Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Join Malcolm and Simone as they dive into an intriguing thought experiment about the nature of reality, existence, and the universe. Is math truly independent of our perceived reality? Can an equation exist before it's graphically represented? Are we living in a self-simulating reality, or as some may say, a simulation?This profound conversation will make you question everything you thought you knew about our existence, and ponder about the possibility of multiple realities. They also touch on the concept of determinism, secular Calvinism, and how these ideas can be reconciled with a atheistic understanding of truth and metaphysics. Don't miss out on this captivating exploration into the depths of theoretical reality!Based Camp - Reality MathMalcolm: [00:00:00] It's a very lightweight theory for sort of the fundamental metaphysics of reality.Malcolm: And it's, it's really one that I have a pretty high confidence is true just because it's lightweight and it makes predictions . Fun side note about the theory. I have had multiple people offer to sleep with me after I have told them this theory. What? That, yeah. That was a weird thing in college after I had it, this happened on two different occasions.Malcolm: I was hanging out withSimone: a way to bury the lead. Who cares about the nature of reality? This has, how to pick up chicks. Come on Malcolm, let's focus on the stuff that matters here.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hi, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello Simone. This is gonna be a fun one cuz this is a big pet theory of mine. It is, it is where I'm gonna go crazy and I'm gonna label this something crazy. Simone today was laughing at some of my titles for videos cuz she hadn't seen them. Like, the one for, for. Our marriage contract sign on the bottom line and Simone's all like, [00:01:00]Simone: yeah.Simone: Yeah. But what we're about to talk about, I always, I, I, I joke with Malcolm about this a lot because there's this amazing YouTube channel called Down the Rabbit Hole, and one of the documentaries or videos is. Is on this crazy guy who has this like theory about the time cube and everything's like cube based logic.Simone: And ever since we watched that video, I make fun of Malcolm saying like he has pile based logic because he totally doesn't believe in like folding clothes or putting anything away. Like he has a separate room for his like office and bedroom and is, it is just piles, everything is piles. I have,Malcolm: I have like buckets like, like literally like these big plastic bins that I just throw my clothes in.Malcolm: Yeah. And my system for clothes is all of the clothes I'm actively using. There's two buckets. So I can dig through one bucket and throw it in the other bucket as I look for what I want that day. It's, there's not evenMalcolm: I would be completely, I. Boned, if I didn't have you in my life. Simone, actually, we wanted to start [00:02:00] this thing where we're gonna end our videos with little snippets from our lives. We created this great video of at least on YouTube, I mean on the podcast, you know, the people aren't gonna be able to see it, but to force people to build a, parasocial relationship with them.Malcolm: So we're going to at the end of this one, I'm gonna try to get that one of you cleaning up. Oh God. So people can see how useless I am at anything.Simone: No. Well, while I'm doing that, you're watching the, the nuggets.Malcolm: So I'm playing with my kids, I'm playing with my kids. I have. Brainwashed you into believing that's work.Malcolm: But again, how many housewives have done the same thing? You know? ISimone: mean but yeah. So yeah. I have to say though, like when, when I try to get you in, actually like hang something up, I'm like, oh, it's, but there's sky piles. It's a sky pile. It's a, and not, you're not hanging it, it's just a sky pile.Simone: That's how I got you to do strategy walks. Remember, it's like, you're like, I don't wanna go on a walk. I'm like, oh, but it's strategy walk. So that's, that's why we should, that's why we should go on it. But anyway, you actually have a time cube [00:03:00] kind of theory of reality Yeah. OfMalcolm: your own. I have a time cube theory of reality, and I mm-hmm.Malcolm: Genuinely, like with our future police thing, I'm like, I don't really know if this is true or not. Whatever. Like it's pro I, I, I like 70%. I, I've convinced myselfSimone: to believe it. You confirmation biased our way into kind of believing it. Yeah. But we also know that we've confirmation biased our way into believing it.Simone: Yeah, well,Malcolm: Maybe the future police made us do that, but anyway confirmed with this one. This one is, is, is quite different. This one, I'm actually fairly certain that this is actually how reality is structured. Break it down,Simone: friend.Malcolm: Okay. So it goes with a few premises. , it goes like, if you believe these premises, this is the logical outcome of these premises. First math. Is not dependent on our reality. And by that what I mean is in every possible universe if there are multiple universes, two plus two always equals four. And obviously you can change the rules of [00:04:00] math like using Non-EuclideanMalcolm: math,Malcolm: to mean that it, it has different outcomes like math on a sphere versus math on a plane, right? That's gonna be different, but that's still within the confines that you give the math two things. And two things is always four things. And so when I accept this, that means that math must exist outside our reality as we perceive it.Malcolm: So essentially sort of like all equations kind of exist outside of our reality as truisms. The second thing that I take as true, I. Is that the thing a mathematical equation represents, exists as an emergent property of that equation? So let me explain what I mean by this. So if you have a graphical line, like I can write an equation that is used to describe a line with, if this is true, it means that that line exists.Malcolm: As [00:05:00] a property of that equation, even before I physically graph that line.Malcolm: Finally, so this is just three assumptions I'm making here. four, if you include my assumption that.Malcolm: Because mass exists across reality that mass exists outside of any individual reality. So four assumptions of you include that, but I'm only having four assumptions here. So the fourth is that our reality, the way things interact in our reality can be described with an equation or set of interlinked equations.Malcolm: Now this is not something that physics has found yet. Okay? So this is a predictive assumption. About something physics will find that physics has not yet found, but is making this predictive assumption. Okay. And, and by that what I mean is we keep finding like if you go into physics and, and, and you dig into particle physics or something like that, we keep finding that forces that originally [00:06:00] appeared to be two different forces, . Like magnetism and electricity or the small force in electricity later turn out to just be the same thing. Once you go higher in the equation. Now physics has not yet, like there's the, the concept of the unifying theory of physics that we don't have yet. Right. But, but you know, they're working towards that and I'm predicting that we will find one and it will be basically a single mathematical equation.Malcolm: Okay. So if all of those things are true, then that single mathematical equation that describes how reality is interacting, all the little things within what we perceive to be reality must exist outside of reality. And the reality that it describes in the same way, like a graph that it describes, would also exist parallel to our reality, even if the equation wasn't graphed.Malcolm: I'll, I'll use the term graph manifested, however you wanna put it. Even if it wasn't [00:07:00] simulated. Hmm. Occam's razor. You don't need to assume that physical reality exists for us to be experiencing all of the things that we think we're experiencing. Does that make sense to you, Simone? Or is there anything there I need to elucidate on or?Simone: What I, what I'd love for you to elaborate on is a lot of people are like, oh, what if we live in a simulation? And I feel like this dovetails in interesting ways with that kind of theory because what you're saying kind of is Yeah, sure. Kind of we're like a, like a sort of an algorithmic simulation, but also like, That doesn't mean that our reality is any less reality.Simone: And I think people who think that, that we're in a simulation kind of get this perception that there's like some other more removed reality, like the real world,Malcolm: you know? So if this theory is true, it means the master reality.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. The reality outside of a simulation is a self simulating reality, and [00:08:00] so a reality that was contained within a simulation wouldn't be particularly less meaningful than the master reality. It also has some other moral implications. It means that, All possible realities that can be described by an equation simultaneously exist.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So there are multiple universes that, but you cannot travel between them. But any eco reality described by the same equation, depending on how the equation works. Potentially you can travel between them multiple ways for solving the same equation lead to splitting realities. So if there is one equation, but this equation can be solved in multiple ways, then you would have different realities for each one of those ways.Malcolm: The equation can be solved as a different graphical representation of the equation. Yeah. So it has some implications on the fundamental underlying like reality. So you can say, why do you believe this about reality? Like, this seems like a lot of things to believe.Malcolm: , this is the model for reality that [00:09:00] relies on the fewest assumptions that I could come up with at least. And the least complicated assumptions and the assumptions that seem the most obviously and intrinsically true to me.Simone: And one thing that's really fun about this is you know, a lot of people are like, well, how can you be secular Calvinists? Or How can you be, you know, have all this deterministic thinking, you know, with also like a, a fairly. Atheist background in terms of truth and our metaphysical understanding of reality.Simone: Well, this is how, like, we, we can believe that everything that could happen has happened and will happen, has happened in the same way that with an equation. Mm-hmm. When you plug in different numbers, you're gonna get like the, the, the outputs are there. So every graphical representation, as you say, you know, every reality is there.Simone: And I think that that's kind of fun. It's, I think it's fairly elegant, it's fairly lightweight. Yeah. And, and I don't, I don't know. It, I guess it does color our, our moral view of reality. It, it, it, I would say, offers some comfort in that. I think a lot of people are like, [00:10:00] well, if this is a simulation, we have to like, Please the players of the game or some like simulation builder and like, that's, no, no, no.Simone: That's not it. You know, it's, it's, it's really not. It's, it's just everything is, and everything will be, and everything has been, and everything can be all at the same time. And we're a part of that. And that doesn't invalidate our experience at all as humans. It's just kind of how things are. And I don't know, it gives me.Simone: It gives me comfort. It also doesn't do a whole lot, you know, it doesn't like change cuz you know, it doesn't practically on a day-to-day basis change anything about how we live. We still have the things that we want to fight for and we don't know how things are gonna play out. So we're still excited to see what happens per the weird way that humans perceive the world and reality in time on this sort of arbitrarily linear basis.Simone: Right. But has it changed your meta? Like are your morals different because of this view ofMalcolm: reality? That's a tough question. It has shaped my other views on reality. [00:11:00] Like this theory I came up with when I was in college. Mm-hmm. I actually wrote about it in the college Philosophy magazine.Malcolm: Oh. When I came up with it. Yeah, so it's a fairly old theory in terms of my views of the world, and so a lot of other views I have on the world, like the concept of the future of police, which, which we have as a family religion. This idea that eventuallyMalcolm: a million, 10 million years from now if my distant descendants are still around. If I ask myself, are they more the way I would think of a human today or more the way I would think of like a God today?Malcolm: And I consider that we're only like 200 years away from being able to literally create heavens, right? Like simulated environments that we can upload people into where they can get their every need served. Mm-hmm. Where we could have an AI lattice around the world that you could. Beseech for favors, basically pray to, and it can solve those favors.Malcolm: The type of God that these entities that my descendants could be a million, 10 million years from now is beyond anything that we can conceive today. Mm-hmm. And that being the case, I used to say they relate [00:12:00] to time, the way we relate to time. Mm-hmm. And that being the case, you know, we built this family structure around these descendants.Malcolm: , we call it descender worship instead of ancestor worship. Are rewarding us for creating a prosperous future for the human species. And a, a pluralistic future for the human species than Afu future where people are, are thriving and having new ideas and everything like that. So we you know, raise our kids believing that.Malcolm: So they have this motivation both to have kids, right, but also to try to make the future a better place and feel like they have agency over that future. Mm-hmm. So I think that this belief and, and the determinism that is. Sort of a result of it has big implications on the future. And we did another video, which is one of our least watch videos that's on like free will and determinism.Malcolm: And I'd really suggest people check it out if they hear the theory and they go, oh, this means we don't have free will. Because I don't think free will and determinism are incompatible at all. Oh, hardly. Yeah. , I really like what it means for a world in which we're simulated.Malcolm: Cause the really cool thing about a world in which we're [00:13:00] simulated is in many ways for the way some people judge morality. It could be a world with more meaning than a self simulating world. How I'll explain what I mean by that. A self simulating world exists simply because all equations bring simulations of themselves into reality.Malcolm: Right? Okay. But a simulated world. It exists for a purpose. Its creators. Were trying to do something with that simulation, whether it was do historical research or predict some future event or maximize like Qualia because they have some belief around like, that's a positive thing in the world. And so you are potentially serving your role within this great function, even if you don't understand it.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. But yeah,Malcolm:Malcolm: Another interesting thing about this theory is it becomes potentially less likely we're in a simulationMalcolm: in that literally an infinite number of self stimulating realities will exist based on these [00:14:00] equations. However, I. A higher infinite number of simulations will exist because even if an infinite number of realities will exist within each of those realities, people could create simulations. But I think for a lot of people, what they assume is that a like fixed number of realities exist.Malcolm: And this would assume that a literal, infinite number of realities likely exist depending on how these equations work. MmSimone: mm I see. I see. Hmm.Malcolm: But I do like what you said about it. It's lightweight. That's why I like it. It's a very lightweight theory for sort of the fundamental metaphysics of reality.Malcolm: And it's, it's really one that I have a pretty high confidence is true just because it's lightweight and it makes predictions. I just love that one day. It makes a bunch of predictions about the future. And if, if those predictions come true, it's more likely to be true. It's not saying that it's definitely true, but you know, it's a shock calling prediction on the fabric of reality.Simone: Yeah. So we'll see how it plays out. I'm very curious. I loveMalcolm: you. I do. I love that you [00:15:00] tolerate. My theory is like this, this is actually a, sorry, pardon. Fun side note about the theory. I have had multiple people offer to sleep with me after I have told them this theory. What? That, yeah. That was a weird thing in college after I had it, this happened on two different occasions.Malcolm: I was hanging out withSimone: a way to bury the lead. Who cares about the nature of reality? This has, how to pick up chicks. Come on Malcolm, let's focus on the stuff that matters here.Malcolm: I, well, I, I've never had any other thing where like I had an idea that people thought was so good that they wanted to sleep with me over it.Malcolm: And it could just be that they were drunk and they thought, oh, he just said something he's proud of. So I'm gonna flatter that aspect of his ego and use that to manipulate him. But, you know, we'll see.Simone: I don't know. I think it's, it's really hot when someone's passionate about something especially if they're like willing to be really open and honest about it, and it's not something you've heard before.Simone: So I could see that it's not necessarily this theory, it's the fact [00:16:00] that you are. Really passionate about it, you thought through it. That's a, I think a very masculine trait that's very underrated is, is the sign of a passionate outlier because like, what is, what is like more the essence of masculinity than being that dangerous outlier that actually succeeds.Simone: You know? And like, it's almost like, this sounds horrible, but like metaphorically begins like with the. Like with sperm, right? Like just that one, that one crazy outlier gets to survive. And then like now when women see like that one like man who's totally different but really passionate and willing to do something really weird, she's just like, oh yes, let me get my teeth into him.Simone: SoMalcolm: that, that thing you said about sperm, it actually reminds me, so the Federalists, they did a piece on us and they said oh no, they've put their kids in a sit game, we're the healthiest. Get to live. And it's like, what do you think is happening every time you impregnate a woman?Malcolm: Yeah. Imagine you said that about sperm instead of describing it as sex, a sick game, we're [00:17:00] only their healthiest gamma sexSimone: game survive. Well, what is, what is, you know, human as, as the the French court in the 17 hundreds used to describe it com, what is com, but a sick game? Honestly Well, yeah.Simone: Anyway, I find these, these conversations delightful. They're like our little dates. I certainly, which is real sad.Malcolm: Do we not do enough real dates?Simone: We, we don't. We don't wanna spend money on like getting out drinks. Oh God,Malcolm: sorry, I forgot that. We might have to spend money if we went on a date. Yeah, I'm so sorry.Malcolm: This is why we work together. You know, we're CEOs of the theme company together. We, we write our books together, we do our speeches together, combine the speaker, you know, to make it cheaper for the end. We like to be frugal for other people as well, but All, all, all of this is how we pay for our dates.Malcolm: Which is to say other people pay for them to like, well, if we're gonna go to X City to speak, we may as well walk around. Go for, go for a walk around town together.Simone: Yeah. It's like a date. It's like a vacation. PrettyMalcolm: sensible lunch. Yeah. The, they're the only dates that are [00:18:00] worth doing. No guilt.Simone: Yeah.Simone: The, the best meals out are those which you do not pay for otherwise. Not worth it, but yes, I love you very much. Looking forward to our next one already.Malcolm: I love you.[00:19:00] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Simone and Malcolm as they dive deep into the intriguing narrative tropes of heroes and villains, exploring societal expectations and the status quo. They draw upon popular culture references, such as Batman and Spider-Man, to illustrate their points. In this thought-provoking conversation, they ponder the concept of "Villains Act, Heroes React," the paradoxical portrayal of heroes and villains in media, and the real-world implications of these stereotypes. If you've ever wondered how societal norms impact the narratives we consume daily, this discussion will open new avenues of thought. So, get ready for a journey into the depths of societal constructs and perceptions, and don't forget to vote for your favorite 'villain'.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] inheriting your powers is a really common trope of heroes. Mm. And achieving powers on your own is a very common trope of villains. Interesting. Yeah. Even when heroes didn't inherit their powers, like Batman, he inherited his money. well, you want the rich, the people who deserve like the, the inherited rich, this long aristocratic, the people who inherited their powers, the people who, that they are there to maintain social order,Simone: I recently heard the screenwriting trope Villains Act heroes react . While there are counter examples, it does seem like the good guys are more likely to protect the status quo rather than try to change the world,Malcolm: the villain trope is somebody who's fighting against the status quo to try to make things potentially better because . To really make things better, you have to move things past the status quo. You have to move things to the next potential stage.