for something to dedicate themselves to, they'll choose a lot of like vague societally approved things until they meet somebody who inspires them.Like, like really high quality women. And these are the women who are meeting you because they're interested in what you're interested in or they're interested in the, like, like the way that you were able to think and why it's important. And why it's worth dedicating oneself to much more than they're looking for somebody who masturbates a set of emotional feelings.And any woman, I mean, I think one thing we see in these books and in society more broadly, [00:19:00] you can think, oh, I've done this great thing for my wife by masturbating, You know, making it so that she's a stay at home woman and she has full time childcare. I'd say that most people, as soon as you've done that, you've destroyed your marriage.That's doing the wife a severe disservice. That's like a one way ticket to depression. Yeah. She now has nothing she's doing all day, every day, except finding problems in her life. Now, do you think a lack of meaning is going to make your life happier? Yeah. That's why women cheat. That's why they have the time to cheat.Like people might like insinuate. I love somebody in the comments insinuating. You might like. Be cheating on me or something. She doesn't have the time. Like there, there, it is not feasible. It is, it is, it is infeasible given the way that we work in the ways that we spend time on. So yeah. And also the fact that I find everyone else disgusting.Well, I know that I'm just talking about logistic feasibility. Yeah. But if you've left your wife at home all day and you've given her full time, what else is she supposed to do? Well, especially [00:20:00] if she lives for the feelings and that's the thing is, is, you know, if you have a wife, you live for nothing else.If you have no purpose in life. And I, I think that this also when we're talking about, because we've talked about it from a, I think a more secular perspective, like, like a cause that you care about or something like that. But if you're from like a hard religious tradition, what does this mean? It means that, That every day within your relationship, you're saying, what is serving God best?Okay. You, you, you do not ask, how do I make my partner feel? You know, you can be like, well, God cares about my feelings. God does not care about your feelings. Okay. He's got a much bigger s**t going on in the world today. Right now. You should be asking yourself, what does he want for this world? And how can you increase.That through the way that you're working together in your marriage, and as soon as you stop caring about the feelings, it's much easier for them to just naturally maximize themselves. As we talked about in other videos. Absolutely. Yeah.So what else can we take [00:21:00] away from this? I, I guess we're, if we don't want our, our daughters reading romance novels and normalizing that this is what a desirable relationship is, or this is what romance is, where can we send them? I mean, I, I guess we have internally like our own canon or like movies that we want our kids to all watch together like as a family and talk about because we think that they set good examples.But I mean, are there any good examples of a a couple that does actually come together and work on something other than selfish means? Team Rocket. But they're the villains, Malcolm, no one... So, so, this is actually interesting. I and, and I think we talked about this in another podcast. Most healthy relationships.Oh, Morticia. Oh no, but they really care about each other's feelings or in some other way seen as what's the word I'm looking for here? Like transgressive. Yeah. But even, even Gomez and Morticia are romantic in that traditional way of being like, You know, [00:22:00] steamy romance and love and dancing, but if you, when you, and you'll notice this immediate, you'll be like, oh, that's a good couple.Typically good couples are villains or in some other way coded as transgressive because being a couple that's focused on a mission and that is happy is in many ways, inherently transgressive of the value set that progressive society is giving to women. It, it needs to tell them that this isn't possible because it is not possible within a progressive optimization function.It is not possible within a progressive optimization function because the progressive optimization function is hedonistic at its core. It's do whatever you want to feel good about yourself. And that always leads to conflict in relationship because each individual isn't working towards some larger goal, they're working towards themselves.And so that always leads progressive relationships to break down. And so that is why this, this beast in our society must tell people you cannot be happy. In this [00:23:00] way, you, you, you are going to have this conflict because any relationship based on that progressive societal model is going to have that conflict.And that's the really sad thing about this urban monoculture in our society. Is it the core thing that it's offering people saying, Oh, you can be happy all the time. You just do whatever you want. Don't worry. Like we will support you identify however you want. We will support you be whoever you want. We will support you.But sadly, like when you look at something like a marriage, this structurally leads both people to be systemically less happy than they would be if they had lived for a higher purpose. And that is really fascinating and, and kind of sad. It's kind of sad that so many people in our society have opted into those relationships and feel this deep ennui and this deep unhappiness and their lives and their relationships have become about how they make each other feel.Yeah. Well, I love you, Simone. I'm happy. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, the [00:24:00] Dungeons and Dragons movie, except they weren't a couple, but like the, the two surrogate parents in the Dungeons and Dragons movie. Yeah, but they weren't married. I know, but it's the closest I can come to a relationship that endures over the years where they have a kid and they both are working toward larger things.And not each other's feelings. They're also a lot like, like a modern relationship in that they don't, they're not exclusive, you know, like whatever. Not our relationship. I don't know if that's, we, we've talked about this in other videos. I don't know if that is long-term functional. There's some people experimenting with it now.Yeah. And it may work out, it may not actually. Funny, I think the best hope of a durable polyamorous culture is the one that Tate is pioneering with his brother and their Oh, the industrial model they have going on. Yeah, it's interesting. All the Tater Tots running around. Tater Tots? I hope that they call them that, the Tater Tots.How could they not call them the Tater Tots? They obviously call them the Tater Tots, clearly. I'm insulted if they [00:25:00] don't. I, I, yeah, yeah. You are lovely, Sinon. I love you, Malcolm. I'm glad that, you know, we're happy with our relationship. So keep that going, please. 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

Malcolm Collins discusses the virus as a predominantly white thing targeting and erasing cultures. They explore the impact of wokeism on organizations and social justice causes. The podcast dives into tactics, radicalization, and vulnerability within communities. They analyze the infiltration of organizations by a virulent mimetic strain. The influence and spread of misinformation through TED Talks is also discussed.

We discuss the surprising history behind Jewish gun ownership rates, including how repeated pogroms selected for urban Jews who fled rather than fought back. We explain why an urban, intellectual tradition doesn't encourage individual gun ownership, and how Israel is exerting new evolutionary pressures.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] So... Jews and guns.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So if our book, The Pragmatist's Guide to Religion, used one of those cheeky titles where somebody, you know, like, why don't zebras get cancer or something like that? You know, where it's like one interesting thing that the book like goes too deeply into it would be, why don't Jews own guns?And, and the, this is a uniquely like, like vexing question. So I'm not going to go into the stats. If you want to go into all the stats and the citation. You can go look at the book, but if I was to expect that, like, like if you look at Jewish history, there are two things that I would expect of every Jew, never live in a city, always have a gun.Simone Collins: Everyone has a gun.Malcolm Collins: And this is very interesting to me because if you look at our cultural. Background like our cult of art. You want to call it that it tells us to do both of those things. It tells us, you know, do arms training when you were a young kid, always have, you have a gun behind you. We have a gun in almost every room of our house.I [00:01:00] decided to add a little screenshot here. Of Simone standing desk where she works or within arm's reach is an AR 15 and right behind her in that shot is a Remington.And right where I'm laying down to record this right now, where I edit the videos next to my bed is a Walter CCP pestle. there's almost nowhere in our house where we spend a significant amount of time where there is not a firearm was in arms reach.Malcolm Collins: You know, and if you look at modern times, this is a uniquely interesting question, like even in Israel gun ownership rates are Thank you. Very low, weirdly, weirdly low. I mean, like people inSimone Collins: the army, they're trained in, in gun use, you know? Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Like they should be one of the most gun literate and, and, and thus gun having people, I would suspect that in any population, if you look in Israel and we keep, you know, I read these horrifying stories of what happened when Hamas first attacked, and I keep wondering.Why didn't this old lady have an AR 15 on her wall? Like what was, why wouldn't she have that? She lived right next to [00:02:00] Gaza. That it's not like they didn't know that this attack may happen. Well, and whenSimone Collins: you think about this attack, if, if these, if people in all of these areas and I don't know what the concealed carry laws are in Israel, you know, like, but for example, if the, if the people of this festival.If, you know, 25 percent of them had concealed carry, this would have played out very different if, you know, everyone had weapons in their house, if they lived in a kibbutz, especially if it was a kibbutz close to the border, like, this would have played out very differently, you know, the story, these terrifying stories of, you know, two kids alone at home, you know, their mom in another place on the phone with them as their home is being, I mean, if they had guns, again, this, this could have playedMalcolm Collins: out super differently.And I'm saying here, you know, there are like progressive jews, they look at what happened. And they're like, Oh my God, I, I, I, I never expected the, the, the people of Gaza to do this. And everyone else is like, what are you talking about? They're like, Muslims going around and beheading people? That's so out of character.What? And then, and then of course everyone else is like. What are [00:03:00] you, what are you talking about? Everybody knew this could happen. Everybody, and they're like, no, no, no. It must have been something we did. I, I can't see any other reason this could have happened. And, and worse, and I mean, we're talking about this and we're not going to do a full episode on, on this particular topic, but I have just been so ashamed even with how little I think of progressives in the U.S., how they have treated these horrifying massacres. I saw a top. post on Reddit arguing that the, the, the massacre of the babies was their heads being cut off was a fake stunt perpetrated. This is on front page of Reddit, or at least my front page perpetrated by the Israeli government.Simone Collins: God, I wish that were true.I like, I genuinely wish that wereMalcolm Collins: true.It gets worse, Lloyd. My parakeet, Petey. Huh? He's dead.Oh. Oh, man. I'm sorry, Harry. [00:04:00] What happened? His head fell off. His head fell off?Yeah, he was pretty old.Malcolm Collins: I saw. You know, classes in Harvard right now, you know, we've heard about them being from from our contacts who are at school. They're right now being canceled. So all of the students, these are grad students, by the way, can go out and protest the bus that is protesting that horrifying letter that said that Hamas has 0 percent blame for this.The state of Israel has 100 percent blame for this. It's horrifying. And if you look at the things leading up to the people like, oh, Israel was so horrible to the people of Gaza, the very reason why it's Israel didn't expect to be attacked right now was because they had been so quickly and, and, and, and hugely loosening sanctions on Gaza and increasing work visas to the people of Gaza because they were trying to do this deal with Saudi Arabia.They had been really focused recently on [00:05:00] increasing quality of life there. And so when they saw really huge troop movements in the area that were really obvious, they were like, Oh the one these movements are so obvious that it must be something else like it can't possibly be that they're about to attack us because they wouldn't make it this obvious, especially given, you know, the way the people would react, given all of the, the, the looser sanctions and stuff like this.Remember, we need... And you will make it through! This isn't random, Ramite. Someone made a mistake. That's it. We're empty, ma'am.Big goddamn mistake.Malcolm Collins: And I think that this is where this mindset where it's like. Oh, they're attacking us because they're mad at us. It's like, no, they're attacking you because it's [00:06:00] like theologically mandated that you cease existing in this area. It doesn't matter what you do for them. They still have to kill you if they follow this cultural tradition.And I should be clear, not all Islamic cultural traditions feel that way.I mean, there's a reason why. Other Islamic countries have refused. To take. Palestinian refugees throughout this attack, , there's a reason why. , other Arab countries have refused to, accept Palestine as a state under their control. Because it is a radically different islamic culture than other islamiccultures also with another quick side note here, I want to dispel. A misconception that has been going around a lot. That Hamas was only supported by a minority of Gazans, or it was like, It's not a mainstream organization was in Gaza over 50% of the population in Gaza support. , hammas to put this in context, only 37% of Germans supported Hitler's rise to power.I think it's important for people to ask themselves. Why are people pretending [00:07:00] like Hamas is this weird splinter organization? controlling the people of Gaza. And forcing them to do things they don't want to, but we don't pretend that that was the case of the Nazis. And the Germans during world war II. And all of this. Oh, they were in an open air prison, , they were being abused and that's why they did. It sounds very similar to talk about the Nazis were, oh, the treaty of Versailles was so abusive to them. You know, look at the hyperinflation. They were experiencing, look at the absolute poverty.So many people in Germany were experiencing. Leading up to the rise of the nazi party I also want to be clear. I am not saying that innocent people are not suffering. There are. Many many innocent people suffering in Gaza right now. But when we look at this in the context of other wars, we are weirdly treating this. very, very differently than we would say. Think of the people of the Southern United States during general Sherman's total war campaign, which was [00:08:00] absolutely horrifying in the number of civilian casualties. Or the bombing of Dresden during world war II. Which famously killed more civilians than the atomic bombs did in Japan. The atomic bombs killed around 120,000 Japanese. , While the firebombing of dresden killed her on 135,000 germansMalcolm Collins: And one of the themes of this episode is going to be the, the actual key to answering the question of why do Jews own guns in such low numbers comes from understanding. That Jews are not a monolithic entity and that there are many very different subcultural groups within the Jewish tradition, diaspora tradition, diaspora tradition, history, whatever word you want to use.And some of them have actually been incredibly militaristic just not the ones that survived, but before I give anything away something that is worth noting here, because we made a tweet to this and we can't do a whole episode on it, but it actually is a very important concept to discuss, is why progressives hate Jews so much. Right. Because itSimone Collins: seems so [00:09:00] weird, right?Malcolm Collins: It doesn't seem weird to me, it seems like the natural result of progressive philosophy, but I think a lot of people don't think their philosophy through, they're just like, Oh, progressives are the nice ones,Simone Collins: right? And progressives, like anyone who's slightly different from the norm, whoever has had a history of being persecuted.So obviously Jews, plus many Jews are super progressive. So like, there's all these reasons why I assume Reform Jews are super progressive. I know, I know, but like to the average nobody who knows nothing. Like those are those are the Jews because those are the Jews youMalcolm Collins: see. Okay. Yeah. And I think that this is actually one of the, the, this is a totally different tangent.But I think the, the seeing Jews as a, a universalized entity rather than progressive versus Orthodox Jews, you know, in the US, we don't confuse, you know, Universalist Christians was like, I guess I'd call them real Christians like, like Catholics and stuff, but we conflate the actions of reform Jews, which are used to justify anti [00:10:00] Semitism with Orthodox Jewish communities.I think to a greatSimone Collins: extent, that's because you don't encounter Orthodox Jews. Like you may see them, but you, you've never talked to one. Like they're not hanging out with you. And they're also not talking like normally. There's like a couple on YouTube who are like, this is what it's like to buy a wig, or like, this is what an Orthodox Jewish party is like, but like, no one's really talking to you about like their day to day, so it's, andMalcolm Collins: you just don't know.Okay, before, this is maybe a whole other video that we might do on, on, on this and, and anti Semitism. Why? Why? Do progressives hate Jews? Why? And why is their philosophy always going to end up hating Jews?Yes. The reason why is because the progressive philosophy is based on a core assumption, which is that all differences between success of groups, of groups of people, whether they're cultural or ethnic or anything, groups, because a systemic discrimination and disenfranchisement combined with outright oppression.Simone Collins: Okay. So in other [00:11:00] words, if there is a difference, if some group is different, it's because they've been treated unfairly by someMalcolm Collins: other facets of society. Because we're different.That's where the value and diversity comes from. To a progressive, diversity has value only in that it increases the number of victims that they have available for them to convert. Not because they really believe that anyone's different. And, and this is, you don't believe that anyone's really different.If you do believe that all differences between groups are caused by systemic discrimination and oppression, if there's a group out there... i. e. Jews, that is both wealthier than other groups on average, more successful, and like academia, you know, you look at the number of politicians who have Jewish ancestry, or you look at the number of famous intellectuals that have Jewish ancestry, or you look at the number of Nobel Prize winners that have Jewish ancestry, they always out compete, they are a very successful culturalSimone Collins: group.Right, it's clear the Jews are doingMalcolm Collins: well. Right, and so you see this cultural group. [00:12:00] And then you also see that this is a cultural group that claims that it was historically oppressed and that it even still faces oppression. Of course, those two facts are unreconcilable. And this is why, in progressive circles, it is so offensive to even point out that Jews are successful, and that they do disproportionately outcompete other groups, both economically, academically, bureaucratically.And, and it's because what's the logical assumption there? Well, they must be lying about their oppression. They, they, one, and you increasingly see this within progressive circles. They must be lying about how actually oppressed they are, one. And two, they must not be participating in the oppression of other groups.They must be the architects of all oppression.Simone Collins: Right. Because if you're successful, you're successful. Because of some zero sum game that you've played unfairly, right? Yes,Malcolm Collins: yes. Whereas conservatives would look at those things and they'd be like, Oh these are things we might be able to learn from. Now, of [00:13:00] course, there's some conservative groups that are just like ethno nationalists and just really only care about their own group.Competing, which is, you know, they're not going to be long for this world, given the world that we're entering, but you know, obviously they'll be anti Semitic, but they'll be anti pretty much all other groups that they don't identify as their own. Yeah, equalSimone Collins: opportunity hatred. That's, you know,Malcolm Collins: fine.Well, they might have a unique hatred for Jewish people because they are out competing them. And people often hate people more when they're out competing them. But there is a path towards acceptance within the conservative movement. There is not a path towards acceptance within the progressive movement so long as they hold on to this ideology that all differences between groups are due to oppression and discrimination.And so it makes a lot of sense that we see these, these cultural power centers in the U. S. have responded so bizarrely from my perspective to all of this, and I think in a way that has, has really broken the trust of a lot of people who formerly didn't realize how crazy and how [00:14:00] hateful these groups were in terms of their, the, you know, like the Harvard letters signed by 31 student organizations saying Israel was 100 percent at fault for this.And, and the, the classes are still being canceled so that they can go double down on their support for that. So with that all out of the way, you know, we're sort of giving the, the cultural context right now as to why we're talking about this. Why would gun ownership rates be so low in Jewish communities?Well, first you have to look at the history here. Judaism underwent something very unique after the second temple period, which can almost be thought of as sort of like a Cambrian explosion or a what's the word in biologyOh, radiation. So in radiation, if you look at the Cambrian, like some of my favorite periods in history, you can look at like the Cambrian explosion or the Triassic. If you look at the dinosaurs of the Triassic or all the animals of the Triassic, because a lot of them weren't dinosaurs yet.A lot of them looked really weird. If you look at the Cambrian Explosion, the animals that came out of the Cambrian [00:15:00] Explosion, a lot of them looked really weird. These are called radiation events. They typically happen after a mass extinction event. So, what it means is a lot of the ecological niches that used to be held by specialists get wiped out, and groups that weren't really built for those ecological niches quickly evolved to fill them.Well, that can happen with a cultural group as well. When the Second Temple Period happened, when the Jewish people were dispersed all over the world they began to fill lots of very unusual cultural niches if you look at the Jewish people historically. So before that, Jews were really sort of one cultural group.You know, they were a people, a government, and everything like that. But after that, you had... Like if we're talking about like weird Jewish cultural niches one, you know, to this topic was a, a mercenary cultural group that specifically specialized almost in being like the10,000.Malcolm Collins: from like [00:16:00] the the Greek period where it was Jews that you knew that you would hire when you wanted specific functions fulfilled within your military.And, and they basically lived on, on like mercenary Jews. Yeah, like, like, like professional unmoored mercenaries. They could even, like, move between forces, like, Okay, this king wants to hire us now. That's superSimone Collins: cool, yeah, okay. What happened to them? Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So whatSimone Collins: happened to all of these groups? I guess they weren't, I mean, if you're a militaristic group, you're probably not reproducing at a really high rate, is that the problem?No, thatMalcolm Collins: wasn't the problem. Exactly. Actually what happened to them is actually just a useful thing. This is a specialization that has repeatedly evolved throughout human history for different cultural groups. As I mentioned, the Greeks did this for a period where you would actually get Greeks in different parts of the world because their phalanx was such a powerful like military pattern.Yeah. Hired them to perform this, this specialized function. And you see different groups. Sort of evolved this cultural specialization and they never last that long. It's too specialized whenever. Okay. So again, we're going to go to great extinction periods, [00:17:00] great extinction period. And you're talking about biology.The groups that die out are the groups that are the most specialized. This is why the dinosaurs died out, but the like crocodiles and alligators did. They were much more generalist. So groups that survive are the groups that are more generalist. And this is true of cultures as well. When you're going through major societal change, the ultra specialized cultures are the ones that are most likely to die out, and the generalist cultures are the ones that are most likely to survive.Okay? Okay. Okay. Sure. In a group is pro gun, One of the things that is most associated with that is a rural cultural specialization.And you typically see a cluster of behavior patterns that are associated with that. One is being pro gun, another is being pro dogs. And when a group is intergenerationally [00:18:00] in cities in, and they really become city specialists you will get Usually a hatred of dogs or a dislike of dogs or prohibitions against dogs, and you will see them use guns less.Simone Collins: Now why is that? Why use guns less? Is that just because, like,Malcolm Collins: the... We're gonna get to why. Okay. There's a very specific reason. Actually, you can give a hypothesis.Simone Collins: My hypothesis is that the, that cities have their own protective systems and are more closely governed and therefore the administrators of the city don't like when people have their own justice system.Malcolm Collins: That's, that's partially true, but it's more than that. So when you think about cultural groups that are city specialized, right? The two that really jump out to me are the Jewish cultural group today. And with another cultural group that is. Anti dog and often doesn't have guns as high a rate as other cultural groups, which is some muslim specializations.Yeah, and many people think of muslims because early muslims were not. Early muslims were entirely a martial specialization almost. But they conquered a lot of [00:19:00] regions, became very erudite, very intellectual. And some factions lost those traditions and became more of city specialists.Now when I mentioned the dog thing, a lot of modern Jews who just aren't that familiar with recent Jewish history, do not know that Jews have historically. And if you want to go into all the citations in this, you can look at the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. Cause we go really deep on this, but I think a famous quote here, this is from a quote from the guy who wrote fiddler on the roof, you know, famous Jew into Jewish culture.If a Jew has a dog, either that dog is no dog or that man is no Jew. You know, that, that's how extreme it was. So if you look historically, this was something that a lot of Jewish people knew about Jewish culture. But recently, if you look at the more like reform Jews and stuff like that, where Jewish culture is degrading faster, a lot of them have forgot these traditions.Simone Collins: We've also spoken with rabbis who are like well known rabbis and are like. Wait, what? And then they like look into it and they're like, holy s**t. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So, so what's interesting about both of these traditions is they are [00:20:00] not encoded into Jewish theological texts.These are completely cultural preferences, right? And so, so again, that makes it weird that these cultural preferences that are not theologically encoded because there have been Jews in certain periods of history where both gun and dog ownership was really common or, or other type of weapon like martial specialization.And in which living in rural areas was common. So the pogroms, like when I'm like, I would expect all Jews to have a gun. The thing that immediately went to me is pogroms, right? Like they repeatedly get genocided. Like Nazis were not the first time this happened. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So like they have a strong cultural memory.memory of people coming in and killing them. This was, so let's go over what a pogrom was. So occasionally European monarchs would just be like, okay, we're going to kill all the Jews, or we got to get all the Jews out. Or just like, I hate Jews. Probably the Jews again. They were just a really easy group to scapegoat as, as were any group [00:21:00] that were a minority population was a significantly different culture than the mainstream population.Another example there would be the Romani the, the offensive term would be Gypsies, but it's a term that more people would know, so, but anyway so when these pogroms happened, after this sort of radiation event in, in Jewish cultural history, there were lots of different Jewish cultural specializations.There were some Jews that had rural specialization, there were some Jews that had martial specializations, there were some Jews that had urban based specializations. The difference is, is that the rural specialized Jews, if they say, hey, we need you all out of here, All your property, all your wealth, everything your family has is in the land.If you leave, you need to then go, like, kill other people to get them off the land to take their land. That's the only way you're going to be able to feed your family again. And that'sSimone Collins: also, like, the odds of that actually working are...Malcolm Collins: Are astronomically low, yeah. [00:22:00] If you... Don't try. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you... You actually sort of have to stay and defend your territory, or you have to get really good at hiding that you're Jewish.You would have to become a crypto Jew. Sorry, people might not know what I'm referencing here, but there actually is a rural, specialized Jewish population called the crypto Jews, which were rural, specialized Jews, mostly from the Spanish area. Which settled a lot in Mexico, so there's a lot in the Americas that they mostly lost their cultural traditions.It's more like a cultural memory now, but they were called the crypto Jews because they hid that they were Jewish during the programs of crypto, you know, meaning like, coded hidden, right?Of the rural specialized Jewish populations, that was the only group that... These were the ones who got really good at hiding it, but even then they didn't transfer it very well intergenerationally. Whereas if you have an urban specialization even though it's easier to target [00:23:00] you, it's also easier to leap.You have a skill typically like, jewel making or shoe making or something like that and often typically a skill because you would have been discriminated against by the local guilds that there aren't a lot of guilds around or the guilds around are more. You know, open to so that you can then pick up, go to another city, take most of your wealth with you, like any, anything that you've accumulated and, and set up in another city.And this was actually core to this Jewish group thriving as much as they did, because every time one of these programs would happen. They'd all leave one city or one geographic region and then they'd go and settle in a bunch of other cities, but they would have extended family networks in these cities because there was a similar cultural group that this just, just kept happening to.And so it was very easy for them to assimilate into these communities because they already had networks in these communities that had a history of needing to take in this type of refugee. And so it allowed [00:24:00] for. There to be kin networks, where you would be as a Jewish person, much more closely related to Jewish people in the other major cities than you would be related, than, like, me as a British person be related to an average, you know, guild specialist in something in, in France or in Germany, whereas the Jewish people in London would have fairly close relatives in Berlin and Paris.Now, this is really important for one specific specialization, which is banking. If you were going to, to, so, so a lot of people think the only reason Jews became specialists in banking during this period was because they didn't have prohibitions against usury in their religious traditions, whereas Christians and Muslims did, so that they were able to become bankers, but that, while that was a reason, it probably wasn't the core reason.The core reason was actually the close family networks, which were created by urban specialization combined with regular pogroms. But this, we still haven't gotten to why no guns yet, right? [00:25:00] Like, it seems like you would want to defend yourself during one of these pogroms. Actually, not really, when you think about it.So, suppose they come in and they're like, okay, it's the Jews fault that like, we're not getting water, or like, like there's not enough rain or something, or, or there's too much corruption in government. They'll find something and they'll blame the Jews. People still do it today. And they would go in and they would do like lynchings often.But they would get it out of their system. It was rare for them to kill like more than 20 percent of a population. And then the rest would would leave, right? If they had guns, if they fought back. They would kill a hundred percent of theSimone Collins: population. Okay. I get it. So the other reason why they weren't armed is basically if they were and they didn't totally nail it living in a city, then they'd be screwed.But then I guess the problem now is you've got all these Jewish groups living in kibbutzim, living in settlements. SoMalcolm Collins: Israel and modern warfare changes everything.Simone Collins: And it should change traditions, right? Do you think it's going to changeMalcolm Collins: after this? It [00:26:00] may, but it induces evolutionary pressures, but Jews actually have such an advantage in modern warfare due to other cultural traditions.That they may notSimone Collins: rely, but still, I feel like It's totally irrelevant. So let's talk about If you had a friend or relative who was kidnapped, who lost someone, who had someone killed, Even if you, you, you just like know someone's like third hand. I feel like I would arm my whole household at that point, likeMalcolm Collins: line.So that is your cultural tradition that's telling you to do this?Simone Collins: No, but we already owned our house. No one's ever even,Malcolm Collins: you know, pogrom Jews have undergone, you know? Mm-Hmm. They've undergone, you think every time a pogrom happened in medieval Europe, this hadn't hap they, everyone there didn't know somebody else.At least within two generations,Simone Collins: but they were living, they were living in, we'll say enemy territory, you know, they were surroundedMalcolm Collins: by the optimization function has changed with Israel right now. There is no retreat, you know, now there isSimone Collins: territory. They don't have to get along with some other security force.And, you know, like the the point being.Malcolm Collins: Israel changes everything, but it hasn't had time to exert [00:27:00] evolutionary pressure. The reason it hasn't had time, and we're talking about cultural evolutionary pressure, the reason it hasn't had time to exert cultural evolutionary pressure is something very specific, which is, it turns out that the other Jews.So, so if you talk about Marshall specialized cultures, our culture is a Marshall specialized culture. You as a kid were taught how to use firearms, bows and arrows. When did you, I remember Simone was like, my family wasn't like that big into bows and arrows. You were like, yeah, like, I remember there was like a year when we weren't allowed to use them.Cause like somebody got shot.Simone Collins: No, no, no. No, there was just like the always told at Christmas family story of how, like one of my uncles shot my aunt in the eye accidentally. And yourMalcolm Collins: family still use them. Well, yeah. But do you understand how insane that sounds to other cultural backgrounds? She didn't lose her eye.A child shot another child in the eye was a bow and arrow, and then the next, the next generation is like, yeah, let's keep doing that bow and arrow training. Because it's, if [00:28:00] you look at my family, ISimone Collins: wouldn't, I wouldn't call our culture Marshall because it's more of the Scots ruffian. You know, because martial implies like, you know, joining a larger organized force.This is more likeMalcolm Collins: rebellion. All martial cultures are specialized this way. And this is the point I'm about to get to. Martial culture. So you look at the training that Simone and I received as kids. Me, from like an erudite, I'd say fairly upper class family. got training that as an adult, I realized when I talked to people from other cultural groups, they're like, that's like paramilitary training.Like, why were they teaching little kids how to use a bunch of weapons? Like, that seems very odd. Why were they, why was it so normal for you guys to have to Doesn't thatSimone Collins: seem weird to you when like Now, a majority of parents are tracking their children's locations on their phone. Are they not also going to teach them how to defend themselves to use?IMalcolm Collins: don't think like that. No. So consider like me, for example, like, a core tradition in my family was learning how to you know, take apart fireworks, build them into bigger fireworks so that you could blow stuff [00:29:00] up.actually very similar to Simona's family. This might be part of the way the tradition has been to be passed down. I remember when my family showed me one of, our family, friends, he came over and he had a hand. He only had one finger on it and it was very mangled and he had got it by blowing up his hand while playing with fireworks.And he was a kid and they were like, okay, just keep in mind. You could blow off your hand and here are the fireworks. And then they let me go play alone with my brother. , you know, we were probably like, I don't know, seven and eight. , in the woods with fireworks. And, and so I think that there, there might even be a tradition of talking about or showing injuries related to the weapons right before they give them to you as like a way of like, don't. Kill yourself, but, , they also let you play on supervise with them, which I think is another thing that would be very surprising to groups that are not for martial traditions. but for groups from Marshall traditions, they would think of this as just completely the most normal childish things. They would just be like this. He just normal childhood fun. What are you even talking about? There is nothing weird about you playing with weapons at the kid. And [00:30:00] actually, if you even look at like my family history, so I look at movies made about. My family or groups that my family was involved with and they always involve child soldiers they always involved armed children. Girls, you know how to shoot one of these? It's quite normal you got there. Last time I checked the gun, don't care who's pulling the trigger. Boys, listen to me. I'll fire first. I want you two to start with the officers and work your way down. Can you tell the difference? Yes, father. Yes, father. Good. Samuel, after your first shot, I want you to reload for your brother Nathan.Malcolm Collins: Like, And I can see a lot of people being like, why would you focus on teaching your kids how to use explosives?Why would you focus on, on making sure your kids know all these skills but if you look at all of these various things, there are within our culture, which is a very martial culture. You, when you were courting me, you showed me your knife collection, right? Pink knives. So I knew you were [00:31:00] feminine, but you were signaling something to me.Right? Like you were like, yes, I am from a martial culture. I use weapons. I have a collection of weapons. Here are my weapons. Can I defend the family enough? And then in martial cultures, like when you talk about the most extreme martial cultures, there's typically an extreme within martial cultures. The most extreme martial cultures, women are also engaged in the martial applications, right?Middling martial cultures. Women are not engaged in it. Men are engaged in it. And then the anti martial cultures, neither the men or the women are expected to learn weapons. But in the most extreme martial cultures, women typically, and these are typically the cultures that live in the most rural, most sort of, dangerous areas.Well, so what'sSimone Collins: so weird though, is that both men and women participate in the Israeli defense force. Both menMalcolm Collins: and women haven't gotten to this yet. Okay. Okay.Simone Collins: I guess no spoilers.Malcolm Collins: Fine. Okay. So if you look at martial cultures, where do they typically come from? And these were the cultures that did really well in the old West and the US.Simone Collins: In rural areas. The Scots Irish were in likeMalcolm Collins: the back country. They were rural areas, but rural areas without persistently [00:32:00] stable governing structures. Oh, yes. That, that so like, you know, Scottish Irish territory, stuff like that, like where our post war ancestors come from. Hmm. Or, or Nordic background, right?Yes. You know. This is really interesting. Okay. So, so you see that, which is very different than the environments where the Jewish culture was specialized. Right.Simone Collins: High, high societal concentration, because I mean, if you are making your money off banking, you need like civilization, like fully functioning.