​Malcolm: Hello Simone. It's wonderful to be joining you today for my super villain layer.Malcolm: We're talking about villainy more generally today, but I like to be. Super. [00:01:00]Simone: You are always superMalcolm: in my car. People may be wondering why I don't have my ring today. I lose it all the time. And in today's one of those instances, she jokes, I'm like, Sonic's a hedgehog. I I bump into something and rings go flying everywhere.Simone: I think I have one. Tied to the car keys. You do doMalcolm: that. I haven't taken that one. Cause it's hard to get off the car thing. But I'll, I'll use it. That's exactly why it's there. We're going meet with some like. Senator types. AndSimone: so that's why we always have backups all over the place.Malcolm: I gotta look like a traditional conservative male if they're gonna fund our campaign.Malcolm: So we gotta look normal. But actually Simone's the one who we're hoping to run.Simone: Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. But, we'll see if people vote for villains, which I honestly think is how we're often framed in the media. But we read a great tweet recently about heroes and villains from a friend of ours that I thought was just brilliant.Simone: So she, she noted. I recently heard the screenwriting trope Villains Act heroes react for the first time and it destroyed me. [00:02:00] While there are counter examples, it does seem like the good guys are more likely to protect the status quo rather than try to change the world, and that is so true and I find it really interesting.Malcolm: Yeah. No, I, I think it is really interesting and I am, well, , the series that both of us were immediately thinking of when this came up was the Kingsman series. Mm-hmm. , because the Kingsman is always about, somebody has some like vision for the future often how they can make the world a better place.Malcolm: And then there's this secret society for like wealthy, or at least culturally wealthy, if not individually wealthy, but, but it seems like the vast majority of the members do come from wealthy families. British, like elitist who are maintaining the status quo. Yeah. It's like about a secret society completely dedicated to maintaining the status quo of the world.Malcolm: But in the second movie one of the things we thought was really funny is to say one of the villains. Basically they're lacing, spoiler, by the way. Drugs, with something that kills people to remove the, the dangers of drug addicts where what do they, the other villains like, doesn't [00:03:00] care.Malcolm: And they're like, yeah, we'll let it happen. Because it removes the drug addicts from society and will make the world a better place. And it's like, that's brutal, but like an interesting theory at least. But what I loved, and Simone pointed this out to me, is how do they demonstrate that they're actually the bad guys?Malcolm: And you definitely shouldn't be on their side. They, theySimone: started doctoring festival drugs, which is just a step too far.Malcolm: They started to potentially hurt upper middle class people. And they, no, the real scene when you're supposed to realize, oh, these guys are really the bad guys.Malcolm: It is, when it turned out the like, Well-paid office worker was using like Adderall or something as like a performance booster and you'reSimone: like, oh, I thought it was when like a, a bunch of basically Instagram influencers were using the like laced. Lace drug and like talking about it and then talking about the side effects, and that's how it showed up in society that this was a widespread issue that many people were being affected.Malcolm: Well, no, but I'm thinking about how they coded for the audience. Cause it was [00:04:00] clear that they were afraid that a little too much of the audience would agree with this person. So they need to show it affecting upper middle class people as well, because that's the way most people identify. Regardless of their actual economic circumstances, it's, it's really interesting.Malcolm: There was a study done on this that's like something like 95% of Americans identify as middle class. Yes.Simone: Yeah, actually I was just reading a 1982 Ms. Manners book while we were on a call like earlier today. And she Emily post joked that there are three classes in America, lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class, and there's like literally nothing else.Malcolm: Is great. Yeah. The versions I, I love that you say that. That is, that is so true because that's how everyone identifies Totally. That because nobody wants to identify as upper class in our society,Simone: except for us, because we're scared. QuotesMalcolm: elite, right? Yeah. We're scared. Quotes elite. We will take on the, we will be the only upper class family in all of America.Malcolm: That is what we're gonna do. We will just take that segment in society. Just for us, just for Malcolm andSimone: Simone and, and no bless o bleach.Malcolm: You could [00:05:00] say No. Bless o oblig. Yeah, I I remember I got a, a long thing about basically Noble o Oblig when I got into Stanford Business School, but it was from, from a family member.Malcolm: They like sent me this, but they, they, they said with great power comes great responsibility. Of course, I'm thinking, Spider-Man, right? I'm like, oh, this is a Spider-Man quote. And what I love is that Spider-Man, and I realize, no, that's just like no blessed beliefs summarized Spider-Man is Spider-Man based on no blessed beliefs.Malcolm: I think that's antithetical to his character, but that is what I associate that quote with most.Simone: So, oh God, yeah. No, this, this is so indicative of our generation. I was also just watching a YouTuber who was like, oh, it's like they say in the office dress for the job you want. And I'm like, that, that didn't, that didn't come from the office lady.Simone: But no, this is, yeah, of course, as Spider-Man's uncle says, as, as the office. Yeah. As Spider-Man's uncle says, it's famously quoted in the show, the office.Malcolm: Oh, man. Oh my gosh. Wait,Simone: wasn't there a joke like that? That's Stone Middle class. I, I don't know what [00:06:00] to say.Malcolm: I, I think you're good. No, I wanna talk about this larger concept.Malcolm: Cause I think it, it leads to a lot of problems in our society. Mm-hmm. Where any organization that is trying to change things from the status quo, or any individual that's trying to change things from the status quo is seen as villainous. Oh yeah. And. I, I, it's actually really interesting.Malcolm: I, I think that the people who fight for the status quo in many ways want to see themselves as like the big heroes. I think that's what like Megan and Harry have been doing. They're, they're, they're the true warriors of the, of the status quo. And, and, and that's how they show that they're good people because they look, they say, what does society say?Malcolm: Makes you a good person, and then I'm gonna do and care. About those things mm-hmm. That society say make you a good person. But I think in reality when people see individuals, especially individuals in positions of enormous privilege, just going along with what society tells them to, it also makes them at least a large portion of the [00:07:00] population, disgusted with them, but they don't see them as villains.Malcolm: It's interesting is they're often not displayed as villains. They're displayed as like slimy. They're displayed as, as, as pathetic and, and, and like money grubbing, but not villains, but mm-hmm. Elon Musk. Elon Musk clearly has like a vision of how he sees the world could be better and is trying to move towards that vision.Malcolm: Even if he does get distracted at times. Because his, his vision is quite expansive and not a lot of other people are working on it. But he does a lot of stuff. I dunno what to say, but what a super villain character to the extent that if you look at, I think a lot of content now they are actually framing the villains around archetypes of Elon Musk.Malcolm: Is, is you, you see this in a lot of shows now. Elon Musk based villains, I've likeSimone: noticed this, but Ironman was also like broadly inspired by his archetype as well. Although, I guess you could argue that, oh, is he trying to changeMalcolm: the world a new, I don't know. I wa I watch Iron Man and he's.Malcolm: Trying to, he [00:08:00] anhe be less, not like in wars, just have like weapons in wars be less efficient. ISimone: thought he, wasn't he a weapons dealer? I thought he was, yeah. And he was aMalcolm: weapons dealer before that. So he is only like trying, I don't see him as being somebody, he doesn't fit the villain trope. But the villain trope is somebody who's fighting against the status quo to try to make things potentially better because to make things better.Malcolm: That's the thing about the status quo. Right. You can be at a local optimum, but to really make things better, you have to move things past the status quo. You have to move things to the next potential stage. And what's really interesting is if you look at our message and all of our prenatal advocacy, you could say, well, a lot of people, one of the problems was trying to move things past the status quo is it removes individual agency to an extent, which is, which you see a lot of climate activists doing.Malcolm: So I can guess, I can see how those people could be framed as villainous. But when you look at prenatal advocacy, it's all based around individual. Like, like the major organization, which is ours, like the core mission we have is to ensure maximum reproductive [00:09:00] freedom at the level of individual families and maximum cultural freedom at the level of individual families.Malcolm: So even when we're fighting for more individual autonomy, Insofar as that autonomy removes the autonomy of the system, like trying to create new school systems and stuff for, for high school instead of these government ones which we see as erasing people's cultures. We get framed as, as super villains because we're trying to change the world.Malcolm: Well, I think there are two,Simone: there are two broad things in place. One is on a, on a individual level humans are afraid of change. Humans really don't like change. Different is bad. Having to try something new is bad and scary. So that's, that's one side of it. So anyone who's trying to push something new on you, even if like let's say they're trying to get you to try a new food and it looks gross and it ends up tasting really good, but you're still like hating them for making you try it, right?Simone: That that's something that, that is ultimately villainous cuz it's different. We don't like different. The other thing is societies at large are very optimized around driving and enforcing conformity. So anything that fails to conform, [00:10:00] anything that is different or new, even if it's better, is going to be villainized.Simone: Because of course, I think in the past and, and like from an evolutionary standpoint, that which is extremely different. Is more likely to probably do something that is going to cause risk, harm, infection al vulnerability. Well, you alsoMalcolm: just the cultural evolution standpoint. Mm-hmm.Malcolm: Which is to say the cultures that have survived are the ones that are the best at stamping out ideas and world perspectives that clash with their own. Mm. Because they, they represent an intrinsic threat to the existing world order, right? Mm. That's why you burn witches, right? You, because they represent a cultural mutation.Malcolm: Mm. And, and that's what we are seeing the dominant culture do today. So you are right. It definitely has that element to it. . To the first point you made though, that different is scary. I think even the idea, even making people aware that things will change, that society will change, that the world will change, [00:11:00] is threatening and to an extent can make you a villain.Malcolm: Just airing that. Mm-hmm. So one of the points that we make is, If you look at humanity, what it means to be human will change. Mm-hmm. Whether it's through genetic technology or AI or human integration with electronics and stuff. And so a lot of cultural groups, they're like, well, that is bad. Like humans should stay exactly what humans are today because if we deviate from that, then we're something else, and that is bad or monstrous, or.Malcolm: Whatever. Right. But the problem is, is then you really only have two potential futures. Either we do differentiate and we will differentiate in the future. I think it's inevitable. Mm-hmm. Cause even if one country, or one region, or one culture effectively prevents this type of experimentation and change, any region that does will just so significantly outcompete the ones that don't, those cultural groups will become economically irrelevant due to the advantages, the cultural groups that engage in.Malcolm: Genetic and [00:12:00] technological change we'll have. Yeah. But then the cultural groups that are against that stuff, they will need to be very dictatorial in how they impose that stuff. Mm-hmm. So whenever I see a show like, what we were watching or Orville or something like yesterday and, and that the characters in it, like the human characters that they think.Malcolm: Far in the future, thousands of years in the future that HU humans would look still broadly like we think humans look today. That's just absurd. Like that could only happen if basically a fascist one world government takes power that systematically prevents any sort of human technological integration and any sort of genetic selection or genetic Advancement.Malcolm: But even if you had that, it really wouldn't work. And the reason why it really, you'd also then need to kill a lot of babies. So the reason you need to kill a lot of babies in that scenario is only a few generations ago, it was true that about 50% of human infants died in when they were babies, right?Malcolm: Young deaths was really common. But this had a big impact on our genes. It took a lot of potentially [00:13:00] negative things out of our genes now that most babies survive. What it means is the things that were being selected against cancers and the like, are going to begin to build up in the human genome at a really fast rate rate.Malcolm: So if you go three or four generations down the line, we are going to be and, and you, and nothing happens. We're gonna be walking balls of cancer. Of course there's three solutions to this. One is to genetically, crisper out the, the, the parts of the gene that are causing these problems.Malcolm: Another is to pre-select embryos that aren't pro to these problems. So you're still having the babies die, basically, but the babies are dying at the embryo stage instead of the stage of a human child. Or you kill the children who are prone to this, you test them, which, which seems like the obviously immoral answer.Malcolm: But I don't know. , I guess you could say that you could use some technology to edit the genes of adults, like, use maybe a virus as like a vector. Mm-hmm. But that's really hard to do whenever you're talking about, like, editing a person's genes for like [00:14:00] cancer or something like that.Malcolm: The problem is, is our, our, our bodies are made up of billions, I wanna say, of cells, billions of cells. And you need to, you need to edit the DNA of every one of those cells that, that's really hard to do. And, and then I don't know that, that to me also doesn't seem like a good answer with any sort of near future technology.Malcolm: Yeah, not near future, not near future technology, but there might be other solutions to it. The broad point here being is the only way that we end up with a future where humans five, 10,000 years from now, look broadly like humans do today, is if you have a fascist state that is essentially preventing.Malcolm: Human genetics or human genetic toying or human integration with technology. Mm-hmm. But the other thing that always shocks me is when these shows think they're being like progressive by showing different ethnic groups. The only way that 10,000 years from now, we would still have.Malcolm: Black people and white people is largely [00:15:00] if racism survives in like a big way.Simone: Oh. Like if, yeah, if groups still like stay isolatedMalcolm: and don't inter well, you would need to have some sort of genetic isolation of the different ethnic groups for those groups to stay, looking anything like we think of today as black people, white people, Asian people.Malcolm: Yeah. So again, like when I see a show, which is so interesting, you see a show like Star Trek and they're trying to. Portray it as all really good. And in the back of my head I'm thinking, oh, so this is like a super racist society, was a fascist, dictatorial government. Which I, I suppose is why I see like star Starship troopers as such a brighter future.Malcolm: Mm. Because at least it's an honest future. At least they admit it's a, it's a dictatorial, fascist government that, that does honestly seem to be trying its best for people. Thanks for honesty. For sure. But, but it is, it is interesting that when you point out these basic things, that I, that, that, that humans will change, the things will change, that [00:16:00] the world will change.Malcolm: People freak out. It reminds me of these environmentalists who go out there and there's almost this form of morality, which I've always found really. Disgusting myself because it's so shortsighted. Mm-hmm. Where when you're talking to environmental groups, there's sometimes two groups of thought, which is, okay, we want to reintroduce like these old coyotes that went extinct a while ago, but okay, but now you're interrupting the new ecosystem.Malcolm: Right. Because things have evolved to fill that cultural niche. The animals have since evolved to deal with sort of the new environment that they're dealing with, but they believe that the state. And, and you see this in this, let's keep humans exactly the way they are now. Like keep humans exactly how they were when we first built our first cities.Malcolm: And they're like, and let's also keep the environment like exact, well not even our first cities. Cause they don't wanna bring like mammoth back and stuff like that. They wanna keep the world.Simone: Exactly. No. Isn't there a company right now that's bringing back nearMalcolm: community, right? I'm talking about this type of environmentalist.Malcolm: Ah, yes. Right. They want the world to be exactly where it was. [00:17:00] Like 1900, like that environment, those species need to stay static forever. No further evolution. Humans need to stay static like that forever. So in a way, humans are becoming this sort of perverse actor on the environment where we are now preventing further evolution of species preventing extinction, a species preventing them from.Malcolm: Having to come to terms with rapid environmental shifts or something like that. Something that has happened multiple times throughout the history of the world. Right? But, but no, not this time. We gotta end it this time. And they go, oh, it's because a species is causing it, except. That's happened before that there was the, the, it's happened a couple times before.Malcolm: There was a time when the first bacteria started producing oxygen and that was what called the Great Oxidation Event. I, I, I think I wanna say, and they gave, made themselves in almost everything like them. Extinct because they were producing oxygen as a waste product. And oxygen in, in, in oxidation is very caustic to [00:18:00] any sort of cell or biology that hasn't evolved specifically to deal with oxygenated environments.Malcolm: So they, it caused its own mass extinction. So like, not the first time we've seen this either, yeah.Simone: Also discussed in the Twitter thread was an observation that often the villains are. Either like Novo or not. Aristocratic and that the heroes are aristocratic, which definitely shows up in Kingsmen.Simone: I think in both Kingsmen movies, the first two it was like tech elites more that wereMalcolm: the villains. Well, I'm think inheriting your powers right is a really common trope of heroes. Mm. And achieving powers on your own is a very common trope of villains. Interesting. Yeah. Even when heroes didn't inherit their powers, like Batman, he inherited his money.Malcolm: Go, come on.Simone: Batman's. No, Batman doesn't have. Bruce Wayne's power is he's rich and autistic. No, he's bornMalcolm: rich. His power isn't that like, even though that he was born rich, that's his power. Thats his power. And people he's fighting are [00:19:00] like these self-made, like you got poison ivy, who's basically an environmentalist.Malcolm: Yeah. I do agree. Environmentalists are largely evil, but she's trying to engage action in the world. You got Joker, definitely a, a self-made man. You've got people like the Penguin who in, in most iterations has the affectations or was born into a wealthy family, but lost it all like orphaned.Malcolm: Right. Had to rebuild himself. Yeah. But of course that makes him truly villainous. Similar to me, my, my own backstory, going through, oh, do you, do youSimone: share penguins backstory,Malcolm: court appointed prison alternatives and stuff like that? And then Yeah, I have, I have a backstory similar to the the, the penguin from the Tim Burton's Batman returns,Simone: Yeah. So you're, you're not so much Batman as you are Penguin. Yeah, I guess look at how you're dressed. I, unless you're like offMalcolm: this way. Yeah, I'm going for you. I got the KAA pot. I got the Kaa Pot virtue here. Nobody is interesting because I think that society fundamentally believes, like in the back of our cultural brains, what feels nice.Malcolm: Is, [00:20:00] is actually classism the,Simone: the elite? Yeah. That you want the, the, the, the king to save the day.Malcolm: Right? Well, I, well, you want the rich, the people who deserve like the, the inherited rich, this long aristocratic, the people who inherited their powers, the people who, that they are there to maintain social order, thoseSimone: high and a greatMalcolm: chain of being, because historically that's what the story's told.Malcolm: What's a night? But often somebody who was born to a noble family. Yeah. And then was appointed to maintain the status quo. Yeah. And those are the stories that culturally our visions of heroes came from. And who's the villain? Well, it's the person with the other religion typically, like the witch from the woods, like your morana or something.Malcolm: I don't know if she came from a long line or something, but I typically think of the, the villains of the, the night stories as being some witch, someone culturally deviate. Often didn't come from a position of power. But, but they came through power perversely because they earned it themselves. They, they went out and studied.Malcolm: They [00:21:00] found it in, in books and, and, andSimone: working. Oh, because isn't that also in it in itself a villainous act? If it's a subversion of the social order?Malcolm: Yes. It is, you are right. Subverting the social order is a villainous act. Mm. And so I think in many ways we are the archetypical villains of society, and as such, people are right to hate us.Malcolm: Because that is the role of the villain. We believe we're trying to make the world a better place. But isn't that true of all women? That'sSimone: Yeah. It's exactly what, well, I don't know. There are some villains like bond villains and stuff who are just out to make money. But I think that's the other thing is, is we're also we're often villainized for being capitalist and people see, I think capitalist is like a whole different sort of fill.Simone: And I don't know if that's just because like. Socialism is a very pervasive kind of sentiment now that like a lot of villains are just easily just capitalists, just easy to hate people for it.Malcolm: No, I think it's that socialist. So when people believe in capitalism, I think it's typically because they've [00:22:00] thought through it.Malcolm: When people believe in socialism or communism, I think it's much more like a religion. Mm. And like a religion. When we talk about evolved systems that shut down any idea, that's a threat to it. Mm-hmm. They react as if. They're reacting to a, a religious threat. So one of the things we talk about in our book is the concept of cones.Malcolm: If people are aware in Buddhism there's this thing where they'll be like, oh, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, like what does it really make a sound? Right? This is a cone, but many religion, Catholicism has things like this. What these really are is. Gaslight. It, it's a form of gaslighting that's used to enforce a Master's authority over the pupil and to get people to doubt their own beliefs about reality.Malcolm: So what they're doing is you go, oh, what's the sound of one hand Classic? Well, I, no either, it's no sound like this is a definitional thing, and they're like, oh, no, you don't understand the question if you, if you come to me with that answer, which what they're really doing is just saying, I have authority over you.Malcolm: Basically, no matter how you answer, I always have a greater access to truth than you. And this causes people to distrust their own logic and helps. It's a, [00:23:00] it's a good system for establishing authority. But what's really interesting is that you see this within the communist worldview often is, is when you describe to someone white communism, stupidist, oh, you don't really understand communism if that's why you say communism is stupid.Simone: Wow. I did not expect you to connect like Buddhist cones with. Communist gatekeeping, but itMalcolm: works. But you see this constantly, whatever you explain why communism is stupid, they go, well, that's not, either, that's not true communism or that shows that you think that that's why communism doesn't work. That you don't of course understandSimone: course.Simone: Yeah. You just don't understand. And then they start using like, oh, well you haven't read this, or you don't follow this person'sMalcolm: voice. Well, then you're like, actually, I have, or I have engaged with this, or I have gone over this. I, I, I do have a, one of our books, it was a top. Top selling nonfiction book in the US by Wall Street Journal.Malcolm: It's is on governance structures, right? Like we are something of I wouldn't say full world experts on governance, but we're definitely in the top percent. And communism is stupid. Like you have to be actually [00:24:00] kind of dumb to think it's still a good idea. And we've done other videos on this, but the point being is it's the people who believe it now, they believe it for more religious reasons.Malcolm: So when they're attacking us, they're more reflexively trying to determine if we're part of their social group or not. And when they determine we're not part of our, their social group, they then just reflexively are like, I hate you because you're not a part of my social group. And that's what they're saying when they're saying, I hate you because you're capitalist.Malcolm: Whereas when capitalists are people with more nuance, we're not like pure capitalists either. I think the government definitely has a role in the economy. When, when people with a more nuanced understanding of, of economics attack us they're attacking us often for issues that are more germane to the actual reasons that they specifically don't like us.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, I don't know that we're not using all of our embryos or something.Simone: That and we have punchable faces, but yeah. No,Malcolm: well, that's a good reason to attack us. It super villain legit means a punchable face. And I think I a punchableSimone: face just means you need to punch the face. I, I don't know what to tell you.Simone: Well,Malcolm: I need to, I'll do this for like the picture.[00:25:00]Malcolm: That'll be the nice YouTube picture for this one.Simone: Right. Very good. Very good. Well,Malcolm: can you do a super villain face? What's your super villain face? Um, That's just Dr.Simone: Evil Go. It's a universal sign Language for evil. Hello? I, I don't know what to tell you.Malcolm: I think we are universal sign language for evil, and I like being a super villain. I like being a super villain. I, I, as a kid, I always identified with the villains over the heroes. I always, I never saw the heroes and I was like, I want to be like that.Malcolm: I was like, because the villains. I could be like them. I could make my own suit, I could build my own science powers. I could maybe one day make my own money. And they'reSimone: self-made. Yeah, they're they're self-made. They're very, they're self-made.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. And so I always identified with that. Cause I was like, that is my path, respect.Malcolm: And so one day people will fear me and.Simone: Well, I love being an evil duo with you. You [00:26:00] are my O T P of Evil. I love you so much.Malcolm: Absolutely. And one thing we've mentioned before is in movies, another thing about villains. Only ones who have healthy relationships, whether it's, team Rocket or the Adams family, or you go through media.Malcolm: Vast majority of healthy relationships are villains because in our society's mind, I think when you're talking about these progressive Hollywood writers to them, they cannot imagine anyone who's like them ever having a happy relationship. Mm. So it becomes villainous and socially transgressive to them.Malcolm: To have a genuinely happy relationship. Well, it's the creative types. They are not, they are not prone, they often really buy into this urban mega culture, which makes it really hard to form healthy relationships. So yes, I think we have a healthy relationship. And that healthy relationship is in itself socially transgression.Malcolm: Well, it'sSimone: monsters, evil, villainous. It's beautiful and I love it. And I don't care if this is what evil feels like. [00:27:00] I wanna be evil cause it's so good. I love you. Yeah,Malcolm: sweetheart. 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