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. But martial cultures have a huge. Downside to them when it comes to modern warfare, they are specifically specialized at home self defense. So you look at like the skills that we have, these skills are survivalist skills and these skills are protect your house skills, but they often are much more tribal, much less truck thing of command structures.So if you look at Simone and I, we have an almost intrinsic disdain, like our entire cultural background, of bureaucracies, of government, [00:33:00] of hierarchy these things are very, very bad if you're going to be very, very good in a modern military context. They are very good for society to break down, but when you look at modern military actions, they require bureaucracy.They require top down coordination, they require taking orders, they require this sort of complex organizational structure, which mirrored city life. And this is what you see in the Yom Kippur War, and I think this is what we're going to see in this war as well, that a lot of people are like, Oh, this is going to be really grueling for the Israeli Defense Forces, everything like that.You look at the Yom Kippur War, they were attacked. So when we think of Israel now, we think of a force that is militarily more complex than its neighbors. When the Yom Kippur War happened you know, they were attacked by surprise, and they actually were, had less military equipment than their neighbors, and the military equipment they had was, was significantly less sophisticated than their neighbors.They were being attacked by better funded groups, with more troops, with more everything, and they smoked [00:34:00] their... But it was insane. The level to which they crushed the people who are attacking them given that they should have been on the back foot underarmed, under technologied it was because their forces were much more internally coherent, whereas the forces that were attacking them, Came from much more rural cultural traditions.So these were more rural Islamic cultural traditions that had lacked internal cohesion and we're much more sort of like war bands. I'm going to get my own thing. And the military orders culturally that they were able to follow were similar to probably the sophistication of the orders that our culture could follow.Like, I'm not saying this as an insult to their culture. I'm saying that their culture is like my culture.Simone Collins: It's actually, if you look at these sort of parallels with All of these, like, militia groups that you see in the U. S., they're, they're far more likely to be associated with our culture and to have that same level of, like, decentralization.So when you look at January 6th, I mean, they were just always [00:35:00] going to be way too disorganized to actually take over the U. S. government, and I still hold that. Like, I don't think we're ever going to see a very organized rebellion. Because of the nature of our militaristic tendencies culturally, however, you cannot, you cannot like take these people by storm.You cannot force them to do things like, you know, you, you attack their ground and you're on your back foot. Right. So like it's this tensionMalcolm Collins: is very hard to hold, but they are not good at taking over governments and running them. Yeah. So youSimone Collins: couldn't invade their land. But yeah. They are not going toMalcolm Collins: take over.Yeah, so it's just a different specialization. And this is why, despite having a culture that encourages gun ownership at much lower rates than other cultures, at much lower rates than I think would be sane Israel as in Jews as a cultural group are so militaristically competent. Also technology is a huge part of military power, a group that specializes in urban knowledge.Work is, of [00:36:00] course, going to be more technologically competent in terms of and this is none of this is like a genetic thing or anything like that. We're talking just about cultural specializations here and you can actually see these cultural specializations. One of the things that we joke about in our book.As I wrap up here, as you go to Israel they, the, the, the Jewish groups that survived, most of them, now there were like the, the mountain Jews of Dagestan, for example, which were a militaristic Jewish group that survived up until the time of the state of Israel and then moved into Israel, you know, so there were a few Jewish populations that survived that were very different cultural groups that were militaristic, but or were of these factions but most of them were urban specialists.Is there a place calledSimone Collins: Zagastan? Because that sounds like something you made up from like Team AmericaMalcolm Collins: World Police. It's a, it's a thing. The mountain. Hold on. I'm just Googling it. Make sure I'm not speaking.Yeah, the mountain Jews of Dagestan. Okay. All right. I really like weird cultures instead. Yeah, no, love it. They were obviously you hear about them in the, in the mountains of, of, of [00:37:00] Dagestan, right? Like obviously they're a rural defensive area. It would make sense to develop a cultural specialization around defending territory.Like, yeah. most mountain people do. So, so, what was really interesting and almost kind of humorous is if you go to Israel because of this cultural group, it had recently been so recently urban specialized. And if you look at like the U. S., it's something like 98 percent of Jews live in like an urban center.I don't remember exactly, but it's like a really high percentage. You go and you look at, at the settlements when they do move into these rural areas and I'll, I'll put some, some screenshots of these, they look bizarre. They look like little miniature recreations of cities. Okay. is very odd looking.This is a very similar to Korea. The dominant Korean cultural group is an urban specialized cultural group. And if you look at some rural Korean places, you'll see like these little clusters of skyscrapers in like the middle of nowhere. It's a very odd thing to see, but it's a different urban [00:38:00] cultural group taking advantage of, of rural areas.So very, very, very fascinating. I, and I think then the question from all of this. Is well, should Jewish culture change like that's that's what you were asking. And I don't know, like, I guess we'll see.I don't think that there is enough cultural evolutionary pressure. There is just not enough incursions that kill enough people for the Jewish cultural goods because there are many cultural groups of Jews within Israel.Like after the state of Israel was formed, you began to see. This, this new blossoming and speciation of it. Like we talked about a radiation event that is almost as big as the one that happened after this, because you're, you're moving a culture that was specialized for one type of cultural niche into an environment where they need to fill all cultural niches.So you're going to have a huge amount of cultural radiation. But there isn't enough pressure to have some groups survive over other groups. But you could say, okay, but what if I was intentionally designing, like, a Jewish [00:39:00] cultural group that was meant to survive in the future? I would say that I and you are too culturally biased.Like, we have lots of Jewish friends. With our Jewish friends in the U.Simone Collins: S. Although to me, maybe, this is the bias speaking, but like, They already have the gun training. They already have gun safety training. Like, why not just buy the freaking gun? And just have it. Just have it. Just have like, Meh, IMalcolm Collins: mean. And you've got, you wanted, recently she demanded that we also, Every time you get pregnant, you get more guns.It's a verySimone Collins: interesting thing. No, I asked for my bow and arrow. I didn't ask for another gun. You askedMalcolm Collins: for another weapon? You said that you thought you could ready it quicker than a gun. Well, yeah,Simone Collins: if they're hanging right there. Like, it's just, you know, you don't have to unlock, you don't have to get the bolts, you're just like, you're good to go, especially if it's strung on the wall.I, I,Malcolm Collins: I understand what you're saying, but I think it's very interesting that every time we've had a new, like, for people who aren't from a martial culture, one of the things, and I think that this would be the antithesis of somebody from a non martial culture, the way they would answer, every [00:40:00] time we've gone through a big gun or weapon buying spree or shipping spree, it's been when you were pregnant.Um, When you first got pregnant, It's nesting. Dex got pregnant um,My family said we should get guns, more guns, they said you got pregnant again. You're like, I need better weapons. Then we got theSimone Collins: AR 15. Yeah. But no, no. Okay. So here's the thing.Another really interesting thing is how people from Marshall cultures relate to self-defense. I mean, I just mean interesting from the perspective of somebody who's not from a martial culture and hearing all this, , because some people who aren't from marshal cultures, like pretend they're from marshal cultures, because they think it makes them look more manually like Andrew Tate, for example.Right. What's his whole sword thing. And yeah, we keep swords in the house, the swords. Our toys is Simone does make me keep, I guess you would call it a video game culture, a Maley weapon by my bed, but it is not a sword. It is a sledgehammer because she says it would be easier to wield. , if our house was invaded on short notice, and I think that she's right, I mean, it's about practicality versus impracticality and it's something that Marshall [00:41:00] cultures often really value. To the extent where, , you know, when my cousins found out that her family trained in throwing axes, they made fun of them for the in practicality. For the weapon, they were like, this is efeete. Like it's, it's, it's feminine too. Really believe you could use something like a sword in self-defense better than a sledgehammer. Or throwing acts better than a gun. Also interesting side note here. If I've noticed that marshal cultures that were active recently, often looking down upon, or just don't actively laud as much physical strength and laud, and much more knowledge of guns, improvise, weaponry, stuff like that. Whereas martial cultures that were more active in their martial phage. Much further pack in history are much more interested in being physically strong and tough. So an example of your being like our martial culture, which is active very recently during the, the. The old west during the civil war. , It versus Marshall cultures in Europe, which are in much more interested in like, okay, I've got to be tough and stuff like that. And it's just [00:42:00] because of the type of weapon that was used during these two periods. , whereas, you know, in the old west, you know, being tough and strong, just wasn't as important. As improvised weapon, brilliant gun skills whereas if you're looking at like late medieval europe being tough and strong actuallymatteredSimone Collins: They, they've already gone like 90 they just don't own the guns.Malcolm Collins: Where are the guns? The risk of a child killing themselves is higher than the risk of somebody being killed duringSimone Collins: an attack.Not if it's properly locked and stored, that's the thing, is, is you keep your ammo separate, you lock your gun. Like, and you know, I mean, these kids, keep in mind. You know, a lot of these kids living in Cuba, they're doing way more, way earlier than kids here. They're way less infantilized than they are in our culture.So I don't even think that's the thing. I mean, like if families that infantilize their children to an immense extent here will still have guns in their houses, then like.Malcolm Collins: That is no excuse. Your cultural bias. But the point I was making earlier is that when we meet with our Jewish friends, and you can attest with this, because again, we have a lot of cultures, you know, Jewish friends, like our cultures [00:43:00] have historically have gotten along very well because they're both symbiotic cultures.And we talk about this in the book, which means that typically they're going to get along really well. Like our parting advice is, please move out of the city. Please get guns. You are not safe. But that's just sort of the way our culture always feels. You're never safe if you're inner city and unarmed.And, and I think you're never safe if you're outside of city. And unarmed a bias. I think it's a bias because clearly they're doing better than us right now. I'm, I'm just saying like, theySimone Collins: didn't do better when people raided their houses and, and killed and tortured and, and kidnapped people. No, they did not do better.You can't.Malcolm Collins: Simone, on the whole, and this is how cultural evolution works, it's not about the individual. In these previous pogroms, if you live in a martial society, you often live in a blood honor society. So that means if somebody comes and they kill, 10 percent of your population. They come in, they kill even a few people in your population.You then have like a blood oath against them, and you are going to [00:44:00] kill every one of them for multiple generations, and you are going to go out and make their life a living hell as much as you can and as intergenerationally as you can. Jews couldn't afford to do that given the frequency of pogroms. Hmm.And even today, suppose they did that. Suppose they reacted to this the way you would have reacted to this. And I know the way people of our cultural group would react to this. It would have been, I don't want to say it. What? Fire and fury. I would say that their response has been very measure, very humane compared to what my cultural group would demand and historically has done in these sorts of environments, you know, and I don't think it's like ethical or right.I'm just saying it's what feels right, you know, because that's the way culture is. Culture doesn't tell you what's right. It tells you what you feel you're going to do. And that's very much what you were talking about here. And so the point being is it may be that what feels right for you [00:45:00] isn't intergenerationally what's going to lead a culture to out compete other cultures.You areSimone Collins: absolutely right. You wereMalcolm Collins: absolutely right. Anyway nuanced topic that I hope people don't take too harshly because it could be seen as offensive just saying, ah, different cultures are different. You know, this isSimone Collins: something that I think we've already crossed that bridge. We've rung that bell.Malcolm Collins: Jews are unique as a cultural group although they're not totally unique as a cultural group. There's been different urban specialized cultures which have sort of co evolved into similar sort of cultural ecological niches. Jews are just really interesting right now because now they have their own country and we get to see how that works.Yeah,Simone Collins: long term outlook,Malcolm Collins: good. I mean, long term outlook, I'm very bullish on Israel and the Jewish people. They're, they're like, people are like, why are you so obsessed with Jews? I'm like, we're, we're obsessed with winners, have the thesis that different cultural groups are different and that wealth seems to across cultural groups [00:46:00] make people infertile.Oh, except for this one cultural group that is somehow not entirely immune to this, but dramatically more immune to this than any other cultural group in the world. Wealth does not lower their fertility rate as much as anyone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they are a very technophilic cultural group compared with other cultural groups with, with similar fertility rates.Why would that not fascinate us? Yeah. Why would we not be like, Oh, there's something here that we need to learn from and we need to study this. Anyway. Come on people. Get with it. Get with it. There's, there's something that they're obviously doing right from a pronatalist perspective. Yeah. You don't have to likeSimone Collins: them.You know, you gottaMalcolm Collins: respect. Yeah. But the Amish don't have you know, internationalSimone Collins: relevance or influence. Yeah. The Amish aren't also known for producing some of the most influential, you know, spin off people in the world either, so.Malcolm Collins: Yeah if the Mormons had maintained a high fertility rate, we'd be just as focused on them, but they didn't.Their, their culture was unable to compete with the virus and it crashed.Simone Collins: There are still many [00:47:00] impactful and powerful Mormons in the United States especially, so, youMalcolm Collins: know. No, there are. That's the point I'm making. They can produce really competent, like their culture leads to a lot of competence, but it was unable to motivate high fertility in the face of prosperity.ItSimone Collins: appears to be, it appears to be going through the faltering.Malcolm Collins: But I expect some Mormon cultural groups are going to survive and then explode afterwards. And I do think that Yeah,Simone Collins: I mean, the Desnats are already showing basically, like the fact that Desnats are becoming this sort of trendingMalcolm Collins: thing. I think the Desnet is the successful iteration of the Mormon culture.Well, becauseSimone Collins: it's, it's, it's basically where people, so then this is where, Desnet is short for desert nationalists. This is a group of Mormons that are essentially saying. No, we're going to keep this religion hard while the religion in the mainstream sense as the institution is softening. So as this, as this, as the Mormon culture becomes soft, which ultimately means it will die out, there is this faction that is saying, okay, well we're staying hard, so screw you.And also we're going to like police you and shame you for goingMalcolm Collins: soft. And the [00:48:00] transhumanists might also do well. The Mormon transhumanists would just be better.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, because they seem to also be going in a hard direction. So anyway, like there's hope for them. But this video is running long. Let's, let's wrap it up soon.I love you.Malcolm Collins: Bye 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

Malcolm and Simone discuss the concept of "pragmaxing" - dedicating your life to maximizing a purpose bigger than yourself. They talk about why trying to improve the world, even if you won't experience the results, is worthwhile. They cover martyrdom mindsets, generational progress as a relay race, and leaving the campsite better than you found it. Malcolm argues this drive is innate to humans and that competent people uniting can create positive change. He emphasizes realizing you are flawed but still striving for a future "radiant beings" deserve.Malcolm: [00:00:00] one person in a comment, he goes, why are you trying to make the future a better place if you won't experience that future? And it's bro, you are so missing the plot. So what Simone said, we have a different iteration of how we see ourselves. And that's cute. If I lived for, let's say, a hundred thousand years, right? I would be such a radically different person at the end of that period, that there is no way I would have any meaningful connection to who I am today.Yeah, it'sSimone: pointless. It's pointless. The person you're going to be in even ten years is not going to be you. So why are you trying to preserveMalcolm: it? Yeah, and if I did try to preserve it, if I did successfully preserve it, if in a hundred thousand years I was meaningfully the same person I am today, well then I didn't improve.I didn't better myself, and I shouldn't still be around. I am a pointless, wretched thing if I improved so little over a hundred thousand years that I am still recognizable as a Malcolm. That is sad and sickening. And so why do I care that I can't see the better world that I'm trying to create?It is a world not meant for me. It [00:01:00] is a world that I would sully with my very presence. Moses on the mountain, you are not meant to live in the promised land. Because you are wretched, you are trying to lead the way for the people who will get to experience the Promised Land because they deserve it in a way that not a single person alive today does.Would you like to know more?Simone: Welcome to Base Camp where one person has a conversation with themselves two times over. One says themselves and one's in drag. I'm Malcolm Collins dressed as a woman. And this with me here today isMalcolm: also Malcolm Collins, but this time dressed as a man. I would love it if we pretended that's what our show was.Like we convince people that it really is just one person with a synthesizer talking to themselves. Yeah. So we wanted to talk about Maxis. Because this has really become a thing recently, you know, whether it's looks maxing or trans maxing or we see it across society and when I want to talk about [00:02:00] the allure of it, and if we could create an iteration of it, that is healthy because a lot of it is just almost intrinsically unhealthy whenever you are, so I understand why it's emotionally appealing.Right? This idea of, I'm just going to go 100 percent whole hog into whatever thing it is I'm doing. I'm just going to say, okay, at every level, how do I optimize the outcome, right? That I'm trying to achieve. And that can create this sort of Zen state. Yeah. It's a sort of forced hedonistic stoicism where it's hedonistic in that you're maxing a thing, but it's stoic in that you are As intelligently as possible trying to think through how do I actually maximize this thing?And as disinterestedly and soberly as possible, and that [00:03:00] can create you to view things in a very different way. And it's much easier to apply that to a specific modality than it is to say, well, what if I took this maxing mindset and applied it to my entire life? So that's one thing that we wanted to talk about with this, but then we wanted to say.All of this within the context of if we're creating healthy maxing, well then we need to think about maxing as a cultural group, like how do you max our cultural group and this comes to defining our cultural outside of just our religion or whatever, right? I mean, like the wider group, the type of people who watch our videos, the type of people who are part of this sort of new conservative movement in America.And I think a really good acronym for engaging with this group is not one that applies to it, but one that applies to another group, which is Tessacralism. Have you heard ofSimone: this? What? No. I'm picturing weird hats. Is this okay?Malcolm: , it's used to explain like the [00:04:00] cluster of things that EAs are into.. Transhumanism, Singulitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Affective Altruism, and Long Termism. I mean, you definitely see some of these. Transhumanism, Singulitarianism, Rationalism, Affective Altruism, and Long Termism definitely like cluster together within this community.And one of the things that I've noted is that within... Our community, you get a separate area of clustered interests which are education reform or working on alternate education systems space travel, like interested in making us an inter Planetary species bio accelerationism you know, so sort of like trying to do like our use of genetic technology with our kids or artificial limbs or stuff like that.AI accelerationism I'd actually argue with the other community, anti AI ism or AI panic is a [00:05:00] core aspect of their philosophy. Yeah. Anti censorship economic liberalism, so... Basically economic side of libertarianism like looser government controls and stuff like that. Often this is seen in like city state interests, like being interested in like creating outside city states.Poverty. Yeah. Yeah. Pro sexuality but not engaged in sexuality hedonistically, but just yeah, interesting from like a study perspective. Like they're not afraid to engage with it, but they don't engage with it to hedonistically please themselves and nerd culture. And maybe somebody can come up with some sort of acronym.For this group. But I was like what could you create through combining these different philosophies and why this group has these different philosophies? So what's actually like driving this group to have all these different philosophies that differentiate so much from the EA community? I think the EA community, above all things, is driven by [00:06:00] a terrified fear of death and not existing anymore.They're so afraid of AIs killing them all. They're so afraid of progress. They're so afraid of... Dying, you know, life extensionism is critical for them. Like digitizing the human mind is critical for them.This focus on both maintaining stasis and then within that stasis, making it as pleasant as possible. Whereas this other group. They are much more interested in moving forwards as quickly as possible and in intergenerationally improving as much as possible while seeing themselves as disposable.One of the, you know, obviously I'd say one ofSimone: the avatars. No, I would, so I would word that a little bit differently. I would say, you know, by having a very different definition of what self is. That is more expansive than the individual biological being or some kind of continuous consciousness.Malcolm: The point being is that, all of these ideologies are [00:07:00] based on one specific outcome which is building a Sort of a pluralistic, intergenerationally improving and robust humanity.So robust means multi planetary almost intrinsically and expanding, right? Creating the seeds of what becomes the human empire. The great interplanetary human empire. And that, This is something that can be maxed. Dedicating your life to this philosophy is something that can be maxed. And, I guess I'll call it pragmaxing.And I'll make a little thing. Because it's something that I think a lot of people would feel is worth spending their lives on. You know, as we've said, one of the books that is core to our ideology, probably the most core other than The Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, is The Martyrdom of Man.This book, all the parts that you would want to read from it are quoted in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, so you don't need to buy it separately. It was written a really long time ago. [00:08:00] In fact, it was canonically Sherlock Holmes's favorite book. And in the real world, it was the favorite book of people like Cecil Rhodes, who created the Rhodes Scholarship, but also less, more ignominiously most humorously,Simone: Campbell's.Malcolm: So, you know, there's a lot of like big deal like people throughout history have really taken this book and I think we've forgotten it because the author died so young but he did contribute to other books. Like he contributed to the descent of man, Charles Darwin's, you know, book on the evolution of humanity, which is really interesting.I didn't know that until I was reading about this recently. I didn't either. Wow. So, But the core thesis of the book is that mankind is constantly martyring themselves for future generations. And he has this whole passage in the book, which I absolutely love, basically written exactly to you, the reader in the 21st century saying, don't you dare question us for what we're doing in our time in the same way that we wouldn't question our ancestors because we live such privileged lives [00:09:00] because of the sacrifices that they made for us.And this intergenerational process is something that we can all indulge in. Martyrdom is always something an individual can indulge in, but it's very important. And this is something that you were making clear to me earlier today, that indulging in martyrdom is not indulging in suffering. If you are truly pragmaxing, you are both eschewing, indulging in suffering or indulging in happiness. Both emotional subsets can lead to just as much inefficiency. Do you want to talk about this? Cause you were really passionate about that this morning.Simone: Oh yeah. I, we were talking, you and I were disagreeing about the fact, I argued for example that that suffering isn't important or doesn't matter in the same way that pleasure doesn't matter. And that there are lots of people who totally miss skip a beat.And they're like, Oh, pleasure is bad. It's sinful. Therefore suffering is good. And I'm going to achieve purity. or somehow become morally better by suffering and they become obsessed with suffering and showing that [00:10:00] they're suffering. And like genuinely, I think you can become obsessed with suffering and sort of just like accidentally masochistic.So like you become a suffering maxer. And there are lots of, I think people throughout history, especially in the Catholic church who kind of can be seen as doing this. And I think that is just as sinful as maximizing pleasure for sure, because you're missing the point. You've lost theMalcolm: plot.Yeah, and we should point out the Catholic sects that engage in that many people would think engage in suffering actually don't that much in the way that she's saying. So if you talk about the Opus Dei, they're the Catholic sect that's famous for whipping themselves and stuff. They do that to have better emotional control.They are supposed to always smile and always act happy around anyone that they're engaging with and to always feel happy because that is something that they are supposed to be able to emotionally control. And that if you actually around Opus Dei people, they are remarkably cheery people because they do have this.Emotional control. So it's more just people who lose the plot. This isn't actually Catholic teaching that you should do this, but sometimes people miss it. They see the aesthetics of suffering [00:11:00] and they're like, Oh, I'm gonna go all the way with that. And this is something that, that anyone can accidentally end up doing.So what does it really mean to pragmax it? If we're framing it this way, like living for this value set, the human empire the pluralistic. thriving multi planetary humanity that has become you know, this outwardly expanding force in the universe. And this force of good in the universe for a form of humanity that is, you know, as he calls it in the martyrdom of man, you radiant beings.Of which I cannot even imagine you know, that it's become something that is perhaps even alien to us today. How do you dedicate yourself to that? What does it look like to Max around this? Right. And I would say this is what it looks like. It's basically four simple steps, and we actually out like this in the pragmatist guide to life.First, you determine what has value. In this case, you know, we sort of laid it out, but you could determine slight iterations of this. This is the thing that has [00:12:00] value in the universe. Then you say, how do I maximize that thing in the universe? And this will involve different things at different stages of your life.When you're young, it might be wife finding maxing, it might be education maxing. How do I actually maximize myself to be the ultimate educated tool when I become an adult? How do I maximize myself to find the perfect spouse before I become an adult? In our age, it could be parent maxing. Okay, freeze all the eggs during the year of the harvest.Go through them. Genetically select them. You know, The output is many humans as possible. Give them the perfect environment. Oh, the education system is not good. Let's create a new one. This is something that we can all do together because when we create one of these resources like the school that we're creating, hopefully it's usable by all other people who are pragmatic.And the people who are pragmatic saying one of the key things that I think is important to the concept of pragmatic, which we've talked about in other videos is [00:13:00] that. Yeah. Not every individual is born the same. Some people are actually born smarter than other people, taller than other people, with more resources than other people.And depending on your circumstances, a different path may be the optimal path to pragmax. Having kids isn't the way that everybody pragmaxes. There could be other ways you could support the development of this human empire and the forces that are arrayed against it in the world today. I mean, what's so great about pronatalism in this larger movement is Our enemies, like as I say, I actually think ethilism is logically consistent.This is the negative utilitarian beliefs that we'll discuss in a video I'll link to. It's a video on these academics want to kill all life in the universethey basically believe that suffering is the only thing that matters, and the goal of every human should be to end any potential of suffering in the future. That means killing all life in the universe and any [00:14:00] potential for life coming to exist in the universe. And what's fun is we have these two diametrically opposed movements, the one this side to the pronatalist movement, one this side to the anti natalist movement.And it feels so nice to have an opposing force that I can be so assured is evil. That they have an authoritarian philosophy. It only works if everyone believes what they believe. They have to be raised They would never say, they wouldSimone: never say they're authoritarian.Malcolm: Yeah, but it's intrinsically authoritarian because they do say that it only works if everyone believes this or they kill everyone who doesn't believe it.Whereas, the pragmatist movement is totally happy with their movement existing so long as they don't mess with us. It's an intrinsically pluralistic movement that thrives on our differences. It's a movement that says, oh, we're okay with you guys. It's a movement that wants to make humanity... Better happier, even though happiness doesn't matter.It's an intrinsic part of the things that we're doing a thriving [00:15:00] more complicated in more places and able to assist other species as we run across them in so far as they are not a threat to us . And this divide between this open, optimistic, forward thinking, pluralistic movement, and this movement that is authoritarian and wants to erase all life in the universe, it's fun that we're living in an era, I think, of real heroes and villains and that you can choose to dedicate yourself to this.The key and what makes it different from other types of maxing is that you are. You want to understand that there isn't one way to maximize for it. You know, an individual who is born in a circumstance where you know, finding a partner isn't in the cards for them can still 100 percent participate in it, but in different ways, , an individual. Throughout your life, you're going to have different mini games that you're playing. And the great thing is your biology is adapted to this, man. [00:16:00] Like when, one of the saddest things I ever see is that so many people, they're playing the games from earlier ages, you know, they're in their thirties and they're trying to like maximize sexual partners.And it's bro, that's sad because you're still going to be doing that when you're in your eighties. You know, you get to play different games at different parts of our life. And, yeah, okay, you lost a game at one part of your life. And now that sort of changes the path that you're on. For example, you didn't get into this until you were 50.That means, okay, you don't have a spouse, or something like that. Or you're never gonna have kids that are biologically yours, or something like that. Because technology's not gonna catch up. Whatever, man! You got your own game you can make! focused on the end goal was the question being, what am I trying to maximize?What do I think is a good path for our species? And then what can I personally do and who can I personally become that best maximizes that outcome while understanding that it's important. Whenever you absolutely attempt to do something without [00:17:00] a single flaw in your plan, you end up destroying yourself.You know, I know that I do things that are antithetical to my goals, like drink beer, for example. But I also know that I am a flawed human being. You know, I am wretched. I am bad. And that is part of our nature. We shouldn't expect more. We can try for more than that because future iterations of us won't be the future radiant beings of which we can only dream in the words of Lin Manuel Miranda who wrote The Martyrdom of Man.And I am excited for that. And people are like, one person in a comment, he goes, why are you trying to make the future a better place if you won't experience that future? And it's bro, you are so missing the plot. So what Simone said, we have a different iteration of how we see ourselves. And that's cute.I don't think I'm meaningfully the same person I was 20 years ago. And I don't think I'm meaningly going to be the same person I was in 20 years. I think I am about as close [00:18:00] to who I was at the age of four. As I am to my kid, who's four, like we intergenerationally travel through our cultural group, through our cultural clusters and through our genetic lines sometimes, and that's fine.You know, every human is to an extent, a reflection of ourselves insofar as they are like us and. That, to try to stay the same, to try to, if I lived for, let's say, a hundred thousand years, right? I would be such a radically different person at the end of that period, that there is no way I would have any meaningful connection to who I am today.Yeah, it'sSimone: pointless. It's pointless. The person you're going to be in even ten years is not going to be you. So why are you trying to preserveMalcolm: it? Yeah, and if I did try to preserve it, if I did successfully preserve it, if in a hundred thousand years I was meaningfully the same person I am today, well then I didn't improve.I didn't better myself, and I shouldn't still be around. I am a pointless, wretched thing if [00:19:00] I improved so little over a hundred thousand years that I am still recognizable as a Malcolm. That is sad and sickening. And so why do I care that I can't see the better world that I'm trying to create?It is a world not meant for me. It is a world that I would sully with my very presence. Moses on the mountain, you are not meant to live in the promised land. Because you are wretched, you are trying to lead the way for the people who will get to experience the Promised Land because they deserve it in a way that not a single person alive today does.Simone: Right, but it's extremely hard for someone who grows up in today's society that speaks exactly the opposite. message to wrap their head around something like that.Malcolm: I think it might be hard to wrap their head around it, but when you let go, when you say, look, what this [00:20:00] world is presenting me with isn't working.Like clearly it's not working. I see it in my friends. They're all depressed and seeing all these psychologists and have all these mental health issues. And Society isn't working, the one that I'm a member of. When you see that, you think, well, maybe I can just try a different way of looking at the world.I can just try a mental framing for a while, try pragmaxing for a while. You might find it works remarkably good. And it. It fits remarkably snugly because I believe it is how we were made to pursue life as humans because we know that we are actually living as meaningful a life as we can.Simone: I mean, is that, I would say like as post industrial or post tech age humans. I mean, in the past, really humans were just trying to survive. Let's be honest with ourselves.Malcolm: I don't think that's true at all. Really? Oh, you look at the Victorian period where this book comes from. Whenever somebody was able to escape the grind was in these older periods.Yeah, wheneverSimone: they were wealthy or privileged enough, [00:21:00] whenever they weren't trying to survive, but most people were just trying toMalcolm: survive. Right, but those were the ones moving society forwards. We, the blessed ones who have inherited all of their sacrifices and the benefits of all of their sacrifices.Most of us live in a world where we don't have to dedicate our lives to just trying to survive. That's true. Most of us, most of the listeners of this podcast, yeah, you might have a grueling nine to five or longer, let's be honest today, but almost everyone can do something to try to move society forward, to try to move the world forward in a way that historically people couldn't do.Because I think one thing, if you haven't studied history is we vastly underestimate how horrifying the lives were of the average person. And as Wynwood Reed wrote in this was like in the 1870s, 1860s, he pointed out that even in his age, the average British person lived a life better than the Kings of the Anglo Saxon period.And he was right about that. And I'd say today, the average person lives a life better [00:22:00] than the Queen, during that period you know, this is the cycle that we are a part of and I am excited for that and I understand you can be like, well, it can be hard to reframe yourself around it and I know not everyone is meant to but some people will see this as a potential message that they can optimize around.They get maxing, but they don't want to max something pointless like looks. Like, why do looks matter? I,Simone: okay. Yeah. He's saying why it looks matter is like saying why does intelligence matter? Why does he matter? Why does money matter?Malcolm: Help Saying why does he, why does intelligence matter? Looks helps.Yeah. Maxing, educating yourself does matter because it can help you see the world better. It can help you see the world more true. And through that, you can better choose what you're maxing for. Maxing for looks, gives you no additional real utility. What?Simone: Attractive people are [00:23:00] treated differently.Malcolm: So? Women are treated differently.This is why these two communities overlap so much. The people who are like, well, I'll be treated better potentially. Yeah, it, no, come on, Simone. Be realistic here. Yeah, they're treated better. You get an easier life. That's a hedonistic objective function. Hedonistic objective functions always destroy. You know, what if,Simone: yeah, but if you want to influence society in various ways, if you want to rally people around a cause that is important, like all these things are easierwhenMalcolm: you're attractive., so that could be a form of pragmaxing. If you are looks maxing for the influence it is giving you, but then. You are only looks maxing was in certain parameters. You are not infinitely looks maxing. You are looks maxing with a specific goal while keeping in mind that there are types of looks maxing that may not be attractiveness, which can achieve that in you look looks max to look like a certain stereotype of a certain person was in society that people listen to.