In today's deep dive, Malcolm and Simone discuss the complex interplay between physical attractiveness and perceived emotional stability. Drawing upon personal experiences and exploring social constructs, they debunk the notorious "hot-crazy" graph and redefine the spectrum as "hot-evil." The conversation expands on how attractiveness and dating dynamics influence people's emotional well-being and self-perception, and how this subsequently impacts their mental health.As a fascinating twist, Malcolm and Simone reveal their transformation from what they call their "ugly duckling" phase to their current attractiveness, and how this change has influenced their perspective on body image issues. This intriguing discussion delves into the impact of societal pressures and the unrealistic beauty standards set by online spaces. Stay tuned to see how this conversation challenges conventional wisdom about attractiveness and its influence on personality traits.Transcript: Simone: [00:00:00] it, is like having everything on a 50% discount.Simone: Like just not realizing the real price of things, but on a social spectrum, right? SoMalcolm: like is it a little worse than that? So if you're having everyone come fuss over you, every time you cry, every time you lose emotional control in some way, you are being subconsciously emotionally rewarded for losing emotional control for you, losing your composure.Simone: Oh, wow. So, so it's not just that they're given privileged treatment the whole time, it's also that they're, encouraged to engage in very toxic emotional loops that ultimately harms their emotional wellbeing and mental health.Simone: Yeah. So it's, wait, so the spectrum isn't hot? Crazy. It's hot evil, yeah. ForMalcolm: guys it's hot, evil if they're still singleMalcolm: And so this is why I think the guys that keep running through, people that stay on these apps that most women are actually exposed to that don't end up settling down. Mm-hmm. Why they ate. That's almost serving for evil guys because you begin to realize after a while is you've noticed.Malcolm: [00:01:00] Some people who you've hurt.Malcolm: Normal humans don't feel good when they hurt other people. Even if it was unintentionally,Malcolm: and so men who do have that emotion, take themselves off the marketWould you like to know more?Simone: Malcolm. Does being hot make you crazy?Malcolm: I, I think it just might, and I, I like this at the topic cuz a secret that people don't know about us. And I'm gonna post some picture of this proof because people will doubt this is that you and I were born. Ugly. We were born ugly. We were born ugly. We transformed.Malcolm: We transformed. You say, you would've always found me cute. I, I look at some old pictures of you and I would've found you cute, but definitely we are dramatically more attractive now than we were 10Simone: years ago.Simone: No. Okay. Yeah. One, one. Let's say I, I was an ugly duckling that now I'm normal. I would say you are always pretty cute, but you look better now than you used to.Simone: Look, you are way hotter now. IMalcolm: actually think you're delusional about this cause we play this game. I think you are normal if [00:02:00] who you're comparing yourself to is like celebrities and people you watch online. You have to understand, and I thinkSimone: this is, this is actually something we were discussing last night when we were watching a show and some, some female character came on who was supposed to be really hot.Simone: And you were like, I don't get it. She's not hot at all. And I think the issue is that she didn't look 22 and just in like the past five years, basically everyone online started looking 22, I think because of filters. That's an issue. And the problem is, yeah, we stopped, we see someone. Who's aged well, who looks good, but because they don't look 22, we're like, oh, Cris keeper.Simone: Like, what's wrong with, yeah.Malcolm: So I actually think that a lot of our viewers would think that you look normal as well, because I, I, I will agree that was in my evoked set of women. Yeah. You know, you might be on the more normal category, but whenever we're walking around, so we play this game, I play this game.Malcolm: Okay. Like if you're walkingSimone: around in a group of, of normal Americans, but also Americans have a serious health crisis right now,Malcolm: Simone. When we're walking [00:03:00] around, I play this game. We're walking around out into the town, we're walking around in a mall, we're walking around on a cruise. I go, look around, is there anyone in this room that's as attractive as you are?Malcolm: And she won't find anyone. And she'll be like, but that doesn't mean anything because we're what? Because the population sample we're comparing you to is Americans. Like, I think that you are forgetting how unattractive the average person is in this country now. And I think that, that this is a problem that a lot of our viewers have because we've had some viewers reach out to us about like their attractiveness and stuff, where when you are measuring yourself off of this cultural idea from what you see in online spaces, you can create a self-perception that you are much less attractive than you actually are when you compare yourself to the general population.Malcolm: And so if. In our audience has body image issues. I think one of the best ways to deal with those body image issues is to compare yourself to large crowds. Oh. To likeSimone: go to a mall?Malcolm: No, like if somebody thinks I'm not buff enough or I'm not skinny enough. Right. Go to a [00:04:00] mall and say, where am I percentage wise within this community? Mm. If you're in the top 20%, you don't have anything to worry about. And I think that that's a very useful way to reset your expectations in a world where we are seeing people online all the time.Simone: Yeah. Within limitations, like I thinkMalcolm: I.Malcolm: You don't wanna admit it because you have body image issues and you don't wanna accept that you, thatSimone: you're actually, I can't identify as female without having body dysmorphia, Malcolm, otherwise I wouldn't be a woman. You have to understand, like, the way that we all relate to each other is we're like, oh, I hate my thighs.Simone: And you know, someone else is like, I hate my face, I hate my chin, I hate my ear. Lobes are so fat. Anyway what we're here to talk about though, what. Hot crazyMalcolm: graph, right? Yes. We are crazy, but we're not crazy because we're hot. This is a crazy cause we're crazy. First talk about the hot, crazy graph cuz this is a very interesting.Simone: . So I think what I, I don't know where the meme came from, but certainly there are videos out there of like [00:05:00] people charting out a graph of hot and crazy where there's, you know, on one axis there's hot on the other axis, there's crazy. And basically there is a strong correlation.Simone: The hotter you get, the crazier you get. And this is funny to people. It's amusing because it, it often holds true and. It's fun to discuss the dynamics behind that. So why would, especially, and this is for women which is interesting. This is, this is a woman thing. This is not necessarily a man thing. Why would a woman be crazier if she wereMalcolm: hotter?Malcolm: I think it, it, it messes up your social development. Hmm. Because we live in a society today with low switching costs to partners, people can genuinely date a lot when they're younger. So it used to be, you know, if you're a young woman, Technically you can date, but not really.Malcolm: There's no reason to like just fallen over attractive women in the way we do today because you really have to commit to that woman your entire life. And so if she's dated anyone in high school, you know that's the person she's dated throughout all of high school. And if she's dated a lot of people in high school, then she's considered.Malcolm: Low value, right? Like that was the way things used to be. [00:06:00] Historically, I, I'm not gonna say this was a good way of doing things, but what I'm pointing out is that this is a fairly new problem. Mm-hmm. Which is women because they can sleep around without lowering their value as much in modern society.Malcolm: There is an enormous reason for like guys to just absolutely simp over the attractive girls, especially during their formative years, because that's when guys have the highest amount of. Testosterone and sex drive. I often liken male puberty to like, somebody injects you with morphine overnight, so you are addicted to something and it wasn't your choice.Malcolm: You'll just do anything to get it. Like really stupid stuff. And that defines I think, male puberty as doing stupid things to show off to girls. But anyway or, or, or boys sometimes. But anyway, so, it creates a, scenario in which the social limits. That normal people , are building, do not get taught to these hot women through no fault of their own.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Like a [00:07:00] huge number of social lessons that a normal person would learn. These women never get a chance to learn during that really important developmental period of their lives.Simone: Well, you described it to me at one point when we were talking about it, is like having everything on a 50% discount.Simone: Like just not realizing the real price of things, but on a social spectrum, right? SoMalcolm: like is it a little worse than that? , and we've talked about this in other videos, The more you allow yourself to indulge in any emotion, the harder that emotion becomes to control.Simone: It's, it's pretty, oh, right. It's like the, the punching bag thing where if, yeah, if you, this whole teapot letting off steam theory is really toxic because actually if you like punch the punching bag in anger, you're gonna feel more anger if you just kind of let it go. Yeah. This has been shown inMalcolm: studies people who like punch a wall or punch a bag after, after they get angry as a form of therapy for it, actually get.Malcolm: More angry in the future and get angrier due to lower amounts of stimuli that would induce anger, right? So it's the same thing as like crying. So if you're having everyone come fuss over you, every time you cry, every time you lose emotional [00:08:00] control in some way, you are being subconsciously emotionally rewarded for losing emotional control for losing your composure. And of course that's gonna really mess you up as a girl. And I think that that is why when I've dated, , really attractive women in the past, I have often noticed that they do have a lot harder time controlling their emotions than less attractive women.Malcolm: And they do cycle between emotional extremes much more often. And I think that's because they are often rewarded for doing that when they'reSimone: younger. Oh, wow. So, so it's not just that they're given to like privileged treatment the whole time, it's also that they're, it's encouraged to engage in very toxic emotional loops that ultimately harms their emotional wellbeing and mental health.Malcolm: Yes, yes, yes. But it's worse than all that. Cause our society. People are trained to find a lack of emotional control attractive. And powerful in many ways. You see this in shows like the huge emotional out [00:09:00] outflow is seen as a sign of power, whether it's, you know, dragon ballsy, like, you know, really, but, but you see this, you know, somebody gets really emotional and then all of a sudden they have the power to fix something.Malcolm: Right? Like, that's, that's often a, a, a tr in, in shows or the characters that are seen as having uniquely low emotional control, like a Harley Quinn or a jinx is shown as being like that aspect of them is shown as being desirable. Yeah.Malcolm: So we have archetypes of ideal sexuality, outside of sexuality as tied to like motherhood or sexuality as tied to like long-term partner traits as personified by the civil of crazy because I think people have come to associate the two to some extent, so, Women are rewarded by guys finding them more sexually attractive, but lower value as partners, which in another way is psychologically torturing these women, cuz the women are being rewarded for acting in a way that makes men more likely to show them in the moment.Malcolm: Kindness, but less [00:10:00] likely to over the long term, be interestedSimone: in that. I think there's also what I could call the Daisy Buchanan syndrome, which is like, she wasn't crazy per se as a character, but there were a lot of really beautiful. Women that I knew in college who clearly, like they would talk about this.Simone: Like I, I would work with, I I, at one point I worked in this cupcake shop where like everyone there was super hot and they like all slept with each other. It was amazing. It was a favoriteMalcolm: one from the Georgetown Cupcakes from Cupcake Wars.Simone: Not cupcake wars. Like I think the reality TV show that they had was called Cupcake Sisters.Simone: Okay. Continue. But anyway, everyone was hot. And, and hearing about their, their dating and, and love lives was really interesting. And the interesting thing about the most, attractive people was like, there was this deep sadness among many of them and like deep distrust of men specifically because , they knew that they were really attractive and that they were kind of apprised to be one.Simone: And that [00:11:00] many of the, the men who were interested in them were, were only interested in them because of their looks, and it wasn't about them. And they, they couldn't, they weren't, they weren't essentially allowed to be appreciated for their intelligence, for their interests, for other accomplishments.Simone: And I do think it's interesting that that would create so much sadness in, in a woman when, like, on the flip side, like men who know that women are after them because of their wealth and their Rolexes and their cars and stuff are like, kind of really proud of that. So like they don't have that same sadness of like, oh, the woman is only interested in me because I'm incredibly wealthy.Simone: What's goingMalcolm: on there? Well, I guess I'd call this another category of hot crazy, which is like hot on we hot.Simone: It's the syndrome fromMalcolm: syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I, I've definitely seen this phenomenon as well, this whistless, non-interested, engaging and keep in mind that these women also, Get less credit for anything they achieve.Malcolm: Totally. Yeah. So, so if they achieve money, if they achieve success, if they achieve academics, [00:12:00] often people just discount it. They're like, oh, you got that because you're hot. You know? Exactly. And so how demotivating must that B to B systematically discounted to have an entire half of the population that like lies to you about everything.Malcolm: And then another half. Because this has been shown in studies that women, when they're around attractive women, they'll undermine them. Like, they'll then beauty.Simone: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll pull them down because they're seen as threats, like when they stand out for their beauty. Yeah. Which ultimately makes me so glad to learnMalcolm: helplessness.Malcolm: That's what you're seeing in the daysSimone: Yeah. That they get. Yeah. But like, so, and, and so really you, you could argue that. Below average looking, especially adolescent women, which is what I was like May if I'm a five now on, on the internet. And maybe a little higher in reality. But like I was Oh, really? A little below average in my high school,Malcolm: was probably good friend.Malcolm: Well, I'll put up pictures and, and, and you were kept out of this reality show. It was filming while you were at the cupcake store and they hid you in the back and had the. AttractiveSimone: employees. Yeah, it was. I was, yeah. Yeah. Only the hot people were allowed to be to be in it, which was great. Amazing. [00:13:00] See, I don't qualify, but, but I honestly think it really helped me now, like there were guys who had crushes on me.Simone: I later learned, cuz I couldn't figure it out when I was in high school, but they had crushes on me because of my. Academic achievement and my intelligence or whatever, because the, these same guys also had crushes on like other really high academic performers at our school. So like, and, and, and imagine what, like, how, how nice that was that like, I knew that people were interested in me because, you know, I, I did weird things and because I was, you know, interested in, in weird stuff or because I, you know, was passionate about certain things and instead to just be appreciated because I.Simone: You're, you are attractive. It would be really hard, like it could really screw up a girl. It makes me think differently about how we might raise our own daughters because if we, give them all the tools to look really, really, really good young, it might actually kind of screw them up.Simone: Not that I want to make them look horrible, but like, I, I kind of understand now the [00:14:00] parental hesitancy to like, have girls learn how to use makeup really early, very effectively. Although now it's really messed up cuz you can just use filters to like completely skew the way you looks. I, I don't know what to make of this, but it is something to think about.Malcolm: No, I, I agree with what you're saying, but I hear, I'm gonna talk about the other thing, which is crazy guys. So the interesting thing about hot, crazy girls Okay, is that they end up acting crazy in ways they really can't control because they're psychologically conditioned while they're growing up, okay?Malcolm: And it's very hard for them to escape this. Okay? Hot guys typically don't get the huge advantage to being hot until they're older, because women prefer older men. And because that's. Advantage. And it is true. You can look at the data. It is, it is not an illusion that 20% of guys are getting 80% of women, but, but it's actually more extreme than that.Malcolm: It's more like, Two to 3% of guys are getting any woman they want or, maybe, maybe 6% I, I go like that. But what it means is these are the guys who a lot of women are engaging with because they're engaging with a lot of women. They're also what most women are [00:15:00] thinking about.Malcolm: When they're like, I hate men. What they mean is they hate these men who are really hot, who they considered worth their time going out with and everything like that. Mm-hmm. These men who at any point can choose between who have very low switching costs, you know, they can dispose of a partner and then choose a new partner at any time.Malcolm: Right. They have very little motivation to treat their partners well. And so they in many ways receive almost no punishment for being cruel. To their partners or being honorable to their partners. And so you just get this, this horrible action from them. And I think that the hot, honorable guys because I know a number of them, they get locked down early.Malcolm: They get locked down typically. Few years outta college at the latest. Yeah. And so what that means is if you're still on the dating market, like in your thirties and you're going after hot guys, right? Like guys above a certain level of attractiveness, they are pretty much all in this non honorable category because no one has decided to lie down, right?Malcolm: They're theSimone: the ones who wouldn't [00:16:00] ever marry you anyway, because all the ones who would ever marry you have been married off, right?Malcolm: So they're treating you. Crazily, but not crazy, like low emotional control due to something outside of your control that the women hot, crazy deal is, but like evil, crazy.Simone: Yeah. So it's, wait, so the spectrum isn't hot? Crazy. It's hot evil, yeah. ForMalcolm: guys it's hot, evil if they're still single. Yeah. For single. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so you can have a guy that goes hot and evil. But, but you know, try not to, but it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I do like that. I'd like a woman in the same way they have the guys talking about the hot crazy chart.Malcolm: The hot evil chart. Yeah, the hot evil chart. Because the hotter they are, the more evil they're, they're going to turn out to be. But then of course all the red pillars would be like, well, that's the thing that makes them hot is that they're evil and Right. Yes. There's a component of that to it. But even if that component didn't exist, you would still have a reward for this behavior.Malcolm: Mm. But what I think is important to remember, and I would recommend this to all of the hot guys [00:17:00] out there my fellow hotties it's not that I'm hot, I don't know. No, you'reSimone: so hot. OhMalcolm: my God. I had an easy time with women. I've always had a very easy time with women. But what I would say is that not.Malcolm: Locking down a partner and, and getting in a long term relationship that hurts you just as much as it hurts the people you're, you're running through.Simone: Okay, but explain this, cause I mean it, if I'm thinking about this from a guy's perspective, like more, more female sexual partners equals better. Why wouldMalcolm: I not?Malcolm: Well that really get into high numbers. So this was seen as like when ALA lined everyone up, she did this live Twitter poll of how many partners you'd slept with. And I realized that like in a giant crowd, how many people were there?Simone: I. I don't know, like 200. I'm really bad at counting 200. IMalcolm: was second to the end, third to the end in terms ofSimone: number.Malcolm: I've had this experience, and what happens? Is sex begins to become gross once you get like well over a hundred people.Malcolm: Like your body count gets that high as a guy, it becomes routine and gross and you start [00:18:00] thinking more about like the cleanup, and you are really only still doing it at that point for the status it grants you. Mm-hmm. And I think that the people who still sleep around a lot, like in their thirties, the guys who do that, I think they're trying to make up for either the way they see themselves or maybe not getting enough sex when they were younger.Malcolm: And so having some self-image issue because sex is just, it actually doesn't reward guys enough to really do it that frequently with that many people. You begin to get sick of it after a while. Mm-hmm. So, so one, I just don't think that they're actually enjoying it that much. The anticipation of sex is a much stronger mechanism than the actual reward for having sex.Malcolm: When you meditate on it in the moment, the, the actual feelings from having sex are just not that good. They, they're, they're fine. Like they're good, but they're not, like, they're not worth like a day of work. Much less like months of labor in trying to get someone, if, if you're one of these, you know, guys who is really [00:19:00] struggling with this.Malcolm: So, so one is, I think a lot of these guys are just not getting that much reward anymore. Mm-hmm. And then too, I think what guys really want, and the truth of what they want is, is somebody who genuinely cares about them. Somebody who's who, you know, kids, I can tell you. Having kids. Around the house, like playing with my kids is so much better than sex.Malcolm: In terms of theSimone: actual, isn't this a damnation of my sexual prowess, Malcolm? No, no, no, no. I'veMalcolm: had sex with women. It has nothing to do. The point that I'm making. Is that the core difference in our society is one of these things is tied to a lot of guys' self-worth. So they think I'm not a real guy, I'm not manly enough if I'm not out there sleeping with a lot of people.Malcolm: Yeah. And, and our society pretends like that, that it's a lot better than, than playing with your kids. But if you, I think to most of men, now, keep in mind people are different. Some people are born like, some guys are born liking penises, right? Like, I, I don't know. I, I guess some people [00:20:00] are born probably getting less intrinsic happiness from playing with their kids.Malcolm: I. People are born all over the spectrum, but at least for me, like what if I actually tried to , meditate on how much actual positive emotions I'm getting from the two experiences. Yeah. If like, not evenSimone: close. So you think part part of that's though this stage of your adult development? I think if you were a teenager, definitely like spending time with kids, probably not gonna be as satisfyingMalcolm: as I think you're right.Malcolm: I think you're right, but I think that your development reacts organically to your environment in many ways. So I think if I was younger and I got into a developed relationship sooner, like a committed relationship sooner, my testosterone would drop sooner. Yeah. And, and, and this sort of stage of, of my, the human life cycle would begin sooner.Malcolm: Yeah. But I, I, I guess what I'm saying is as somebody who went through that experience of. Being able to just, sleep with whoever they wanted for a long period of time. , when I was, , really horny when I was at that stage in my life where like that emotion is, is [00:21:00] maximized.Malcolm: I can say that when you're at the stage of your life where like fatherhood is maximized that emotional well is just a much richer emotional well yeah. And you feel much better afterwards cuz you never like, That was another thing is I, I think when you sleep with a lot of people, you begin to worry about hurting people.Malcolm: And I think that this is something that people don't talk about, but I think a lot of guys, and, and so this is why I think the guys that keep running through, people that stay on these apps that most women are actually exposed to that don't end up settling down. Mm-hmm. Why they ate. That's almost serving for evil guys because you begin to realize after a while is you've noticed.Malcolm: Some people who you've hurt.Simone: Yeah. And so those, those who keep, keep going at it or those who just don'tMalcolm: care. Yeah. Who felt their emotional connection to you was stronger than the emotional connection you had to them. Or they develop like some really strong bond to you because you know you're the first person they slept with, and then when you, you know, you move on because that, that wasn't what you were in that relationship for.Malcolm: And you signaled that to them very clearly. They just didn't believe [00:22:00] you or thought it was some sort of a gambit. Yeah. They end up hurting. And I think that normal humans don't feel good when they hurt other people. Even if it was unintentionally, even if you signal to the person, you know, I suspect you're gonna get attached to me and when I leave you, it will hurt you.Malcolm: And so I think that, that people who do have that emotion, men who do have that emotion, take themselves off the market and, and in, in a way that, yeah. So that could be another reason why you have this hot, evil graph with guys who the women are engaging when they go into the market. The ones that are still on the market are just more likely to be evil because they don't care about the people they hurt.Simone: And I'm, I'm, I'm just thinking about the similarities between kid time and sexy time. Oxy toss. Oh, oxytocin surges. Yes. Cleanup is necessary. You know, yes. You might wanna shower after Yes.Malcolm: But, but you never, I never feel like, did I hurt my kid? No, just wrestling with them or fighting with fake swords. Well,Simone: They're devastated when playtime is over and they have to go [00:23:00] to bed.Simone: You have, you know that the negotiation that that happens with our, oh no, I stillMalcolm: need, I want this. I lead you to handle those negotiations. Don't leave me.Simone: Oh no. I want another hug. I don't know, man. Anyway, though, you're in for a treat because we've gotta go pick up our kids right now,Malcolm: so. Ooh. And then we have our fancy dinner tonight.Simone: Yeah. So you gotta run up. Get your shirt on and I'm gonna get some bottles and diapers together and off we go. Love you, Simone. I love you too, Malcolm. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm takes a deep dive into the current societal trends, specifically highlighting what he calls the "progressive mind virus". This "virus", he suggests, aims to homogenize society and systematically extinguish all genuine cultural diversity. He passionately argues for the importance of unity among diverse cultural and religious groups, focusing on Orthodox Jewish populations, to counter this prevailing issue. Also, Simone and Malcolm engage in a light-hearted conversation about performative Star Wars fandom and the impact of cultural signaling in our everyday interactions.Transcript:Malcolm: [00:00:00] right now the big boogeyman is this progressive mind virus, which is, taking control of our education system and using it to erase and eradicate any culture. That shows any sort of independent thinking Everyone needs to have exactly the same views on gender. Everyone needs to have the same views on morality. Everyone has to have the same views on sexuality. Everyone has to have the same views on how we relate to the environment. Everyone has to have the same views on how how women and men relate to each other and, and they're pressing this and they're like, they are trying to homogenize society, systematically extinguish all genuine cultural diversity . One of the groups that has the longest. History of fighting against that. Regardless of what you think about like their their allegiances, they do care about their own kids, Orthodox Jewish populations, and because of that, not only are they disproportionately in positions of power across the conservative movement, why they're in these positions of power, why they're fighting so hard.Malcolm: Makes sense. It's because it's the same reason that we're fighting hard and they're not trying to convert your kids. Yeah, that they [00:01:00] don't, they don't want an all Jewish world. That's not the way their religion works. That's not the way their cultural group works. They are genuinely one of the lowest threat groups to you and one of the highest value aligned groups to you.Malcolm: And , one of the things that really gave me heart is when Andrew Tate converted to Islam and conservatives weren't like, oh, you bastar, they were like, oh yeah. We understand that because that's what society is though. It's an alliance of conservative groups against this progressive mind virus that wants to systematically erase and homogenize every culture on the planet.Malcolm: And we all have a lot in common. And if you try to form an ideological faction that is just your narrow cultural group in the hope that one day you can dominate the entire planet.Malcolm: I'm sorry. You are so delusional about how much power your cultural group has right now. All of us, all of the Orthodox groups, all of the conservative groups are on the back foot right now. And the only way we win this is through working together.[00:02:00] And I do think that we can beat this progressive mind virus. I do think that, that it will not win. And I hope that some alliance of different cultural traditions can stay together coming out of this and fight off the cultural traditions that like the progressives want to do now, want to erase all cultural diversity in the world.Malcolm: But even if you are from one of those cultural traditions, just understand that you're on a weak footing now.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And you need to fight with us or we all get erased. . And we need to just have this conversation where we need to have the conversation that we are different.Malcolm: The conservative Protestants are different from the conservative Catholics, and they're different from the conservative Jews, and that's our strengths because that's not true of the progressive Catholics and the progressives, Protestants and the progressive Jews. If you scratch beneath the surface, if the same views on gender, the same views on sexuality, the same views on our relationship to the environment, the same views on morality, the same views on the future of our species.Malcolm: They, they just have different holidays. What's that? That's not, that's not [00:03:00] difference. That's not strengthened diversity. That's, that's people who have had their cultures hollowed out and then worn, like a ghoulish skin mask is dusting and horrifying. And, and, and I am sick of it.Malcolm: I am, I am sick of this cultural extermination campaign that so many people are standing by. Wow. And, and I think that it, it will take an alliance, it will take all of the people of middle Earth coming together to fight these hodes that want to see us erase from this earth.Simone: So this morning while we were dropping off the kids at daycare I was talking with Malcolm about our difference between performative Star Wars fandom and actual Star Wars fandom, which which is actually inspired by the fact that like all the cars in our daycares parking lot are really nerdy.Simone: Like they all have anime and Star Wars stickers on them, and it's really hilarious. It's, it's how mainstream these things are, but I was, but when I met Malcolm incredibly, A [00:04:00] performative Star Wars fan, like I didn't, I don't really like the movies that much. Not that into it, not into the lore. And yet my OkCupid username was Mos Eisley ton, a ton of Star Wars references in my Okay.Simone: QID profile. And um, I was also posing in film grade Storm Trooper Armor, which I owned. Um, So it's, it's funny that I just use that as a signaling method. I, I think many women do use nerdy things as a signaling method without actually being into 'em at all ,Malcolm: oh, because arbitrage play, there's less women in nerdy communities.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So you can mm-hmm. Oh, and you admit it, youSimone: sneak, I own it. I own it. I, no, I'm just like, this is a thing that happens and women who pretend otherwiseMalcolm: are, yeah. You didn't even go to anime convent conventions and like, did you even care? You don't even No, no, no, no,Simone: no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I love anime.Simone: So don't even, don't especially manga. No, don't go there, friend. But we, we were, we actually just. In the afternoon revisited my complete performative Star Wars fandom and his [00:05:00] genuine like weird star Star Wars fandom. No, no.Malcolm: Hold on. I like the lore. I don't like any of the new stuff. Okay.Simone: Right, right. You like, yeah, you're in it for the plot friend.Simone: Okay. So anyway That's, I, I asked him like, what do you mean you wanna talk about don't, don't order 66 your own Jews? That just shows like how performative I am. Because orderMalcolm: 60, no order 66, order 66 in Star Wars is the order that was given to the clones to kill the Jedi. And I, I often feel when I'm in conservative communities these days, one, one really Crazy thing is, you were on Ed Dutton's podcast and people were like in the comments trying to figure out if you were Jewish.Malcolm: Jewish I don't know. So she is like one 16th Jewish, not that much. Like one eighth Jewish, I think one eighth Jewish Junos. Right.Simone: I have a Junos one. JuMalcolm: knows, right? But, but Matrilineally Jewish though, I guess like technically she is kind of Jewish, but, but she didn't grow up knowing that she was Metro Jewish.Malcolm: She found that out when she was an adult and they went into family history. But what was interesting [00:06:00] was just the hostility that a community that's not even like religious, like his listeners are like edgy, atheist types, right? Ethno supremacist sortSimone: of types sometimes supremacists.Simone: That'sMalcolm: great. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess they are, and, and they, they have such hostility towards, and then we talk to other people. We, we've talked to some like really spicy conservative people and they're sort of like, oh, I don't know. Is this a Jewish idea? We should be worried about this.Malcolm: And I'm like, I think that there is a serious misunderstanding of, Jews as a cultural group, and I say this to somebody who is, has no like history personally with like I have a lot of Jewish friends, but like I. Personally, I'm not genetically Jewish, I'm, none of my ancestors are Jewish, anything like that.Malcolm: And yet as an outsider, I can see that there is a misunderstanding of what's going on here. So here's where I think conservatives are correct when they say, Oh [00:07:00] Hollywood is serving our kids bad values, and Hollywood has a disproportionate number of Jews within it.Malcolm: Okay? And I'm like, okay, those two things are true. But the conservative intellectual sphere, fear also has a disproportionate number of Jews in it. The, the people who are getting conservative politicians elected has a disproportionate number of Jews within it. Pretty much any position of power in our society has a disproportionate number of Jews in it.Malcolm: And it's, and so this is one of those things that's, that's really offensive. And I think it is partially why when I talk about the, the order 66 on the Jews, why I'm increasingly getting worried for the Jewish community. So, so just quick aside here. I, I think the conservative movement has always had a ethno isolationist aspect to it.Malcolm: I, I think it's getting smaller and smaller as the conservative movement shifts and it's, it's, it's distributing throughout the movements. But historically in the US a the, the progressive movement has been until recently, the more pluralistic movement. But now part of the progressive philosophy is defined [00:08:00] by this idea of.Malcolm: You can tell which groups are evil by which groups who have power and victimhood is a virtue. And so if, if they've created this narrative of these groups are in power only because they have victimized other groups, and then you look around and you're like, oh, well, Jewish people do I think very inarguably disproportionately end up within positions of power in our society.Malcolm: Yeah. Does that mean. Like it, it, it's very hard to maintain this narrative that they historically are a victimized group. If you buy into this mindset, it's oh, well they must be oppressive and, and worse within different progressive groups, we're beginning to see now this idea of. White people aren't the bad guys.Malcolm: The Jewish people are, the most overrepresented group was in positions of power. You're talking about in proportion to the percentage of the population. Therefore, they must be the ultimate bad guys. And this is why you see people what was that communist group of That was . Burning Anne Frank's diaries for their campfires. [00:09:00] And, and this is what you're seeing on the extreme left right now, which I think when you begin to see antisemitism rise within the extreme left and within in the extreme right, that's not good.Malcolm: But, but to my larger point here, I think that there is a, a, because our politics today are so focused on your enemies, Groups can ignore their allies and they can begin to define, okay, this group is overrepresented within positions of power among my enemies. Therefore, it is an enemy group. And yet the most competent conservative allies, you know, and Ben Shapiro, right?Malcolm: I, I actually really like Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro calls us nerds. He did like a whole, like you podcast on like us being nerds and like people shouldn't listen to us. And, and, and because we're nerds, basically. He's who are these weirdos? BenSimone: Shapiro says, we're nerds. ButMalcolm: I think that's a sign of true nerdom.Malcolm: You wanna say No. Star Wars fronting about Star Wars. That's not how you become a true nerd. No. [00:10:00] When. Holy b***h, you broke all you a nerd then. You're a true nerd. Oh God. But you know, he's done a lot to progress the conservative cause. And I, and I think one of the things there was this YouTube a while ago, and they're like, look at how many of Joe Rogan's guests are, are Jewish?Malcolm: And it's yes. Because a lot of leading conservative intellectuals are Jewish. Right? And this is what I talk about. If you have a group that is disproportionately in positions of power, this is why use a Jedi analogy, don't order 66 year old Jews. Do not start stabbing them in the back. With this whole anti-Semitic movement that is gaining steam, I think on both the left and the right, if the right moves back from this position and becomes a safe haven from the Jews at the same time as the left is moving more and more anti-Jewish.Malcolm: Yeah. You'll never win Reformed Jews, but reformed Jews. I mean, they are, they are. So, they are like the Unitarian Universalists. They, they are to Judaism as Unitarian Universalism is to. Evangelicalism, or Catholicism. Right? When you see people in [00:11:00] positions of power on the left, You see they are reformed Jews and you say, ah, this is proof that Jews can't be good conservative allies or, or the Jewish population at large is against us.Malcolm: To me this is very much like a person looking at the leftists in positions of power and seeing Unitarian universalists in a lot of these positions and being like, well, this is why I can't trust Protestants, right? Like, What, this is the, a highly memetically in infected with this progressive mind virus group.Malcolm: Like you can't, that that's not representative of the Jewish people more broadly. You look at the Orthodox Jewish group, these people are incredibly conservative in the way that they view everything, and they've been able to maintain their traditions with fidelity across generations. So, In the face of highly diverse, if we're dealing with a world where immigrants are posing more of a threat to us, if anything, we can learn from Orthodox Jewish populations that have for [00:12:00] a long time been the minority in their, their cultural environments and been able to pass on their cultural group intergenerationally with fidelity.Simone: Something, something, gift, horse, mouth, et cetera.Malcolm: Well, I mean, don't look at if, if you, if you take inventory of both, who are the most competent people on both sides of, of the cultural battlefield right now there are few groups.Malcolm: As motivated and, and, and, and that have dealt with a situation like this historically. So if right now the big boogeyman is this progressive mind virus, which is, taking control of our education system and using it to erase and eradicate any culture. That shows any sort of independent thinking from our society.Malcolm: You know, Everyone needs to have exactly the same views on gender. Everyone needs to have the same views on morality. Everyone has to have the same views on sexuality. Everyone has to have the same views on how we relate to the environment. Everyone has to have the same views on how we relate, like how, how women and men relate to each other [00:13:00] and, and they're pressing this and they're like, We support diversity just except anywhere where there's actually like meaningful ideological diversity.Malcolm: It must be stamped out there, right? Like they are trying to homogenize society, systematically extinguish all genuine cultural diversity in our society. One of the groups that has the longest. History of fighting against that. Regardless of what you think about like their competency today or, or their allegiances, they do care about their own kids, Orthodox Jewish populations, and I think because of that, they are, not only are they disproportionately in positions of power across the conservative movement, why they're in these positions of power, why they're fighting so hard.Malcolm: Makes sense. It's because it's the same reason that we're fighting hard and they're not trying to convert your kids. Yeah, that they don't, they don't want an all Jewish world. That's not the way their religion works. That's not the way their cultural group works. They are genuinely one of the lowest threat groups to you and one of the highest [00:14:00] value aligned groups to you.Malcolm: And one of the things that really gave me heart is when Andrew Tate converted to Islam and conservatives weren't like, oh, you bastar, they were like, oh yeah. We understand that because that's what society is though. It's an alliance of conservative groups against this progressive mind virus that wants to systematically erase and homogenize every culture on the planet.Malcolm: And we all have a lot in common. Even when you're talking about other groups, like a lot of conservatives these days, they have some, animosity towards Muslim cultural groups. These Muslims aren't converting your kids. They, they do not have any aims at erasing your cultural group through capturing educational systems and converting your kids.Malcolm: That's where the immediate threat is right now. Understand that they are just as threatened, a Muslim immigrant. By the progressive elite within our society as you are, as are the Orthodox Jews. And if you try to form an ideological [00:15:00] faction that is just your narrow cultural group in the hope that one day you can dominate the entire planet.Malcolm: I'm sorry. You are so delusional about how much power your cultural group has right now. All of us, all of the Orthodox groups, all of the conservative groups are on the back foot right now. And the only way we win this is through working together. It's through genuine pluralism.Simone: Well, yeah, I mean, what I think is interesting about this, and part of me thinks that this is our, like Silicon Valley.Simone: Background speaking. So it could be a view that actually people strongly disagree with. But we were raised post meeting each other and certainly in our entrepreneurial and career lives to believe that he who moves first and fastest and most boldly is he who wins. So a defensive strategy oh, let's trademark this, let's copyright this, let's stealth this.Simone: Like all, protect, protect, protect. Attack anyone who tries to copy you, like you will not win it is move fast and break things in Silicon Valley. And I think that we view things very similarly culturally. [00:16:00] It, it is move fast and break things. So it doesn't matter like a, a defensive strategy it's not something that would ever occur to us culturally speaking because we come from a mindset of, I don't care about my enemies.Simone: My enemies will not even really exist because I'm going to build the future and they won't be a part of it. That kind of thing. You know what I mean? Well,Malcolm: I mean, I think what you're missing here is our enemies are so good at erasing our cultures right now that many of the conservative cultural groups will not survive this.Malcolm: When you look at things like Mormons falling below population rate, when you look at their bleed rate, I would have thought 10 years ago if I was like, there's an alliance of conservative cultural groups who's one of the strongest positions here, and that blanket's breaking. Um, You know that that's, and, and, and I think that some conservative groups, part of their strength is their traditionalism, their unwillingness to accept new ways of doing things.Malcolm: . You can look at a great example here in the Amish are a great example of this, right? Hmm. They don't adapt to new ways of doing things. They don't move fast and break things.Malcolm: What we should think of ourselves as is a, a [00:17:00] multicultural and multi front. Battlefield and understanding that different, the, the strength in our diversity is different players on this battlefield have different strengths. And sometimes that strengths is a group's traditionalism. It is their steadfastness and it is their defensiveness.Malcolm: But if the defensive groups say, no, no, no, we wanna get rid of people like you and, and Malcolm, right. Because you're from a highly accelerationist, a highly aggressive group. Mm-hmm. It's well, If you just take a defensive position, eventually the entire front loses. Mm-hmm. We need certain groups that are going to at risk to themselves.Malcolm: An acceleration is position. A culturally experimental position puts our culture at more risk.Simone: Well, yeah. It's offensive, it's moving. It's moving more of your team into an offensive position and leaving. Leaving, honestly, your defense kind of weak. Well,Malcolm: yes, but that's for our culture because we have other people on our flanks.Malcolm: Mm. Cause we have the, the, whether [00:18:00] it's, it's the Amish or the Catholics on the flanks holding ground where we move in and do things with the Collins Institute, try to break through the front lines and take control of an aspect of the education system so that we can protect the cultural diversity that I think makes the world strong.Malcolm: Hmm. At the very least, do not attack the groups that are making these aggressive maneuvers because you cannot win just by holding steady. You, you do have to make aggressive maneuvers. You do have to break through lines and , no group, no conservative group has enough numbers or enough willpower even to win on their own these days.Malcolm: Mm. , and I think that some conservative groups are really just like progressives in disguise. Like they want to impose their cultural group on everyone else after they win. One of the few groups that I'm really not worried about here is the Jews, right? So I'm like, why?Malcolm: Why? They're, they're one of the few groups that I'm like, I know they, they don't want to, well, maybe my kids because they're technically Jewish, but most kids, it is, I think just an [00:19:00] incredibly dumb position that takes the perspective of a world that no longer exists, a world in which you had a country.Malcolm: Where you were, the culturally dominant faction in which the world was made up of, of countries where your country was your ethnicity, which was your culture, that's not the world anymore. And the countries that have stayed in that world are some of the weakest on the current playing field. It is the weakest strategy you can take.Simone: Right?Simone: Okay. So a good example of a culture following the strategy is Korea by staying homogenous, either through inaction or inability to bring in outsiders or an unwillingness to do so. Yeah, and they've doneMalcolm: a very good job of keeping out immigrants, but eventually they will die.Malcolm: Just keeping yourself in a hermetic pod doesn't save you. Mm-hmm. And I think that learning to work in a multicultural ecosystem is, Something that the surviving cultural groups will have to do. I think coming out of this period in conservative history, [00:20:00] one faction of conservatism will be a genuinely pluralistic cultural group that is okay with different cultural groups.Malcolm: I. Working together towards a common goal. We're from a Calvinist cultural group, which also isn't that interested in converting other people, we'll, we'll breed our, our, our, our cultural affection. We don't need to convert people. That's, that's not something we're interested in. But I do believe that we gain strengths from a diversity of opinions.Malcolm: And I think that coming out of this, I do think that we can beat this progressive mind virus. I do think that, that it will not win. And I hope that some alliance of different cultural traditions can stay together coming out of this and fight off the cultural traditions that like the progressives want to do now, want to erase all cultural diversity in the world.Malcolm: Want everyone to think the same, want everyone to have the same moral system. But even if you are from one of those cultural traditions, just understand that you're on a weak footing now.