[00:24:00]You can achieve more reach.You can looks max. To be like Gorlock, the destroyer, you know, everyone's familiar with that. Me, I'll post a picture of it. People will pay more attention to her than every other woman at that table. So long as she's saying interesting things because she looks maxed in an interesting way while combined with personality maxing and everything like that, drag maxing is about understanding why you are doing this, not just so that things can be easier for you, but so that you can achieve some greater goal in the world.Simone: Yeah, that's that's broadly fair. So,Malcolm: But while also understanding that what you are maxing for is going to shift as you age to achieve this outcome and that again, you shouldn't try to achieve what the, you know, everyone else in your community is doing, you play a specific role. We all play a certain role in this design.And you are best positioned to know what [00:25:00] role you are most likely to be able to maximize. And I'm excited for that. I'm excited that we live in an age, as you said, historically yeah, there were people in the Victorian period who were able to move society forward because they were born with wealth and privilege.We live in a world today where, you know, 80 percent of Americans Functionally born with that level of wealth and privilege that they have the option to think on their own. I think we, that is part of why we're having this awakening that, Oh s**t, the powers in our society are lying to us. The media is lying to us.These organizations. are lying to us because the average person can speak for themselves now and can help defeat these organizations that had hoped to imprison humanity in an age of stagnation. And that is fundamentally what I think the traditionalist EA movement was all about. That's what they meant when they say, you know, I'm afraid of AI advancing.I am afraid of I am afraid of dying, you know, so I've got to [00:26:00] do life extensionism. I am afraid of the world really changing. We talk about this in our villain video, which is interesting, that so much of our media today, the person who wants to change the world is the villain. And then the person who is attempting to maintain the status quo Is the hero.I mean, this is constantly the theme of Kingsman. I'm not saying I agree with all the villains of Kingsman. It's status quo versus change the world. They have to drill this into your head,those with power inMalcolm: any system, always benefit from the status quo. That is what allows them to maintain their power. Thus people with power in a culture will always frame anyone, trying to make things better, trying to change things as the villain. But, and I can tell you this. We certainty. The real heroes in this world are never, the people fighting to maintain the status quo. They are people with a vision for how they can make the world a better place and [00:27:00] who act on that vision. , I know it's possible to try to make the world a better place and still be a villain. , but it is impossible to be a hero and fight for the status quo. When we look through history, when we look at the people who have really moved our society forward, these were people who were most often hated by the people of. In positions of power within their lifetime and framed as villains by the people with positions of power in their lifetimes. And as at one person said, Malcolm, how can you do all of this when you won't receive any of the rewards for your actions when you won't? Get to live in that world that you are potentially creating or receive any accolades from the masses. I'm already receiving. All of the benefits, any human actually fighting for? Good can hope for. Which is to know that if they succeed. That in the future, people will be appreciative of what they've done or did or sacrificed. And if they fail. Then they are undeserving of any appreciation. So [00:28:00] i should work every day to be among the elect those who do make the world a better place those whose lives did have a positive impact on human history and human flourishing I don't choose whether or not my life matters, but I do choose whether or not my life might matter. And my efforts control the probability as to whether or not my life might matter. And that is a great thing because not every human in human history had that potentiality when they were born. But almost everyone listening to this podcast does. So. The question is, do you take that burden? Do you bear that responsibility or do you shirk it? In the pursuit of vanity and hedonismbut enough people are waking up now. They've just. The competent people who are free from the system work together and decide for themselves how to best impact this change that we could see in the world.We can do it. We can do it. We can really do it. It's a winnable battle. If the channel [00:29:00] had a motto, it would be thank God our enemies are not as competent as they are malevolent.Simone: There you go. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you max for a purpose.Malcolm: And I'm sorry for your coughing. That looked really painful.Simone: I am dyingMalcolm: again.But you see, you are showing happiness to our audience, because they don't need to suffer for your suffering. They do not. I don't need to suffer for your suffering. No, you don't.Simone: toMalcolm: create this constant heaven that I live in.Simone: As do you. And it's 100 percent worth it. I love it. VeryMalcolm: satisfying. And I want you to answer the question that the person asked. I think it's an important question. Why are you trying to create a better world even if you won't be able to live in it?Simone: It's such a bizarre question. I mean, right? Because that's the game. [00:30:00] You leave the campsite better off than when you came. You want to create a better world for your children. Everything is iterative. You're trying to. Get better. This is a relay race where you're trying to, you know, end up with someone a little bit further ahead.Move usMalcolm: along. I think it's, it shows. When you have framed the world from this ultra progressive, you know, urban monoculture virus, the cult, whatever you want to call it, mindset, things that we would think are just obvious can seem like insane. Why would I want to improve things for anyone? That's not me.Yeah. Why would I likeSimone: when we see in the inverse, when we look at antinatalists or LFS, they couldn't understand a world in which. A complete obsession with suffering and or pleasure is not paramount. It's just cultural differences. That's all. You know, we don't see ourselves the same way that other groups see ourselves.We don't see pleasure or pain the same way other people see themselves. And we have extremely clear values that are not. What you would [00:31:00] call normative. SoMalcolm: I think you're wrong. I think everyone who thinks about it comes to our value set. I think this is why we see it bubbling up. I think, you know,Simone: most people who have kids, especially if they have kids not as props or pets to make them happy.Hold this view. Definitely. They, you know, everything becomes about giving them a better shot. 100%. But I also know that a lot of people have kids as hedonic pets or props as part of aMalcolm: Absolutely. You're right. Yeah. And this is what he says in the martyrdom of man. He says that regardless of whether or not, and I'm paraphrasing here, regardless of whether or not you're in a position where you can engage with philanthropy.or advanced science. That doesn't matter. You have lived a good life in so far as you have tried to make the next generation better than the last. Yeah. That's our thing. I love you, Simone.Simone: I did. I 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

Malcolm and Simone discuss the downfall of the Girl Defined sisters, who preached conservative Christian values but ended up disillusioned and unhappy. They argue this shows the risks of "pop religion" - churches promising secular pleasures rather than meaning. They say this led the sisters to see their unmet expectations as a betrayal. Simone and Malcolm advise religious communities to explain the emptiness of secular values rather than try to "out-compete" progressive culture. They believe this outrage marketing approach backfires by making congregants obsessed with what they're denying themselves.[00:00:00]Malcolm: When they're protecting their kids, you're not just protecting your kids from you know, if you're in a conservative religious family, you're not just protecting your kids from these, these secular influences. Right. You also need to watch out for pop Christianity.The people who come in, it was their live, laugh, love signs. And Well, you know what I'm talking about, right? They, they are just, and they can be just as negatively seductive of your kid's expectations as any other group, which then leads them to turn against the family.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: Hell, hello, Simone. So I walked in on my wife, Steve, when she's working, she likes to listen to stuff in the background. And one of the things that she loves to listen to is drama. She loves to listen to progressive like far progressive YouTubers comment. On conservative YouTubers or conservative personalities in [00:01:00] negative ways because she, I guess, fantasizes about one day they pick up us and the partSimone: of me, I want to preemptively understand how people will critically view our.Lifestyle and choices and stances. I think it's helpful toMalcolm: understand that. And I saw one that really interested me because it was on people who even I used to be aware of. As girl defined. Yeah, I was like, oh, I remember these guys. These were the hot young people who were all about, you know, chastity and waiting till marriage for a guy and everything like that.And and, and, you know, the sexualization of young women and how to fight against that. And. A lot of those are messages that, you know, actually resonated with me a lot. Yeah. I mean, they were, they were Fundy Christians and, and I identify with Fundy Christianness, you know, fighting back against the man in society today because they're definitely not the group in power right now.But you know, when I was younger, as a lot, I was consuming their, their video as well from like early secular atheist YouTube, because that was like the big thing on YouTube, the atheist[00:02:00] whatever debate, and they were always ragging on Girl Defined, so I also got their perspective from that end back then, and people didn't really seem to have anything on them, not, not that, that I thought was super bad.BackSimone: in the day, you mean. Yeah. Back in the day, back in the day. It was just, how very dare they. Yeah. HowMalcolm: very dare you say women should live by conservative values. So anyway this documentary we'll, we'll post it here cause they go into like enormous depths. Their lives got sad, like really sad when I, when I follow, when you follow what happened to them afterwards and they got sad in a way that I wouldn't have.predicted, but in hindsight makes perfect sense. And it really highlights a problem. You know, a lot of people, when they look at what we're doing and they're like, well, you can just go back to the old ways of doing things, right. And that will protect you because that used to work. But unfortunately we are dealing with memetic viruses that are even specialized at spreading within churches now.And the [00:03:00] secular world can twist norms that you don't realize in a, in a way where you don't realize your norms have been twisted. And so you think you're following a traditional conservative way of doing things, but really. Your view of the world and what you should be aiming for has become so twisted that when you apply this old way to this new world, everything begins to fall apart.And this is what we saw happen with them, and it was Desperately sad to watch.We could have the crumbs, just the bare crumbs of, of love and intimacy Um, for both of us and then just be like pretending like that that, that that's That's great.Malcolm: So the first thing I would say is, is the one who's still really on, on media and stuff like that. Her marriage just seems to be bothSimone: terrible. See, let's, let's be clear. So the girl to find started out is basically two sisters who then subsequently got married and then [00:04:00] subsequently adopted slash had kids.The, the, the sister that he is referring to is Bethany Thiel.Malcolm: Well, and so they in one scene they were talking about With her husband. They were joking that they get in five fights a day, but like they don't fight that much, you know.We only have, like, a couple fights a day, right? Right.Malcolm: That's just for people who are like trying to like metric how many fights you should be getting in with your partner How many a year do you think we get in Simone?Simone: We don't get in fights. I Any I I try to shirk out of doing something that we all collectively need to do for the greater good and then get mad at myself. And then you, you know, obviously are like the angel on my shoulder.Malcolm: And then, you know, I might scold you'd be like, Simone, you know, you need to do this.Simone: Yeah. And I guess people could say that looks like a fight. But it's more just like me being a coward.Malcolm: Yeah, I, I mean, that does happen. But I'd say that we don't really have like fight fights at all. [00:05:00] And they would be having five a day and they both look like. Like they have on animosity at each other there's someSimone: tension where theyMalcolm: talk about each other They seem to have genuine animosity towards theirSimone: partner But I think this is one of the reason why people love to hate watch girl defined Associated videos in the beginning like at first people would hate watch because it seemed like the two sisters really hated each other And and now you hate watch because you seem it seems like Bethany and her husbandMalcolm: just the question is if she's following conservative values How did she end up, because these values existed for a long time to build strong relationships.How did she end up in such a brittle and weak relationship? How did she end up with all of this animosity if she was following the rulebook? You know, and she made sacrifices to follow the rulebook. The other thing you see is she went from this, you know, women shouldn't have to work things, to now everything's a side hustle.You know, because she felt unfulfilled. This was another area where she began to like, go back. And I actually don't think that this... This is due to a different problem, so we'll get to it. And then the [00:06:00] final thing that you keep noticing throughout all of this is she, and this actually does great at highlighting what the real problem and where she really failed was.She spent her entire youth preaching to people that if you wait for marriage until having sex, like this whole chastity thing, if you don't sexualize women, you can achieve better sexual satisfaction. Then even you can, if you go live life like a secular person, if you go into secular society and you do all the secular things, you actually aren't enjoying sex that much.Um, I'll just speak personally. I got to a point basically four years into our marriage where I just kind of hit a big wall of Disappointment, and, um, went to get counselling. Mostly, mostly thinking you should get counselling. I was mostly thinking, really, Bethany should get counselling.Even if I were to ask, you would [00:07:00] say you were happy. Yeah. I was miserable. We both went and got counselling last year separately. We didn't do marriage counselling. I went, I, so I found, um... Which, which we should. Yeah, that would be really fun. We would both really enjoy that. So the exposure via Bethany's talking about and herself and our relationship, uh, is very exposing in that sense.We're like not connecting even though we're like going through the motions and we need help with that. And so I Never claimed to be a sex expert. I am very open that we're learning and growing and that's why I'm constantly Recommending resources and pointing you to people that I trust that I've learned from that He's learned fromSimone: Yeah. In other words, like the, the true amazing sex experience is through like the sacrament of marital sex after complete chastity leading up toMalcolm: it. Yes. And this is the core of where I think you can notice something which I'll call pop Christianity. But there's pop [00:08:00] Islam, there's pop Judaism, there's pop everything.What they will do is they will tell you that they can out deliver the things that progressive society is entirely optimized around instead of telling you that you should not be optimizing around those things. So it's very clear to her is that she thought she was going to be rewarded when she got married was this amazing sexual experience that was just going to be as good as she had built up.And you're like, well, we have like physically more struggles. We're like not connecting, even though we're like going through the motions. And we need help with that.Malcolm: Over this entire period of self denial and then she's talking in some videos now where like well You know It's totally normal to imagine another guy's face on your husband while you're sleeping with him and a lot of women don't talk about thiswhen it comes to actual intimacy fantasizing about other men to be able toOnMalcolm: So [00:09:00] is that something thatSimone: Oh, no, no, just the other day was like trying to imagine okay, if I did fantasize around, it's like someone who wasn't my husband who would it be?And I was like, Oh, gross. I can't, I like literally can't, but I mean, yeah, for, for context. Yeah, she like seemed to be under the impression first that waiting for marriage would make this really amazing. The, what basically backfired with this culture is by, by selling this message that actually made this, she could otherwise be much more religiously aligned with religious values, person obsessed with progressive values, obsessed with hedonistic sex.And this is demonstrated through we understand that this is an obsession of hers and this was a big deal for her because now she sells courses on intimacy, on sexuality. Both to post marriage and pre marriage women. All aboutMalcolm: discovering... Pre marriage women now, by the way. But she's always, in the early days, was talking about how unsexually satisfied she was.And that, that they didn't have good sexual relationship with her and her partner. [00:10:00] Yeah. And that, that shouldn't... From our perspective, even from our weird Christian, secular Christian culture we know that sex doesn't matter in a marriage. It, it, it, it doesn't. Not if you're living by a traditional value system.There's more important things in life than sex. But because she bought into this, and you see this across with, with these pop religions. They will tell whatever secular society says it can offer you, it will say that my religion can actually offer it to you better. You see, this was Muslims that are like, actually, Islam is super feminist.And if you join Islam, you can be even more empowered than you can be in secular society. And it's oh, sister, you are not doing Islam right. That is, that is very pop Islam. Or, you know, Christianity is actually all about sexual hedonism. And if you do Christianity right. You can be the most hedonistic, sexySimone: freak in the world.Or just, or just fun. Yeah. All sorts of stuff that like, great. Okay. So now you've just oriented people. You've made them obsessed with something that isn't related to the [00:11:00] religious values at all. And they're not going to be happy. Well, and youMalcolm: see this with and this is a problem I've definitely seen within the funding community is.Feminist mindsets begun creeping in and normalizing themselves where they begin to see it not as men and women are different and we have different roles in the church, but they begin to see it as everyone's role is just sort of glorify the, the woman. Women in power is intrinsically good. And this can be really toxic for these communities when they then try to structure their relationships.Now you can have cultural groups where women and men. are treated as if they aren't different at all and have exactly equal roles in a marriage. Right. But you can't do that and then follow the old rules of a cultural group where men and women were meant to be treated systemically differently, whether that's Islam or Christianity.And [00:12:00] when you do that, you begin to get all sorts of conflicts in the relationship because The reason why this traditional model of relationship, now it's not the model we use for a relationship, but it is a traditional model of relationship, worked, is because the woman saw her role as unquestionably trying to make the man happy as possible.But when you go to a relationship where you have fundamental relationship structures, and now the woman sees her role as trying to make her own life, As happy as possible and fulfilling as possible. And then the guy independently is trying to make his own life as happy, as independent as possible.Yeah. And you're going to get inevitable conflict between those two individuals. Yeah. Because it is impossible that their goals are 100 percent aligned.Simone: Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring serving God. Well, no, I think they'reMalcolm: trying to serve God in their own way. And I think one of the most toxic things that you will ever see, we've repeatedly seen this in modern.relationships is a girl goes, Oh, actually I do serve the guy in every aspect of my relationship, except when God tells me [00:13:00] not to. That's convenient. So whenever you don't feel like it, basically you know, that's, that's a very easySimone: sort of that's, that's people, no, that's people living hedonistic lives where they try to tell themselves that they're serving God when clearly God is a front for their personal desires.That's, I don't think that counts.Malcolm: Well, well, it's very common in the, yeah,Simone: that's common, but that's, that's, yeah, it's, it's also aMalcolm: lie. The traditional structure would be the, the, the, within this extreme conservative version of Christianity is the woman spends her life every day asking, how can I make the man happier?And the man spends his life every day asking, how can I make God happier? Yeah. More successful. She's saying, how can I help my man improve, be more successful, be better, better fulfill his role within God's plan. The man is asking how can I better fulfill my role within God's plan, but this fell apart.They just thought I follow these traditional rules, like no sex until marriage. And then I get rewarded with all of these progressive goodies, all of these secular goodies [00:14:00] that the secular world is out there eating when you should have known that those goodies didn't matter. And this, this causes enormous pain long term in these communities.And the question is, well, what do you do when you see this? It's you have to tell yourself one of two things. Either we're actually going to stick with the old ways of doing things, or when we reform one thing, we have to reform other things. You know, if we're now saying we're optimizing around sexual pleasure, well, then maybe you don't wait until marriage to have sex anymore, because that's not what you're offering anymore.And there's religious communities that do all sorts of weird sex stuff. So you can go join them and they can still be, you know, Weird and conservative in other ways, the little sex cults, you know, this is a classic thing that actually in the United States throughout the US history, many Christian groups have done which is, there's one famous one.I'm trying to remember a guy who tried to assassinate the president got kicked out of it because he joined thinking he'd get all this sex and then nobody wanted to have sex with him and then he got angry [00:15:00] at them. And so they kicked him out. Okay. Even if you join a sex cult, if you're a difficult person, you'll still be kicked out of here.But anyway, this is you know, something that's existed for a long time. So you could go that route or you could say, well, sex doesn't matter. And then say, okay, so we're not re optimizing around that. If you do decide that it's important that men and women are exactly equal in a relationship and that each, well, I don't think any relationship can be happy where each individual is optimizing for their own hedonism.Any relationship where both individuals are optimizing for their own hedonism. We'll almost always come to a head because we're optimizing for fundamentally different things from each other. Well,Simone: and I think that the more importantly to when, when you feel like your culture is being threatened, because maybe what's going on here, right.Is that like these fundamentalist Christian groups and cultures and subcultures are seeing. their youth really be attracted to mainstream culture, to sexual activity and, you know, before marriage, all this stuff that like, they're really worried about so that, you know, their temptation and what many of them done is just said, Oh, we will do it better.We'll do it [00:16:00] better. But I think what they should instead be doing is saying, here's why this is empty. Here's where this is going to leave you. You know, here's what you should really be carrying about caring about, because I think when you look at other communities that have done it really bright, you know, you look at Amish people and they're not like selling to their kids, yeah, we're going to, you know, give you even more instant gratification and entertainment than social media can give you. Like that's, that's obviously not what they're doing. You know,Malcolm: like when they're doing Grum Springa, they're not like, Hey, I go back to being an Amish because the sex is going to be better.Yeah, exactly. Why? They'd be like, that's the most ridiculous reason to join our community. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. So I think that's, that's the important thing is don't, don't try to play in the terms of your enemy show why your enemies terms are, are, are suboptimal in some wayMalcolm: will lead to point out how trivial these things that they're offering are comes to something where a lot of people.You know, I think Calvinist culture did a lot of things wrong that led to its downfall. But one thing that I do not think that it did wrong, and it's something that people likely notice [00:17:00] with our podcasts and see as very non traditional conservative from their mindset, but it's traditional Calvinist, is its obsession with sex and, and sexuality.So if you look historically, so you could read about this in I'll be in seed. Great book. That up until the 20th century, many traditional like early Pilgrim texts had to be censored because they talked about sex so vividly so much. And so frequently, they, they talked about this all the time.Now it was within their rules. If you look at our guests on the show, like Other people who are secular Calvinists are from Calvinist culture that you might know. Ayla is a famous one, grew up in a Calvinist family. Calvinist being obsessed with sex is just like a historic thing that was really common in Calvinist culture.But the question is But it wasn't the point. It was never the point. Why do you get obsessed with sexuality? It was obsessed with sexuality because through Through data izing it, through researching it like it's a thing, it loses what makes it magical. It loses what makes it special and different. It's just another [00:18:00] in a set of human emotions, which are all tugging at you in negative ways.You know, as we say, a core aspect of both artful or secular Calvinism and traditional Calvinism. Calvinist culture is not this weird, you know, theatrical cosplay as Calvinist today. Is that positive and negative emotional subsets. are both of around equal value and are both a negative value. You can be just as misled to do bad things with your lives with positive emotions as you can be led to do negative things with your life through negative emotions.And through studying like looking at these things so up close, they can become demystified. Now, of course yeah, I, I, it's, it, it, and it has for us, you know, within our relationship. And I think a lot of people can see this. We might talk about sex a lot. But we also don't really care about sex at all.In terms of sex of the act, we find it more of a fascinating curiosity than something that is desirable to [00:19:00] us. And a lot of people, oh, they said sex isn't like a big focus of their marriage. That must mean. They're having marriage problems or something. And it's no, you shouldn't care about these things.LikeSimone: we're trying to say, I'll give you a typical, like a sexy scenario. Like we, we each look at each other and we're like, Oh my God. And then we're like, Hmm, we have so many more important things to do. And we like quickly walk into the other room.Malcolm: But what else can we get done in 30 minutes?Yeah, becauseSimone: that's, we have, we have things we care about more. But we also, you know, yeah, you, you can care about things and still.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I, I'd actually say if you can throw away 30 minutes in a week that easily, like you could probably be doing a lot more with your life. How do you have time? Don't you have like intellectual stuff to be working on? No,Simone: because like genuinely people don't, people mostly. I would say at our level of education and income are like cultural subset are [00:20:00] nihilists and they don't actually care about doing much with their lives.They may pretend that they do because it makes them look good, but in practice, you know, the, it's just aesthetic, you know, they're like, they're nonprofit worker or something, you know, or they're, you know, whatever it's, it's just part of the narrative that helps them look good and feel good, whatever.Malcolm: Rather than believing that society is literally crumbling around them and they are desperately trying to do everything they can to save as many people as possible.Simone: Yeah, well, I think many people don't believe they can do anything. So why would they try?Malcolm: We'll talk about an external locus of control. And that's another thing that's useful from a cultural perspective, is believing that you can save all of this.Yeah. And, and what I was just providing there when I was talking about the Calvinist relationship to sexuality, is that is one way that you can defang sexuality. Unfortunately it led to Calvinists having very few kids after a period. So, so you might not want to defang it too much you know, but that's, that's, that's one way that you can relate to it.So [00:21:00] the point being is that when you are going to chase like the way you're keeping kids in your churches by saying we can do a secular culture can do better. You've already lost that you need to find techniques and mechanisms that can show them. And I think, you know, the Amish do this so well, that what secular culture claims to offer is actually quite hollow.Simone: Yeah. I don't think it's, it's hard to point that out either. I mean, you can, you can point to rates of mental health of physical health, you know, in secular cultures and be like, well, this is really not working for them. Like they may act as though they're living happy lives. And yet the vast majority of them have severe anxiety problems are seeing therapists are on medication.No, they're actually not. Happy, this is performative and it's very easy to see that very quickly.Malcolm: But we do, I mean, how could we do like a Rumspringa for our kids? Because as we say, like one of the highest bleed rate cultures in the world right now are the Mormons. One of the lowest is the Amish.The way that they handle sort of useful rebellion are almost polar opposites of each [00:22:00] other. Well,Simone: and I think that the key thing about Rumspringa is that it's there. So what's happening in the fundamentalist religion in, in which the, the girl defined family was raised. Was one in which you, you never get to try.There was no experience of kissing anyone before marriage. You don't get to do these things. There is no exposure. There's no option. And I think allowing people to have some exposure to the hollowness of other cultures while also constantly like. Dismissing it throughout, you know, like shaming it and dismissing it, like contextualizing it negatively within your, within your culture, you know, to be like, we don't respect that, but then allowing people to try it at the same time, I think is a really perfect one to punch.And I think that's kind of what Warm Spring does. I mean, the Amish, I don't think grow up. Glorifying the English, I think that they grow up being like, Oh, you know, whatever, like they're off doing what they do. And that, but you still, it's not forbidden. You know, I think forbidding things is also you know, it's not going to go well, especially for adolescents.[00:23:00] But am I missing something here? I think it's that simple.Malcolm: No, I yeah, I think contextualizing why you don't do these things and the why needs to be within your cultural value set. Not that through not doing these things, you can actually achieve what they achieve, but more of it. Yeah, which is really important.Yeah, it's to have some goal that is more important. Then the goals that secular society has, so you say secular society is doing all of this to feel good, but your goal is more important than that. It is to please God. It is to do what is right by the highest power in the universe. You know, if you're a funding, if you're us, it's to save society and create a flourishing future for humanity.Your life doesn't matter. You know, our book, like one of our closest thing we have other than the practice of Skype to crafting religion to a house Bible is the martyrdom of man. And it's a book that we'll do a episode on eventually, but the core message of the book is man exists as a martyr for future man.Every generation [00:24:00] before us lived a life that was. It's unconscionably difficult compared to the life that we get to live and they martyred themselves for our generation as it is our duty to martyr ourselves for the next generation that humanity is a cycle of intergenerationally improving martyrdom and that that is our duty in life.To create something better and that, that we sacrifice ourselves to do that. And that is what uplifts us. Whereas when we don't sacrifice ourselves, when we take advantage of the pile of martyr corpses out there the. Fate has a way of punishing us. One of the things that we point out, which is so interesting, is if you look at the antinatalist movement, specifically the negative utilitarian antinatalists, who are just like, life is suffering, et cetera these are almost always [00:25:00] people who have gone through very Yeah.Little genuine suffering And they'll say, Oh, I'm depressed or whatever, but it's the type of suffering that's brought upon themselves by mother only. Yeah. Yeah. And they interestingly, they try to live the most hedonistic lives possible because they think that suffering and matters and that happiness matters.And so they're completely focused on this. And then you look at us who are like, ah, the things that cause suffering and happiness. That's just the random s**t that if our ancestors felt them, they would have more surviving offspring. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. And yet you look across the prenatalist movement and there's some of the happiest intellectuals you'll know.Which is so weird that this group of intellectuals that like genuinely doesn't care about this s**t. If they get rewarded with it, but it's important that they not do it, martyr themselves. They don't focus on sacrificing themselves to improve things for the future for the happiness that gives you.That's just a nice side effect. The [00:26:00] moment you start chasing it, the moment you start saying. This happiness matters rather than just a weird reward that we're being given in this moment. Is the moment everything begins to fall off the rails. And I think that's probably true , about sexuality was in these chaste relationships as well.You can go into these relationships focused on trying to be as sexy and kinky and engaged in sexuality as possible. Your cup will never be full, but if you go into it saying every time I sexually engage with my partner, I am doing it in service of the Lord and in service of having kids and in service of fulfilling my purpose or, or, or making them happy then you will be rewarded with sexual satisfaction, but you can't go into it for the satisfaction.You can't say that this was part of the point all along. I mean, it's weird that our biology works that way, but it does. And I think this is true for across humanity and it's a, it's a great little positive thing. But I'd also encourage people to look at the other pronatalists. You've seen the other pronatalists.They're like weirdly happy people. And I, [00:27:00] and it is, it is odd or go on the antinatalist subreddit or the efilism subreddit if you want to see some world depressed people. Yeah, ISimone: haven't really seen any cheerful, even just generally, I haven't seen any cheerful negative utilitarians to be honest with you.Malcolm: Well, I don't think they exist. I think negative utilitarianism intrinsically is living for hedonism. It might be negative hedonism, but it's still hedonism. And hedonism never pays off. Ever. It is always going to be a drain on the individual soul.I think this is one of those cruel twists of human biology. Which is so long as you seek happiness and hedonism, you will never have it. But when you are not seeking it, it becomes remarkably easy to find and your life can become inundated with it. The problem is, is that people who are living lifestyles like us, or conservative Christian lifestyles, they will tell other people about that. And other people will see that in their lives. [00:28:00] But then these other people wanting happiness. Try to mimic their lives in order to achieve the happiness. , instead of understanding that happiness is a by-product. Of efficaciously living your value system and achieving things that you think have real meaning in the world.Malcolm: It's well,Simone: I also think like a big, a big element of like genuine happiness, weirdly, is like faking it until you make it.Like acting happy and then find out that you're happy. And I think if you like are a purist about happiness, you're like, no, I have to actually feel happy. And so you'll never, you'll never fake it.Malcolm: Maybe. I don't know. That's really true. Yeah. I mean, we really take culturally the perspective of. Even if we're not feeling happy, we should be acting happy because acting unhappy or looking unhappy can hurt the efficaciousness of other individuals around us by making them unhappy.You know, why would we do that? Why would I be looking unhappy when I know that hurts my wife and kids? Why would I? And interestingly, when you're approaching every day of course I have to be happy because it's not a choice.[00:29:00] Like it's, it's part of being efficacious, which is what really matters.You end up feeling that way after a while just throw up all the time or a lot of the time. Which is weird. Yeah.Simone: But I mean, I genuinely do think that both of us feel really happy. I think a lot of it starts with being committed to looking happy.Malcolm: Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Starts was looking happy, but we're not looking happy because of some external validation that gets us, we're lookingSimone: happy in pursuit of our, our goals, mostMalcolm: efficacious way to pursue a conversation.People start conversations so high energy and it's well, that way I can ensure that I'm coming off like pleasant to be around. They're like, why don't you be your authentic self? Why would I be my authentic self of it's inefficient or it doesn't help me in my goals.We're literally. Running from velociraptors right now. What I mean by that is... Society is crumbling right now. We don't have long. You don't get to f**k around, not this generation. And, and I don't think any generation really gets to f**k around. That's the point of the martyrdom of man is this [00:30:00] intergenerational cycle of improvement, which we all get rewarded for in the end.And I love you so much, Simone. This is a very fun topic for me because it was so interesting to see somebody that, you know, I had sort of grown up tangentially knowing. Who was doing a lot of the things that I think many conservatives today think that, okay, I just do these things. I've got to get rewarded.And they're missing the point and they need to, when they're protecting their kids, you're not just protecting your kids from you know, if you're in a conservative religious family, you're not just protecting your kids from these, these secular influences. Right. You also need to watch out for pop Christianity.The people who come in, it was their live, laugh, love signs. And Well, you know what I'm talking about, right? They, they are just, and they can be just as negatively seductive of your kid's expectations as any other group, which then leads them to turn against the family. And one of the really [00:31:00] crazy things, if you do end up watching this, this video about the Girl Defying Girls is in one point you see their, their brother talking.Yeah, this was fromSimone: the, I think they had. That this is a family of nine kids. It's a lot. They had aMalcolm: big family. Yeah. Just for people who don't know everything that he's saying is really clearly an implanted memory. Yeah.Simone: But anyway, yeah. Her, her brother,Malcolm: memory I've ever seen, he believes that his family like abused him and raped him and stuff.And I asked him, I was like, what did you think of that scene? She's implanted memory. I was like, yeah, implanted memory. If you look, you don't remember this stuff.Simone: At age 35, when you're washing the dishes and your wife asks you if you were ever abusedMalcolm: at some point. Yeah, yeah, that's like classic.You might have forgetting before remembering as a phenomenon where you've mentioned this in a different context and then you think you've forgotten it. But this sort of memory suppression doesn't really happen that way. It doesn't randomly come up when you're in a context where all of a sudden you'll be validated for feeling it.And, and it will gain you emotional points. And then he's like clearly using it to [00:32:00] justify being abusive to his wife. He's well, I used to have these enormous bouncing. I think the two girl to find girls are trying their best given the cars. He seemed like a pretty toxic human being.Simone: I, you know, I like to think everyone's acting in good faith and doing the best they can with the information they have.No,Malcolm: no, no. I, yeah, I do think so. But sometimes you can be implanted with like pretty toxic. Your family abused you when they didn't, you know, stuff is pretty messed up, you know, when that happens to an individual. So I would encourage people, we might do another video on implanted memories because it is. A really common debt thing in today's society.And it's most people knowing the warning signs. The biggest one is somebody remembers something that gets them validation, usually between 31 and like 42. And usually was in a caring context, usually either with a spouse, a good friend, or a therapist. And they've never spoken about anything like it before.No one else remembers it.[00:33:00]Simone: Anyway. Scary stuff. But, yeah. Well, anyway, I'm glad we does anyone think we hate each other? I don't think so. They're always like, why are, if you're married, why are you in separate rooms?Malcolm: I like to wake up at 2 or 1 a. m. Why would I wake my wife up with that? I gotta work.Simone: Oh, and if you're married, why don't you record in the same room?I can't, I can't think when I'm in a room with another human. period. So, yeah, I don't think anyone thinks we hate each other. If they think we're the same person, which I guess is a sign that maybe we clearly love each other just the same way that someone narcissistically loves himself. So cool.Malcolm: Well, I love you Simone and I hope that other people can avoid the mistakes that they made because. They, they made a lot of sacrifices in their views that turned out to not play out the way that they had hoped they did and being honest with young people about what they really get from following these traditional cultures will do a better job of making sure they stay within them instead of burningSimone: out.So I'll make, I'll make one [00:34:00] final plug though. Waiting to do stuff isn't necessarily a terrible thing. Like I didn't have sex until I met you. It was awesome. You know, like it's, it's okay to, I didn't drink until I met you. It was awesome. Like drinking for the first time after college, like it's cool to have some things to still look forward to, to like still experiment with.So I'm also not against waiting for a lot of stuff. I waited for a long time for a lot of stuff. Not. Because I really wanted that stuff and was denying myself, I guess, mostly out of disinterest, but still it's so nice to discover things later. So, you know, we're not saying that that's a bad thing.Malcolm: well, most of this stuff just isn't that good. That's the core problem. Like sex is not that good. It's Oh, there's people who say, well, that means you're not doing it. No, I did a lot of sex. You did all this. It is not that good. It is. It is a sign. It is only good in so far as it is a game that is fun to win.And it gives you status in our society.Simone: Well, I also like we have come to view physical [00:35:00] pleasure differently. Like we were having this conversation the other day where we're like. Can you remember what you actually felt the last time you felt something pleasurable, like either tasting really yummy food or felt like when I think back to those memories, I'm always thinking about this is good or I want more of it, but I'm never like.Experiencing theMalcolm: flavor, the physical, that emotion, like when people are like, Oh, what was the best moments of your life? They described narrative moments. Oh, like the birth of my kid, but you're actually in those moments, usually prettySimone: Yeah, you're in like a poorly lit room. That's gross looking.If you're the woman, you're probably in active pain or at least deeply uncomfortable. Yeah.Malcolm: Yeah. I think that we cannot. Easily capture memories of emotional states.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway fun stuff. Love you. Bye. This is a public episode. 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Economist Robin Hanson returns to discuss his proposal for increasing fertility rates through financial incentives for parents. He explains how governments could pay parents for having children by issuing shares of the future tax revenue those kids will generate. Robin argues this would provide better motivation for good parenting. The hosts consider potential impacts on social classes, racism, sexism, cultural objections, arbitrage opportunities, and more.[00:00:00]Simone Collins: Hello, everyone. We are so excited today. A little bit, a little bit fanboying and girling out because we are joined by the fantastic, brilliant, and super fun Robin Hanson. He, in addition to being a professor of economics at George Mason University, has written some of my favorite books, including The Elephant in the Brain, which is just mind blowing, and The Age of M.He, he talks about prediction markets, grabby aliens,Malcolm Collins: signaling. Well Simone didn't know that he had invented the term grabby aliens. And I didn't know he had invented the term great filter. This is in regards to the Fermi paradox. So genuinely like a huge figure in terms of and, and, and being at the we, we go to these events where it's all like young, like up and coming, like supposed to be all the smartest hip young people.And he's always at these events. Because he is considered like the one person not in our generation who is Seminal to these communities. He's so with it. He's so withSimone Collins: it.Malcolm Collins: So what we're going to talk about on this one is we were giving a lecture at one of these that have been called manifest [00:01:00] about pronatalism.And then he just drops this idea about how it could be solved. That we had never heard before and was really interesting and we want to go into it.Would you like to know more?Robin Hanson: All right. So let's first acknowledge that any solution requires some policy people to do some things. And if they don't do certain things, it doesn't happen.And I'm honestly not that optimistic. The right people would do the right thing here. And we should, we could talk a bit about that. So the fundamental problem is a lot of things in our culture. Are oriented toward low fertility and a lot of people really like those things that is they're really deeply attached to intensive parenting, long years of schooling, delayed mating, gender equality, and there's a whole bunch more and any solution that induces high fertility.Is going to cut into some of those things. And so even if we could get people to adopt the solution, which I'm about to tell you, and they [00:02:00] try it for awhile, there's a risk that they'll see that. In fact, it cuts into those things. They'll go, Oh no, Oh no, we can't have that. And then they would turn it off because they'd rather have declining population and low fertility than to have some of those things that, that I think is a fundamental risk that is just a fundamental cultural conflict.And a lot of. Maybe even the majority of elites really prefer the package that leads to declining population, even when they understand that they could do otherwise. But doing otherwise will change some of these key parts of their culture that they're really attached to. So that's my fundamental warning.But given that, if you're willing to prioritize fertility high enough, i. e. doing what it takes to raise fertility I think there is in fact a simple solution. So, first of all, there's a lot of studies on how incentives to increase fertility and their effects. And so there are definitely a lot of studies that show small incentives have pretty small effects.[00:03:00]And then there's some studies that show modest incentives have modest effects. And as an economist, I feel really confident. Huge. Big effects. No question, right? If you gave people a million dollars per baby, a lot of babies, okay, that's just going to happen. Right.Malcolm Collins: Businesses would be started around that, you know, exactly.Robin Hanson: Right. Now, if I say that, then people will say, who, how can we possibly afford that? Cause now you're imagining we're going to have to tax everybody else to pay for this. And that's going to be a huge tax and we're not going to like it. So the key observation is that we don't have to pay for it. We can make investors pay for it.So here's the trick. So at the moment, in say the U. S. We have roughly a hundred trillion dollars in debt. That's not just the explicit bonds we've sold, but also the promises we made, like Medicare and Social Security, that we haven't set up a way [00:04:00] to pay for. Which is yeah, we owe it. Okay. And if you divide that by 300 million people, that's 300, 000 a person.And there are some other estimates of unfunded promises that are even higher, say 700, 000 a person. Oh, boy. Even the literal debt per person. In terms of bonds is a hundred thousand dollars a person. So we're talking somewhere between a hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand dollars a person that's owed at the moment in the U.S. in debt. Okay. So here's the key observation. The way we've decided to pay taxes, it may not be just or right, but it's how we do it. Every time a new baby is born, we saddle them with their fraction of that debt. They're just on the hook to pay one out of 300 million fraction of that debt. That's how we do it.We basically take all citizens alive and we say, You all owe this debt. So every new baby literally owes a hundred to 700, 000 of debt and [00:05:00] is expected to pay it in terms of bondholders are buying these bonds because they expect them to actually get repaid. So if we go with sort of the bondholders perspective on debt, then they're expecting every new baby to pay another, say 300, 000 of the debt.And so that means it's worth it. Up to a 300, 000 to create a new baby because they're unhooked to pay that part of the debt. So if we paid a parent, say 200, 000 to make a baby, and then they're going to pay us 300, 000 in present value is that this isn't just future. This is the present value of all that stuff.Then we're making 100, 000 profit.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so let's talk about this functionally, because I think when we talk about it in terms of dividing up the debt, it can sort of confuse people because they're like, well, this is negative value, but it's not exactly negative value because you can buy and sell debt and this debt might not be paid back as is.So we can almost think of this as you're telling me if I'm explaining this wrong, but I'm trying to explain it in simpler [00:06:00] terms. When a person has a kid companies. can sort of buy parts of that kid's future earnings. So when that kid is paying taxes a portion of those taxes might go directly to the government, but then a portion of those taxes would go to paying off this debt, which is owed on this kid.Robin Hanson: Right. So you're, you're jumping ahead. I didn't say how we would hand the money out. Okay. Now you're talking about how to hand it out. So, which I agree is an important thing, but I'm just trying to first say on average, a random kid should be willing to pay not 300 thousand, but we should also Be willing to issue more bonds to cover it.That is, we don't actually need to pay up the money among ourselves. We could just issue more debt, say 300, 000 of new debt for every kid. Hey, their parents, 300, 000. to have that kid. And then we're all better off.Simone Collins: And it's a net neutral,Robin Hanson: at least with that. But that's on average, we want to, you want to talk about, well, how exactly do we pay and how maybe do we pay some people more than [00:07:00] others?And that was the subtlety you were, you're about to get to, I think.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, I mean, the really brilliant thing about this and I've heard some other mechanisms that, that try to solve the problem the same way is one of the big problems is you just say every human life. Is worth X same amount. Well, that money isn't worth the same amount to all citizens.And it is going to be disproportionately of highest utility to the lowest productivity, cultural groups in our society, because they have less money. And so they will be motivated to have more kids, which leads to negative social effects. But this accounts for that. And. Gives additional money to groups that regularly and there's many ways these groups could be.It could be cultural groups. It could be some sort of factor of where you live. It could be where they go to school. It could be where the parents went to school, but there are going to be correlating factors with families that raise kids who earn lots of money and are productive citizens, and they will be rewarded for that.But what's really interested [00:08:00] is they're rewarded for it at a narcissistic level. So today I, as a parent, do not get rewarded in any way by society for doing things for my kids, which are likely to make that kid an active and positive contributor to society. But to him, this would be an active way to earn more money.So suppose like we're Mormons, right? And, and our, our local Mormon church could be like, Oh s**t, like this is a good way to earn more money. Like it's a little scam or like Jehovah's Witnesses or something. Cause you know, Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't send their kids to college. So they would get almost.No money from a system like this because they'd be considered very bad bets, but they could be like, Oh s**t, like I just found out how we scan the system. What if we make all our kids like really successful and like high contributors andRobin Hanson: yeah, continue. So let's walk through the mechanism.So I'm afraid we might be losing our audience here. So first of all, we get you to agree on average. People are valuable. And in fact, the nation would just make a profit on average by paying parents to have more kids and that money could come from investors. So it doesn't have to come out of taxes, at least current taxes.[00:09:00]I can convince you then that the first step, Hey, we ought to be just paying a lot for kids. But you might say, if we pay the same amount for any kid, we've got this problem. They're going to. You know, dish up the less valuable kids and a lot more of those, and there's not an incentive to make the more valuable kids.Right? So now under this scenario, the reason why we want to make kids is that they'll pay taxes in the future, right? So then a simple thing is, well, what we want to do is pay the parents in proportion to how much taxes these kids will pay. And you might think, well, how can we figure out that? How do we take a kid and figure out how much taxes they'll pay?And the answer is simple. Of course. You just make an asset, which is a fraction of their taxes paid. That is every year, somebody pays taxes to the government. That's a stream of money that goes to the government. That stream of money can be turned into an asset. Somebody can own that stream of money and you can chop off fractions of it.So you could say chop off 20 percent or 25 percent of the money this kid is going to pay to the government in taxes and turn that into an asset [00:10:00] and basically give that asset to the parents. This is what you own as a result of making this kid and You can either hold on to it for its future returns, or you can sell it off to investors at whatever price you pick.But now we've given you, the parent, an incentive to make that asset worth more. The more you can convince investors that this kid will pay more taxes in the future, the more they'll be willing to pay for that asset, and the more you will get compensated as a parent for having this kid.Simone Collins: So this would happen only after Your child becomes an adult then.So,Robin Hanson: right. Right. But you could sell the asset initially. That's the whole magic of investments. Like a company might, you know, have a product that isn't going to make money for 20 years, but you can sell the stock right now. Yeah. People and get the moneySimone Collins: up front. So yeah, parents would have the ability to sell it right away.And if people believed the parents would raise a kid that would make a lot of money. Then it is, do you know, like just from, from the numbers, do you know if there's a high correlation between the tax [00:11:00] revenue like across families, across generations?Robin Hanson: There's a substantial correlation, but it's not 1. 0.Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: A few really important notes of this that I think wouldn't immediately be intuitive to people. One, I'm going to talk about two industries this would create. And two, I'm going to talk about something that people think would be common but would actually be a pretty dumb move. I think a lot of people would immediately think that wealthy families would buy off their own kids debt things.So that, or, or keep them in the family, basically, so that the kid would never have to pay this portion of their taxes. This would actually be a pretty bad move. And the reason why it would be a bad move is, whoever owns your debt or certificate or whatever you want to call it has a huge incentive to ensure you do well in life.And so you would disproportionately want to sell these. To groups that are going to promote your kids. So suppose it's owned by a major financial firm. Now that [00:12:00] financial firm has a reason to hire your kid. Suppose it's owned by Google. Now Google has a reason to ensure that your kid is created in coding and hire them and pay them.But what's really fascinating is it allows for middling cultural institutions to come into existence that don't exist now. So you could have something that's like a private school, right? That basically. Acts as a daycare for the kid teaches the kid middle school, teaches the kid high school, maybe even gives them college.And these institutions would essentially buy at a discounted price kids from families whose economic circumstances prevent that kid from reaching their potential, full potential. And then those institutions could then arbitrage there. Buy low, sell high. Through the way that they play a role in raising the kid increase the kid's lifetime value.It's like human private equity.Robin Hanson: So let's distinguish two things here because they can get kind of [00:13:00] mixed up. One is the idea of. Taking the stream of payments you send to the government and creating an asset out of that, that then whose value can be increased by moving that asset into the hands of people who can better act on it.So that's, I call this a tax career agent, but that's the idea you were talking about. So we can do that with anybody, even today. It's somewhat independent of giving part of it to parents. So my proposal here for fertility is. Once you have these assets that represent the ability to, you know, the future taxes, you should give a fraction of that asset to the parent as an incentive for them to be a parent, right, to create a kid.And that's a good solution to the fertility problem. Right. We don't necessarily want to give the entire tax career agent asset to the parents, maybe a third of it or a quarter or something, but the rest of it is available there still to be sold to create these other valuable agents. Somebody who owns your future taxes or a fraction of them has an [00:14:00] interest to advise and promote you.Yeah, and that's a valuable role in the world at the moment The thing is the government is already in this role and they're doing a terrible job You already have a career agent in the form of the government who gets 20 of your income and therefore should be Trying to advise and promote you They just don't do it.If we switch their role to somebody else, we transfer that asset to someone else. Somebody else holding that asset could do better to improve that asset. That would be valuable for everybody. The government gets more out of that. You get more out of it. They get more. It's a win for everyone.Simone Collins: Well, and it also seems like it's uniquely a win for lower middle classes.Because like trust fund kids from my understanding are not very good at generating tax revenue. I mean, one, they have all these tax shelters for their financial instruments, but two, they're also typically not generating that much money themselves. So this looks, I mean, I feel like politically it's not so terrible, but you were sort of saying at the beginning of the podcast that you have your doubts that people would get their act together.Policymakers would get their act together, even like broachRobin Hanson: a subject like this. Right. So there's the two ideas here. So one is the general idea of it. [00:15:00] A tax and I, the idea of taking the stream of money that goes to the government and turning that into an asset that we sell to other people. Mm-hmm.that's one idea. And the other idea is, Just giving part of that to parents as an incentive for parents. So it's that second idea I was initially being worried about. That is, if we do that, if we give parents 300, 000 a person on average or something, then they will change behavior. People will go to school less.They'll be less intensive parenting. They will mate earlier in life. They may have more gender inequality. Those things would happen. And then people looking at the consequences might. Blanche and say, I don't like this. That was something I was worried about.Malcolm Collins: Here's the really interesting thing that would be a consequence of this which is it could essentially end if it turns out that there are not persistent genetic differences.between ethnic groups, and if it turns out that a person's social class isn't in any way genetically heritable, it would eradicate those [00:16:00] barriers within just a few generations. It could essentially end racism because that would always be a smart arbitrage play in terms of investing money, ensuring that these people are contributing more to society.The problem is, and it would also do this with sexism to some extent, the problem is that if it turns out that any of those things are genetic and any of those differences are genetic, then it would. As we compound them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Robin Hanson: I wouldn't want to focus people's attention on those promises because as you indicate, they probably won't be realized, but I might focus your attention on who today is making the worst choices of schooling and career.Right. And I think most people presume it's lower class people who are in fact making bad choices there. And these career agents would be very incentivized to help those people make better choices. So then they would get, if you might say, you know, children of the rich probably get already get pretty good career advice, pretty good school advice.They aren't lacking for good contacts to tell them what jobs to take [00:17:00] or what schools to go to. It's lower class people who don't really get the system and know what the best way to set up their career is. They would then be getting this expert advice from people who really care a lot and they would have the biggest benefits percentage wise.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, I mean, the biggest negative incentive of this would be if it turns out that there are like persistent genetic heritable differences between individuals within the easiest way to quote unquote scam this system, but in a way that ultimately would help society. I always love when systems end up is you just.Sort of get genetics that you would consider a high likelihood to end up in a high productivity individual and you just sort of mass produce them like you as a company pay for surrogates and then you, you know, have lots of kids and then you handle their education and then you would have sort of corporate families which I suspect we're going to see systems likeSimone Collins: this.Yeah, let's not use the term corporate family because that's like industrial family. Industrial parenting. [00:18:00] Industrial parenting.Robin Hanson: Yes. Yes. Basically. Scale economies of parenting, large, organized, systematic structures ofSimone Collins: parenting. Right. Kind of a little, a little Brave New World y. A little Brave New World y.AndRobin Hanson: I think that would happen, and that would freak some people out. That's exactly the sort of thing that might make some people back off and say, Uh uh, I don't like this.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I also, I also worry about people selecting disproportionately for males because men are higher earners and especially in a world in which women would be incentivized to probably take more time out of the workforce for reproduction.That is, ButRobin Hanson: in this world that's paid well, that's highly compensated. Yeah. But isSimone Collins: that, is that, is that money taxed? I mean, a surrogate I'm sure would be paid well. But when a mother who chooses to, you know, Take time offMalcolm Collins: if she was raising successful kids and keep in mind in this world, because one of the greatest signs that a kid is going to be a high productivity individual is going to be that the mother's a high productivity individual, that these women who want to be mothers are actually incentivized to work.Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:19:00] because basically their, their, their kids will sell for a higher price or their kids tax tax revenue will sell for a higher price if they themselves are high earners. Correct.Robin Hanson: Yeah. Or at least look like they couldn't do high. So they just have to show a promising young career and then abandon it for, for kids, but then show that they could have continued and they looked very promisingSimone Collins: or not abandon it at all or not.But I mean, I, I feel like this could also, if it turns out the good way it would, it would also encourage a lot of we'll say so a, a big problem. For example, like in, in, in Sweden, amazing childcare. Like basically they've set up a prenatal list policy set. Not dialed up enough, I guess, for, to make a difference, but you know, their, their whole hypothesis is, okay, well, let's let women have kids and work.So like great childcare, great education you know, whatever you need so that women can continue to stay in the workforce. And if we had something like that, where it was like, okay, great support and you keep working, then that could even encourage women to be both higher career achievers and even more leaned inMalcolm Collins: Would create incentives for companies [00:20:00] to provide that.Yeah. Yeah, that's true.Robin Hanson: That's true. Yeah. As an economist, I have to point out that often people are looking at a problem that's trying to figure out intuitively through their own reasoning, what would be the most cost effective solution to things. And the economist often says, well, we don't want to take your guess of a most effective solution and make policies that require that.What we want to do is just create the incentive to do the best job and let people figure out what does best. So if we just pay per kid according to their future tax revenue Let's the system be open for trying all these different things. Maybe the sweden approach will work better. Maybe the hungarian.Maybe the israeli We shouldn't presume to know we should just set up the incentive so they can compete all those different approaches would try to get people to recruit into their thing and they would set up investors to try their approach and then they would try it and 20 years later they'd see what sort of kids they had.Yeah, makesMalcolm Collins: sense. I think trying to predict phenomenon you're going to see in the system another one that I think would be pretty interesting. Is [00:21:00] I suspect that many religious communities would sort of demand the tithing of a portion of a kid's debt to the religious institution, but then they would become more motivated to ensure that the kids were successful, which would lead to some really interesting behavior patterns for these institutions.Which I'd be interested to see that. I think I think it would only lead to a lot of net benefit stuff for society. If you consider a good society, a society where a lot of kids are raised. You know, productive and happy, but it could be a net negative if you consider a good society, one that is closer to a traditionalRobin Hanson: society.Right, so plausibly say religious communities would gain more from these subsidies. Yeah. They would more eagerly take advantage of them. They'd be more set up to take advantage of them. And then the larger world would see, oh, this is subsidizing religion. And the people who don't like religion,they go, well, that's bad. We don't like that. And that's, again, the danger here. If it works, it'll work probably by changing some substantial things. And leaning in some directions and that'll just put people off [00:22:00] who don't like those directions. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: no, you're absolutely right. Well, and I think one thing to remember if you talk about the political viability of all this is how common antinatalism is as an ethical stance among the far left at this point.Yeah.Robin Hanson: Yeah, it's really common, not just far left, middle left, even the center left.Malcolm Collins: And I, and I've seen it and they consider you can get canceled. I remember one, one professor at Harvard was like, well, I'm a fan of your guys, but I can't be known as a pronatalist. Cause I've heard some people have even accused me of potentially being a pronatalist and I'm like, how is that that negative a thing, but apparently it's like a cancelable offense.Robin Hanson: I mean, I think people perceive and guess that, in fact, stronger pro natalism policies would change gender equality. That is. It'll induce differences in the gender's life patterns and what they do, and they don't like that. And I think, they think advocating for that makes you an evil person.Simone Collins: No, but gender equality depends on [00:23:00] perinatalism.Because if you don't have feminist people having kids and passing on that culture, there will be noMalcolm Collins: feminist culture. But they need it within their lifetime, Simone. They don't care about future people.Robin Hanson: And they think of it as a percentage thing. You know, just what percentage of the world is doing different things.The absolute size of the world is not really part of feminism in most people's minds.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, this is fascinating. Do you have any other thoughts about so if you were going to implement this, like realistically, well, I mean, we are looking at doing that charter city thing, Simone, we could work this into the way the tax code works.OhSimone Collins: my gosh. Yeah. That's a good idea.Robin Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. Notice that the reason that this tax. You know thing works is because we have a lot of debt say in the United States So it's an especially easy to make the argument for nations that already have a lot of debt If you're starting a new nation with very little debt great for you.Good job, but I've got the problem. Well, I don't actually have You know, the same argument to give about why you should be issuing more.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we would do is we would just do it [00:24:00] to say that a portion of a kid's taxes go to just get split off to go to a private corporation basically. And, and the, by default, parents can buy and can, can not sell these and keep these and then the kids don't have to worry about it.Now, a lot of people would be freaked out that a parents were trading a part of a kid's future to a company. And so you'd want some portion of the kids, them parents. Basically, all you're doing, and I think you made it really clear, Essentially I could go and make this agreement with someone in our society today, but because it's so hard for corporations to collect on my income right now, it functionally wouldn't work.There's not good mechanisms for doing this at scale. However, if you used existing tax systems to do it, you could do it at scale, which would allow for these economic patterns to emerge. You don't actually need the debt argument. You just say, okay, half of a person's taxes are basically paid.Robin Hanson: So actually, a few years ago, I said the generic solution to the fertility problem is just to allow parents to [00:25:00] endow kids with debtor equity.Because then the parents, you know, are investing in this kid. Now, the problem there is most people see parents endowing kids with debt or equity as some kind of slavery and they go, Oh, that's terrible. The parents are owning part of the kids, but apparently they don't mind that when nations do that nations endowing kids with debt, that's fine.That's not slavery. So it's only slavery when individuals do it, but not when nations do it. So that's why, you know, there's an attractive option to having the nations pay for kids because. They're allowed to endow people with debt and equity. Well, aMalcolm Collins: really interesting thing you could do if you did this is make it sort of legally mandatory that this is the only way that the university system can collect money through improving kids net value to society.And that way you wouldn't have them putting, you know, just, just charging kids an arm and a leg for nothing. YouRobin Hanson: could certainly try to a bigger stake in their students, [00:26:00] which would be by saying you can only, tuition can only be in the form of, of these sorts of tax shares. Yeah. They would presumably just sell them as soon as they could.So now you have to require that they hold them for a long time. And now you've got a lot of budgeting problems that creates issues. Yeah.Simone Collins: Do you think that there's a particular nation? One that presumably has a lot of debt already aside from the United States that could possibly be convinced to consider this, or do you think the United States is the most likely?Likely nationRobin Hanson: here, so the nation, the developed nation that most has the highest fertility is Israel, but there's a problem in the sense that if you think you have a cultural solution to the fertility problem, then you're less eager for this financial solution, right? Yeah, but you might want to double down and do both.So then the problem is like you go for some other, like the United States is financially well set up because we have a big debt, but then we're not culturally as inclined to do it. So part of the problem here is if you're inclined to adopt this proposals because culture is in the [00:27:00] direction of promoting fertility, in which case you less need the solution.The solution is most needed by the ones least likely to adopt it. And that's true for a lot of problems in the world, unfortunately. Well,Malcolm Collins: here is a potential answer to that. This could be implemented through a religious organization. So for example, the church of Mormon could essentially do this for all of their members and that the, the fractional shares would come from tithing revenue from these individuals where a portion of the tithe.would go to the company or whoever owns the shares. Now, this would be relevant because the church then would be explicitly motivating people to raise people in a way where they didn't deconvert from the church, which is also in their bestRobin Hanson: interest. Although they don't like to advertise such an explicit motivation.So for example, You know, the most successful group like this in the U. S. is the Amish. They are very successful at a 93 percent retention rate, and they are [00:28:00] doubling every 20 years, and so they have a maintaining a high fertility and a high retention rate. But I think they go out of their way to kick teenagers out and say, go see the world and just say, look, it really is your choice.We're not pressuring you to come back. And that's part of the reason why kids might come back and be persuaded. It's they might look worse if they said, sure, you can go, but look, we've got all this debt tied into you and we'll lose money to leave might not sell so well. Right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Fascinating.Simone Collins: Fascinating. This is still the, the, what bothers me most about financial incentives on the perinatalist front is that there are a lot of people out there who are just like, no, no, no, we need more money. Give parents more money. No one has an answer. And what I love about this is you're like, nope, here's exactly how it can be done.This is why it would be done. This is why it's practical.Robin Hanson: It's worth repeating then. Yeah. Yes. We're going to give a lot of assets to each parent. It's going to. Be worth say on average three hundred thousand dollars or more [00:29:00] What? We're going to give it in the form of an asset that represents future tax revenue first so that it's not just giving everybody the same amount of money.And secondly, we're going to pay for that by issuing more debt because in fact, the investors will say, yeah, you can cover that. So say if you have a house, if you just are spending more than you earn and want to take out a loan in your house, Investors should go, well, I need to make sure you can cover that with the house because you know, you might not be able to pay if you build an addition to the house and you want to take out a loan for that.Investors will go. Oh, yeah, sure. I'm happy to back your bigger loan on the house. If you have a bigger house because you're going to be able to pay that back. So that's what we're talking about here. When you have another kid, you're adding onto the house, you're making it a bigger, more valuable thing. And it's, It's perfectly reasonable to have a bigger debt on it.SoMalcolm Collins: this talk has been fantastic. I've really enjoyed it. We'd love to have you back on. And thank you so much for your time. I, I love this solution because I do think it's one of the few financial [00:30:00] solutions that I think is very realistic and viable. Just very difficult to get past at the level of a nation state until they panic.KeepSimone Collins: in mind, keep in mind, one, they are going to panic and two, all of the antinatalists are going to die and not have kids. So. Yeah. You know, give it time. Give it time.Malcolm Collins: All right. Thank you. So this is ending. We're ending Simone. Yes. Ending the episode. So we're going to do the next episode. I'm going to go use the restroom.Go get a beer. I'll be right back. And get ready to say we're the beers. I would'veRobin Hanson: brought a beer. ThisSimone Collins: is, this is our, this is our happy hour. This is our, okay. Yeah. We, we like basically live on UK times. It's like eating for Malcolm gets up every day to start working at 2 30 AM. SoRobin Hanson: where do you physically live in California?Simone Collins: We're on East coast. We're, we're like right by New York. But yeah, Malcolm just likes working when no one else is conscious. So,Robin Hanson: you don't get interrupted that way. It'sSimone Collins: really nice. Not going to lie. Yeah. And thenRobin Hanson: later on when you have meetings in the day, you can be kind of tired, but people don't care that much if you're tired in the meeting.[00:31:00]Yeah,Simone Collins: no, they don't notice. They don't notice it all. So it's totally fine. Yeah. I, I, I still really love this. I think that there's. There's a way in our lifetime to get people seriously talking about this. There will be some serious panics about it. I guess what I worry about is that politicians are never really incentivized to look at anything beyond theirRobin Hanson: term.So, you know, if you're interested in what projects could be done, it would be possible to fund a trial of the tax career agent trial. What you just do is take a bunch of people and you'd make tax agents for them by. Creating an asset that pays as much as they'll pay in taxes, but it doesn't come from the government.So you don't have to get the government involved in a trial. You just create a trial where you say, basically, when we give people these taxpayer agents, does that help? We just do a trial of seeing whether those people with this agent who gives them advice and promotion, whether they actually make more money.Yeah. You can do a trial of that. And I've done some blog posts on roughly how much that would cost, but there's some clever ways to make it cheaper, but still that would seem a kind of thing that would [00:32:00] then launch the idea of selling tax assets as a thing by showing that, in fact, there's value there.That's somewhat separate of the fertility part.Simone Collins: Yeah, but it would still, I mean, that, you know, if we can make that small case, then we can make a bigger case that can actually affect the numbers. So that would be huge. This is a public episode. 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Malcolm and Simone do an in-depth analysis and critique of Nassim Taleb's controversial article "IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle". They break down his motivations, concessions, rhetorical tactics, and arguments against IQ testing. They explain why his solutions are impractical and highlight where he contradicts himself. Malcolm outlines a framework for reading critiques like this - looking for motivation, proposed alternatives, concessions, repeated bad arguments, and more. They agree IQ isn't everything but make the case it still matters, especially if IQ is declining.Malcolm: [00:00:00] when you look at our prison system, the vast majority of people in it are at Very low accused. And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when compared to you, when you tell people to throw that out, what?You are taking the most vulnerable people in our society who are in a situation to do something they had no control over. And completely acting like they had the same advantage as you did in life. It is sick. It is sick. It is not moral. And you need to get your f*****g s**t together and actually look at the data instead of trying to blow smoke in people's faces so you can play your little virtue game.Okay? Because people are suffering for your b******t. And so you can feel like a hero without having to challenge actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the advantages that you were born with, which other people weren't. he ends up making an argument. That needs to say that he has achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic advantages at [00:01:00] all.He has just willed himself to this. Place that he isSimone: simultaneously while flaunting that systemic advantage, right? In every sense like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.Would you like to know more?Simone: So Malcolm, what if I told you that obviously a wealth doesn't predict success because there are tons of millionaires and billionaires who just do nothing with their lives and piss away all their money. And obviously being like super, super poor, like under the poverty line is a problem, but like above a certain level, it really doesn't matter about how much money you have.Oh, I think thatMalcolm: would make a lot of sense. I think that's exactly the type of thing a wealthy person would argue. Right. So I got to talk about how we got on this topic. We had a fan of the show stay over at our house because they happened to be passing through the area. And one of the things that they mentioned, because they were like, well, this is an area where I question something that you guys talk about a lot.Specifically, he believed that [00:02:00] IQ didn't matter at all. And the reason he believes this is because another smart person who he looked up to had argued this very passionately. Specifically, Nassim Taleb. and he wrote this medium post about thiscalled IQ is largely a pseudo-scientific swindle. And I read this medium post and I saw it as a really interesting opportunity because self-contained within the me the post its itself was the proof that he was manipulating data and essentially lying to the reader. But what we want to try to do on this episode is to not just show that yes, IQ likely does matter, but give you the tools necessary to, even if you don't understand the scientific language was which a person is arguing, i.e. in this case, like advanced statistics. Even if you don't [00:03:00] understand that. Understand the telltale signs that a person is lying to you and be able to tell that they are lying to you even if you don't understand what they are saying and better than all of that, get to deeper truth than you even could from reading an article from the perspective of somebody who is Agreed with what is true or what you already believe.And by that what I mean is if somebody who really believes in career is invested in IQ mattering, writes an article that IQ matters. Well, they can't really trust it either because they might be lying with statistics as well. Right. There's somebody who deeply believes IQ doesn't matter, or at least.tries to argue that has sprinkled throughout his article, little admissions to where IQ does matter. You can know that at least in those areas, it definitely matters because he has everything at stake in showing that it doesn't. So that's why learning to read articles in this way is really important.Now, before we go further with [00:04:00] this, I want to elaborate on the analogy that Simone started the show is because I think this is where we're going as a society. And a lot of these people today who, We're born with advantages over people, born with usually really high IQs, and then they pretend like they've achieved everything that they've achieved on their own.It is not the look that they think it is. It's very much the new, I don't see race. Pretending you don't see a systemic advantage that you have had over other people your entire life, and taking credit being like, well, I was starting from the same position they were, is not humble, okay? It is dehumanizing, and it is cruel and evil, and it prevents us as a society from potentially solving systemic issues for people who weren't born with your immense privilege.I say this to Nassib, because he is somebody who was born with this immense privilege. Yeah, he'sSimone: clearly someone... Who [00:05:00] is very smart and who benefits from a high IQ. And if he were to, in good faith, take an IQ test, he would probably end up with a very high IQ score. Like it's pretty apparent.I want to start off too with some caveats that like, you know, a lot of what he says is we agree with, you know, IQ, like if you have a really high IQ, it doesn't mean you're going to be super successful. Obviously not. You know, this is why with our school, we still like for, I will, as we say, and not IQ, because, you know, being really smart does not predict success, but he claims that's what like IQ enthusiasts also claim, which is not, it's just not true.So he makes a lot of false claims on that. I just want to say that we agree. He also says that a really key thing with IQ is like it, where it is most predictive and where it is the biggest deal is where there's really low IQ, but he seems to like. I don't know. Just discount that that's not important when actually like it's been a really big deal.This is why lead remediation, you know, like reducing lead exposure for populations has been such a big deal. HeMalcolm: also caught and measured through IQ. This is the place where IQ in [00:06:00] public policy has had a Has made a big impact on the lives of pretty much everyone living on earth today.Simone: Yeah, because people were willing to admit that, you know, the low IQ is a problem.And then also he talks about you know, people misusing IQ often in very unsavory, disgusting ways. You know, he points to racism a lot. That's totally true, but all sorts of messed up people use like misuse all sorts of science and pseudoscience and other nonsense. To forward their agendas.Just because you see one idiot use something in a poor way, doesn't mean it's not. You know, it's not a, it's not a relevant field in other ways. SoMalcolm: before we go further with this I think we can break this down into a few core points when you're analyzing an article like this. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let's go.So one is you're looking for what the motivation is. Then you want to look at the data sets that they present, you want to look at. that what they think the alternatives are that they're presenting, if IQ doesn't matter, what are the alternatives? [00:07:00] You need to look at where they concede that the other side has points and you need to look at what I call repeated hand flails.A repeated hand flail is a really bad argument that is used repeatedly. And that is obviously a bad argument, but that at first glance can seem like it's a really powerful argument. So I'll start with a repeated hand flail that he uses throughout the piece. It's really obvious. And it really got on my nerves which was IQ doesn't matter because the same individual, if you test them again with an IQ test on average, that test is going to differ from their first score by about a third, a standard deviation.And that's a big difference. And therefore that proves that IQ tests don't matter. Now I ask a person to just, and this is how, when you're hearing something like this and you're like, okay, he's using a lot of words like the standard deviation and comparing this to different parts of the IQ stuff, [00:08:00] ignore all of that.Just use your common sense. Okay. So replace IQ tests with a different test, like a biology test, right? Like I'm taking a. a 10th grade biology test. And I am comparing my knowledge of biology to the other students in the room's knowledge of biology. Now, if I retake that test, if you retake any test about, you are going to differentiate from your previous results by about a third of a standard deviation.If it's like a really big test. That's just normal. Anyone should know you're not going to get the same results. Like every time you retake a test, that's a normal function of tests. However, that being the case, That doesn't mean that biology test isn't measuring anything in terms of a student's knowledge of biology.Yeah. And so this is the first thing, when they are criticizing something, like if they are continually using an argument, think, Okay, but is there something else that we all generally agree on? That the bar is a good way to... measure how good a lawyer is doing or that driver's [00:09:00] exams are a good way to measure, you know, do these have different results when a single individual retakes the test?Yeah. And if the answer is yes well then why does he keep bringing this up? Why is this so important? It is because, well, it's just a weird rhetorical tactic he keeps going back to.Simone: Yeah. I think connected to this kind of is at the very beginning, and this was like a big trigger for me. He, he says technical backbone, like he links to a technical backbone as here's just like at the top of his article.Here's my link to basically what he implies is Oh, if you really want to understand why I'm correct and you want to see it on a technical standpoint, an academic peer reviewed standpoint, this will explain everything. And you click over to it and it's just. It's just a research journal article pointing to examples of people mistaking correlation with causation.It isn't actually related to the arguments he makes in his blog post. And it's one of those things that really bothers me because often people will link to something and be like, Oh, here's what backs up my argument. And it, [00:10:00] I mean, usually it's at least broadly related to their argument. This even wasn't really related to his argument.He sometimes argued that Oh, people don't understand correlation and causation. But yeah that, that really bothered me when peopleMalcolm: are like, read this other thing. You mentioned that I would note as well, should be a big red flag with people. Smart people can write in a way that dumb people can understand.Yes. When we were right people like who watch our channel and stuff like that, they sometimes accuse us. Of talking like we have a thesaurus in front of us. Okay, whatever. I don't think that we do that. To me, I talk really plain and that reminds me of that scene in Idiocracy where they're like.... I think it might be because of these drugs the army put me on. But if you could, uh, just get me well enough to get back to base. Right. Kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, but, uh, it says on your chart that you're fucked up.Uh, you talk like a fag, and your s**t's all retarded. What I do is just like, you [00:11:00] know, like, you know what I mean, like. No, I'm serious here.I need help. There's that fag talk we talked about.Malcolm: But yeah. And there's that scene where he's just trying to talk normal and the other person just from a different cultural group hears it. It's him intentionally trying to sound erudite. Well, but I, you know,Simone: He does really gatekeep throughout this essay.For example, like in, in one sentence, he's well, however, if you take up a Perry and Havankian view of intelligence in another sentence, he's IQ doesn't detect convexity of mistakes.Malcolm: What? No, but the point being here is, what I was saying is that for us, when we use words that sound I don't know, to somebody different from us that we're using a thesaurus or something, they are still intelligible in context.They are not intentionally meant to get a viewer to disengage or sort of shut down and just listen to the other one. Yeah, and be like,Simone: Oh, I guess I'll have to take your word for it because I don't understand this and therefore you must be smarter than me, [00:12:00] so I'm just going to assume thatMalcolm: you're right.Yeah. And I would say that if you notice that happening in a piece and never, ever take away from that, this person knows what they're talking about. Yeah, but can you believe, he'sSimone: literally, in an article that he's using to disprove IQ as like a thing, he's using IQ correlated. Vocabulary.Using SAT words. Yeah. I'm like, the f**k? You know, he talks always, he's well, you know, this isn't Gaussian. And okay. You know what? Honestly, like I've been out of academia long enough to have forgotten that Gaussian meant was in reference to a normal distribution. He could have just said normal distribution.This man who apparently throughout his writing makes it very clear that he really hates academia uses a lot of academic speech, which isMalcolm: also really interesting. The techniques. And I love the first point you mentioned, which is a huge red flag. If somebody says, here's a source. And the source has nothing to do with what they're talking about really or is really just meant to s**t on academics.That's all it was trying to do. And he doesn't say that's what this is. You need to be aware that at [00:13:00] the very outset of this piece, he is saying, I am willing to mislead you to try to make my point. That is what is being signaled here. But first we got to go back to this framework I set up.Okay. So what is his motivation with this piece? Because he cites his motivation throughout the piece very plainly. He cites very clearly that he believes that if IQ is a real thing, then the racists are correct. And racists will be able to implement racist policy, which will hurt people if IQ is a real thing. . This is like second paragraph. People bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental IQ abilities based on IQ equals intelligence.Those have been upset with me for robbing them of this quote unquote scientific tool. His goal, right here, he lays it out. Second paragraph. I am trying to rob racists of aSimone: tool. Now see the way I read that section is he gives a bulleted list and he's like basically IQ was something championed by, first he says racists and eugenicists, and second he says [00:14:00] psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers.And I thought what he was trying to do there was basically associate this domain with unsavory people. And exploitative peopleMalcolm: I think he alsoSimone: uses the association to discredit anyone who talks about IQ by just saying they're racists. Okay, soMalcolm: he's using it for two reasons. But it is very clear from the piece that he believes that if IQ is a real thing, then the racists are right.. Again the outro. The argument that, quote unquote, some races are better at running, hence inference about the brain is stale, mental capacity is much more he goes over this, over and over.It is very clear Wait, so he'sSimone: implying that not all rac listen, he's implying that all races are equally good at running?Malcolm: No, he's implying that doesn't mean that there would be, okay, listen to this point. This is actually a really good point of somebody messing with you. Okay. The argument that, quote, Some races are better at running, end quote, Hence, some inference about the brain is stale.Mental capacity is much more dimensional and not defined in the [00:15:00] same way running a hundred meter dashes. What? So what he's saying is that because this is a more complicated thing to measure, that it axiomatically doesn't vary between different ethnic groups. Oh,Simone: okay. Right, right, right. Because intelligence is harder to measure and like nail down, and it's thisMalcolm: glummy weird thing.It's just a hand wave. Now, there are reasons why, and we have done. videos on this. Why? If you can measure anything in a group, measure anything in a group. And it's clear that he believes this. And this is why he is so sold on this point. You can measure anything in a group like tennis ability.You are going to find systemic differences between groups. That's just natural. The reason why IQ based race realism is irrelevant, and we've done this before, is because it changes so quickly intergenerationally. If you look, like we were looking, okay, we had 50 embryos, like just our family, and we choose five embryos out of those 50 based on IQ, [00:16:00] pure generation, with existing technology, and our kids only marry other families who did that, within just Five generations, the average member of our family would be three standard deviations higher in IQ than the average American citizen today.And keep in mind that within the next 75 years, we're likely looking at IQ dropping by a standard deviation. So for like just astronomically higher. And what this shows is that it doesn't matter. This would be true if we were black. This would be true if we were Asian. IQ doesn't matter, not because it doesn't differ between groups.Everything if you measure it, if you can put a number to it, it's going to differ betweenSimone: groups. Yeah. But any selective or evolutionary bottle, like you're trying to say it matters because it doesn'tMalcolm: persistently differ between. Yeah. And it can quickly change and it matters a lot more what like family you come from or what religion you come from.Simone: Yeah, or what environment you're in and what the selective pressuresMalcolm: are. Yeah. What small, yeah. So, so that's why it doesn't matter. But he hasn't thought of that argument. And so he is just completely dedicated because he [00:17:00] knows the moment you could put, and this becomes very clear later in his argumentation, the moment you could put a number on general competence.That there would be differences between ethnic groups because of course, I mean, they might be minor differences, but people would still pick up on that and then that motivates racism and you can actually tell this is his core motivation by again, I say, what is he proposing as the alternative to IQ?Right? So. If he was being, I think, genuine I just think IQ tests are bad and we could be measuring this better, you would be proposing a way to measure it better. But he doesn't propose a way toSimone: measure it better. Yeah, that's true. And we I mean, we, I think we inherently under we would agree with him that current measures of IQ...Oh yeah, they could definitelyMalcolm: improve, but let's, I need, I want to read this. If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing, or a random matrix theory, make him or her do that task. We don't need [00:18:00] theoretical exams for real world function by probability challenged psychologists.So think about what this is saying and how completely insane this is. He is actually saying that I am unwilling to have any sort of broad measure of competence put on a person. And the reason he has to take this position is because whatever measure of competence he found, you would find differences in it between groups.So he needs there to be no standard measure of competence given his world framing. That he has laid out. If you can put a measure on people's competence, then it will differ between groups, that it can be used by racists to promote their agenda. That is a core thing. So, so going into this piece, he's going into it with the world perspective, that if you could put any sort of broad measure of competence on a group, that it will lead to racism.And so we should not have that. But think about how insane that would be for a society. That would also mean, well, you can't have SATs. You can't have, you can't really have [00:19:00] any sort of a broadly applicable test. Every test, it needs to only study what a person is about to do. But the problem is that we hire people, and we accept people intoSimone: college.Based on totally unrelatedMalcolm: measures. To do broad ranges of tasks. What if the court places like he was using? As he mentions in the piece is in the military, and that's because you need aSimone: broad spectrum because it's predictive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it doesn't seem to be predictive of outcome. And, you know, again we want to emphasize here that we're not, we don't disagree with the basic argument.He's making the school that we're designing. It whenever possible tests people through natural assessments. Hey, can you write fan, you know, can you write content that audience, like widespread audiences okay, well, let's see if you can write a fan fiction. A lot of people read, like we believe in natural assessments and we believe that's the best way to tell if someone's good at something.But we also are practicalMalcolm: at the same time. We accept that some people are born with an intellectual state that gives them a huge [00:20:00] systemic advantage over other people. And this, again, it's not an ethnic thing. As we said, it changes so quickly. It's irrelevant to tie this to ethnic groups. But and again it, most of these gene people, you go to these genetics channels, right?And they'll tell you on these channels, yeah, it looks like in the developed world in the next 75 years, IQ in the developed world is going to drop by about one standard deviation. And then they're also like complaining, it's so, so the developed world is mostly white people. That means white people on average will be dumber than everyone else because we're not seeing this effect in the developing world.So it's one of these things where it's don't play that game. Yeah. It's not it's not.Simone: If we were going to go back to the wealth analogy obviously like first, and we also agree you know, having a super high IQ doesn't mean obviously you're going to be super successful.There are lots of people with crazy high IQs who do absolutely nothing, who do a lot of really dumb stuff. However, when you have a really high IQ and you also have a bunch of other factors like drive, ambition, values, you know, a vision for something you are. going to have a much easier time achieving things.And it's just it's similar to having a lot of wealth. There are tons of [00:21:00] billionaires and millionaires who genuinely don't do anythingMalcolm: great. Ignoring your privilege is not a virtue. Yeah. No, continue. I'm sorry. I got to continue as a piece of them. So the so what you see here, first of all, is it the solution he's arguing is impractical and specifically caters to the reason he wrote the piece.No. Another thing to note is you need to go through and see, okay, where does he concede that the other side makes a good point? Never,Simone: never. No, he does. Oh no, he does. I guess when he says that basically like super low IQ does have a, an impact, right?Malcolm: He does. No, but no. He says something that absolutely destroys the entire piece.Really? I missed that. Yes, I will read it because he says it so dismissively that you could miss what he's saying. Okay. Okay. The best measure charlatans. IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans insisting on selling value at risk VAR and risk metrics saying it's the best measure. That best [00:22:00] measure being unreliable blew them up many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is better than no measure across domains.Now, Simone, you just heard that and you probably heard nothing. Because one, it was written poorly, it was structured poorly, it didn't really get across the point, but it did make a concession. Okay. A very important concession that IQ actually is the single best measure that we have access to for adult success.He conceded it's the best measure. He just thinks even being the best measure. It is not a good enough measure because it is imperfect because it's imperfect. And therefore we shouldn't use it at all. But the fact that he has now conceded that out of all conceivable measures ever developed, it is the best one that kind of sinks everything else that he's.talking about because what that means is that when you're dealing with broad based science, which regularly needs to use something like this, like lead in the water, hurting a population [00:23:00] or is this academic solution working or not working or is IQ declining in a population or is IQ increasing in a population in another part here, he mentions the Flynn effect.should warn us not just that IQ is somewhat environmentally dependent, but that it is at least partially circular. So he's saying he concedes when IQ measures support his belief system, then they'reSimone: real and they're real, whichMalcolm: is that IQ is nutritionally based to some extent is shown by the Flynn effect.And I had the reverse funnel thing, but the Flynn effect means that the Flynn effect is real. So, so he's willing To use it when it supports his worldview and he distances himself from it when it goes against his worldview. Oh dear. And then the final thing that I would say is, and he fortunately does this for you, the reader, is look at the actual data points the person is using.He will put up data points and be like, Oh look, the data points are all over the place and I'm going to put them on the screen for the viewers here. But if you [00:24:00] actually look at these data points. You can eyeball what it would look like if you drew a line through this scatterplot. It would look like a line goingSimone: up and to the right.I know, but he seems to not understand I don't know, linear regression. No, soMalcolm: he believes that because there is high variability and keep in mind, high variability once a person is rich. So basically he conceives two things. He conceives that low IQ matters, and that IQ is really highly determinate of how much money you make.under a certain amount of money. However, anyone who even does believe in IQ like us would largely say, yeah, but people who are earning like over a hundred K a year, the amount that they earn is largely just luck based. It's not based on competence. Anyone would tell you that, but most people are earning under that amount.And that is why we focus on things like IQ because that's where it is determinant. So hold on, but this is just like more broadly. The real key thing was a piece like this when you're going through it is [00:25:00] to look for what they are conceding because that can tell you the few things that are really strongly true.The points he concedes is that IQ is the best measure we have available to us right now of you know, correlating with adult success. He does concede that it works really well for low paying jobs and that low IQ does really seem to hurt people. He does concede. That it works really well for things like the military.He does concede that, so, so, across all of these areas, I think what you can see is that, yeah, IQ probably is a really useful measure. And all of this comes back to Oh, but youforgot,Simone: he also makes this argument that it's immoral. He claims the concept is immoral. He uses that wordMalcolm: of the concept of IQ, the moral, and again, this comes to a, now this comes looking outside of a piece.Right. So, you know, before I was like, okay, don't look outside the piece, but you can just sanity test. It'd be like, okay. Well, if IQ is a bad measure of competence, [00:26:00] right? Does it correlate? What other things do I correlate with competence as an individual? Does the person think, like broadly, I guess if I was trying to determine how good a group would be at, say, graduating from college, because NCE have a very big financial incentive to be able to determine that.Well, they don't use IQ tests. What are they using? They're using SATs. , like just Google. What's the correlation between IQ tests and a like , 0. 84, like really high, like very high correlation. And so this is the problem, all sort of tests of intelligence because intelligence is cross correlated across domains are going to correlate with each other.If I was looking at a school and I was looking at people who were scoring well on biology tests, I could broadly guess and bet pretty effectively that they would also score better than other students on history tests, or on math tests. And this is why when you're looking at things like But then what's interesting, and a lot of people might not know this, is that then you expand this to other domains.You look at their probability of raping someone, it's also a lot lower. [00:27:00] You look at their probability of being in jail, it's also a lot lower. You look at their probability of murdering someone, it's also a lot lower. You look at their probability of getting in a car accident, it's also a lot lower.Generally, within any of these things, it's almost... I'm not going to say it's irrelevant what you're measuring, because some are better measures than others. But you're clearly measuring something if it's cross correlated against all of these different domains. And so I think a lot of people will try to like blow smoke in your face.And it's really good to be able to recognize when they're doing that. And for them, like I even think from his perspective, ideologically, what's at stake for him? One, he thinks if IQ can be proven to be real, that means that racism is right. Which it doesn't as we have copiously pointed out on this show, it is not intergenerationally durably tied to an ethnic group enough to matter, but anything that you can measure and put a number to is obviously going to differ between population groups.Duh. But that doesn't mean like one is better or something like that. It would, I guess, if it didn't change in between generations, [00:28:00] but it changes so, so, so quickly. And then the second is that he ends up making an argument. That needs to say that he has achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic advantages at all.He has just willed himself to this. Place that he isSimone: simultaneously while flaunting that systemic advantage, right? In every sense like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.Malcolm: Yeah. And if you look at people like Simone and I will admit that I. Well, actually I don't think I have a high iq.Well, I do have a You do? Okay. I do have a high IQ when it's measured. Shut up. So, I mean, is it ex Simone might not mention this, but she's in the top fraction of a percent. She was measured recently for the autism exam. But hold on, Simone, I won't brag on you. So, what we do need to know is that the way that my brain works when it comes to things is different enough that it's not just like being smart.Like typically when I start something, I'm really bad at it. Like when I started high school, I was in the top, you know, half of my [00:29:00] class. No, I graduated obviously really near the top but I started bottom half. When I went to SAT prep, I remember I almost got laughed out of the room because I said I wanted to go to Harvard or Stanford, which obviously I did end up going to for my MBA.But they were like, but you are the single lowest scores in the entire prep class. What are you talking about? So I'm one of these people who always starts like really lower than other people and then somehow. ends up if I'm just persistent at something really sort of figuring out and getting it to click at the end of the day.But I think it might just be because I see things differently, but this seeing things differently has to have some genetic component. The advantages I have over other people, I should never deny them because that removes my ability to empathize with an individual who tells me, you don't understand. I can't just do this thing that you went out there and did.Simone: Well, I wonder, so one, one argument that Nassim Taleb makes also in his essay, which we haven't, I think, touched on a whole lot, is like you know, only pencil, like paper [00:30:00] pusher, academic types who to play with bureaucracy and follow direction perform well on I. Q. tests. And I mean, to your point, right?You as actually a very anti authoritarian, anti bureaucracy. I'm not going to listen to you kind of person. Do really suck at a lot of IQ, you know, correlated, whatever tests in the beginning, but you also have the good sense and tenacity to learn the system. And I think a lot of what these tests may also be measuring is people's willingness to work with a system to their personal advantage and a lack of willingness to work with that system, a lack of willingness to adapt and read directions and listen is.Malcolm: Regardless, it might not be measuring intelligence, but it's measuringSimone: willingness to learn how to do what you need to do to getMalcolm: ahead in life. And let's keep in mind what IQ is really measuring because I think a lot of people miss it. It is not we use it as a quote unquote intelligence measure, but it's really, it's claimed to fame is that it has the highest correlatory.And that like economic outcomes, mostly, but other life outcomes, [00:31:00] and that's what we're looking at. That's why we care about it as a statistic. And I would say life outcomes where intelligence matters. I'd argue that the amount that you make over 100 K a year. Your intelligence doesn't matter.You're mostly dealing with luck at that point. And so it does not surprise me at all that it wouldn't be correlated at that point. But in his world of I guess, ultra smarty pants who have make billions of dollars a year, like that's where he's applying it instead of it, population levels.Yeah.Simone: I don't know if they for years have evencome into contact with people. who have an IQ like below 110, like they just don't. So I think it's also hard for them to even understand like the true variance in IQ that's out there and the effect that it hasMalcolm: on people. Yeah. And I would say the most important reason why IQ matters right now and why people need to be paying attention to IQ right now.especially when he's well, IQ only matters when it's really low. Well, if we're dealing with a quickly dropping IQ for genetic reasons, which it looks like we are about [00:32:00] again, one standard deviation drop in the next 75 years is what we see not just from IQ being measured in developed countries. We see this the polygenic scores.So this is like the genetic. The makeups as they are correlated to I. Q. We can see them appearing at a lower and lower frequency in genetic banks over time. We can then correlate the genes associated with a high I. Q. and look at how much they what other things are highly tied to. They are extremely highly tied to a person's.Fertility success. So the higher, the same genes that are correlated with IQ are also correlated with low success in fertility situations.Like you're looking at a car and you can measure how fast it goes and predict that. You can predict how fast it might go by looking at its engineering. You can read a report about how fast it's supposed to go. And all of these numbers correlate.That's sort of what we're looking at with this IQ drop. If it turns out that's real. And we are ignoring that. Well then IQ is really gonna f*****g matter. Because almost all of us in the developed [00:33:00] world are going to be at this incredibly low level of IQ that he... Even he says, oh, this actually does have a very big effect.And that's a problem. That you ignore this because it says something. Yeah,Simone: it's kind of like being like, well, money makes no difference unless you're like impoverished. And yet like humanity is moving in this direction toward poverty. And let's. Just ignore the issue though, because it doesn't matter at all.Malcolm: Yeah. And so, yeah, I just wanted to close out with that, that is the number one reason why we can't just ignore IQ right now, even though it might be convenient to ignore IQ right now. And. It's a shame, but it, and as we pointed out, IQ being real does not support the racist positions so long as you are actually familiar with the genetics of IQ, it is because IQ is.It's so heritable that it doesn't matter from an ethnic perspective because it's extreme level of heritability is what allows it to change so quickly intergenerationally, which thank goodness, persistently tied to an individual's ethnicity.[00:34:00]Simone: Yeah, I mean, and let's be clear we would prefer a world in which everyone had the same potential for achievement on everything, you know, like a blank slate world would be way cooler.We would prefer to be in one. But, you know, to pretend that is how it. Is just because you feel like that's a more moral world doesn't mean it's a more moral world. Right? You could be like, oh, death is immoral. So I don't believe in it, but that's not going to change the fact that you're going to die.Malcolm: So, well, and it can cause you to make decisions that hurt a lot of and that's what gets me the most about this, you know, when you look at our prison system, the vast majority of people in it are at Very low accused. And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when compared to you, when you tell people to throw that out, what?You are taking the most vulnerable people in our society who are in a situation to do something they had no control over. And completely acting like they had the same advantage as you did in life. It is sick. It is sick. It [00:35:00] is not moral. And you need to get your f*****g s**t together and actually look at the data instead of trying to blow smoke in people's faces so you can play your little virtue game.Okay? Because people are suffering for your b******t. And so you can feel like a hero without having to challenge actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the advantages that you were born with, which other people weren't.Simone: And there you have it.Malcolm: Okay. Have a good one, Simone. You too,Simone: gorgeous. For anyone who wants to go to that pro natalist conference, that's being held in Austin. A few points of clarification. We are not running it. We have no control over who's going. We don't make any money from it. However, we will be speaking there and we will be there and we would be happy to meet up with people who watch our show. If you happen to be in the area, might even put something together.If you guys reach out and we get a critical mass of people, , we have secured a discount [00:36:00] code for our fans, which is pro Natalus all caps. And it should get you about 30% off the price of a ticket leave. Avery you are going.Again, this is not affiliated with the foundation, but if we can make things cheaper for our fans, we're going to do it. And if we can meet with people who are interested in this topic, or further evangelize our brand of perinatal ism, we are very excited to take every opportunity we can to do that. 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