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And you need to fight with [00:21:00] us or we all get erased. Everyone who differentiates from the mind virus and the mind virus does not lead to a prospering, intergalactic human ecosystem. They, they do not want that. You look at what they, when we, when we're behind closed doors with them, they're genuine, negative utilitarians.Malcolm: They're like, yeah, but would the world really be so bad without humans? Look at all the suffering we cause, look at all the suffering we cause in animals. Look at all the infighting we have. If we go extinct and it's just due to low fertility rates, is it really that bad? They do not care about extinction events.Malcolm: You look, and I point out to them, I'm like, look, you guys have controlled the academic system for the past 25 years, and the amount of money that needs to go into new discoveries, and new discoveries in general are slowing down. The replicability crisis is getting worse. It seems that you have genuinely gotten bad at searching for truth.Malcolm: Does that not concern you? And they're like, well, not really, because we're creating less negative emotions in the world, right? Like through the ideology we're pushing, we're lowering negative emotions than that. It might be true, but that's the way a [00:22:00] negative utilitarian sees the world.Malcolm: They, they, they cannot take us to the stars and therefore they are an incredibly risky group to leave in a position of power. I don't mind if, if, if. Some group that's radically different from us war Hammer style ends up on giant cathedral ships going to the stars, right? That, that, obviously that's not how they first went to the Stars in War Hammer.Malcolm: Sorry, I'm getting nerdy about lore here that again, the Empire of Man turned into. I'm just saying I do like cathedral ships. Aesthetically, I think they're pretty cool. We, we, we can do that.Simone: Yeah, I mean, when, when I think about like cool sci-fi scenarios of this, and I don't think you ever like it, but I really like Dune.Simone: You've got all these really different groups that kind of use each other may not respect each other, sometimes respect each other definitely mess with each other are very ideologically different but still create a very interesting universe and. I like that because there's a lot of interplay.Simone: I don't know how that works in the war hammer universe. [00:23:00] But I, I do, I do love sci-fi explorations of how it could be though. I guess they're kind of just, Extrapolations of what is here now.Malcolm: Well, it's interesting, you're talking about the war hammer universe. It depends on how you would interpret it.Malcolm: So some people would say, well, they're all technically following, the same religion, like worshiping the emperor of man. Right. Okay. But if you look at the cultural differences between space, marine units, for example they are easily. As big or bigger because they're also genetic cultural differences.Malcolm: Mm. Between the pretty big genetic cultural differences. Do you gain people's memories when you eat them? Oh, oh, okay. Bigger than cultural differences between most of the conservative cultural traditions that exist today. So if they can work together towards this, this prosperous future for our species, hopefully we can,Simone: fingers crossed, well, Let's see.Simone: Have you changed my view on anything? We talk about this a lot, so, or we're a little bit too [00:24:00] aligned maybe next time. Well, what IMalcolm: like to create is I like if I'm thinking like 3D chess, how do you play this? Mm-hmm. If you can really damper down the antisemitism in the conservative party.Malcolm: Really have people attack it whenever they see it. Okay. ThenMalcolm: in an era in which the progressives are moving more and more towards anti-Semitic positions and the progressive fringes are becoming more and more virulently, anti-Semitic you.Malcolm: Allow in the same way. So a lot of people don't know this, but in the 1970s, Catholics were majority progressive. They were Democrats majority. Mm-hmm. And this is when the conservative party took the position against abortion. Before this, the majority of re conservative Republicans at the 1970s conference were actually more, they were not only pro-abortion, but the conservative your average Republican was more pro-abortion than your average Democrat.Malcolm: Oh. And a lot of people, they're, they're not familiar with this. The core reason the conservative party made this shift was to bring the Catholic cultural faction into our fold. And it worked. [00:25:00] It worked with flying colors. And it was because at the time Democrats were taking shakier and shakier positions vis-a-vis Catholics.Malcolm: Right now we're in a society where the Democrats are taking shakier and shakier progressives, vis-a-vis the Jewish population. We can right now, we can peel off that population in the same way the conservative movement did.Malcolm: The Catholics in the 1970s. And I think that the, another population that we can easily peel out, which I'll talk about in a future video, is the Hispanic population. Because I think naturally they're very aligned with us, same with Orthodox Jewish population and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population.Malcolm: They're just naturally very aligned with the conservative movement, so long as we can commit toSimone: cultural pluralism. Okay. I'm, I'm sold on this Sounds great, but I mean, what actually would it take. To get the conservative party to be a little less anti-Semitic seems kind of like not plausible. Yeah, sure.Simone: It would be great if that's possible, [00:26:00] but I just don't like would major influencer if enough major influencers in this space just. Decided to not be cool with it and shamed it a lot, would that make the difference? AndMalcolm: what would it take? I think the number one thing we need to do is talk about it. So this whole video, the very fact that I'm talking about Jewish people is like a unique cultural group that is, uniquely successful within certain, and it's just measurably, they're uniquely successful.Malcolm: Whether it's like getting Nobel prizes or you look at the number of, millionaires or whatever, like just uniquely successful. Mm-hmm. But just saying that, that's considered offensive. People are like, well, that's a stereotype. And it's well, You, you, you nutter butter. It's like simple statistics, right?Malcolm: And they're like, well, that's an offensive statistic and you, and you shouldn't say it. And it's due to historic discrimination. How is it due to, what are you going on about? We're different. Different people are different. And then, and then, I love it like Nicholas says, he's well, the, the signs that they have positions of power is a sign that they're doing something Machiavellian together.Malcolm: Even, hey, they'll say this. I'm like, oh yeah. Well then what do you think about the last Supreme Court? Where, seven of the nine justices were Catholic or raised [00:27:00] Catholic. One came from a Catholic and Protestant household, and many people say Protestant, that actually Catholic didn't go through this.Malcolm: . Does that mean that there's some like Catholic conspiracy to control our court system? No, just different cultural traditions. The, the great strengths about cultural diversity is that they have different things they're good at, right? And, and, and it's a fact that we're different.Malcolm: The fact that we can recognize our differences and see that by working together, by working with people who are different than us, who are culturally optimized for different outcomes, yeah, you're gonna see different long tail distribution outcomes. That's our strengths, is our difference. And it's something that progressives will never have.Malcolm: Because they lack genuine diversity, they even lack the ability to recognize the strength in genuine diversity comes from the fact that diverse groups are going to excel in different things. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Okay. And we need to just have this conversation where we need to have the conversation that we are different.Malcolm: The conservative Protestants are different from the conservative Catholics, and they're different [00:28:00] from the conservative Jews, and that's our strengths because that's not true of the progressive Catholics and the progressives, Protestants and the progressive Jews. If you scratch beneath the surface, if the same views on gender, the same views on sexuality, the same views on our relationship to the environment, the same views on morality, the same views on the future of our species.Malcolm: They, they just have different holidays. What's that? That's not, that's not difference. That's, that's not, that's, that's not strengthened diversity. That's, that's people who have had their cultures hollowed out and then worn, like a ghoulish skin mask is dusting and horrifying. And, and, and I am sick of it.Malcolm: I am, I am sick of this cultural extermination campaign that so many people are standing by. Wow. And, and I think that it, it will take an alliance, it will take all of the people of middle Earth coming together to fight these hodes that want to see us erase from this earth. ISimone: thought you wanted to sail away on some Elvin ship, which would be super lame.Malcolm: The vin ship is a life [00:29:00] extensionist, the Elvin ship that these people who are like, I want to live forever on an island, right? Don't matter. And it's okay, you go away.Malcolm: You, you live forever. And I'll be like, Sam, and have kids in a happy life, youSimone: know? We're gonna be the same way as, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let, let's do it. Team Ji. Do you want me to saute some meat for you?Malcolm: I would like you to saute some meat for me. Yes. Okay. And put in some oyster sauce earlierSimone: this time.Simone: Okay. We don't, do you want me to do an onion? We don't have shallots left.Malcolm: I do, I got some more onions, so Yeah, goSimone: for that. Perfect. Okay. I love you. I love you and I'll see you soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join us as we dive into an intriguing conversation about the phenomenon of Rule 34 and fandoms, particularly focusing on the "My Little Pony" fandom. Malcolm and Simone discuss evolutionary pressures that could contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon, addressing arousal patterns, societal norms, cultural traditions, and much more.Transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] the first impression that the internet gets is, oh my God, you sick, disgusting monsters.Simone: How are you turned on? By cartoon ponies, and what you're saying is actually the people turned on by these cartoon ponies are actually very good. Like they're, they're triggered by instincts. Driven by being a very good, committed partnerMalcolm: I'm sorry I don't consume my little pony porn.Malcolm: I, I'm, I'm, I'm a terror. This is,Simone: this is probably one of your greatest downsides. Think about all that, that, that is recommended about these, these gentlemen here and true gentlemen is theMalcolm: word really. Men of class and, and men,Simone: no men of class and distinction. Checking with me and like the whole gradation of, of genres of this type of material.Simone: I have to say, hats off to these guysSimone: Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I come to you today dressed as an intellectual. Hello. Because people have said [00:01:00] we are intellectuals.Simone: Well, LAMalcolm: Doll, well, I don't know, like elite, not an intellectual elites. This is, this is the brand we have publicly, I guess. So this is an elite conversation.Simone: Elite, if that counts as what Yahoo News calls us in scare quotes. In scare quotes. Yes, elites. Well, tell me, Mr. Elite, intellectual, what have you been reading about today?Malcolm: Well, so there was this poll on Reddit, which was going through the different fandoms that people create, R 34 artwork of. So R 34 is based on the internet rule, rule 34, that even exists.Malcolm: There is porn of it. GodSimone: bless America,Malcolm: God bless the internet. You little herbs. Anyway, so the second most common fandom the material was coming from [00:02:00] was Little Pony, which is interesting and it's actually something we talk about in our book because if you think about it, humans are degenerates, of course, especially males.Malcolm: So you would expect it would be some fandom with like scantily clad women. Actually the, the fandom that that beat it was Pokemon, but,Simone: No.Malcolm: Okay. Well, I don't, I don't want to get into that, but yeah, you expect that it's gonna be top by a bunch of these fandoms because there are a lot of fandoms out there.Malcolm: That have a lot of scantily clad women in them. Yeah. So why, why aren't those the fandoms that are dominating these spaces? Well, I'd love to hear, do you have a theory or,Simone: I, I mean both, both of these top, top rankers are kids shows, so I feel like there's something that has to do maybe with, I. I don't know. It can't be nostalgia though, because the adult audience that got into My Little Pony was not into My Little Pony as a kid. It was the new reboot of [00:03:00] My Little Pony that they only consumed asMalcolm: adults.Malcolm: Exactly. So I think it's a couple things that are happening here. So I think the core is, is we need to understand what sexuality, like what are our arousal patterns today We think of them as being these like, Despicable disgusting things because so many of our cultural traditions have evolved around repressing them and, and for good reason.Malcolm: They lowered fertility rates if you just indulge in them whenever you have them. So a lot of cultures the cultures that were like just indulge in your sexuality whenever you feel it, they did not have as many surviving offspring and they were out-competed. But the cultural groups that recommended a high level of self-control.Malcolm: However, however what did all of these systems evolve for in the first place? And it was to. Breed with high quality partners who would also dedicate resources to the offspring so that those offspring couldn't make it to adulthood.Simone: Right? So far so good. Yeah, this seems reasonable.Malcolm: So, so good. So it would be almost crazy if our arousal systems [00:04:00] were not paired in a way where we find people who our brains subconsciously recognize.Malcolm: As good life, partners and members of our social group who we think about a lot, who we mentally engage with a lot as more arousing than ones we don't. You particularly ones that we feel uniquely safe around, particularly ones that model our society's ideals around womanhood as it relates to long-term partnership.Malcolm: And that's what I really think you are seeing here is the very system that evolved to motivate the most wholesome of emotions, be more likely to become aroused by people who you see as wholesome and your friends, right? SoSimone: the, the first impression that the internet gets is, oh my God, you sick, disgusting monsters.Simone: How are you turned on? [00:05:00] By cartoon ponies, and what you're saying is actually the people turned on by these cartoon ponies are actually very good. Like they're, they're triggered by instincts. Driven by being a very good, committed partner who wants to, well, I'mMalcolm: not saying it's a good thing to, to be out there consuming this sort of material or creating this material, but what I'm sayingSimone: is, but you're saying it comes from a good place, you're saying?Malcolm: No, I'm not saying it comes from a good place. Okay. What I'm saying is the evolutionary pressures. That motivated this behavior were actually, I mean it's, it's obviously, so suppose you're coding software, right? Okay. And you're like, well I want people to form like good relationships, so let's code the software to be like, yeah, be more likely to form a relationship with something you see as wholesome.Malcolm: Something you spend a lot of time around. And if you think like specifically the My Little Pony show, you look at these characters cuz we used to be brownies, we [00:06:00] engaged in like, Is said, like my little pony memes in my proposal to you, when I did that Reddit proposal that, that with viral. Yes. I've had some of our listeners don't even know they were those, those people who, who did those, those types of people.Malcolm: But anyway the, if you think about the characters in the show, they each represent a different stereotype of ideal long-term female partners. Hmm. With, with all of the aspects of that exaggerated and very few of the downsides. So if you're talking about a cultural archetype that people would glom onto.Malcolm: Yes. And then two, because a large community formed around the show, a lot of people saw them as almost like high status individuals within the community. Like that would be the closest thing their evolutionary brain would have to. What a star of a show is. Well nowSimone: hold on, hold on. What you're saying here, actually, I feel like this doubly recommends, this community to women. Okay. So let's say that I'm a woman [00:07:00] who's dating and I discover that the guy I'm dating is aroused by, what do they call it? Lop arousing material related to my Little pony. Or they, they watch it for the plot or something, something like that, right?Simone: But I find my boyfriends into it, or the guy I'm dating. What you're saying is he, one is aroused by people with whom he has, or characters figures with whom he has a close emotional relationship. And two, he's aroused by characters and people who show diligence. Pro-social behavior. It's, I, I think most women.Simone: Would, would think, oh, this must be a freak. I can't date him. Red flag. Whereas like, oh, I would see a bigger red flag would be a guy who's like super aroused by violence in porn, like gang bangs. LikeMalcolm: get to that in a future a podcast. Yeah. Well, okay, so two things here. What is, I'm sorry I don't consume my little pony porn.Malcolm: I, [00:08:00] I'm, I'm, I'm a terror. This is,Simone: this is probably one of your greatest downsides. Think about all that, that, that is recommended about these, these gentlemen here and true gentlemen is theMalcolm: word really. Men of class and, and men,Simone: no men of class and distinction. Checking with me and like the whole gradation of, of genres of this type of material.Simone: I have to say, hats off to these guys.Malcolm: One thing that I think that, that you're touching on here that I really wanna dive into more on a, a later podcast, but I think it's interesting is we didn't have this theory and we were doing our sexuality books, so I wasn't able to elucidate on it. But since then, we've gotten to be friends with Ayla and we've talked a lot about the way arousal patterns work.Malcolm: And we've gotten a chance to look at some of her data that this come out. And we've gotten some new ideas. And one of the ideas we have is that male sexuality may actually be polymorphic. And by that what I mean is it expresses itself differently, in different environments. And I suspect that somewhere was in the male brain.Malcolm: There may be [00:09:00] something that. Tries to determine if a potential partner is in the long-term partner category of their brain or is in the we are raiding a village time to make as many kids as possible before we, we leave right part of their brain. Because the optimization of arousal patterns for these two different types of potential breeding interactions is wildly different.Malcolm: Mm. And it would almost seem to be useful for men to have both of these patterns stored within their brains for different scenarios. And in women, we actually argue in, in the book that women also have a polymorphic sexual behavior pattern. So in women the more partners they sleep with, the less oxytocin they release with new partners.Malcolm: And that basically means that they are forced to fall in love less with a partner, like they have less. Instinctual. I love this person because they slept withSimone: me and this, well, they're just less likely to get super attached person. They're not gonna see, receive the same level of, [00:10:00] of like addiction. This can actually cause trouble for women on the dating market.When, if they've slept with, , a number of people, they will start to say, well, I'm looking for a guy. Who made me feel the way, , X, previous partner I had made me feel. And it may be that their biology has just adapted. So no other partner will ever make them feel that way, which can lead to them. Discounting potentially really good romantic partners for longterm relationships.Malcolm: But what that means is their biology is basically saying, okay, if I am in a monogamous tribe and I like, this is the optimization. It's actually a really brilliant sort of polymorphic behavior pattern. It's saying, well, if I'm in this tribe, right, and this is a monogamous tribe and it's a stable tribe, and I have one partner, then it is useful to form an illogical attachment to the first person you sleep with.Malcolm: But if I, my tribe has been rated and I'm being passed around as like a sex slave, well then it's, it's useful to not form attachments to everyone I'm sleeping [00:11:00] with, right? So in women, you see, This one pattern of changing sexuality, but in men, you'd want those two sexualities to overlap on the same mind and what we were arguing from the data might be true.Malcolm: That we haven't collected data specifically on this. There's just hints of it, is that a lot of men may actually have two overlapping sexualities. One that expresses with people they see as potential long-term partners. So this would express in, in terms of like shows that they really enjoy for a long time or something like that.Malcolm: As well as so like rule 31st, Jeff. But as well as like their wives. Right. And then another firm of, of sexuality, which is like the type of sexuality that gives them arousal. When they're consuming porn or something like that.Simone: Well, okay, hold on, hold on. Let me see if I, if I understand you correctly.Simone: So we've more discussed in, in other places this polymorphism with female sexuality, which is basically, The fewer sexual partners a woman has, the more attached she gets. And if she has more sexual