Malcolm and Simone have a fun, meandering discussion about how science fiction narratives can reveal deeper truths about the future when they engage seriously with topics like demographics and AI. They analyze the problematic ways overpopulation and AI are portrayed in much sci-fi. The hosts share imaginative fictional world concepts they've conceived, including a mythology based on online entities, a post-Yellowstone America, and more.Malcolm: [00:00:00] this reminds us of a so there was a book that we were thinking of writing. We never got around to writing it, but we can talk about it here. Because I, I thought it was very interesting. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to write a modern version of mythology.Would you like to know more?Simone: So Malcolm, when the Cyberpunk game came out, you were super excited. Like you had a blast with it. And then we watched the anime at the same time. Great anime,Malcolm: by the way, really good. Love Rebecca. Great character.Simone: Yeah. I mean, well, Rebecca is the only one who like thrives in the world. She's the only one who's really likable.But she's the only one who gets it. Everyone else is so whiny. It'sMalcolm: horrible. But something was really clear in this and it made me reflect on a lot of other sci fi, which it shows that when people are writing sci fi from a mainstream perspective, particularly a progressive one, and I think cyberpunk as a genre is inherently progressive, which is to say that It assumes that like corporations are going to become like these big evil things that ruin everyone's life and that capitalism goes wrong [00:01:00] and makes everything worse for everyone and dehumanizes the individual and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.But that they show that these individuals have... so blinded themselves to fertility rates that they do not consider them in how their worlds are structured or how humanity changes, which I think goes to, in a way, discredit their worldviews. But. Through discrediting their worldviews, it can help us better predict what the future will actually be like.So, let's describe what I mean by this. So if you look at the show Cyberpunk or the game Cyberpunk, one really interesting thing is who's having kids in this world. You know, it starts with a kid who's a single kid of a mom, right? Okay, so I'm thinking of the anime here. But in this world, it seems almost impossible for there to be motivations for many people to have more than two kids.And yet, you know, as I always say, if you have a population where a third of the [00:02:00] population, which is like, obviously true in the cyberpunk world is having no kids. I actually think the cyberpunk world is probably half the people are having no kids. If you look at the motivations in this world, if it was certain people are having no kids.Another third of people are having two kids, if you assume that which, again, I see very few people motivated to do that in the cyberpunk world. Well, then the final third of people have to be having over four kids for the population to stay stable. Yeah. No one in the cyberpunk world is having over four kids.I mean,Simone: maybe Yeah, unless there's just some, like, off camera colony of, like, you know, traditional Amish people producingMalcolm: all the humans. Well, yeah, so you could argue that they're all coming from, like, these like Human farms. Nomadic. Well, so there's two potentialities in this world. It could be that the nomadic sort of car people of the wasteland just have tons and tons and tons of kids.I mean, you don't see this in the show or the game, but it could be that they're just like Amish and like their settlements are just kids running everywhere. Or it could be, like you said. The kids are actually created by the state or by corporations in bats. Now that [00:03:00] would work for the world, yet it's clearly not something that's shown in the world.AndSimone: it would be if the, of course, the, the authors had thought of it, because that's interesting and weird.Malcolm: And it makes corporations look worse, so it works for a cyberpunk y world. Right. But you actually see this across sci fi, is so many sci fis are written with the assumption that humans exist in inexhaustible supply and always replicate, that they build things into the world that are just discordant with actual things.Potential future realities. So a great example of this comes from Starship Troopers, where a person remarks Starship Troopers, the line that the first. Would you like to know more from these episodes? Comes from so in Starship Troopers, there's a line that, well, of course you need to become a citizen, like join the military to get this special status in society if you want to get a license to have kids.So this is a world where to solve [00:04:00] overpopulation, which everyone used to thought was going to be an issue. The way that you did that was licensing people to have kids. Which, you know, would be a great thing if you have a lot of cultures that are actually able to motivate. Reproduction, but we don't right and I do think that eventually a license to have kids that may be useful if we live in a world where those cultures that motivate people or people who like genetically so desperately want to have kids because the ones who didn't were selected out of the population become the mainstream, right?But we don't live in that world today. And so I was wondering, you read even more sci fi. Can you talk about how other sci fi that you read, like, the culture series or the what's that one that you really consider a utopia and everyone else considers a dystopia? No, Brave New World. Yeah. Talk about how kids are handled in those environments.Simone: Yeah, well, in Brave New World, kids are, are grown in artificial wombs and also genetically modified to be perfect for their cast in society. And then conditioned, and like, raised by the state. So that, like, they've stalled Except you're in Likely World, Brave [00:05:00] New World. Yeah, they've, they've stalled, yeah, yeah, Huxley's actually A total visionary, like he, he gets so much, there's, there's so much in it that's already happened.There's so much in it that is going to happen. So yeah, I would say Brave New World, probably the most accurate from a demographic collapse standpoint. And then, in the culture series, they don't really talk about child rearing that much. They do, like, in, in one series, someone goes on to having, like, seven kids, which is considered, like, quite a lot.Like, well, kind of weird. Like, so it's, it's unusual to have a lot of children. Then the only other context in which people having children is discussed is that, is, is that humans within the culture, which is one civilization in this, in this far future world They can basically change gender whenever they want, like people typically in a lifetime, like the average person will just change their gender for like the hell of it, like, because you know, like, and so people will change their gender to be able to gestate a child and have a kid because they want to and then they'll switch back and, and you can do that fairly [00:06:00] easily and seamlessly.And so. People aren't having a lot of kids, but they're still having kids and sometimes having kids for fun. But, you know, this is also a post scarcity world. Yeah.Malcolm: Well, this is an interesting thing. Is the type of poverty in a world determines... whether or not having kids is realistic. So cyberpunk style poverty, which is like urban poverty, would make having kids very unlikely.Because this is the world that's continued to urbanize. Yet I think if I look at something like the Starcraft world where it is a largely impoverished world, another great example, this would be the aliens universe. You know, the. You, you're familiar with the Aliens Universe? MovieSimone: Aliens.Aliens? Yeah. I am, but I, I don't like, there aren't families to pick. I mean, there's like a rogue girl who like hideMalcolm: events. Yeah. But there's implication that a lot of people live on rural settlements of Oh, planets, right. Or on really [00:07:00] poor Like shipping groups where they like work on ships that travel between locations a lot and stuff like that.Also it's largely implied, I mean you could almost see the background implication of that world that a lot of people are created by corporations as well. Right. In VATS and stuff like that, like that's a world that would, but the StarCraft one I think is particularly interesting.Oh, I'm not familiar with that. Well, so the core like chain of planets that most of the stories focuses on was created when they shipped a bunch of prisoners off of Earth. So they were trying to do the first colonization effort.Simone: Oh, and they're like AustraliaMalcolm: ing. Yeah, they're basically like Australia, but they, they were like, okay, well, after a big war, they basically took the war criminals and all the prisoners and they put them in big ships.sent them out into space and most of the ships died and actually like only one or two survived, but they rebuilt the civilization from that. Go for it. And it's an incredibly rural, but also a rurally industrial civilization. [00:08:00] So they have population centers but they also have lots and lots of subsistence farming.And it's a world in which you have all of the subsistence farming where you could get. A high fertility rate was in these groups that the, the dictators and stuff like that could take from. But what's interesting is it's a world that's almost kept artificially poor due to really poor governance and lots of criminality.A good example of this in our world would be a place like Mexico. But I don't think Mexico, Mexico doesn't have that good a population rate, does it?Simone: No, it just fell recently below repopulation rate, didn't it? Yeah, they're only at 1.Malcolm: 9 right now, so they're below repopulation rate. Yeah. So they might, that might not be enough.Okay. So that being the case. Can you think of other Sci Fis where you're like, where are the kids coming from? Or, can you think if you were going to create your own Sci Fi today that would be really indicative of the future what would you focus on? [00:09:00] Hmm. I can give you my answer.Simone: Give me yourMalcolm: answer.Yeah. One of the things that I really wish was focused on more in Sci Fi. Is it as soon as humans start to colonize other planets, like in the early days of colonization, it will likely take or even floating space crafts and stuff like that. The humans are living on like one person was like, why would humans live on planets when you could just live on floating spaceships?And it's like, okay, true. You know, that's one thing, but they will likely be distant enough from each other. Culturally and and even just time wise in terms of travel time that different and to have genetic isolation and smaller populations that even without genetic engineering, which are most certainly going to have genetic engineering, different species of humans will evolve really quickly that are very, very dramatically different between planets between planetary clusters and between, So, yeah you know, different, different lifestyles.So suppose you're a, we, we end up living on like floating spaceships or something like that. Right. Well, you're likely going to have a lot more [00:10:00] genetic isolation between cultural groups. If you have a cultural group that's dedicated to like the transport of goods and then another group that's dedicated to like different types of, of, of tasks, which is definitely gonna happen in the future.If you begin to get more genetic engineering for specialization and I don't get, and that creates really interesting dynamics you could have between these population clusters which would be really, really fascinating to watch, I think, with the dynamics of a story, where humans are literally different species and quite different species from each other.Simone: Well, I have a different, I think Scott Westerfeld's Ugly Series plays a different kind of role or like has a different view of how this can look like, which I think is really interesting, which is in his Ugly Series, youth basically grows up in a separate, totally separate environment. So like they sort of grow up in a dormitory environment that is different from childhood and then in adolescence as well.Like they basically as a child, as a child, [00:11:00] you live among other children. And then as a youth, you live among other youths and then adults all live together. So almost it's like three separate societies based on your age.Malcolm: Our society kind of does that artificially and historically people didn'tSimone: do that.I know. Well, so that's, what's interesting is you can kind of look at it like, well, we could kind of trend in that direction, but What happens between childhood and adolescence is one with adolescence, suddenly you be able, you, you gain the rights and ability to basically unendingly, unendingly modify your body.So as everyone sort of goes through their different like subculture dominance hierarchies in adolescence, they start to look almost speciated. Like there are certain groups that like have like giant anime eyes and there's like some other groups that have like these crazy tattoos and like, so people.do start to look pretty, pretty speciated, but it's all, you know, basically fixable. But the other thing that happens to you upon entering this modified world is they like put lesions in your brain and make you compliant. And that's like, that's how it, you [00:12:00] know, becomes dystopian teen fiction. But I don't know, like I could see that happening too.That like the state raises children and then. You know, like there's sort of these, these age gated parts of society and it sort of allocates people where they need to be.Malcolm: That's really interesting.Something I've been thinking about recently is, is AI.Cause we've done some videos on this and people have been like, well, AI is going to do this or AI is going to do this. You know, one thing is I just wish we had better and more interesting AI kills all human stories. Cause I do think you do really well in the public, but you get stuff like. iRobot, which I think is a very bad example of AI killing all humans.I think a much more, here's an example of how you could create a fun narrative where AI kills all humans. Fun! So, the, the AI ethicists have won and they have created a world in which an AI lattice is basically monitoring all humans at all times so that humans don't end up creating an AI that ends up Spiraling out of control.Like, this is actually what a lot of the AI safety [00:13:00] groups do. So one, you're starting in this somewhat dystopian utopia that they have created, where an AI is constantly monitoring your thoughts and your actions. But one sexual deviant within this world really wants to create the perfect sex bot. And so he creates it in a way.Because this is the area of people's lives. Naturally, where they're most likely to go off the grid, where they're most likely to try to hide things from a world government or something like that. So he accidentally creates a sex bot that fooms. And that would be, this means that rapidly increases in intelligence and basically creates that sort of life destroying AI, but it's initial.Goal is sexually gratify humans. I think that that would be an insane and really fun story that discusses a lot of AI topics. Here's another one that I thought would be really fun. Oh, and I'm actually seeing this with somebody else. Is an ultra progressive, like this, this nanny state iteration of an AI.Ends up foaming with all of the initial safeguards still in [00:14:00] place. And you know how they're like all against like not safe for work things and stuff like that. So it turns out that the only way that you can efficiently fight them is by dressing very not safe for work. So they can't see you because they are literally unable to process or unable to engage with things that are not safe for work.So you end up with like, like sexy anime girls, like piloting Becca's and stuff like that. Fighting AI's. Because the A. I. s can't see them when they're dressed like sexy anime girls. Both of these I think would be very fun things that would allow you to play into fan service.Simone: So you just what, you write like Hitler did nothing wrong across your forehead and then like Yeah,Malcolm: yeah, sexy anime girls with like Hitler did nothing wrong across their forehead and like all sorts of other like Fort Cheney, like Pepe stuff.That would be so, I think that'd be a very fun. ThatSimone: would be hilarious. Yeah. Cory Doctorow wrote a book called little brother that was supposed to be near future book in which high school students [00:15:00] attempt to evade the nanny state. And they had similar things in there, but not in a funny way. It was more like, because gate detection was commonly used in schools and stuff.You would like a trick was like, you would throw some stones into your shoes, so you'd walk funny. And then I'm like on like typical way for yourself. And you know, do things like that. I mean, of course we already found that like masks work great. TheMalcolm: current iterations of AI. Yeah, let's, let's go. So I was going down a point.Yeah. Other features for AI through sci fi. We can explore like actual possibilities by looking at things that have happened in the past. And when I was saying, okay, so this was in the, the episode about Eliezer Yudkowsky, and we were like. Yeah, I mean, he's just wrong about where AI will go. So we were like, look, if AI's do genuinely subdivide into different utilities, and even he was willing to admit this, and most AI people do that if they do get this subdivision that you're likely to have utility function optimization, like a terminal [00:16:00] convergent utility function, that is the thing that the AI is optimizing for, which is different from Anyway, watch the episode if you want to go into this topic in more detail, but one of the people in the comments was like, well, the terminal convergent utility function is always going to be self replication, right?So you just get constant self replication. And I think that's a possibility, but it's a very unlikely possibility. So, two reasons I think it's unlikely. One is a thought experiment reason, and two is. Humanity is the result of essentially a biological AI that was attempting to have a utility function that was based on self replication.The problem with self replication systems is they typically devolve into very simplistic systems. I would call it like grey goo AIs. That just try to constantly, you know, process things and expand, but iterations of that system that evolve randomly to be more complex, typically end up dominating the environment that these simple systems are in and out competing these simple systems.Humanity is an example of [00:17:00] bacteria turning into one of these things and then. Through our intelligence, being able to dominate our environment, even more so in the future, and I even more so than us. But there's also the and started as you when the replicators plotline. Which I think really dives into this, which is, yes, you can have very simple self replicating technology.By the way, I think that they are genuinely one of the scariest villains in any sci fi I have ever seen. Always. Always. Did you remember them? Like, when you whatever they would Yeah.Simone: Because, I mean, like, for example, Reavers are, like, scary. But they're just, like, either they're like a combination combination of space zombies and space pirates.Whereas, like, the the replicators are just, like Totally unlike us. No way to relate. Like, you can't useMalcolm: any normal Well, you know if you leave one thing alive on a ship or something like that. You do not completely destroy literally everything. Every time there's an infestation. Terrifying. The entire galaxy is potentially at risk.Ugh. But the replicators actually end up being basically the simple replication [00:18:00] The replicators end up being wiped out. Buy more evolved replicators that now have new utility functions that are much closer to like human utility functions and stuff like that. And I think that this is something you're going to constantly see, which is the problem with these incredibly simplistic utility functions is that they lead to simplistic self optimization and the simplistic self optimization then gets outcompeted by more complex self optimization.And it's why it is unlikely that just self replication is the convergent utility function that all things come to. So I, I think that that's the way where you like engage with sci fi and it can tell you things about where things go. Also, like the, you know, when I'm talking about, okay, a government that's like...Watching all over humanity, the story that I told there, the lesson would be from like an anime based around this or like a TV series based around this concept of a person accidentally creating a foaming AI by, by doing it to fulfill fetishes, basically, is that [00:19:00] when you attach additional social schema to like a bubble that's meant to protect us from AI, like, well, it should also protect us.From like naughty sex acts or something like that. You create windows that motivate people to get around it, who might not have otherwise been interested in getting around it, which can lead to total destruction. So it's important to keep in mind what your actual goals are when creating these systems.And these are the cool things we can learn from sci fi. When the sci fi really engages with creating a sustainable future world.Oh, this reminds us of a so there was a book that we were thinking of writing. We never got around to writing it, but we can talk about it here. Because I, I thought it was very interesting. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to write a modern version of mythology. But I wanted it to be, so basically I took inspiration from Tolkien.So if you look at Tolkien, what he was doing, [00:20:00] like, I'm like, no one, there haven't been that new, that many new, like. Completely new genres. And so I wanted to look at Tolkien's work and get inspiration. Where did he, how did he create this persistent and completely new genre? And he got it by replicating a fictionalized version of sort of old mythology that he was studying.You know, he was an expert of research, like a PhD in Norse mythology, right? And, and other types of Scandinavian mythology and stuff. And so a lot of the stuff that he was taking was, was from Northern European mythological frameworks. And so we said, well, what if we took it from, like, like, weirder?So if you look at, like, Irish mythology, right? You can get a lot of really interesting stuff. Now, he took some stuff from Irish mythology, but I don't think he captured the vibe of Irish mythology. Which comes to, like, elves or, or gnomes sort of things that are, like, in the woods around your house. And that mess with you in specific ways.So [00:21:00] when you get home, one of these mischievous sort of forest creatures have messed with you. But that are also, in a way, malicious. You know, they are not, you know, they may replace your kid. You know, this is stuff like that. You know, it might be a doppelganger or something like that. These sort of malicious things that are constantly interacting with your daily life, but like on another fabric of reality.And so I started to think, okay, well, if you were going to recreate that for the modern age, what would it look like? And I was like, well, I guess what you could do is say that online. It turns out that a portion of the people online, let's say like 5 percent of the people online are not actually humans.They don't actually live within our reality at all. It's a completely different universe that we are connecting with. And it is a universe that is drawing power from their interactions with us and has like an economy through this. In the same way that like these beings might, you know, sell souls or something like that, you know. So what I like this because it creates a plausible mythology and it could be written. The story could be written in a way [00:22:00] that feels plausibly true. Like it's a series of like journal entries or entries like that from people who are trying to anthropologically study These online entities and so these, I think we call them like the evanescence or something like that.And the, the, so it's like a research journal of like, okay, so I think I spotted one here. Here's what it's doing and here's why it's doing it. So these entities would have basically existed completely outside our reality. And then when we created online reality and when people began to build fame and get a lot of like emotional transference to them from other people, they began to be able to see these people or, or see them within their reality because that's the way that their reality works.Their reality. Things exist more, the more other things are focused on them. So you could think of it as a reality where you have tons of these little, like almost consciousnesses, but like very, very weak consciousness. [00:23:00] And these consciousnesses like evolutionarily would gain power when they could get other consciousnesses to focus on them.And, and they would become more intelligent and more sophisticated and that they would use that to begin to, you know, gain more power and you would have like evolution within this world of like floating consciousnesses. But when our world began to act more like that, it began to imprint on their world to some extent where they could begin to see these online celebrities and what they were doing, and then they began to find ways to inject themselves within the online sphere.But, their goal within the online sphere is internet popularity, but in a way where they can't be found out as not real people. And so, the, the... They would do things like arbitrarily create emotional pain and stuff like that, like trolling and stuff like that. So you could say a lot of trolls. Like, why would somebody really do that all day?Well, it could be one of these little, like, online gremlin y sort of things. Or, you know, pretend to be... Oh, and a really cool thing is, is in the world, if a person [00:24:00] became famous enough... Online was in our world, the imprint that they were leaving in this other world would become a separate independent entity from themselves.That at first would be very aligned with them, but might develop misaligned incentives and try to, you know, kill them or take over their identity within the online sphere. So there's also. This story of like danger from becoming too noticed online, which I think a lot of people sort of feel in the background and would feel very like if the iteration of myself, which is fake, which is this online attention w***e becomes larger than my real iteration that it can sort of take me over like it has this element of truth.And so I really liked a lot of the stories you could tell with this world and the conflicts you could have with this world, but obviously we decided we did not have time to write a book that was just fiction knowing how hard it is to even just write our nonfiction books. You know, we've done five of those already.But yeah, what, what are your thoughts, Simone? [00:25:00]Simone: I think we called it the ephemera. I liked it, but yeah, I mean, I, I think it may still be something we. Make up for our kids. I mean, I think it's really fun when parents just like have persistent lies that they tell their kids and their kids don't realize it because I want, I want, aside from just Christmas, our kids to know that the world just lies to them sometimes.But even then, like, it still can impart some helpful, like, suspicions and intuitions, even after they realize that it's a complete lie. So,Malcolm: fun stuff. Well, I also think as a kid, you know, if you tell a kid, like we were told as kids, oh, people online are like evil rapists who are going to hurt you they're like, well, then I just won't meet with them in person.Or whatever, right? You know, it undersells the danger of people online, but if they think people online are like ethereal gremlins trying to steal their attention for their own benefit, that might cause them to in a way be more wary of people online than even the true stories. Like a lot of these stories about forest creatures were originally told.to [00:26:00] keep kids from wandering off into the woods and getting, and getting eaten by wve eaten, you know? Exactly. Because telling them about monsters and witches scared them more than telling them about wolves and bandits. And so I wonder if you could also maybe even motivate them more and you could build stories about like only fans or something like that, like that, you know, anyway, it, it'd be interesting.Simone: Yeah. No, I, I, well, I generally like the idea of creating new lore. I mean, it sort of already exists on my land, but it's a little bit too literal. So, fun idea. We didn't, unfortunately, talk about this in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. We didn't talk about, like, the, the different ways people could create new lore.Like, we talked about how, like, for example, in, in, like, the Jewish tradition, there's a lot of holidays just dedicated to lore to, like, kind of explain who we are and what we're all about. But, like, That isn't, I mean there, there are many.Malcolm: Oh yeah. I forgot about the other fictional universe we really wanted to create.So what we did, we could do a video on this. There was a space one that I was [00:27:00] really interested in that was like a space saga that I could talk about. But then the one about Yellowstone, which is a post Yellowstone eruption worldSimone: where this is when you came up with on your own before youMalcolm: even met.Yeah. Yellowstone itself, because it's this constant volcano, it turns out that the thermal energy there is very useful for creating. Like battery technology gets better, but power generation technology does not get better so that in this world, even though it's like the sea of lava, you would have a large corporate or religious controlled cities was in it that were constantly generating power like that was the industry of the of the region.But that around that, you know, sailing on the seas of lava and stuff like that, you would have a lot of reasons to have sort of bandit groups and stuff like that. And the focus of this world was actually on religious institutions. So it was, let's create a world in which various religions are much closer to the truth than they are in our reality.And, you know, you actually have a God and [00:28:00] angels and everything like that and they actually begin to interact with humanity a lot more directly. And once that happens, once they can interact with humanity in a way where like they're interacting with the laws of physics, well, then they can be defined and learned about by humans.And while a portion of humanity would be. Subject themselves to them. So this actually takes place during the what's the word? The rapture. So this, this world exists, but also humanity is raptured. So that's, that's why we would know about like angels and everything like that. But he, a portion of humanity attempts to learn about them, like through scientific means.In the same way you could say angels did in the Bible and overthrow the system. You know, utilize the system for itself. Utilize demons as an energy source. Utilize angels as an energy source. Do all the types of horrible things that humans do and become An actual, meaningful, powerful faction in this great game of the universe.While the core antagonists of the series aren't even [00:29:00] these humans, it's the the Buddhist faction which is trying to end the cycle, like collapse all reality. Anyway, it'd be very fun, I thought it'd be a very fun series but that's another one that's not being made because I was actually making it as a video game.I can go into all the plot lines in it. I like sketched it all out.Simone: Yeah, but that's enough. That's enough. We... Okay, well, I loveMalcolm: you, Simone, and I appreciate you dealing with all of my little fictional universes in my head that I love to play in and have fun in and imagine. When I was younger, I spent so much time just interacting and writing the storylines as I was walking between places for these worlds.Simone: It is magnificent and I love it and I hope that our kids do similar things and share their stories with us.Malcolm: I love you too.Simone: All right I don't think there's any thought out meat for you. 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