partners, that's a sign you [00:12:00] should get less attached. Okay. That's smart. It means you're in a society where maybe you need to be a little more flexible.Simone: That's good. Okay. So, but for men, the thing is like men may also be in a position where sort of us, which. Can flip of like, Hey, like it's time for me to be aroused by committed relationships, because I'm in that kind of stable society. And then the other flip is sort of like, oh, hey, I should more what devalue women just be like, Willing to churn through them as what, what, what, what exactly are signs of the other form of like male polymorphism?Simone: Like one, one is pair bonded husband kind of material. What is, what does the other one look like? Well, I, I'dMalcolm: argue that it's probably like brutal sexuality, like, like much more hardcore you would think. It could be expressed in online porn as. Rape, stuff like that.Simone: Well, what, what I'm trying to get at here, which, which I think is interesting is what we've seen with swipe based dating and the failure of, of relationship markets [00:13:00] is that probably the vast majority of men, the implication of your theory is the vast majority of men who are not really getting many sexual partners, if any sex at all, are gonna fall into this husband category, which, we'd, we'd say is fairly pro-social and, and good for a relationship, whereas like the smaller group of men.Simone: That is able to access a very broad array of women and actually does have a pretty high sexual partner count, is going to be, per this theory flipped to a much more, at least from the perspective of female partner, toxic form of sexuality.Malcolm: Well, not necessarily from the perspective of female partner, because if we live in a society where women also have lots of sexual partners, then they are going to be in slave state sexuality, which basically means they are going to be more turned on by beingSimone: By more violent scenarios.Simone: By more violent, by more violent scenarios. Yeah. Which, which shows up in our data. Right. Then the percentage of women, what was it like around 40% who reported actually being aroused by these violent, coercive scenarios? Yeah. Had more sexual partners. Yeah. Yeah. .Malcolm: So what we saw in the data that really [00:14:00] tipped us off that this might be happening came from interviews of people who life like really extremist porn.Malcolm: And th they often in their relationships were not actually interested in that with their partners. It was like their primary partners. Hmm. That was really interesting. Like why did you keep seeing that? So the point I was making is the type of porn a guy is consuming does not necessarily correlate with what they prefer in a relationship.Malcolm: And I think that that is really interesting, but it can also cause problems. So if a guy's sleeping around a lot, like you have one of these Chad guys who's sleeping around a lot when they first engage with a woman, it means they're going to treat them much more in this brutal sexuality way.Malcolm: But as they begin to form an attachment to them, they will treat them much more caringly like their brain will conceptualize them within the long-term partner form of sexuality. But then the problem you have there, Is that the woman may have found them attractive for this sort of brutal type of [00:15:00] sexuality.Malcolm: Right? And I suspect in BDSM dungeons, this is why taking on roles is so important as well as the huge environmental change because you are trying to trick your brain into believing the person you are engaging with is not actually your long term partner, which is going to allow that different part of your sexual brain to activate.Simone: That's interesting. Yeah. And of course that, that creates a problem if, in some communities that would be framed as losing frame, failing to maintain frame when what you're saying is it would, it's a natural course of events based on the way that that humans function.Simone: So it's something to prepare for for sure. But that's That's interesting.Malcolm: Yeah. Well, but I do really like your take it, it's such a fun idea of a take is like, oh, this, this, this type of material recommends a guy to a woman. Yeah. Wouldn't it beSimone: fun if and I, I think this is something ALA's even [00:16:00] asked her Twitter followers about like, wouldn't it be really fun to sit down with someone you're dating and go through their erotic material history?Simone: Which I think some people think about that and just like, Their faces go pale. Like they couldn't imagine sharing this with anyone. Like it's this shameful thing that they would never, ever wanna share with someone when I feel like you could actually learn so much about someone like looking through that search history and view history.Malcolm: You could learn a bit about, and this is what's really interesting about arousing things. Hmm. You could learn a bit about the things that are pre-coded about them. Oh. But I think that's what's really important is they didn't choose those things. Mm-hmm. And what's important to remember with sexuality, whatever a person's sexuality is, I it, the, the, the things that arouse them is you have very little control over that.Malcolm: And this is something that religious traditions admit as well. Like a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people are like, oh, they're trying to like erase gay people or something. It's like, no, they admit that some people are born same sex attracted, they just have a different cultural solution [00:17:00] for that.Malcolm: Yeah. And whether or not it's a more effective cultural solution is it's probably not, like I admit, I, I would imagine if you're born same sex attracted, you probably have a much higher chance of committing suicide if you grow up in a, in a Christian household. But We also know from the data that if you're depressed, you have a much lower chance of committing suicide in Christian households.Malcolm: So what does that mean? We give our depressed kids to the Christians and we give our same sex attracted kids to the progressives. Just do a, a child swap there for whoever likely to, I'm just, I'm just talking about the data, like if, if that's what we're going on there, but yeah, so there's, there's.Malcolm: Different cultural solutions, but the point being, and I think that this is very important for people to remember, is the things that arouse you are not who you are. Mm-hmm. And so they, they are literally the least you part of you because they are like randomly coded things about you. They do not justify behavior.Malcolm: But if somebody's just consuming content, right? Like that, that is, I don't know.Malcolm: I, I don't know if, if I can pass judgment here, but [00:18:00] I do understand what you're saying, Simone.Simone: I, you know me, I love seeing how people are weird. So I see it as a major, a major perk. Well that's, and I also want people like, this is a very controversial thing in that a bizarre number of, especially female partners think it counts as cheating.Simone: Even if a male partner just looks at erotic material, which is. AMalcolm: lot. That's, that's, yeah. I, I, I, I actually hate to say there was this famous study where they were going to try to find men. That didn't consume porn to compare with men that did consume porn, and they had to drop the study because they just couldn't find a large sample size of men that they consumed.Malcolm: There was no porn. And I think that when you as a woman are sorting for guys who don't consume porn when they're in a relationship, what you're really sorting for is a guy who lies to you.Simone: Because, or you're sorting for asexuality, which I do think we're gonna see going, oh yeah. You could be sorting for asexuality.Simone: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, I think we're gonna see more and more asexuality [00:19:00] because it seems to be that there's a strong correlation between large amounts of endocrine disruptors and first trimester bloodstreams of mothers and less complete male sexual development for Right. ThoseMalcolm: babies. So, well, and I love people would be like, yeah, but you can control, how, how often you consume erotic material, and I would say, well, the data doesn't really seem to suggest that.Malcolm: If you look at areas like there's this great study that looks at areas by like the, the number of like religious people in them, and you actually get higher rates of porn consumption. When you are in a cultural group that is more against porn consumption, like the think act of trying to constrain it leads to it being more of a problem in yourSimone: daily life.Simone: It's the same as as binge eating. You're more likely to see binge eating behavior among people with very strict diets. Well, well this is,Malcolm: yeah, actually that's, that's correct. Mm-hmm. It actually comes to, in our book, we were like, well, could you actually go to like a camp to cure gayness? Cause you were talking about how like, Okay.Malcolm: Sexuality can change, like if you use hormone therapy, like the 25% of, of, of people when they go [00:20:00] through trans hormone therapy, they change their gender of primary attraction. And we're like, well, okay, well, can you use this information can for anything? Like, no, because it's, it's random and, and these people aren't gonna wanna go through hormone therapy, so what could you do?Malcolm: And we were like, oh, well, I guess you could go to a camp where you just have like tons of gay sex because you can actually desensitize yourself. That is true. Yeah. The downside to this sort of a camp, of course, would be that you would have to do it regularly. Like it would have to be a once a year or twice a year thing.Malcolm: And then we started thinking, we're like, oh, these all male secret societies in the woods for like, The conservative elite? Is that something that exists?Malcolm: Oh, it is a thing that exists. Oh, is that like a camp that's meant to make them less gay? We do know. Hold on. I actually will say I, I can't talk to any of my own, but there's a famous quote from Nixon about the Bohemian Grove where he said it was the gayest thing he's ever seen.Simone: I think he used a word meaner [00:21:00] than gayest, but yeah.Malcolm: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. ButSimone: we're being polite. But I love it. Yeah, thereMalcolm: all types of else other, oh, I, I really do wanna do a longer video on vore at some point, because I find that to be one of the most interesting weird arousal things. So this video is made in, in, in response to either being like, yeah, talk more about sexuality and our sexuality videos get the most clicks.Malcolm: Because that, that one is confusing to me. Until we do a video, I, I would, I would venture to say, I. Suspect the answer might be boring. It might just be a misfiring of the dominance and submission system. Yeah. Potentially that system was borrowed at some point. One of the things we always say about evolution is evolution's a cheap programmer, and it might have been borrowed at some point of our system used for hunting.Malcolm: Or maybe the hunting system was like trying to be hijacked by the, the system used to like, Hunt someone down and rape them when you're like raiding a village and, and that system beca, I don't know. I, [00:22:00] I, I suspectSimone: it's something like that. Well, when you, when you look at like VRE illustrations though, you can see that it's a, a confluence of so many things, even like swaddling interest.Simone: Like I, I think, eating I think extreme dominance, its Submiss mission totally show up there too. But then there's a lot of like furry content in there. So I just, I think what's really interesting to me is how cross-sectional it is, because it's very niche.Malcolm: Oh, we've gotta do a video on furries sometime.Malcolm: I, I love that. Our, our theory is always actually um, coverage, an ancient practice. Well, you look cross-culturally, almost all cultures have some sort of furry like practice where people in animal costumes dance around a fire to music.Simone: It's traditional culture.Malcolm: Yeah. Well, what I'm saying is I actually think it might be in.Malcolm: A evolved group bonding ritual. You see this, in, in medieval Europe, if you look at what the masquerade balls were actually like, they were often done with like animal mass during that period. You look at ancient Egypt early Native American cultures, early Asian cultures I think in some [00:23:00] Polynesian cultures you see similar ceremonies, like why would every culture on earth have the animal mask, fire music ceremony?Malcolm: Like that's weird. And then we see it in today's society, it's because they're men of true culture. But we'll go full into furries at some point cuz I, I think that's really interesting. Yes. Course of course. Course we're trying to bio-engineer a cat girl army that is the faction of elite that we are want to be aligned with is the, is the cat girl army.Malcolm: To, to replace you. That's the type of conservatives that we are,Simone: cat Girl, because that faction is the winning faction.Malcolm: It's the winning faction to think that the master race already exists. The master raceSimone: is, is the cat girl. It lacks, it lacks the cute ears in Entail and, and soon today approach to relationships.Simone: I, I don't, I don't think we're anywhere close to the pinnacle until that comes. Well,Malcolm: love those conversations. Weirdo Simon, I love how you combine this weirdness. It was just such an openness to groups that are very [00:24:00] different from you and, and eagerness to understand them. I, I really appreciate that. It's, it's, it's, so, it's the thrilling to have that in, in my day-to-day life, and it really helps simmer portions of myself that may.Malcolm: Be overly judgmental or, or look through groups that are different from me. Yeah.Simone: But you're still way better at diving down through new rabbit holes and finding the things that I love, which I'm just, I love that. I love waking up each morning and having you surprise me with some new discovery, so never stop that.Simone: Anyway, I love these conversations. Let's have another one soon. Okay. 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

Join Malcolm, Diana, and Simone in a stimulating conversation addressing some of the intriguing contradictions that arise from certain sociopolitical stances. They delve into complex issues like prenatal screening, abortion, and embryo selection, juxtaposing these topics against the backdrop of social biases. Listen as they highlight the inconsistencies in certain beliefs and reveal how individuals often tailor their convictions based on social approval rather than logical reasoning. Whether you're interested in bioethics, social commentary, or philosophical discussions, this conversation offers a fresh perspective that challenges conventional thinking.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] he is pro aborting. Fetuses. Yeah. If they show signs of a potential medical problem, yeah.Malcolm: But against not choosing a pre implanted IVF embryo because they might end up showing one of those diseases. So he is more pro. Abortion, like even mid-stage abortion, then he is pro embryo selection.Diana: That is whack,Malcolm: well, not whack, but I think what it shows is this, and this is a wider topic I wanted to talk about here, is this insanity you get and you see this on both the left and the right, but right now the left is more in control of media, so they do it more.Malcolm: Were they, there are individuals who clearly like put genuinely no thought into their actual beliefs about the world and they're choosing their beliefs on what they think will get them the most socialDiana: credit. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's absolutely a progressive status quo bias [00:01:00] because at one point in a debate that we were having on Twitter months or years ago, Noah, Carl said, Let's say you could do prenatal screening with blood on a woman and a woman finds out that her baby's gonna have a lower IQ than she will on the basis of this genetic screening.Diana: What do you think if that woman aborts the baby, is that eugenics? And he says, I think that's misguided, but I don't think that's eugenics. And so, because he can't say that. Any abortion is in any way bad because that is a sacred progressive cow, right? Ah, and so I remember when I used to ha teach I taught human sexuality and I taught some other Topics around philosophy of science to undergraduates.Diana: I remember asking students is it worse for a woman to abort a baby that she finds out as a girl when she wants a boy? Or is it worse for her to choose an embryo that's a boy? Rather than choosing an embryo that's a girl and almost, I mean, it was really profound that people thought the abortion was okay [00:02:00] because abortion is a sacred value in the uk to abortion for any reason is a sacred value.Simone: Wow. I think what that kindaMalcolm: terrifying is the percentage of the population that are, I mean, so when we, we on our podcast talk about like this progressive mimetic somfy virus and I think that people might think we're going too far when we call it a virus that sort of whipes out people's higher order logicSimone: hi. And we are excited to welcome back Diana Fleischmann, author of the Soon to Come Out book, how to Train Your Boyfriend, but also evolutionary psychologist, host of the Aporia podcast, an overall amazing and awesome.Simone: Writer and reformed academic. She's made it out, ladies and gentlemen, and thank God,Malcolm: so what we wanted to talk about today was an article that they're, they, they've actually recently written on usDiana: it's called Bad Arguments versus Healthy Babies Rebutting Ruthford on Embryo Selection.Malcolm: So it's about all of these deranged people who [00:03:00] attack Simone and I online. Yeah. For selecting against things like our kids getting cancer in terms of like the, the genetics of our embryos.Malcolm: And arguing that this is just like, And Al, it'll always have terrible results to do this. Even though whenever you're doing ibf, a lot of people don't know this. They actually already sort your embryos, but by how pretty the embryos look. Yeah. Which isn't really correlated with that much, but they're still getting selected based on a, a trait like that.Malcolm: But what I wanted to talk about this podcast was specifically like the meta around this. Why do people react like insanely to topics like this?Simone: We can start with Adam Rath referred too. Cuz he, he presents a lot of great examples of just also being like, he conflicts in a lot of areas. It's very strangeDiana: you. I'll just give an overview of the piece really quickly. So the piece talks about polygenic embryo screening. Right now people do look at single trait or single allele diseases for their offspring.Diana: They look at aneuploidy when they're [00:04:00] selecting an embryo. But polygenic screening is fairly new. You guys and raffles, McCrosky and some other people are, I don't know, are there 200 babies that have been polygenic screened? Something around that. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's this, this very outspoken critic who's a BBC presenter.Diana: His name is Adam Ruthford. He's a geneticist and he's written a book against Eugenics and he has a beef with Steve Sue because Steve Sue has written some blogs about making sue intelligent people. And whenever I saw him come out saying polygenic screening is terrible, he kept saying, read my book.Diana: Read my book. So I read. The relevant, whatever, 20 pages of his book. And it was almost entirely b******t. It's like, really, it's very, very bad. And the, the evidence he uses is really asymmetrical for his claim. Of course, about seven pages of it is just like about how bad Steve Sue is and how he's friends with Dominic Cummings, and then how Dominic Cummings is associated with some other people that liberals don't like.Diana: And the actual meat and potatoes of like what his case is, [00:05:00] is made very succinctly and not very well. In a smaller portion of, of that book. So that's there's, there's a few different arguments that I make. GoMalcolm: ahead. Oh, no. Before you continue, I wanna pull on something you said there, which was, I just find it really rich.Malcolm: I. That he could be arguing like that. This guy who is clearly a eugenicist , is pretending to take an antigenics position. He's the guy here saying, we need genetically pure humans? Don't alter human D N a. I want to use the government. To restrict the reproductive choices of individuals to maintain humanity's genetic purity is like, is there anything more eugenics than that?Diana: Well, I don't actually know if he's, this is one, one thing is like, it's, it's pretty short on actual policy. Mm. So he often endorses this guy called you and Bernie who says, yes, polygenic screening should be banned. Right or not allowed in the, in the uk. And it doesn't surp, I mean, the UK is really, has very strict laws, a lot of which don't make a lot of sense about reproductive freedom.Diana: And [00:06:00] one of the best things I think about the United States is, is, is the reproductive freedom here is the fact that people can do IVF and can do sex selection, can do polygenic screening, can do, can do what they want, but. What I thought was really weird about what, how Rutherford responded to this.Diana: It's one thing to say polygenic screening won't work. The people who are using it are like wasting their money, whatever, whatever he called you guys, energy vampires, he made fun of your appearance. Like not once or like two or three times. Like he was like very intensely against you both. And I didn't really get it.Diana: I know that there was a huge backlash against the Tism stuff more generally, but I think that people bristled at the idea I. Because they just read the, the title of that telegraph piece that said that you were elite. But people bristle up the idea that you guys think that you're gonna have great kids.Malcolm: Well, here's the, here's first of all, like, that's not what we're trying to do. But one of the things that I, I read in this article, I didn't know about that just to meet like signals this guy is a complete grifter, is that he is pro [00:07:00] aborting. Fetuses. Yeah. If they show signs of a potential medical problem, yeah.Malcolm: But against not choosing a pre implanted IVF embryo because they might end up showing one of those diseases. So he is more pro. Abortion, like even mid-stage abortion, then he is pro embryo selection.Diana: That is whack,Malcolm: well, not whack, but I think what it shows is this, and this is a wider topic I wanted to talk about here, is this insanity you get and you see this on both the left and the right, but right now the left is more in control of media, so they do it more.Malcolm: Were they, there are individuals who clearly like put genuinely no thought into their actual beliefs about the world and they're choosing their beliefs on what they think will get them the most socialDiana: credit. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's absolutely a progressive status quo bias because at one point [00:08:00] in a debate that we were having on Twitter months or years ago, Noah, Carl said, Let's say you could do prenatal screening with blood on a woman and a woman finds out that her baby's gonna have a lower IQ than she will on the basis of this genetic screening.Diana: What do you think if that woman aborts the baby, is that eugenics? And he says, I think that's misguided, but I don't think that's eugenics. And so, because he can't say that. Any abortion is in any way bad because that is a sacred progressive cow, right? Ah, and so I remember when I used to ha teach I taught human sexuality and I taught some other Topics around philosophy of science to undergraduates.Diana: I remember asking students is it worse for a woman to abort a baby that she finds out as a girl when she wants a boy? Or is it worse for her to choose an embryo that's a boy? Rather than choosing an embryo that's a girl and almost, I mean, it was really profound that people thought the abortion was okay because abortion is a [00:09:00] sacred value in the uk to abortion for any reason is a sacred value.Simone: Wow. I think what that kindaMalcolm: terrifying is the percentage of the population that are, I mean, so when we, we on our podcast talk about like this progressive mimetic somfy virus and I think that people might think we're going too far when we call it a virus that sort of whipes out people's higher order logic in the same way that one of these funguses like replaces is an amps instincts.Malcolm: And causes the ant to become a zombie ant that's only job is to replicate this fungus. But when you hear things like this and you see this even in majority population surveys, especially with an educated group like students I really don't think I am underselling how zombie flying this virus is because to me there's just no logical argument where you could be anti it.Malcolm: It is, it is wrong. To, to select something at the stage of the embryo, but Right to do it at the stageDiana: of the fetus. Yep. And not, not only that, so one of the arguments that Rutherford makes where I got, I [00:10:00] pulled a, a few quotes from Simone, is that he says that doing I V F in order to do polygenic screening is somehow exploitative of women.Diana: That the people who talk about polygenic screening are mostly men and therefore it's a feminist. Position to be against polygenic screening. I've heard this exact same argument about a sex selective abortion or even abortion more generally, that women are gonna be pushed into aborting babies if they don't want to.Diana: And, he talks about I v F not being fun. Abortions are also not fun. And I, I just, it, it seems very strange to me that he hasn't thought about all these alternative arguments, which is there's a ton of arguments in, in the feminist sphere, which are things like, We should outlaw surrogacy because surrogacy can exploit women.Diana: We should outlaw IVF cuz outlaw, because IVF can exploit women. Pornography. Prostitution. Abortion because women can't make their own choices and he doesn't realize that he's actually making the same really, I think, kind of misogynistic argument.Simone: So what I'm realizing after listening to this is that like [00:11:00] there are two elements of discourse or two spheres of discourse online.Simone: One is just people Sending signals to rise in their own local status hierarchy and, and they're not actually engaging in discourse. And then there are people who actually enjoy kind of discussing these things or, or seeing if they can win a debate and actually engage with the ideas, but, How can one separate those out and know when it's worth it to engage or not?Simone: Well,Malcolm: I mean, I think the communities are pretty separated from each other. The sad thing is, is I think the first group that you're talking about controls our university system. Mm-hmm. Which many people see as the, the priest class in our society that determines what's true and what's not true.Malcolm: But I'd love your take.Diana: I'm not sure, but I just think that it, it that people, one thing that happens on Twitter that I see a lot is that people curate a following and then they're beholden to the, the whims of that, of that following. Right, right, right. So like, there's some people who I see bite bullets all the time, and their audience loves that.Diana: They bite bullets. There's people [00:12:00] like Ruthford who I see attacking other people. Like, I think he called Boris Johnson like a. Like a saturated bin rag or something. He's like, got these. Really?Simone: That's wonderful. A floored language. You do get points for that. I like him likeDiana: 10% more insult about people.Diana: Like he's got a million different synonyms for s**t that he uses, like against people. Right? There's, there's all these kinds of insults that he used and his audience is like, they love that red meat. But one time it's was like a few years back Richard Dawkin says, you might be against eugenics, but eugenics works.Diana: Right? Remember, I dunno if you guys saw that there was a tweet by by Dakin saying, you might be against it, but selective breeding definitely does work. Right. And and this is the only time where I was like, okay, Rutherford says you're right, it would work. And he like went through it and he said Eugenics actually would work.Diana: Right. No, like selective breeding actually would work. And he had so much s**t and I, since then I have not seen him bite a bullet. And that was 2020, ISimone: think. Interesting. That's, that's really, that's really sad. I'm, I'm in the middle of [00:13:00] reading how Minds Change by David Raey, cuz I think it's really interesting to go into like, the psychology of how humans are able to change minds.Simone: And in this one chapter on reasoning, he goes into a lot of the research on how and why humans reason. And there's one study where it, it suggested that basically when, when. Subjects were provided with their own reasoning for coming to a conclusion as though it was someone else's reasoning.Simone: They would criticize it. They were like, oh no, here's where it's wrong. This isn't logical, because they didn't realize that they were arguing against their own reasoning. And, and it, it indicates or suggests that human reasoning is really meant to happen in some kind of social format where people present their thoughts, they present why they came to the conclusions they came to, and those are, they can criticize others' conclusions and also their conclusions are criticized.Simone: And then that in a. In a social environment, especially where people are motivated to be somewhat cohesive, which makes sense. And that social cohesion does play a big role in why we believe what we believe or what we choose to [00:14:00] believe. Then you, you are able to get to the truth in an interesting way.Simone: So, I'm, I'm, I'm hearing this research. I'm, I'm interested in it. I'm reading about it and I'm like, oh, wow. I mean, you would think. Then in the right conditions, social media would be perfect for this. We would present our reasoning as to why we believe, certain things are good, like apologetic, risk score, selection.Simone: And then some people would say, ah, here's the fall on your reasoning. And because we want to be acce accepted by them, then we would, we would do that. And yet that doesn't seem to be how it ultimately plays out at all, especially for people like David Rutherford because instead of, being able to like, Survive flaws in his reasoning being pointed out.Simone: He's just like, wellMalcolm: here's, here's what I think you're missing. He's a high priest of the existing priest, cast of our society, given that he needs still within the university system, which Diana has escaped. And, and being within that system, given how spicy these topics are, if he deviates.Malcolm: Even a little bit from the socially accepted norms was, was in that ideological tribe. He can lose his [00:15:00] job. Like it's not a small thing. You get fired and you're that kind of a personality. No one else will hire you because your only audience is this, you know far. He's already pushed out any other audience he may have.Malcolm: He's got no real skills other than being in this priest class. I,Diana: I don't know. He also works for the bbc. So I mean, when I was in academia, I felt like I could say whatever I wanted and I did say almost whatever I wanted. BARR, a certain, like certain edge cases but actually working for the BBC and so what he says reflects on the BBC and also it reflects on Humanist uk, which is where he's president.Diana: The thing that shocked me about his attacks on you guys is that if I frame this a certain way, Which I have in this article is that he's attacking people who chose an embryo with a low risk of cancer. Mm-hmm. He's attacking people for using their reproductive freedom, a mother, for using their reproductive freedom to prevent her daughter from dying, what her grandmother died of.Diana: Like, that sounds awful. And yet nobody gives a s**t cuz you guys are eugenic. Right, right, [00:16:00] right.Malcolm: Again, I need to. To keep pointing this out. We do not support eugenics. I knowDiana: you don't. Exactly. But you guys are, you guys are labeled as eugenics, but we're labeled asMalcolm: that. We're labeled as that definitionally a eugenicist if he wants to use the government to maintain the genetic purity of our species.Malcolm: That is whatDiana: eugenics is.Diana: So a few months back, I talked to Brian Kaplan for Aporia and Brian Kaplan, who wrote Selfish Reasons to Have more Kids, and I asked him if there was backlash against selfish reasons to have more kids because right at that time I was thinking about Tism. You guys were getting really attacked on on Twitter.Diana: Yeah. And he said that. Yes. He got attacked a lot for selfish reasons to have more kids. It seems like Tism now is more controversial than even Antinatalism Telling people they should have kids is more controversial. Yeah. And the way he framed it was, when I tell you when I, with selfish reasons to have more kids, I said, I'm giving you a 20% coupon for having children.Diana: Having children is 20% less work than you think it's gonna be. He's like, if I gave you a 20% coupon for chocolate, and you're like, I don't like chocolate, would [00:17:00] you, would you attack me online for having given you a 20% coupon offer for, for That's great. Putting it. Yeah. And so, obviously not, but, but when it comes to this question about child rearing and even things like the other day my husband Jeffrey asked somebody if they were gonna ha if they were interested in having more kids and we're very close to these people, so I think it was okay.Diana: But questions like, are you planning on having more children? How many children do you wanna have? What kinds of conditions are keeping you from having kids have become really touchy. Oh yeah. And that maybe it's because people are waiting to bear children. Maybe cuz people who are infertile see it as like a form of inferiority.Diana: You guys grapple with all of this stuff. But it's it's a very tricky for me to untangle why this is such a dumpster fire. Well,Malcolm: yeah. So, there's a few subjects I wanna touch on here. One is you said that he was like, because he was able to frame us as eugenic, the whole eugenic thing really had nothing to do with it.Malcolm: From his perspective, it's that we are conservatives and he is a progressive and therefore he can call us any slur no matter how illogical [00:18:00] and his side will buy that. And I think it's the same thing with like the coupon argument. Like if somebody was giving out coupons for like 20% off a gun or something like that.Malcolm: Progressives are like, guns are evil. And, and the reason why the mind virus went to this position of kids are evil is because people who are quote unquote from the virus's perspective Yeah. Wasting their time not proselytizing and instead caring for kids. They, they are not. Following the sort of reproductive strategy of the virus and therefore are, are less efficient at it.Malcolm: And those brands of progressivism are out-competed by the other brands of progressivism. And so I think what you're really seeing when you talk about Antinatalism versus Tism I, is, it's really just in the same way that if I went to a, a conservative event and I said something like, About global warming being a problem or like pro environmentalism, I might be immediately attacked, even though there's no reason for them to really be intrinsically anti-environmental.Malcolm: It's more just that this would become a calling card of people who they see as their enemies.Simone: So I get it. And let me, yeah, let me build on that actually. I mean, Malcolm argues that [00:19:00] the key differentiating point between progressives and conservatives is that progressives are optimizing for.Simone: Intergenerational fitness and wellbeing. Also for like minimizing in the moment suffering or discomfort, whereas conservatives are not really caring about in, in the moment suffering and discomfort. And they're more optimizing for intra generation. So from generation to generation wellbeing.Simone: And there, there's basically, I mean, having kids. Inherently means in the moment suffering over comfort. Right? It's the hard choice initially. And for like a good, 18 to 30, to 40 to 50 years, however many years it is. And it is definitely not about having like an easier time in the moment or a more pleasant time in the moment.Simone: It is really about In in intra. Sorry. AndMalcolm: I think it also to, to something else you pointed out is I, I think that people, and this is an issue that's just not as talked about as it should be talked about, given that it, it, it's, it, the progressive, like the super virus doesn't really care about this as the concept which [00:20:00] is the increasing a fertility of our species.Malcolm: And, and this is causing a lot of heartache for a lot of families. And, and it requires the use of, unfortunately, I think, a lot more aggressive fertility technology than was needed in the past.Simone: Yeah. Which, which still runs counter to the progressive thing. If the progressive thing is, oh, if this hurts your feelings, don't engage with it.Simone: If this hurts your feelings, look the other way. Give up, stay inside. Don't go outside. Don't do that hard thing. They don't mention itMalcolm: in front of somebody. If it could hurt their feelings. Even if it, even if you're talking about technology like you, you couldn't go to someone and be like, Hey, there's this technology you might not have tried yet that would be seen as, as wrong and, and unethically how much you actually, itSimone: shows up in Rutherford's argument, right?Simone: Like one of his core arguments is, oh, I V F is hard and it's painful for women. Mm-hmm. Like, how dare you imply that women should go through ivf And that I think that that is fairly indicative of this, this general theme that anything that. That requires, a suffering or discomfort or obligates.Simone: It is therefore bad. And, and having kids is kind of it. I mean, obviously like the joy you get from kids is so much more right, and, and, and the [00:21:00] meaning in life and all this amazing contentment. But definitely like the in the moment, convenience and comfort. Does take a ma major hit with like,Diana: everything.Diana: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I've been through IVF lots of times cuz I'm an altru. I was an altruistic egg donor and I just, in the piece I say like, I'd rather do IVF than have four hours of, of early labor. And I've been through totally early labor. Early labor is no fun at all. And also the actual.Diana: Sleep training or the early whatever, months or weeks. Like, to me this is like, complaining about traffic on the way to a 10 year prison sentence. Oh. Like, yeah. Seriously. Although that frames it all very negatively, but like, nobody, nobody would do that. Right. Yeah. This is the, another thing about, demographic collapse.Diana: This idea of demographic collapse being incredibly controversial is that you're saying a variety of things that are, anti progressive views, which is they're interested in doing things for the greater good. So to speak, like recycling or not flying or being vegetarian or whatever the case may be.Diana: And so what you're saying is like you guys are doing the opposite of what you should do for the greater good, [00:22:00] but another one of their key tenets is that immigration can solve all these problems. And by saying that we should have our own children, what you're saying is that immigrants can't solve this problem.Diana: So it's like implicitly an anti-immigration sentiment.Malcolm: And, and for our listeners, I just wanna touch on this point really quickly cuz a lot of people in the US don't know this, but as of 2019, by the UN's own statistics, And they are famously, really aggressive with these. So, so it's almost certainly worse than this.Malcolm: By 2019, all of Latin America, so Central America, south America and the Caribbean collectively fell below repopulation rate. So we are, are, are draining from an evaporating pond and they refuse to look at that.Diana: Yeah, I mean I just, I don't know how much, brain drain. I tried to do a deep dive on brain drain the other day.Diana: I don't know how much that's the case. I know that you guys say when you import people from other places, they acquire the sterilizing meme. They do. And so then they, they end up having fewer children, although apparently Japanese people have more children when they come our career. Well,Malcolm: this is really interesting.Malcolm: So actually, I wanna touch on this a little bit. So one of the things that I think goes against the [00:23:00] conservative meme, which is. That typically the more diverse an environment someone is in, the more children they will have. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons why in prosperous countries the US and Israel have some of the, the lowest cases, the fertility collapse, whereas monocultures like Korea have some of the highest levels of fertility collapse.Malcolm: But if you take a Korean immigrant and they come to the us. Their fertility rate actually increases by, I think around 50% on average from when we were doing the statistics, which is just insane, but obviously they're in a much more diverse environment. Now, if you're talking about first generation immigrants on average to the us the fertility rate is 1.7 right now, which is around the US average.Malcolm: It's a bit higher. It's like 0.5, I think, is US usaver. I mean, 1.5 is US average right now. Okay. But what's really interesting there is it's not that much above the US average, even when people come from really high fertility rate cultures. So what you were seeing there, Is that there's all of these talks about like we're not good at adapting people to our culture or whatever, but in terms of fertility rate, it actually happens really, really, really quickly.Malcolm: And what that means from a [00:24:00] progressive standpoint is you can't like bring in an immigrant population that's high fertility and have that work. You need to continually import these people for it to be a solution. And the only way that you are able to continually import them is if their countries stay high fertility.Malcolm: And on average, a country only has above repopulation fertility rate right now if the average citizen is earning less than 5,000 u s d per year. So you basically need to keep these other countries poor,Simone: not optimal.Diana: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is, it is interesting in terms of the. Yeah, the incentive structures and how all these things don't work.Diana: And I, I'm really interested in digging into the immigration debate. I just feel like I need to devote like a two solid weeks to it cuz you know, Richard Hania and Noah Carl and all these people, Garrett Jones have been writing about immigration and whether or not it's it's good or bad. There was a very funny tweet about, basically about how confederate whites moved up north and about how they changed the culture of, of the north throughout the United States.Diana: And Philip Lemo who's on on [00:25:00] Twitter was like, yes, of course. Confederate Whites changed the culture of the North forever when they immigrated there. But of course that would never happen with immigrants coming to the United States today. And so, he was, he was basically making fun of this idea that this was actually a very It was a progressive talking point, was about this historical yeah, this historical phenomenon, which is something that they would never extrapolate towards the future.Diana: Right.Malcolm: Well, I mean, for our listeners, our position on on immigration, cause I bet they're wondering here, I, we, we are very pro policies that Let in productive individuals to immigrate. I'm really, yeah, in no way against productive immigration to the United States because we live in a different world today.Malcolm: If something makes the US as economy strong, we need to focus on individual cultural group thriving, and your individual cultural group is going to die. If you, if you seal it off from the world, I mean, look, what do you want? What's your best case scenario? You're like, okay, one country, one people.Malcolm: So you end up like Korea, like a, a desperate old man in a hermetic tube who's slowly dying keeping immigration immigrants out because you're weak. It just [00:26:00] allows you to die in peace. Either strengthen yourself or don't.Diana: For me, there's two different arguments that are very compelling that pull me and diametrically oppose directions.Diana: Mm. So there's this Peter singer, utilitarian child in the pond thing that Brian Kaplan talks about, which is like, why wouldn't we take anyone and everyone who wants to come to our country, we make their lives better, they increase our gdp, they increase their country's gdp. It's a win-win. Not even selecting people, just letting anybody in.Diana: Mm-hmm. And he also says, that immigrant. Crime stats are overblown, that's very anti-conservative kind of talking point. Mm-hmm. Even though Brian Kaplan is, is quite conservative in many ways. There's this other kind of IQ realist idea that I have. Also, I think that people are often happier in more homogenous societies.Diana: It can be very difficult to get along with neighbors and people that you have nothing in common with. Yeah. But I. I also wonder, what is the tipping point? Is there a tipping point in terms of people who are from very culturally diverse backgrounds? What is the tipping point in order to being able to sustain the civilization and [00:27:00] institutions that we have come to enjoy and rely on for prosperity and stability?Diana: Yeah. Like, is, is that, is that a possibility that you can That, that, that there could be some kind of voter base or letting in certain number of immigrants. To me, I was looking at this stat the other day, the idea that a Sweden with 40% Muslim population and a a Sweden with 5% Muslim population are going to sustain the same institutions the same way without any difficulties.Diana: Right. Seems really farfetched to me. So these are all difficult questions, I think to grapple with.Simone: Yeah, they really are. It's gonna be interesting to see it play out.Malcolm: We can do an immigration po po podcast sometimes, cuz we have a lot of thoughts on that, that are very controversial. You guys shouldDiana: talk to Kaplan about cuz he is like, yes, he knows everything and he's just the, the best faith interlocutor about immigration that I've ever heard.Diana: He's just amazing. Yeah. Mm-hmm.Simone: Yeah. Although, Diana, I have to say, I'm already like dying to talk with you again. When you're ready, when your book is closer to coming out, will you come back on and talk about how to train your boyfriend? [00:28:00] AndMalcolm: you can check out her podcast right now. Which is similar.Malcolm: How we divided the world into two spheres. One is people just trying to ideologically signal to their tribe, and the other is people trying to get to the truth. They're very much in the, get to the truth camp. And it's,Diana: Aporia is is is really great. And, and I'm grateful that, given that I have a, a small child and another on the way that I managed to find a place with them because I really feel good about what I'm doing.Diana: So yeah, my most recent interview was with. With Paul Bloom. I recorded an interview with Simone. That's gonna be great. And there's, there's a, some on the back burner, Ayla, Mike Bailey. Those people are all coming out at someSimone: point. Oh good. Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm looking forward to those. That's really exciting.Simone: And where else can people find your work, read more ofDiana: what you write? I'm on se I'm, I'm on Twitter too much. I'm at Sentient. And yeah, check me out there.Simone: That's great. Oh, Diana, you were such a delight to speak with. I'm looking forward to all of your upcoming podcasts and articles. I just love every time something from you comes out. So everyone check out Diana's work if you haven't already, and hopefully we'll have you back on the podcast soon.Diana: Love to talk to you guys again. Thank you.Simone: Thank you. [00:29:00] Woohoo 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