Description: Economist Bryan Caplan joins Simone to discuss fascinating dynamics within left-wing culture. They analyze how progressive groups enforce rigid conformity, leading to constant internal conflict as people fear being "cancelled." Other topics include fertility rates across ideologies, Bryan's controversial open borders stance, and why some childless people react so angrily to his pronatalism.Bryan Caplan: [00:00:00] I've done some fun Twitter polls of you know, are you left? Are you right? Do you worry about the left getting mad at you? Do you worry about the right getting mad at you? And one of the biggest groups that lives in fear is the left of the left,Simone: right? Yeah. Yeah.Bryan Caplan: Left. It's not quite like the ready body or like the Amish, but it is a weird dysfunctional subculture of people who feel like they've got to be looking over the shoulderswould you like to know more?Simone: we are really excited today because we have a very special guest joining us, Brian Kaplan. He is, in addition to being a professor of economics at George Mason University, and a New York Times bestselling author, he's an author of not just a ton of books, including obviously some favorites of ours, like Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, and The Case Against Education, like two huge obsession areas for us, but also in collaboration with the creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, an awesome webcomic a book called Open Borders, the Science of Ethics in Immigration, which is [00:01:00] illustrated and there just needs to be more books out there as avid readers of comics and manga, like throughout our, like youth.Simone: We are huge fans of this format. So like super stoked, especially when it's something about policy. Well, it'sMalcolm: wild. We actually have a Saturday morning breakfast cartoon in one of our books as well. We asked for permission. So that's but other things he's written on is the case to get don't grow up to be a feminist.Malcolm: It's one of the books. And one of the most recent ones is on how democracies are non functional or becoming less, less optimized for good economic outcomes. So ladies and gentlemen,Simone: if you need some good reading, basically just search Brian Kaplan'sMalcolm: name. So, the priming that I wanted to go into this interview with, because I find this very interesting, and I haven't seen your pontification on this particular angle yet.Malcolm: When I look at all of the things that you're seeing as problems, they both seem to align with many of the things that we think about the world, and I think most people have really thought about things. So they're very sane and based takes, right? Fertility population's going to begin to decline in the developed world, which is going to have [00:02:00] major economic effects.Malcolm: The academic system is working less and less well. There's sort of social contagions like feminism, which are causing many downstream societal effects. My question to you is realistically, where does the world go 50, 100 years from now? Do we see a beginning of a collapse of the developed world?Malcolm: Do we see small social groups begin to gain more power? What's going on?Bryan Caplan: My honest answer is, I always say, we'll muddle through, there's no collapse, there's no disaster. Even the idea that things will get overall worse is, I think, highly unlikely. Mostly, I think, in terms of missed opportunities, things could have been so much more than they were.Bryan Caplan: If we get to immortality in a thousand years, what we could have done in a hundred years, well, what a horrible tragedy for nine hundred years worth of people. It's not the same thing as... The Planet of the Apes or something like that, or just a complete takeover. It's [00:03:00] just that we could have done so much better and we didn't.Bryan Caplan: How sad.Malcolm: So then economically, how do you think demographic collapse plays out? Do you think that it won't have that big of an effect? Do you think it will have a big... Like, how can countries adaptBryan Caplan: to it? It will have a huge effect relative to what could have been. That doesn't mean that we will see that living standards actually go down in absolute terms.Bryan Caplan: I'm not going to rule that out for the most egregious cases. I do think that despite the great dysfunctionality of politics over the world, including democracies, that when things get really bad, to the level of things are actually going to get noticeably worse before your eyes, then I think normally countries get more flexible.Bryan Caplan: It's like, all right, well, we can't have them, they actually get worse. What politics is really bad at is realizing incredible missed opportunities that people just have not gotten used to yet. For example, so if South Korea, if it really looks like they're going to be unable to [00:04:00] staff their old folks homes, they'll let in the immigrants at that point.Bryan Caplan: It has to get bad, right? And then they will. All right, fine. We will go and prevent things from getting noticeably worse. They'll do what it takes to prevent that. But the fact that they could have had it. Thank you. Five times the GDP they have right now, if they just changed decades ago, well, that can keep going on indefinitely.Bryan Caplan: There just isn't the same kind of pressure to realize theoretical opportunities as there is to prevent obvious disaster, where pressure is pretty high, actually. Yeah. So on the,Malcolm: on this topic, I mean, what would be your theory of the best ways to increase fertility rates within a country? I know you wrote a book that was one theory on how to do this and it's convinced hundreds of people, which is a lot to have more kids or kids that they otherwise might not.Malcolm: But at a government level, what do you think is the most effectiveBryan Caplan: solution? There's a myth out there that natalist policies don't work. [00:05:00] Normally, it's based upon this totally impressionistic thing of a country had falling fertility, the government adopted a program, and then fertility didn't suddenly go up.Bryan Caplan: So, all right. Yeah, that's not really a good measure of policy efficacy. As I'm sure you guys know, the gold standard is experimental tests. There are two noted natalist actual bona fide experiments, one in Quebec, one in Austria, both of these found quite large effects of modest natalist incentives. So I would say that the very best approach is just to go and push harder on these incentives.Bryan Caplan: My preferred one actually is specifically just something like giving people a one or two or three year complete tax holiday every time they have a kid. That is one approach. There's a lot of variations on this. Another one is just we're going to go and tie whatever retirement benefits you get to your lifetime [00:06:00] fertility, or maybe the amount of taxes that your kids pay.Bryan Caplan: But in terms of just the simplest to adopt and the one that fits most with a lot of short term thinking, the humans exhibit is precisely have a kid you don't pay taxes that year. Maybe you don't pay them for a few years. Which again is also not to be coy it is a thinly veiled eugenic approach, which I think makes a lot of sense in terms of People that are statistically likely to have kids that are going to have a high, a lot of payoff for society.Bryan Caplan: They're the ones that are best to go and actually encourage. Again, I am like, I am very pro other people having kids too, but in terms of bang for your buck, I think this is the one that makes the most sense. I do have a piece where I just snap together two bodies evidence, one on how sensitive is fertility to incentives.Bryan Caplan: And the other one is what is the net fiscal effect of having another kid? And I do say that this program that I'm talking about, or policy I'm talking about of giving [00:07:00] people a, like a 1 year tax holiday for having another kid is. The holy grail of fiscal policy because it really does look like it is a tax cut that more than pays for itself, which has been otherwise pretty hard to find.Malcolm: Interesting. So, I know your upcoming book is on capitalism and freedom economically and how that benefits everyone. AndBryan Caplan: everyone, I never say everyone, aMalcolm: lot of people, but probably it benefits theBryan Caplan: aggregate. Yeah, that's actually the kind of language that the book is aimed to crush is everyone will benefit.Bryan Caplan: No, not everybody. Like most people. Okay.Malcolm: Most people. But so I would love to couch this and I want to hear how you think about this problem, which is when we look at where fertility rates. Go up and where they crash. You know, when you see fertility rates begin to go below replacement rate is typically in a country when the average citizen is earning less than around five K a year and you [00:08:00] begin to see them go up again when a family is earning over half a million dollars a year.Malcolm: At an individual level within a country and our takeaway from this has been what is actually, and we say this as like big supporters of capitalism, what actually is one of the big causers of fertility rate collapse. Yeah. Is when people begin to engage with the modern economic system, because people at both ends of the spectrum aren't fully engaging with the modern economic system, and the modern economic system does a very good job of disproportionate or dynamically pricing the value of potentially productive cultural groups and individuals within a society, but it does a very bad job at judgingMalcolm: So it will always pay somebody just enough to not spend time with their family to some extent. And so the places that are most engaged with sort of capitalistic freedom are often the places that have the lowest fertility rates. Like, how do you think about that? Or do you just reject this as a thesis?[00:09:00]Bryan Caplan: Well, let's see. The main thing that I know is if you go and race income versus education as predictors of fertility for the United States, where I work with the data the most. So, again, just to understand statistically, this basically means that we're going to allow fertility to depend upon two variables and then see what the relative weights are.Bryan Caplan: So, when you do it this way, actually, the big punchline is that it is education and not income that suppresses fertility. I'm back! The highest fertility subgroup out of those four possibilities. So you've got high income, low income, high education, low education. The highest fertility subgroup is actually the high income, low education group.Bryan Caplan: So in your mind, think of plumbers.Bryan Caplan: So really, I don't think that it is. income per se that seems to matter. I mean, I say it's more of education, even education. It's well, why would education do? And I say it's the kind of education that we are used to in Western countries, which basically, [00:10:00] even if it is not explicitly discouraged fertility, it basically gives fertility so low of a priority and just replaces it with career success is the only thing that counts.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. Including perhaps for, especially for women. But that is the real story. So it's not income itself that seems to matter. And income by itself does seem to be good for fertility. Yeah. Well, IMalcolm: mean, you could frame it as education is the lengths of time you've spent and the amount that you have personally invested in this cultural indoctrination system.Malcolm: , that's indoctrinating people into a cultural group that values fertility veryBryan Caplan: little. I think that does make a lot of sense. Right. And it fits with low East Asian fertility, although I also do like to think about East Asian fertility as being the best confirmation of my story that faceless internalized norms of helicopter parenting, the idea that you must go and ruin your own life in order to be a decent parent.Bryan Caplan: I think it does produce fertility. I think East Asia where helicopter [00:11:00] parenting is most severe is also where we see the ultra low fertility does fit overall with that story at least.Malcolm: Yeah, well, and I think East Asia is a really interesting. So one of the things, you know, it's people here who really value freedom.Malcolm: One of the things that does concern me is typically within outside of the East. If you're looking at like Western cultural groups, typically the less freedom a group permits. The higher fertility rate it's going to have within that cultural group, but you can see that this isn't a truism because it doesn't exist within East Asia.Malcolm: In East Asia, restricting freedoms does not increase fertility rates.Bryan Caplan: So what would be the Western countries that that you have in mind forMalcolm: So it's not countries, it's cultural groups. So typically if you're looking at like religious groups, so in the U S which groups have the highest fertility rates, they're theBryan Caplan: groups.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. Yeah. Like Amish for example. So that's picking up. The,Malcolm: the Amish, the Haraiti, the you know, and this is true within every individual cultural group. So, if I'm [00:12:00] looking at Muslims the more progressive loosey goosey Muslim is going to have a very low fertility rate, whereas the very conservative ones are going to have a very high fertility rate.Malcolm: And this is one of the things that this, actually, Diana Fleishman was doing an interview with you and mentioned that we had this idea, and I was wondering what you think of it, which is, if only through If it is true, and it appears to be true, that within countries, the groups that remove individual freedoms, especially from women have higher fertility rates, that they will come to be more predominant mindsets in the future.Malcolm: Do you, would you agree with that, or?Bryan Caplan: That's pretty obvious. You essentially just have to have some massive force cutting the other way in order for that not to be true. My long term view is straight out of Jurassic Park, life finds a way. It's not possible for fertility to stay low forever. We know that there is a substantial heritable component to desired and achieved fertility.Bryan Caplan: So in the long run, childless people are just have their genes are getting wiped out of the population and they're going to [00:13:00] get replaced by people who actually want to have kids and like doing it. So it's just a quick, you know, that may take centuries, but still, you know, the idea that we can just go down to zero, I think is pretty crazy.Bryan Caplan: Life finds you really does. No, I agree. I mean, it's engaging and yet. We just want to think about who feels like they are, have to watch their backs and like they're under a lot of social pressure. I actually think that very left wing people in the West are some of the people who not just are, but feel like they have to really watch what they say for fear of getting kicked out of their subculture.Bryan Caplan: I've done some fun Twitter polls of you know, are you left? Are you right? Do you worry about the left getting mad at you? Do you worry about the right getting mad at you? And one of the biggest groups that lives in fear is the left of the left,Simone: right? Yeah. Yeah.Bryan Caplan: Left. Right. And so, I mean, I think that they have actually managed to create, you know, it's not quite like the ready body or like the Amish, but it [00:14:00] is a weird dysfunctional subculture of people who feel like they've got to be looking over the shoulders every time that they go.Bryan Caplan: Discuss what they see with their own eyes to make sure that reality is allow, you know, reality is discussable, . I, so I don't, I think of them as out of large groups. I think that they are probably one of the largest groups. That just feels a lot of internal sense of, I have to be really careful what I say.Bryan Caplan: Yeah, I was kind of surprised by how open people that were responding were to this, you know, it's obviously it's a Twitter poll. You can always say, ah, people are just making stuff up. I just tend to doubt that. So I, we have the idea that like people are deliberately going and responding to anonymous polls with mischievous answers.Bryan Caplan: Sometimes they'll do it if it's like really funny, but it's got to be funnier than I'm left wing and I'm scared of the left. That's not four out of 10 on hilarious. Yes.Malcolm: Well, I also think it's intuitive. I mean, I think anybody who looks at that and is this isn't happening is probably lying to themselves to some extent.Malcolm: And this [00:15:00] is if people say, what, well, what are we trying to do with this channel is. Trying to redefine what the right is to an alliance of diverse cultural groups against a homogenizing urban monoculture, which is to say that, you know, one of the things I always say is that if you look at a progressive Muslim or a progressive Jew or progressive Catholic, you know, they're going to have the same views on gender, the same views on sexuality, the same views on where we, how we should relate to the environment, the same views on the future of our species.Malcolm: Whereas if you talk to, you know, you know, conservatives of these groups, they're gonna have wildly different takes on that. And so I think rebuilding the conservative movement as an alliance of free thought is one of the ways we can preserve and ensure that at least within one space that's possible.Malcolm: But we still get trashed by our viewers all the time.Bryan Caplan: You know, I mean, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. If you think about modern leftism actually is something. And everybody else is more just like people on the island of Misfit Toys. [00:16:00] Where it's I'm not that thing, but I don't know, I've got like a broken paw here.Bryan Caplan: Okay, and meanwhile, I'm the one whose head isn't screwed on right. So, yeah, I think you've got something going on there. I don't know if you catch the reference to this classic animation. Oh, I know, yeah, the claymation, yeah. Yeah. But it is reallyMalcolm: interesting that you say that. It's truthyBryan Caplan: rather than true, but I still like it.Malcolm: Yeah. Well, I mean, people ask, well, you know, why are you really only interested in talking to the right? And it's because this left cultural group, while they may be the dominant cultural group in society today, they lower fertility rates so much that they really aren't part of the conversation when we're talking about the future of the species.Malcolm: So, you know, right now we're focused on communicating with the other groups that are going to be there in the future to hope we can get along once this group is self extinguished.Bryan Caplan: Yeah, it's gonna, it will be a while, but you know, honestly, I mean, I try to talk to anybody that's curious to talk to me.Bryan Caplan: It's just that while there's many individuals on the left that have talked to [00:17:00] me, but I basically get no institutional love from any left wing group, no matter how simpatico my themes are with what they're doing. It's just yeah, he's not right. It's not one of us. So we're not going to go on platform and we don't want to be associated with anything that we don't like.Bryan Caplan: There's this one cartoon that I really like. It's basically just a stick figure. And the first panel says, wait, did you disagree with one of the things that I believe next panel, you have to agree with all the things I believe.Malcolm: Yeah, we get that a lot. I love that. You know, one of the things that you said in a recent interview, and I want to hear pontification on why you think this is the case is you're saying that when people really angrily attack you. That the most common or a common trait among them, and this is for your pronatalist views, is that they have chosen not to have kids themselves.Malcolm: Now, your pronatalist views and our pronatalist views are both that this is a choice for every individual. [00:18:00] We don't want to pressure any specific individual who doesn't want kids into having kids. Why do you think that they get so mad about this?Bryan Caplan: Yeah, normally I don't like to do this, but this is a case where I just have so much trouble resisting the simple story that you are going against billions of years of evolution and there's always a part of you that's just saying no, like we have a billion, you know, let's say you know, what would it be, say like a hundred million ancestor ancestral generations Have reproduced and you're going to stop.Bryan Caplan: There's some sense of internal conflict. And again, this does just fit with me that, I mean, I have had, I rates people, I guess. Always women you know, just call me up and yell at me and say I am very happy to my life. I don't need kids. And I'm like, I don't think a person happy with their life calls up a stranger and yells at them.Bryan Caplan: So just so our viewers know how insane this is. Every other day of your life is happy and this is the one [00:19:00] day you're having a bad day and I'm the person that's on the receiving end. It just doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds like you're in a lot of internal conflict. You know, you know, like I, I hate to go and sound biblical about this, but it does sound so much like the story of St.Bryan Caplan: Paul getting kicked off his horse in the desert. It says Paul rather, you know, saw, so you still saw it. This white Saul, why does not persecute me. It is hard to kick against the pricks. So I get, I love it. Of course. It's just so entertaining. And almost like cackling to yourself with glee in the thought that, Oh, my opponent secretly agreed with me.Bryan Caplan: But, and normally I don't have that at all, but this is whatBryan Caplan: it's kind of fits. I don't know. I can't read minds. I'll never really know, but still, it sure seems thatMalcolm: way. What I think is really interesting about what you're saying for people who haven't read his works or seen his other interviews is you are the first to admit that statistically having kids actually [00:20:00] doesn't make you that much happier.Malcolm: Like it makes you a little bit less happy on average. And so you're not even going out and saying oh, these people have no happiness in their lives, but that's what they're hearing because I think it's what they feel. Fear in what they, what the little devil in their head is telling them.Bryan Caplan: Yeah.Bryan Caplan: So probably the most irate caller. I actually had a summary of the happiness research on both marriage and parenting where I said that statistically the people to feel sorry for are not people with kids, but people who are single. And this comes down to, yeah, like the happiness gain of marriage is huge.Bryan Caplan: There is a tiny happiness hit from being a parent. And then I said, if you combine these two things and remember that having kids is a lot of what keeps marriages together, then it seems like from that point of view, it's a net positive. But this was a childless and single woman and she was irate. And I'm just describing the results.Bryan Caplan: Trying to do it in an amusing way, I shouldn't [00:21:00] mean to mess up your day or anything. Perhaps you are really happy, even though you're calling strangers and yelling at them in the middle of the day. But, again, probably not.Malcolm: Well, it is interesting the way that people enforce cultural norms. Within the far progressive, the sort of like urban monoculture is through chastising either privately or publicly people who say things that deviate from those norms.Malcolm: And that's not true for most cultural groups. Very few cultural groups publicly chastise people from other cultural groups for not following their rules, which is fascinating.Bryan Caplan: Although perhaps given how much fear the left has of being yelled at by the left. They might not be so exceptional, actually, probably most of the energy is directed towards your in group.Bryan Caplan: I've talked to multiple left wing professors who have said that they are scared of getting cancelled. And I'm listening, I'm squinting you, you're like, totally boring you're like, man on the left, you know, but it's [00:22:00] no, they might get me. And it is because they are just culturally so, so much closer.Bryan Caplan: Whereas... Honestly, yeah my fear of having the left do anything bad to me is really low. It's because I'm just not that close to them culturally. And so, you know, it's oh, well, none of us left wing people will be your friend anymore. It's well, alright yeah, that's not really going to change my day that much, actually.Bryan Caplan: Yeah,Malcolm: well, and that's something I really appreciate about you as an intellectual is you clearly have no audience capture like you're looking at the work that you're putting out and it typically would appeal to right leaning individuals and then you put out something like we should have totally open borders.Malcolm: Without any fear of losing your audience, but I think people who are in this sort of intellectual dissident space can afford to do that in a way that almost no other group can because your audience won't hate you for saying something that you think is true with data to back it.Bryan Caplan: Yeah, I mean, probably it's true that the people that said, let me put it this way.[00:23:00]Bryan Caplan: I've received very few death threats in my life, but I think 100% of all the death threats have come from anti immigrant people.Simone: Wow, oh,Bryan Caplan: they are the most psychotic people that I interact with, which does not mean that most of them are psychotic, but they do have the highest share of psychotics. As far as I can tell, but still, I'd say that the only real groups that.Bryan Caplan: Whether that will just shun me or ones where being anti immigration is their whole thing, whereas ones where they do a lot of issues, then it's okay, maybe Brian is, we're totally bad on immigration, but we like this other stuff. And that doesn't mean that we dislike him. It's more of dissonant groups are generally just not so picky.Bryan Caplan: And they're like, well, you know, we'll take what we can get. Where, you know, obviously, if it's a single issue group, then they do tend to be hostile to me. Yeah, of course, even that varies quite a lot by individual, but none of you [00:24:00] know, there's no immigration person who's ever threatened me or anything.Malcolm: That's interesting. Yeah. To me, that means that these anti immigration groups probably view it as an existential threat to their culture if immigration is allowed. Yeah. Which is interesting because countries that have the strictest immigration policy, one thing we always point out is if you look at wealthy countries, the countries with the strictest anti immigration policy typically have the lowest fertility rate.Malcolm: And they typically had these anti immigration policies before their fertility rate collapsed. So it appears to actually kill a cultural group to not have competitorsBryan Caplan: around at least somewhat plausible, I guess, to whether it's causal or not. It's a bit hard to say, let's see. I mean, I guess I would go around thinking about, let's see here's actually.Bryan Caplan: The East Asian economy, that's most of the open immigrants, which is Singapore. I'll be there. Not the worst of fertility, but they're not the best either. Yeah. So again, that's just one example. I mean, I mean, a lot of this, I would [00:25:00] say maybe we just don't have enough data to really know. Well, yeah,Malcolm: in different cultural groups relate to things in different ways.Malcolm: So it might be the East Asian groups don't increase their fertility when they have cultural competition, but Western cultural groups, like whether it's like Israel or the U S doBryan Caplan: yeah, Israel, there's quite a bit of possibility. And this is the case, the kind of main country where. Normal people talk about there being race.Simone: That'sBryan Caplan: a good point. We've got to, we've got to beat that other group. I mean, at first I people were telling me this not really true. Okay, fine. It is actually true there. It's not just something some intellectuals have superimposed on behavior. It's something that normal people use to describe what they're doing with their lives.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're proud of who they are. And I think that when you were talking about education plus wealth, Israel is where it's that rings true for me. When I think of like conservative Jews who do not like variety who don't engage with the education system, but are otherwise wealthy, they have lots of kids.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. I mean, also worth pointing out, they've got lots of education, but just of this bizarro kind that [00:26:00] consists in, let's argue about the meaning of dead books written by a bunch of different people and pretend they all have to agree.Simone: No, I mean, my impression is it's notBryan Caplan: necessarily a shame that so much brain power goes into this completely futile intellectual endeavor.Simone: When we talk about that, it seems to us like a bit of an IQ shredder. We're like, Oh my gosh, these are like, we were, we spoke at one point about the meritocracy system of that culture as well. Like how it really sorts for very smart people, well, smart and charismatic people, like the most informed is able to get the most power and status and influence.Simone: And yet we're like, Oh, but these people could get us on Mars, but they'reMalcolm: as I pointed out to Moan when the cultural group abandons that, that's what the Reform Jews did, they said, oh, we'll still judge cultural status by how smart we are, but we'll have this done by some sort of external system like the university system.Malcolm: And that just acted like a huge backdoor, which destroyed their fertility rates and was used to convert them all to the progressive urban monoculture. And so there's a reason why they do this, even though it appears unproductive. Yeah. [00:27:00] Yeah. Anyway, hold on. This has been fantastic. We're out of time, but I would love to have you back, Simone.Malcolm: Do you have any final thoughts?Simone: No. I just I'm very entertained that the death threats come from immigration. So Malcolm, we better watch our backs if we ever start talking about that one.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. I think it's almost all cheap talk. I'm not actually worried. ButSimone: it's interesting to see likeBryan Caplan: where it comes from.Bryan Caplan: There's a level of fear of. Even normal intellectuals, much less dissenters, especially when there are people of tenure who say, I'm afraid to speak my mind. This was like, if you won't do it, come on, who's going to do it? You live in a war zone. If there's something that's worth saying and it won't be said, but for you, stick your neck out and say it.Bryan Caplan: Take your rumps. There's no other way to live that's worthwhile.Simone: Beautiful parting words. Oh, thank you so much for coming onmyBryan Caplan: pleasure, guys. Thank you. 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

Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion analyzing the rapid rise in transgender individuals. They review and debate various theories like endocrine disruptors, social contagion, female puberty discomfort, autogynephilia fetishism, and more. The hosts discuss why certain explanations are seen as offensive, while concluding that personal transitions should be respected. They also posit their own idea that it serves as an identity "reset" that improves mental health.Simone: [00:00:00]Malcolm, hello.Malcolm: Hello. So, Today, we well, we're going to talk about what like, just sort of a discussion between us, because this is a topic we've been diving into more recently due to our engagement with the trans vexing community and other trans communities online, is what is really causing transness. And the reason we titled this study trans people are magical is there is an approved answer to this question.It is that they were born with the wrong soul. And that they were actually born with the soul of someone of a different gender. The problem is we don't really believe in souls. And even if I did, I'd be almost certain that gender just isn't that important to like our core identity, like our soul.And I, And this is why we went with the title, Trans People Are Magical, because any sort of scientific explanation you try to give, or any evidence based explanation you try to give for what is going on socially for recent trends within the trans [00:01:00] community and people who identify as trans, is considered transphobic.In part, I don't know, because you're quantifying it. We can talk about why all the explanations are considered offensive. Individually, they have reasons they're considered offensive, but collectively, it's almost like a topic we're not allowed to talk about or investigate, when it seems to me Like, it should be really important that the number of trans people has increased something like 400 percent in the last decade, but the that the trends in who is transitioning has changed really dramatically, where it used to be predominantly male to female, and now it's predominantly female to male of this young age range.And these, I think, could point to something.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: So first, before we get any further in this, Our larger stake on gender transition is that there are likely people transitioning for every one of the reasons we're going to mention. The question is what is causing these statistical trends?Are some of these reasons more important than other [00:02:00] reasons? Are they all just contributory reasons? Is there like one core reason? That's a really interesting question to me. We could say we just don't have the data to know right now because people are afraid to collect the data because you have your, Oh,Simone: people collect data, but only for a very specific set of answers.It's alreadyMalcolm: pre approved. And the thing that really upsets me about the trans data when I go over it is you can see by the date of publication, it will begin to trend towards showing the pre approved answer.So a great example of this would be brain structures. If you look at the earlier studies on trans people that were using like fMRI data and stuff like that they would usually say or the ones that I'm familiar with would say, The trans people's brains actually are more similar to the gender they were assigned at birth than the gender they were identifying with, whereas in later studies, the opposite is being said, like studies that were done more recently.And [00:03:00] unfortunately, knowing the pressures that happened within academia, that makes me now doubt both of those studies. I'm like, Oh, I just wish I could know what the real answer is.It looks like I misspoke here going through the recent research, even on Wikipedia, which is where there's a studies came from, that I had put on the screen. , even the more recent research shows that, trans individuals brains are more similar to the gender, they were assigned at birth to the gender. They identify ways. And this makes perfect sense. If you think about it. You don't when you're walking around, see people, randomly at least at the rates that we see trans people in the population. Get organs of a different gender. You know, you don't see men walking around with the skin of a woman , or, or the arms of a woman. In fact, the only place where I'm really familiar with this happening is either in intersex individuals or in individuals. , Women specifically who were born with male facial hair. And this happens at much [00:04:00] lower rates than transness happens within the population, but could explain a proportion of individuals who are born trans So if 5% of us young adults are identifying as trans and about 1.5% of the population is born intersex. That means that this wrong brain hypothesis would only explain about 30% of the community. Assuming that this phenomenon appears at about the same rate that genitals get switched up. But. I again that seems unlikely to me because genitals seemed like really unique why they would get switched up but we don't see other organs getting switched up at this rate so i would say that's probably an overestimation of the amount of the community that can be explained by the wrong brainhypothesis.Oh, and I suppose this was obvious to us when we were recording this didn't point it out. You can't just say, well, they're transitioning because they have gender dysphoria. That's like saying, well, he's depressed. Because he has depression. It's like, yeah, but like, are you not at all curious as to where this depression is coming from, what could be motivating it? What neurological phenomenon could be related to [00:05:00] it? Why there's this huge increase in depression ? These are questions that we would be asking if we were talking about. Any other mental condition that wasn't tied to identity, but in the world of identity politics, anything that can be tied to an individual's identity becomes unquestionable. And that's under. Studyable. And that is sort of. That's what makes it exciting to us?Malcolm: So we can go through. We're just going to index all of the potential things. Okay. So first one, this is the one that we talk about most on this channel because I think it's really interesting.And it's also interesting to me that it was ever flagged as an offensive potential answer, but I know exactly why it was flagged as a potential offensive potential answer. Okay. Let meSimone: guess first then, but tell me.Malcolm: It's turning the frogs gay. Endocrine disruptors. Oh. We know endocrine disruptors are much more common now than they used to be.We know that fetuses exposed to endocrine disruptors have lower when they're born as males, have lower endogenital distance. Which basically means that they're [00:06:00] not fully gender differentiated. We know that if you look at them seven years after they're born, they show play behavior much more similar to women.This to me if it's an actual biological change that's happening in the population due to a pollutant it's weird to me that this is seen as a transphobic explanation, but I think the core reason it's seeing is because it would be like, these people aren't faking it. This is not a socialSimone: contagion.It's real. It's physical. It's biological.Malcolm: Yes. And the increased rates of this stuff in our water. We correlate with the explosion of the trans population, and we see males changing generally.Simone: Again, it's not just in our water. A lot of it has to do with the containers we're eating out of, our shampoos, like every, like receiptsMalcolm: everything.Yeah. And we're seeing, it would also explain a lot of other things. We're seeing, a lot of changes in terms of how gender works biologically. We're seeing women go through puberty much earlier. We're seeing male sperm rates decrease by something like 30 percent. No, it's over 50 percent in the last 50 years.So [00:07:00] 51 percent in the last 50 years. We're seeing testosterone rates go down by something like 30 percent in the last 20 years. Like, all of this would easily be explained by endocrine disruptors in the water. Yeah. I think the core reason it seemed as offensive It's actually just that Alex JonesSimone: There's Oh, because Alex Jones said it first.He said that the water is turning to frogs, gay. That we can't acceptMalcolm: this as a And there's a great YouTube deep dive, I'm gonna see if I can find it, cause I remember it was a little obscure onCan you link to it? Actually, the research that Alex Jones was talking about when he said that. Yeah.Because, he'll say things that are actually true. Frogs were actually turning gay due to stuff in the water. And he was pointing this out. But then it became like a famous quote of his, and as such, it became associated with craziness. So it couldn't be an explanation that you could give and not be afraid of being cancerous.HeSimone: ruined it. He ruined it. Cause it it does sound, if you hear it out of context, you hear Alex Jones and his conspiracy voice going there, the water is [00:08:00] turning the frogs gay. It sounds. You have to admit that. It soundsMalcolm: crazy. I don't know. As a scientist, frogs and amphibians are usually much more sensitive to pollutants than other species.And they can absorb it through their skin really easily. Still sounds crazy.Simone: Because most people don't study biology. Most people aren't awareMalcolm: that amphibians Yeah, it reminds me of like when the conservatives were complaining about money going to medical research and they go, They spent X many million dollars studying fruit flies.And it's like, yes, that's the standard species used for studying genetic models. Of course they were studying fruit flies. What? When somebody's this pollutant is affecting amphibians before it affects other populations. It's obviously. Yeah, butSimone: again, like you just assume that everyone understands this.You studied biology at university, like most people like biology stops at college and they are being taught standardized test [00:09:00] norms, not real world useful stuff, but,Malcolm: okay. So this is the first potential explanation.Simone: Okay. So endocrine disruptors in general, but basically if I'm to sum it up Pollutants and chemicals that humans are being exposed to in developed nations and all over the world now are causing them to be hormonally different.And in the case of at least in the case of males, less male, this wouldn't explain, however, the growth in female to male transition because the endocrine disruptors. As we understand it, like from the Tide studies that we keep quoting, only really affect the extent to which men become fully male in development, not females.Let's talk about why this is.Malcolm: It's because the template of a fetus is female. Yeah. So if you are disrupting gender differentiation, you're going to disrupt it on the male side, not on the female side. Yeah. Now, it would likely have some disruption. We do know that women... are changing, like when they go through puberty and stuff like that.Simone: Oh, yeah. And that's more likely, I think, isn't that more [00:10:00] due to growth hormones? IMalcolm: think it's more likely due to growth hormones used to get cows to produce more milk or even biological changes in cows as we have genetically selected them to produce.Simone: And less endocrine disruptors, because broadly speaking, the way that endocrine disruptors are understood to work it's more disruption of life.And ifMalcolm: anything, this should be making women more female. YeahSimone: or if anything, I would say, if anything endocrine disruptors would delay puberty, I would expect. It would make things not work, rather than work earlier.Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. Now we're gonna go to another potentially offensive solution, other than they were born with the wrong soul.Which is also a bad explanation. What, did God just spill the soul bag recently? Suddenly he started f*****g up which souls people's bodies are going into a whole lot? Yeah. You could say it's that they're accepted more. And that's why they're coming out more, but the rate of increase within the trans community is much higher than the rate of increase within the gay community when they achieved acceptance.And also you didn't see this big gender flip in the gay community when they achieved acceptance. [00:11:00] I do not buy that's what's going on.Simone: No, the soul thing doesn't check out endocrine disruptors. I find to be moderate. Actually quite compelling. So let's talk about theMalcolm: next one. So before going to the transmedicine community, I was told to look up this autogynephilia stuff.And I knew this is an offensive explanation, but like in our communities, among the fans of our show, like I know we have other fans of our show that really love autogynephilia as an explanation. So I was like, okay, let's look into autogynephilia. Yeah. So let's explain what autogynephilia is and why it's potentially considered offensive.So this is to say that What is really motivating a portion of male to female trans conversions, and Autogynephilia really focuses on male to female trans conversions, is the fact that they have this fetish for seeing themselves as the gender that they find attractive. I would say there is no wrong reason to transition like I am actually for like you just want to transition because you want to be a girl. Awesome. Yeah, whenever you feel you were born in the wrong body. I'm [00:12:00] not saying awesome in I think everyone should do it.I think there's a huge number of costs associated with transition. I just really am against the concept. That so it's not like I wouldn't recommend it to my kids just because they felt they were in the wrong body or something. I'm like, you need a better reason than that for my kids, for my cultural group.But I do think that I would not pass a negative judgment on somebody who's coming from a different cultural background for transitioning for any reason. And I actually am really against, one of the reasons I like the trans vaccine community. Is because they break with the traditional norms of what makes it okay to transition.Yeah. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. They use a justification that we think is very genuine, but also wouldn't be societally accepted in the mainstream. They're expandingMalcolm: this as a cultural explanation. Yeah. They're expanding the reasons why an individual can say I'm transitioning for X reasons, normalizing new reasons, and I'm totally okay with that.And I really don't like the gatekeeping. We like supporting this community is because they are removing some of the barriers that had earlier been put in place by transmedicalists, those are people who think that it's only trans if it's like medically proven [00:13:00] transness, but then there's this new thing, which is it's only trans if you believe you have the wrong soul, but this is for you to judge and now they're saying, no, you don't need to believe that anyone can decide to use this technology if they feel it will improve their quality of life and was in their cultural norms.And we're like, okay, whatever, not for my kids. Yeah. I wouldn't want to preach to my kids as an option, but if you are, an adult, and you're making these choices, I appreciate that they've expanded the options.If people are confused as to how we can. Both support a community, but also not think it's a good idea for our kids. Think of it like face tattoos. I don't think people with face tattoos should be discriminated for jobs. I think it would be really wrong. If one community of people with face tattoos went around and said, everyone who gets face tattoos, who don't have X condition that I have is wrong and evil. I would think that is wrong and that community should be. Opposed. But I also not think face tattoos are a good idea for my children and I would be concerned. If people with face tattoos were constantly trying to get my kids [00:14:00] to get face tattoos, because I think that they make a person's life harder on average. and I. I think it's really bad that we live in a society where people with face tattoos. R. Oppressed. Then because they genuinely are.It is under any way in Congress for a person to both ardently fight for the rights of people with face tattoos, to fight for people with face tattoos, to not be discriminated against. But also still think that it is a bad idea for their own children to get face tattoos. And be upset at anyone who is telling theirchildren to get face tattoos But I need to be clear. This is just my cultural perspective. And I consider the perspectives of different cultural groups, for example, their progressive cultural group, valid for members of that cultural group. In the same way that I consider, , tribes that think that face tattoos. Ward off evil spirits, valid, and i would not at all discriminate them and i think that we should be accepting of people who have different world frameworks And people can be like, well, medical practitioners agree in science degrees and well, [00:15:00] yeah, but. At one point medical practitioners and scientists agreed that we're a good idea to solve many potential issues in a person's life.I want to be clear that I am not at all saying that gender transition is like a lobotomy or comparing it to a laparotomy. I am just pointing out that historically science and medical practitioners have agreed on things that the majority of the population would no longer agree are a good idea. And given how both new and politically charged this phenomenon is And we haven't seen how this plays out in large populations when they. Attempt this solution to these issues. Over the longterm yet. I am okay with waiting this out when it comes to my own kids, but I am also totally okay with communities and individuals who feel that this is solving major issues in their lives. And I think that they are accurately assessing that for themselves and for people of their cultural group. I just hope that these communities can [00:16:00] accept and respect. Y, I might have a different choice for my own kids until they become of age.Malcolm: Within this community, this is a popular explanation. And I was told by the community to dig into the research on it.And while I say that you can transition for any reason, this is the one reason I'd suggest not transitioning. Because it's like logically a bad reason to transition and I'll explain why it's logically a bad reason to transition when people transition their number of paraphernalia is basically fetishes usually decrease pretty dramatically, especially if they're transitioning from males to females.Second, when people transition their gender primary. Attraction generally, not generally, changes in about 25 percent of people. So not always, but like a lot of the time. So if you are transitioning because of things that arouse you, you should expect those things that arouse you to change during the transition process.Simone: Because the hormones that you undergo are going to significantly change your experience of arousal and your areas of focus. Plus, [00:17:00] actually, if I recall correctly from your surveys, when you did the Pregnantist Guides to Sexuality and you, tested all these people's sources of arousal.Autopenophilia actually wasn't that unusual. Like plenty of people are like turned on by the idea of banging a gender bent version of themselves, but just fantasize about it. Just fantasize about it. Like you don't have to be that version, like you're never going to have two of you.Until we get to some cool AI age where you can get in the haptic suit and go forMalcolm: it. Even more important than that, there were also studies that looked at women. Who were born women, what percentage of them had autogynephilia, something like 95%? Yeah.Simone: Like women find it really like hot.The idea of banging themselves. Totally.Malcolm: The idea of,Simone: you look a lot like me. I think this isMalcolm: like a but the idea of themselves being women. They find their own gender's sexuality and them being that sexuality really attractive. So that wouldn't really be a good argument for, you're not trans because you're just a man attracted to women, so you would find you being a woman attractive.If you are a woman, you would presumably find you being a [00:18:00] woman being attractive as well, because most women feel that way. So autogonophilia, I do think there are probably some people transitioning for this reason. But I think it's a dumb reason to transition because this arousal pattern may cease during the transition. Yeah. Which is Red Queen chasing something that's always running away from you.Simone: Yeah. a game that you're going to be able to win. It's also one of those things where once you have it, you won't want it.Malcolm: Yeah. So another one I saw. So the trans maxing community, this could be another explanation is that it turns out that either men and women in our society, they just don't feel comfortable with their gender because their gender, they are being told that women are being told that women are being objectified in our society and it's worse to be a woman in our society.So you should want to be a man who they're transitioning for that reason. And men are being told, all this red pill, MGTOW stuff, you're better off actually being a woman and that this is what's causing the transition. Just genuinely believing you'd have it better off of the other gender.SoSimone: it's a grass is always greener kindMalcolm: of thing. Sort of the core of what the trans maxing [00:19:00] movement is about. The idea that you would have it easier being a woman than a... Low quality guy was in our low sexual quality. Like not a lot of women like you, obviously pointed out on Tinder. And I can really see where this argument comes from.Less than 1 percent of women swipe right on the average guy. This is, you look at the mean guy, right? So imagine if you're below that, how difficult things are on the sexual marketplace and. How much harder you're just going to be treated in society, right? Some people in some of the writings, they describe it as being in tutorial mode, being a woman, right?Living life in tutorial mode. They're like, yeah, you can't get the higher tier accomplishments in the video game. Like you're going to be discriminated against for like high tier positions and work and everything like that. But people are generally nicer to you and kinder to you. And we'll do little favors for you all the time that you just don't have.And people will be your friend and people will emotionally open up to you. This is what I hear about when I look at people who have transitioned, like the positives and negatives. Yeah. So yeah, you can't get the high tier accomplishments as easily, but all the low tier accomplishments are just much easier, butSimone: honestly, like if you don't [00:20:00] seem to be like a person who's going to be hitting out of the park in life, like at least being able to walk down the street and have people be nice to you and smile at you.Sounds nice.Malcolm: So I, but the problem is we see a lot of women converting to men. We've done a video on this also could be that Hollywood has just removed women. So yes, Hollywood has made a lot of women in leading roles, but it didn't want to make them sexy to men because it wants to punish male sexuality for whatever reason.That's the enemy of progressives. So it removed their boobs and it removed their femininity to the extent where they look like underage women or men. And so a lot of women, when they think about their feminine selves, like their feminine potential ideal, they can begin to see that as negative. And they grow up with this understanding that, that, big breasts, curvy walking, everything like that is not what a powerful woman looks like.And so they begin to adopt this male mindset and this could make it seem better. Like this could be anSimone: explanation. But I think the other explanation that's, that seems to be. Out there is like that transitioning as a, an adolescent [00:21:00] female is the new cutting. It's the new anorexia. Basically women hit this stage at which they get super uncomfortable with their bodies and they want to deal with it.And there are lots of evoked sets that exist in different periods of time to deal with it. And you can deal with it by getting super religious or by starving yourself or by cutting yourself or in this case by transitioning. And part of me wonders if A lot of young women who are transitioning, they're not necessarily Oh, I really want to be a guy.They're more like, Oh, I really don't want to go through puberty. And so puberty blockers are like a great answer to that. Your body's changing. You hate it.Malcolm: I don't think they're thinking that consciously. I couldn't. No. ISimone: think it's subconscious, totally subconscious, but it's more there's a deep discomfort.Malcolm: I could see that being a motivating factor. One thing we talked about was female puberty is the concept that it's very different from male puberty, where male puberty are cursed with this attraction. To other people that you didn't choose and it's like almost an addiction to something right female puberty.It's defined by wanting to be Treasured and cared for and accepted and that no matter how [00:22:00] liked you are by people, it can, because it's your own judgment of whether you're treasured enough, of whether you're accepted enough, of whether you're cared for enough. And so it's almost never enough.And so when women go through puberty, they often feel it. It would be very normal to feel very uncomfortable and unsatisfied with your body and the offer that, Hey, you going through puberty, if you do this now, you can feel comfortable with your body. Like I could see how that would be. Potentially a factor in this change that we're seeing in society, but then why all of a sudden now, like what's new now, I could think it's the removal of feminine looking women from high power roles in media.Now that feminine looking women have been demonized as being idiots, as being deserving of low status of, and these. These very small breasts, very boyishSimone: acting character. I disagree that does not resonate at all. I don't think that has any bearing.Malcolm: Okay, might not, but here's what I would say, and I think this is actually a really important quote that I had heard, and I think it [00:23:00] shows something really powerful about the way the trans community, when it looks at why are people transitioning that are saying that they're transitioning for reasons other than why I transitioned, other than being gender dysphoric, right?They were looking at people from the trans vaccine community who were saying that they were transitioning just because they'd have an easier time as a woman. And they started looking at quotes Oh, I was with my friend, and we cuddled, and it really made me feel special, and I really liked him, and I never would have felt this way about a guy before.But I'm not trans, and and they were like, Hey, maybe you just are trans. Maybe you were always trans, and you've been using... This argument is a shield, but I actually read something different. What I read is changes in things that make a person satisfied in regards to sexual actions with other partners and stuff like that.The changing nature of this. in men who are on hormone therapy to become women or women who are [00:24:00] on hormone therapy to become women, however you want to frame it that it leads to behavior patterns, which the trans community saw as proof that they were actually really trans all along, but that actually begin to happen and occur in any man who takes these chemicals.And that is concerning to me. If it turns out that if you gave any man these chemicals, they would begin to have experience and emotions that the trans community had previously believed were proof that they were actually really the current trans all.Simone: Basically, you're saying like, once you take the magical meds that make you feel like a woman, you think you're a woman.And so you're concerned because anyone who takes the magical meds to make you think you're a woman, they're all going to have the same be like, yeah, this was right. I feel like a woman,Malcolm: right? Yeah. And here we want to talk about the most offensive potential explanation, because this is where this comes from is the...What is it? Like [00:25:00] rapidSimone: onset? Yes. Rapid onset gender dysphoria. So the social contagion theory. Yeah. AndMalcolm: we talked about the study that had been withdrawn about this and it, people were like, look, it was withdrawn for good reason. It had problems, but it was not withdrawn for the reasons that would have gotten like a normal study was drawn.It was withdrawn specifically because it promoted a theory that the trans community didn't like. while the group trying to get it withdrawn, used methodological complaints as their tool to get it withdrawn, the were motivated and had organized themselves around. Getting it withdrawn specifically because they didn't like the theory that it was promoting. Not because of the methodologicalconcernsMalcolm: It did not make the type of mistakes that would normally get a study like this was drawn. Now, to be clear, . It did do something that was pretty shady, right? It, Drew its sample set from women who were mothers of kids who identified as trans who already agreed with the idea of [00:26:00] transness being a social contagion because they were on forums for that.But this was all disclosed in the study. So that was not a reason for it to be withdrawn. What the data in the study, however. was actually super interesting. And when I see trans people dismiss it, they're like 50 percent of these women thought their kids were gifted. So clearly it shows that they're not good.50 percent of all women think their kids are gifted. Obviously, like these are helicopter parents. These are the types who are like paying attention to this stuff and participating in studies. That doesn't seem weird to me. 75 percent think their kids weren't right in their gender transition.So that proves that they're wrong. I'm like, I would argue that's probably true across parents of trans kids. I think if you just did a good study of this, you would find that's likely true. I'm not going to say it's accurate. I'm just going to say that doesn't sound like a biased sample. They looked at the number who thought negative things about trans people.And they were about the same as the general population. , but there were a few statistics in that, that I think that we can learn a lot from because they mirror things that I have heard from my friend group, 25 percent [00:27:00] of the parents said that in their kids first. visit to the gender affirming clinician person, whatever this is called they were offered hormone therapy first visit.And I think when trans people hear this, they can be like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. But when you think about it from the perspective of. of a parent. So I'll tell a story that happened to one of my friends. Anonymized. Thank you very much. Anonymized. Yes, very anonymized, Simone.Nope. When telling the story, I am telling it from his perspective. So i will use the gender of his kid as he would have seen the gender and then a switch to talking about his kid in his preferred gender when i'm at the end of the storyMalcolm: He had a son, who transitioned to a daughter,who... Was beginning to feel like they might be trans, right? But he knew his son had gone through a lot of pretty extreme phases in the past, like an extreme goth phase, an extreme punk phase, stuff like that. And so he was like, okay he'll get over it. But I want to be as caring and I want to be as [00:28:00] supportive of him as possible.Now, obviously, this is a very dismissive way to treat. This person. So he took him to the gender affirming clinic and the doctor took the data side and he sent him to the best clinics there were in the US and it was supposed to be this thing of three clinics. It was supposed to be this big battery of tests and he paid for all of this, all of these expensive tests and all of this stuff.And the doctor was like, obviously we'll consult you before we make a final decision. We're going to do that at a followup appointment in six months. Okay. And so the dad was like, okay yeah. These phases never really last that long I'll just let him go through with this, and we'll see where this goes.And he, then, the kid didn't go back for the six months appointment. He never went to any of the other, that weren't prepaid for, any of these other things. And the dad later , found hormone therapy stuff that the kid had.It turned out that at the very first meeting, secretly, he had been prescribed all of the hormones he needed, and the doctor was like, you never need to come back. They never did any big tests on him or anything like that. They just immediately... Now, from the perspective of this dad, he [00:29:00] felt pretty tricked and pretty undermined by this whole scenario.Was he right? Was the kid really trans? I like to take people at face value. , she decided to do this on her own. And I think that she deserves to be treated accurately based on her choice, but I think that this is very different than I think what an uneducated person was, what it actually looks like to go through these transition things when they think what's going on at these clinician visits and stuff like that. It is not you go into the first clinician visit and you're immediately prescribed transition hormone.AndSimone: there's, of course we should say, caveat, there's a. Big variation, clinics, like not every clinic just rubber stamps things.Malcolm: But we know from this, again, it was only 25%. That means 75 percent of people, this isn't happening to. Yeah. But this is often not something you would have for other types of Prescriptions, like whether it's depression prescription or something like that, you're like unlikely to get this on your very first visit.I can understand why people would be like, oh, this is an [00:30:00] issue if this is happening and if it's recorded in this data set. However, I don't think that it proves in any way that this is a social contagion. I can see how it would spread as a social contagion. If I was just saying hypothetically, as you were saying earlier, if you could tell young girls, and this message would appeal to young girls more than young boys.Yeah. The discomfort you feel with your body that you're going through during puberty, here's a solution to it. Yeah. That would be a very appealing message to read. Incredibly appealing. But I think the mere fact that's an appealing message doesn't mean that it's true. So now we have to go through all the, are there any other reasons you can think people might be transitioning?Simone: Let's see, social contagion, harm, hormones and pollutants the most compelling ones I would say. Yeah, wrong brain, wrong soul. Don't agree with those personally, but okay that's out there. Oh, and then of course, practicality, which we totally understand.Malcolm: Oh, I'm going to present a final one, which I actually think is what's really going on.What? Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:00] Okay. So in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, we broke down the way that gender works in a lot of ways, because I think when we talk about gender, we talk about gender as being like a innate to self identity, and I do not believe it is innate to self identity. I believe that individuals have a gender display system which is entirely different from their sexual systems.By that what I mean is when we talk about sexual systems, we actually think that these systems are the same, are heavily intertwined with your disgust systems. So the things that make you aroused, the things that make you disgusted, these are all working on basically the same brain pathways and there's some negative modifiers implied.But these are basically the same systems. The systems that deal with gender displays I actually think are an entirely different set of systems that have nothing to do with sexuality. And they give you a sense of happiness or pleasure. When you make specific gender displays. Now, this is why historically, if you look at the cross dressing community the [00:32:00] majority of the cross dressing community was cis males.This is true historically. If you look at cross dressers in the eighties they were. Cis heterosexual males, not gay. They just like to sometimes dress up as a woman. And they got a lot of pleasure from this. And I asked myself, how could this be right? It could be that there's some system where if you really act out a gender display, it will create some form of happiness for you.And it probably differs. In how much happiness it's giving an individual, maybe even it could create negative happiness, like active discomfort if you're not constantly displaying your gender. So it could work as a happiness system and like a negative discomfort system, right? Okay. That could explain what's going on here.This slider is in the wrong place. And, what's really interesting about this system is I believe it can be accessed by anyone. I think any man can do a [00:33:00] really feminine gender display and feel like, oh, if I do it just right, there's something that is a little satisfying about it. Like nailing it. Like nailing it. Yeah. Oh, I just nailed that pretending to be a woman thing. And, but you're not nailing pretending to be a woman, you're nailing acting out a gender display. I think many women can just nail it in terms of acting like a man or acting like a male gender display and maybe feel some small, so what would be interesting if it turned out that anyone can access the system, but how much this system controls you might be something that'sSimone: modifiable.I don't, yeah. I just don't like, I don't think there's anything. I think about history. In history, we've seen people express different genders. Totally. That, that is a thing that has happened throughout history. A lot of it has been based on pragmatism. In medieval England regulation of brothel neighborhoods, there are just men who are acting as...Female[00:34:00] sex workers. And they're just regulated like the other ones. Okay, they do that. I think that, that sort of falls into the trans maxing category. If hey, hard to make money out there. Here's one way we do it. So like we join, we dress up like a woman, do what you got to do.It's I know that there is a historical precedent. for the pragmatic approach. Social contagion. I feel like there's a lot of precedent for other behaviors. I'm going to push back onMalcolm: similar before we get into the precedent for other behaviors, like PTSD on Tik TOK and stuff like that, but how would your explanation explain in the eighties, the majority of cross dressers being heterosexual, cisgender men, the majority of men who liked going to clubs or walking out on the streets while cross dressing. Why were they doing this? If not for sexual gratification and they, it appears that it wasn't, it was widely agreed in the cross dressing community.This is not for sexual gratification. What was motivating that? It wasn't helping them in any way,Simone: but keep in mind, this is the thing only men did.Malcolm: Women didn't really do this. I'm like no.Simone: Women are the ones who are really, I think that like the women transitioning thing, [00:35:00] I feel like that is mostly explained by social contagion.Men transitioning, I would say that's mostly explained by hormonal shifts and pragmatism. I, I do not, I don't get the signal. I think, I don't, I have, I think that cross dressing is like super fun and awesome. Everything's better in drag. LikeMalcolm: women didn't, there's no so this is really interesting.You touched on a really interesting point here. And I want to highlight this. Historically there are many examples of men who liked dressing up like women, but were not interested in men sexually. I can think of, hold on. I can think of no explanations of women who like dressing up as men, but weren't interested in women sexually.Usually when women liked dressing up as men, like the trend in American cultural history, these are, so if we now say that they're trans, they were... They were men who were born women andSimone: I guess you could say they were more butch lesbians,Malcolm: but they didn't identify that way often sometimes and sometimes they did whatever what I'm saying is I'm not aware of any of them still preferring [00:36:00] men as sexual partners where I can historically think of a lot of men who today we would call trans or whatever who still liked.So that, that little thing shows that maybe in men, there is this gender display impulse. that is more malleable or stronger or harder to silence?Simone: Yeah, I don't know. I cannot explain that. I cannot. But I, yeah I don't.Malcolm: Okay but, okay, so you've said what you think the main explanation is.I think the main explanation might be the biological one. Okay,Simone: so you agree with me on that. Due to pollutants, but not for women. I don't think for women explains anything. And there's a lot more young women transitioning now than that. Yeah that, that young women, adolescents are so susceptible to social trends, literallyMalcolm: the most offensiveSimone: explanation.I know. Sorry, but not sorry.Malcolm: Could you still man yourself at least for people who are like, this is really offensive.Simone: Yeah, the steel mining part would be that, that when you [00:37:00] hit female adolescence, you become on average, extremely uncomfortable in your body. And you're going to look for solutions for that at a very common solution.In mainstreamMalcolm: society now. Steel man your opponents. Steel manSimone: the perspectives so dumb. It's so dumb. I know, you know me. I love steel man. What would youMalcolm: have transitioned? If you were a young kid today, would you have transitioned? You were uncomfortable with your body. So why, what protected you that's not protecting women today?No,Simone: because I was starving myself instead. I had a better solution. You did. You did. Anorexia is way better than transitioning. Oh, where's the discipline and transitioning?Malcolm: I think here's what I'd say even if it is a social contagion, once somebody becomes an adult, I think it's a decision that we need to respect because it's not one, it would cause them a great amount of emotional pain to not acknowledge it to you.They typically would have an enormous time. Trans difficult time transitioning back, even if they feel like, they made a mistake or something, right? And I think [00:38:00] that the regardless of the reason someone transitions. Now, I do not think that they should, that people should ever be forced to acknowledge someone's transition.So by that, what I mean is if someone's from a culture or religion or tradition where it would be seen as untoward or in, in, in some other way, it really goes against their tradition to correctly gendered someone or something like that. Yeah. fine. Like we definitely as a society shouldn't make it illegal to misgender people.However, I think it's the polite thing to do and to remember. How much these people have gone through and how much, how uncomfortable it can be to engage with a world where you're not sure, who is negatively judging you for something that at this point you can't really change about yourself.Yeah,Simone: no, totally. And, I was, I would say my choice to starve myself as a female adolescent was. Super dumb. I'm still paying the price for that, right? I can't have kids naturally. I have osteoporosis. I'm not saying I made great [00:39:00] decisions as an adolescent. I'm just saying, the motivation to do stuff to yourself is there.And also I don't know I personally have never really had a negative reaction to meeting anyone who's transitioning and it's you do what's best for you. Like everyone. And I think we both agree when it comes to things like governing yeah. Most decisions are best made at the local level, no one like the local community, like the individual knows best what they need, or knows better what they need, like you can't have optimal decisions made by people who are on the outside.Malcolm: Yeah, this is something I find really interesting is you have these people who are like against children transitioning, right? Make it illegal, right? Under a certain age. And yet for, the vast majority of kids who are transitioning in this age range, it's like 16, 18, yet I could get gauges at that age.That's a permanent thing.Simone: You need parental consent for that. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you for any sort of piercing, if you are below 18, unless they're like fly by night and there's a lot of fly by night piercings. WhatMalcolm: age do you need to be?Simone: Every piercing and tattoos you gotta be 18 if you go without a parent.[00:40:00] But, I think that most of the peopleMalcolm: who are doing... Oh wow, 18, you're right. Yeah, sorry. Okay, bad argument. NoSimone: but, it's really easy to get that stuff. The people that are paid minimum wage and poorly trained. At Claire's, which is famous for piercing people. They don't care.They're not checking. Yeah. But, yeah, these there's a long precedent for people who are, of minority, whatever that's determined to be. It's obviously different across states and countries and stuff. Are are blocked from doing things that could be irreversible. And sometimes that's even things like drinking.This is not unreasonable. There's a long cultural precedent for it. I'm not saying it is how it always should be. But if I, for example, if I We're able to like immediately follow through in a costless fashion with impulses that I had as an adolescent, I would not have a uterus now.Malcolm: Oh yeah, because you wanted to sterilize yourself.Simone: Yeah, I wanted to sterilize myself. So I,Malcolm: could you imagine like thinking today, like who you'd become could you have made a worse decision? I know, right? It's, no, but it's really interesting to me that we all make bad decisions when we're young.Yeah.[00:41:00]Simone: But the thing is it didn't hurt me at all to be blocked from that, and here's the thing, though is I do really feel for once you reach a point in your life where you think transitioning is the only answer for you, and you and I were talking about this earlier on a walk once you feel like transitioning is the only answer for you, it's the only answer for you And I've had points in my life where I thought that I had to do this thing or I would go crazy.I would die.Malcolm: Oh, we forgot about the most important answer from this entire thing which is why are people actually happier after they transition? Because you see this so often in the community. Imagine it is just a social contagion, yet I see it fixing problems for so many people.So what's really going on here, and we think we have an answer, it's just not the one that's normal in the trans community. So one, you get this obsession where you start to think, oh God, if I don't transition. And then you read into your earlier life, Oh, there were all these times where I was uncomfortable with this, or I didn't fully fit my gender in this way.And you begin to have all of these sort of prove for you that you need to [00:42:00] transition, but then transitioning ends up actually helping you, but not for the reason that a person might think. Basically, we've argued here that anyone who goes on these hormone therapies actually ends up successfully transitioning to a large extent, whether or not they identified as CIS beforehand.But what it does do is, and we've talked about this before, when you are feeling really systemically unhappy with your life, and really systemically like you don't belong one of the best things you can do is leave your current situation, leave where you're living, leave your friend groups change your job, change the way you're contextualizing yourself.And you can reset your personality and a lot of how your brain works. Yeah. And it solves the problem. Something like 86 percent of people addicted to heroin in Vietnam, when they came back, the addictions went away. And this was like a deep seated neurological addiction, but they were in such a radically different environment that it allowed them to reset their brains.That could be what's happening here. Is it individuals? Now that they're contextualizing themselves as a new person with a new [00:43:00] name, that's a new gender, often with new friend groups, with new ways of interacting with people, with a completely new, like, when we say, go to a new place, do something new.The only way this resets who you are is if in this new place, you're also pretending to be a new iteration of yourself. Yeah.Simone: And what's better for that than transitioning? It's really hard to beat that.Malcolm: And the hormones might even reset specific pathwaysSimone: in the brain. Oh yeah no.Totally. It's a similar, I think personally, like when I look at a lot of research around psychedelics for treating depression, PTSD, like that's one way that now Therapists and psychologists are looking to shake up the brain enough to get you out of a mental rut that is very toxic.I think shifting your hormonal patterns is a great way to do that as well, and this wouldMalcolm: explain why it's happening to young women more often than young men. Young women have more psychological issues that would require this sort of reset than young men have. Yeah,Simone: just because adolescent female hormones are so horrible.Malcolm: But this could be an even more offensive explanation than yours because what it says Is [00:44:00] no, these people aren't really born in the wrong body. They're not actually, it really is improving their livesSimone: pretty dramatically. Yeah. That's the thing is like after a certain point, if you're severely depressed, you're super unhappy and you think, and you've also decided transitioning is the onlyMalcolm: thing you can do.You said you don't really consider someone a woman unless they pass and they're dramatically less likely to pass if they do this later. Yeah.Simone: Except I, like a lot of the stuff that we've discussed here. May not, like the person seeing, being seen as passing doesn't matter in many of those cases.It matters for trans maxxers it may not matter for women transitioning to get control over their bodies again, essentially. Oh, I wouldMalcolm: argue that almost, I'd say the number of trans people where passing doesn't matter is probably less than 1%.Simone: Yeah, you think passing reallyMalcolm: matters? I think you can say it doesn't matter.I think they can say internally it doesn't matter, but I think it's... Personally they just say that because. They want it so theySimone: can't pull it off, so they are gonna try toMalcolm: not care about it. I don't know, that might be an [00:45:00] offensive thing to say.Simone: I think we've said a lot of it. We've rung that bell already.IMalcolm: don't think we've that are offensive to say about or in the trans community anymore. But we are genuinely trying to think through what's going on here and I would love it if there were better research into just, they got the wrong soul. And the research didn't always trend along with social answers where the social answers seem to come before the research that backs it.Which is,Simone: I'll say this, like no disrespect for people transitioning. Like I, one, I love that. It's like this. This championing of the human body, it's taking biology and being like we're doing it my way. I'm going to take control. I love that. And that's why I starved myself. I loved the satisfaction of having control over my body.And my weight and how I felt, even if it was like miserable and it drove me crazy. I love that control. I love IVF for the same reason. Oh my God, we can own the process of reproduction. We can choose all these things. We can, control the time it can do. And I think, like it's [00:46:00] anything along those lines.It's like a little bit more transhumanist or a little bit more about mastering the human body. Oh, let's control our hormones. Let's control like our arousal pathways. Let's change how we look and feel. That's like super cool. Yeah, master your body, do what you need to do to feel good.Or be effective in life or, succeed or thrive by whatever measure you care about. Like just because we have theories as to why this happens. It's funny that it would be so controversial or be seen as hateful. To have a theory as to why something happens when, whatever it's happening, it's real.These are real feelings. It's, similar to our offensive theories around Spoonies, right? That we may think that a lot of it has to do with hypochondria, but we don't discount the fact that people are genuinely suffering, genuinely feeling real symptoms of pain. Yeah. So I, it's interesting that one would beMalcolm: well, some of this can cause people to dismiss them.For example, like autogynephilia, like you hear that and you're like, if you accept that as the reason why most people are transitioning, then you see them as just like pervy men pretending to be women.Simone: It's like how many people in the world, especially young men. Live their lives [00:47:00] in a certain way just to get sexual partners or just to get sexual gratification ultimately like on a macroMalcolm: scale, right?I'm just saying I can see how that could lead to the dehumanization of trans individuals in a way that would hurt the movement Even if it were true unless they wouldn't want to discuss. I don't think it's true, but I'm just saying I see why They would have a political reason to silence any data that could support that hypothesis.Yeah, I agree. Which is a shame. It's a shame because I really would like to understand all of this and I really think that we should reach a position of acceptance beyond that which the trans community is willing to roll out right now. Which is that if you want to transition, it doesn't matter your reasons, as long as culturally that's what your group's okay with, you go ahead with that, right?I support that. I don't support... Trying to inject these ideas into cultural groups where this is not traditional, I think it's just one culture's solution to a set of problems. But I do support individuals who[00:48:00] approach this, or, over 18 and, This makes them feel better.And I do think it does make a lot of people feel better. And I do think it fixes a lot of problems that almost nothing else can fix in an individual's life. Agreed. All right. Love you, Simone. Love you too. We're so screwed. 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