Welcome back to Based Camp with Malcolm and Simone where we dissect different, fascinating aspects of human cognition. Today's episode centers around sexuality and arousal patterns, as well as fetishes that seem strange to many. Malcolm challenges the traditional Kinsey spectrum and offers a groundbreaking new perspective based on arousal to disgust spectrums for specific stimuli. Simone, meanwhile, shares her unusual hobby of exploring NSFW subreddits and trying to understand the various unique kinks and fetishes she discovers. From the "Gone Wild Audio" subreddit to the world of vorarephilia, we dive into a deep discussion about the nature of sexual arousal and how it's often far removed from societal norms or physical realities. This episode might just change the way you think about sexuality.Transcript:Malcolm: [00:00:00] .the Kinsey spectrum is just completely nonsense.Malcolm: It is a really bad mechanism for understanding arousal patterns. The way arousal patterns should really be thought of is as individual arousal to disgust spectrums for specific visual, auditory, or conceptual stimuli.Malcolm: Now one could be like the concept of, of being eaten, or the concept of farting, or the concept of disgust or some set of visual stimuli, like a large breasts or something like that.Malcolm: Or secondary sex characteristics of a specific nature. . So what do we mean by this? Cause a lot of people are like, what Disgust isn't part of your sexuality? But if you think about it, what happens when you're aroused by something? You look at it longer, your eyes dilate.Malcolm: People often take a breath in. What happens when you're disgusted by something, your pupils contract, you instinctively look away from it. You hold your breath. These sound like exactly mirroring reactions, almost as if they're the same system with a negative modifier [00:01:00] reply to it. And then when we started mapping from our data, all of the arousal and disgust things that people have, what we realized pretty quickly, Is something you would find is anything that disgusted a portion of the population would arouse a corresponding smaller portion of the population.Malcolm: And anything that aroused a portion of the population would disgust another smaller portion of the population. So what it seems we have here is that some part of the developmental life cycle, and this happens much more in males,Malcolm: and this is where another interesting thing happens that you regularly see. In gay males, which you don't see as much in gay females, and is a very interesting thing to explore and was one of our sort of hints in this is in gay males you will often hear active disgust.Malcolm: Towards certain female arousal stimuli or, or, or visual stimuli or physical or conceptual stimuli that we associate with women. [00:02:00] And, and so the question is, well, that's weird. Why would they begin to develop disgust around that when you don't actually see that in lesbian communities as often?Malcolm: So what our data actually showed is if you look at men like anyone would expect, the predominantly arousing thing is. The naked form of either males or females,Malcolm: but if you look at females, what we actually found is that is not the most arousing thing. It's a close second, but it's not the most arousing thing. The most arousing thing was, submission or dominance. And so what we pointed out there is even the concept of gay or straight, even the concept that our sexualities should be primarily defined by male or female predominant attraction.Malcolm: Is misogynistic because had women invented the field of sexuality research, they likely would've defined our sexuality as being predominantly dominance or submission based [00:03:00] instead of male or female based. And that the only reason why this wasn't caught earlier, isMalcolm: because the field is so dominated by identity politics that people can't say, well, let's just throw out all of the identity pol. Like let's pretend like gay straight is just like not an important dichotomy. And look at just like the data, like what are the core things that are arousing different populations.Simone: Hello, gorgeous. Hello,Malcolm: Simone. How's it going today?Simone: Really good. Should I share one of my dirty little secrets with.Simone: Our followers,Malcolm: I think they find it a very fun and weird hobby to have.Simone: Right? Yeah. So whereas other people like research World War II history or learn how to knit, collect Barbies I like to explore N S F W sub subreddits and try to figure out why exactly weird things seem to arouse people because.Simone: I, I really don't get it. I'm largely asexual, so like, this is fascinating to me. I feel like I'm an alien [00:04:00] exploring another planet and it's amazing. And I thought, I thought I'd seen every separate that it was N F S W. I thought I knew everything, even the really weird things like Sharpies and Anuses, like, you know, I, I thought I'd seen it all.Simone: And then I'm at this one late night dinner and, and someone brings up gone wild audio. I guess I never checked it out as a subreddit, an N S F W subreddit. It sounds boring. Yeah, it sounds boring. It, it just sounds like, I don't know, people telling sexy stories, and so I'm like, this is lame. Not gonna, and like, who wants to like sit down and listen to something?Simone: You know, when, when you know, you're like idly exploring stuff online. So it it just like, this person was like, yeah. Gone wild audio. Like I discovered I could orgasm without Without anything or anyone touching me uh, listening to this stuff. And I'm like, okay, so what uh, like what? So immediately I, I go, I go and I, I, I like, dive down this rabbit hole and I am, [00:05:00] my mind is blown because it is.Simone: It's like taking a theme park ride. You know those haunted house rides where you're like on a little track and you're like going through the haunted house and like, ugh. Like things are like coming out at you. It's like doing that. You're like putting yourself into the body of someone who's having some kind of arousing experience, but these aren't the experiences you would.Simone: Think necessarily. So like obviously the really popular recordings that have gotten the most dead votes in all time and stuff. Cuz the great way of exploring, you know, weird things on Ns FW is to both see like what is the most popular and what gets the most votes for all time, but also like what's trending, like what weird niche things are, what's controversial.Simone: So obviously like the vanilla ones are, you know, typically very like mainstream kind of vanilla plots, but like the weird ones are like, You are being assimilated into the Borg and like, you know, you're listening to this audio clip and like you, the listener are like going in some, into some [00:06:00] kind of machine and it's like beep boop, beep boop.Simone: You are being assimilated. And it's just, it's like what is happening to me? That was a deep cut. I, but I went deep. Cause there are all these different tags, like you can look you in, in gun wild audio.Simone: You can do M four F, F four, m, M four A. So you're getting a male voice for all audiences, a female voice for male, et cetera. So like, And they have, of course, like lots of tags like rape, non-consent incest like fantasy sci-fi and Star Wars. There was, there was a recently like a, a Boba FET sort of themed one.Simone: And like, this is just so nerdy. This is amazing.Malcolm: I love this as a lead in like we were talking about cuz somebody is like, oh, you guys should do an episode That's like just on fetishes. People have and the reason why, you know, we wrote a book on sexuality, the Fragmented Guide to Sexuality, the reason why we're so interested in fetishes more generally, especially fetishes that are unmoored from reality.Malcolm: So one is, is, is you know, [00:07:00] audio, but then another you can look at is like Hint I sites and stuff like that. And in both of these instances, what you're looking at, Is turn-ons for peopleMalcolm: that are unmoored from any constraints of reality. And when you see something that is very odd happening across populations, especially across cultures, and then especially if you see it happening over and over again historically, which is really interesting what you are seeing there is something like a scar, I, I would call it like an evolutionary scar in our psyche.Malcolm: Mm. By that what I mean is it's. Some point there was some really weird evolutionary pressure or evolution was using our psychological systems in an odd way that reveals deeper and truer underpinnings about how our brain is programmed. Yeah.Malcolm: So you look across cultures, you look across websites, you will see vore, which is often [00:08:00] talked about online, like somebody eating somebody else or like something eating something else. This is like, yeah, it's like carnivore. Yeah. This is like a persistently common fetish that like has nothing to do with breeding.Malcolm: And yet in the US if you look at our survey on this, And, and you can contrast those other surveys. So the numbers are about equal. It looks like the number of people who are into this is larger than the number of people who live in the state of Massachusetts. Mm. Which is like, I, I forgot like the force, most populatedSimone: state or something.Simone: And also, I don't think it's a new thing because in the. Movie gentleman prefer blondes with Marilyn Monroe. There's this one scene in which Marilyn Monroe describes a somewhat sexy encounter she has with the owner of a diamond mine, where he was pretending to be a python and she was pretending to be the goat.Simone: And that is so boring. We're like more role play. When or when did this come out? Oh, like late fifties, sixties,Malcolm: but certainly beforeSimone: the internet. Oh, no way. Pre-internet, way, pre [00:09:00] like any sort of mainstream, no. AnotherMalcolm: interest thing is people often think of as like, hint I being a modern thing. But if you look at Tijuana Bibles are Tilly, MacBook, these were common in like the 1920s and they were stole under the table at , Newspaper stands and like some other types of places, and they would have like Betty Boop porn and they'dSimone: have So isn't that like what, that's rule 34.Simone: It's like basicallyMalcolm: Rule 34. Yeah. Like rule 34 is really old. Yeah. And I, I would actually bet if you go back his. Historically to like ancient Greek times, you probably would've found, you know, similar sorts of wellSimone: You can even see political cartoons really early, and I'm sure even earlier, but around the French Revolution where they have illustrations of like Maria Antoinette and her primary ladies and waiting, doing raunchy and naughty things.Simone: Obviously some of that was political co commentary and slander, but a lot of it was also like, And these are women doing sexy things and people enjoy looking at images of that. You know what I mean?Malcolm: Well, you know, it sell, right? Mm-hmm. So I, I think that a lot of people view, you know, a [00:10:00] lot of our weird stuff today as being like modern degeneracy.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Oh, another great one was, oh, we have this in our book. I, I. Who's the Irish author who was really into fart porn? OhSimone: gosh. It wasn't James Joyce, was it?Malcolm: I thinkSimone: it was James Joyce. Yeah. I wanna say it was James Joyce.Malcolm: Yeah. Hold on.Simone: You are gonna read it. You're gonna, you are gonna,Malcolm: . I gave you a bigger, stronger F than usual fat dirty farts came sputtering out of your backside.Malcolm: You had an as full of farts that night, darling and I F them out of you. Big fat fellows, long windy ones. Quick little Mary cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty parties ending in long gush from your hole. And he just goes on and on paragraph after paragraph about farts. And this is something that I think today we think of as like a modern degeneracy.Malcolm: And the larger point here are you look at like bdsm. This used to be called the English vice. It was so [00:11:00] common and the assumption was. School teachers, spanking school kids with with paddlesSimone: hot. That's hot. I don't know. I hear that passage and all I can think is here's this woman who really cares about James Joyce or is very incentivized for him to stay with her, who's like, I don't know.Simone: You know, he, he's coming over that night. She's like, shov beans. And she's like, okay, how about like, trying to hold it in the right way to give him the right variation of farts. Like, I'm just thinking, how's this woman pulling this off? Because I'm, I'm thinking about this like, clearly elongated lovemaking scene about the logisticsMalcolm: of how this, yes, probably like prostitute keeps him interested.Malcolm: This, well,Simone: this, this is honestly like what I think about as I go through like. N N S F W subreddits. I'm like, wow. Like where, where do they get the diapers? You know, like where, like where do they source that really weird whip? Like how are they handling, like how are they managing their energy over this five hour session?Simone: Like what kind of antibiotics are they on right now? All these sorts of things, like, these are really interesting things to me and I okay. Okay.Malcolm: So now to [00:12:00] the, the question at hand. So what is probably really going on with all of this? Mm. And there were two. You know, one of the first things we really noticed from our book is when we contrasted our research was existing research.Malcolm: One of the things that we added to the research that we were looking at was not just the consumption of like drawn pornographic material mm-hmm. But romance novels and fan fiction,Simone: because that's the real stuff rightMalcolm: there. Yeah. All of a sudden women and men stopped looking as different in the data began to see about equal amounts of pornographic consumption in terms of the diversity of the consumption, not in terms mm-hmm.Malcolm: But,Simone: well, the great thing about that too, for women, I feel like women just like, one, they're super pervy, and two, it's totally like, just like it's not fair how like acceptable their erotic material is like, you know, we're not paying for a very, like a, a. Raunchy cite subscription as a family. Like we'll pay for a Netflix subscription and Bridgeton is sitting on that.Simone: And like, that's totally like, you know, [00:13:00] you know, it's, I mean, we,Malcolm: we live in a world where 50 Shades of Gray was like the bestselling book in the world for a long time. Yeah. And this was just like kinky female porn. But anyway, but I mean, that's a weird thing. Why do women like that? Why do they like being put in these scenarios?Malcolm: So that was one we already did. Mm-hmm. So if you're interested in why women or men like submissiveness, we have covered that in a lot of detail in the interview with Diana Fleischman that we did. Mm-hmm. But what I wanna cover is how human sexuality works more broadly now that we've done this fun intro thing here.Malcolm: So, When we were looking at things, the point I was making on the Vore thing that I wanted to get to is you'll see weird turn-ons like that. Or like a category of porn where like people get stuck in mud, right? But then there's other big categories where you will see almost no porn, like people catching on fire are falling off.Malcolm: High locations. Yeah. Never seen that. Oh yeah. Yeah. These are things we have like visceral fears of or emotions around. So [00:14:00] like why are you seeing it in some areas and not others? Because I think some people think either one, this is a new thing. Two, this is a thing that's just anything can turn people on.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And three, it's a sign of our, our current moral degeneracy. And yes, that may have added to it. Yes, the internet may have added to it, but all of these things existed before the internet or a lot of them existed before the internet. So what's really going on here? So the first in sort of understanding our arousal spectrum is the Kinsey spectrum is just completely nonsense.Malcolm: It is a really bad mechanism for understanding arousal patterns. The way arousal patterns should really be thought of is as individual arousal to disgust spectrums for specific visual, auditory, or conceptual stimuli.Malcolm: So a lot of people. May say something like, oh, the male, like, like males are one stimuli. So it was like males to females. How much are you? But that's not really it. You, you, if you look at [00:15:00] straight males, one of the things we found in our survey is like a huge portion of them are turned off by the site of, of vagina, but turned on by the site of a penis.Malcolm: So this is like a quarter of them. Yet they are turned on by the concept of a woman, the silhouette of a woman. Breasts, but in a female, everything else. So what you're seeing there is, okay, so let's talk about primary and secondary sex characteristics. Primary sex characteristics are really just the stuff you use to reproduce i e, the stuff below the belt.Malcolm: Secondary sex characteristics are things that are useful like after reproduction. So it might be a guy being larger, having rougher hands or bigger hands. It's female breasts. These two systems for arousal actually seem disconnected for each other given how. Frequently they uncouple in terms of the populations we were looking at.Malcolm: So to even talk about arousal patterns to males, arousal patterns to females is wrong. And this is likely why. You see things like FUTA porn being so common The, because that's appealing to this portion of the male [00:16:00] demographic or the otherwise straight male demographic who is interested in this sort of weird combination of parts that you don't see that often in nature.Malcolm: And, and, and then you have to get to why that's happening, which we'll get to in a bit. But anyway, so we talk about individual stimuli. Now one could be like the concept of, of being eaten, or the concept of farting, or the concept of disgust or some set of visual stimuli, like a large breasts or something like that.Malcolm: Or secondary sex characteristics of a specific nature. And then we say these exist on an arousal to disgust metric. So what do we mean by this? Cause a lot of people are like, what Disgust isn't part of your sexuality? But if you think about it, what happens when you're aroused by something? You look at it longer, your eyes dilate.Malcolm: People often take a breath in. What happens when you're disgusted by something, your pupils contract, you instinctively look away from it. You hold your breath. These sound like exactly mirroring reactions, almost as if they're the same system with a negative modifier reply to it. And then when we [00:17:00] started mapping from our data, all of the arousal and disgust things that people have, what we realized pretty quickly, Is something you would find is anything that disgusted a portion of the population would arouse a corresponding smaller portion of the population.Malcolm: And anything that aroused a portion of the population would disgust another smaller portion of the population. So what it seems we have here is that some part of the developmental life cycle, and this happens much more in males, this sort of flip sign in the data something that's supposed to disgust you.Malcolm: Turns out to arouse you. So this is why you get, like, there's a category of, of arousal and arousing things called like creepy crawlers where people have like insects poured on them. But then you also have stuff like, you know, feces being poured on someone, stuff like that. All of these random disgusting things.Malcolm: And so what we think is happening there, you have this disgust modifier, and this is where another interesting thing happens that you [00:18:00] regularly see. In gay males, which you don't see as much in gay females, and is a very interesting thing to explore and was one of our sort of hints in this is in gay males you will often hear active disgust.Malcolm: Towards certain female arousal stimuli or, or, or visual stimuli or physical or conceptual stimuli that we associate with women. And, and so the question is, well, that's weird. Why would they begin to develop disgust around that when you don't actually see that in lesbian communities as often?This is something we also don't see in straight female populations. So gay males, sexuality does not look like straight female sexuality, but more like a mirror of straight male sexuality, where you also see this disgust reaction, but to male associated stimuli.Malcolm: And what we suspect is going on here is something during the developmental life cycle in males determines their primary [00:19:00] gender of attraction and then starts supplying negative modifiers to other things.Malcolm: But this process is why in males more than females, because there's already this negative modifier process. What it's actually doing is not applying to negative modifiers, to things. It's basically multiplying pathways by a negative one. Is what you can think of it as. And it will sometimes turn arousal pathways to discuss pathways and sometimes turn discuss pathways to arousal pathways because you see that phenomenon much more in males and females.Malcolm: So this is just a broad understanding of how we, we see arousal. Do you wanna talk to any of the subjects here, Simone?Simone: No, I just, it's, it resonates so much more. Like it's so odd to think that sex is limited. I think one thing that you point out in our sexuality book that is useful for people to think about is that, I think men are, are more likely to be really sensitive to signs of gender.Simone: And also men were the original ones doing this sexuality research and doing it from that very male [00:20:00] perspective without even thinking that things like romance novels would be considered as erotic material, and that could be one of the reasons why for so many years, that was the paradigm for all this research.Malcolm: Yeah, I really love what you're saying here. So what our data actually showed is if you look at men like anyone would expect, the predominantly arousing thing is. The naked form of either males or females, right? Like that is the normal thing that most arouses males if you look across the population.Malcolm: But if you look at females, what we actually found is that is not the most arousing thing. It's a close second, but it's not the most arousing thing. The most arousing thing was, submission or dominance. And so what we pointed out there is even the concept of gay or straight, even the concept that our sexualities should be primarily defined by male or female predominant attraction.Malcolm: Is misogynistic because had women invented the field of [00:21:00] sexuality research, they likely would've defined our sexuality as being predominantly dominance or submission based instead of male or female based. And that the only reason why this wasn't caught earlier, that women, you know, focus on that more than they focus on male or female is because almost all of the early researchers in the space were male.Malcolm: And they just weren't thinking like women and they were leaving out tons of data sources that would've immediately elucidated this, as Simone pointed out. And I find that really fascinating because I think it shows how nascent the field of research here really is. Yeah. And how much is being ignored.Malcolm: Because the field is so dominated by identity politics that people can't say, well, let's just throw out all of the identity pol. Like let's pretend like gay straight is just like not an important dichotomy. And look at just like the data, like what are the core things that are arousing different populations.Malcolm: And then you start to be like, oh, so like in women, gender is less important than dominance or submission. [00:22:00] Why isn't that a primary spectrum?The reason, of course, being that people began to develop their identities around the rather nascent concepts. Coming out of the field of sexuality a few decades ago. And now if you update the research, if you update the academic consensus, then you are undermining people's identities.So you can't really update the consensus in academia anymore. It's.It is permanently cannon wherever the field happened to be. About 30 years ago. And that is. A big reason why the field of sexuality is just so backwards right now.Malcolm: But even here, so let's talk about like our system versus McKinsey spectrum. Mm-hmm. Because I think that this is a very useful thing to understand. So if you boil down our system to its simplest level, the way you would think of it as is if in we're using McKinsey spectrum, part of the system, arousal to females, To disgust the females arousal to males, to disgust [00:23:00] the males.Malcolm: And these are two different stimuli categories that have no tie to each other. So two people could be all the way on arousal to both males and females. Two people could be all the way to disgust on both males and females, and two people could be all the way in the neutral to both males and females.Malcolm: Right? Right. And the reason why this system is much more useful is within the Kinsey spectrum, you would literally mark somebody who was exactly equal neutral to males and females, and who was. Like neutral to males, but far disgust to females as exactly the same part of the spectrum, or disgust to female, disgust to males, neutral males, neutral females.Malcolm: All of these people would be in the same part of this, this bar, even though there's, they're actual sexual representations, they're wildly different. Yeah. It's crazy. And the other thing that helps elucidate is that disgust, if disgust is an inborn part of our sexuality, if it is something that is lar or so, so saying sexuality is unchangeable is a wrong thing.Malcolm: You can, you know, in trans people, [00:24:00] the predominant gender of attraction change is about 25% of the time during hormone therapy. So like, you can change what turns you on, but you, you can't change it like intentionally.Simone: You can also change like how much you're turned on.Malcolm: It's like rolling for loot in Diablo.Malcolm: Like you can roll for loot, but you don't know exactly what you're gonna get. You can't like, choose the outcome. But the point here being is if, if, if the things that are discussed to you don't are, are things outside of your control, right? Mm-hmm. Well then one of the problems we have is that when we feel this, this feeling of disgust and we don't know why we're feeling it, one of the, the, the, the jumps tos that most people have is this thing must be immoral.Malcolm: And this is something we see, you know, historically. So you look at lepers, like people assume there was something immoral about them because they created this feeling of disgust in people. And, and the disgust was, stay away from this person who might get you a disease. You know, like evolution was using that system.Malcolm: But this is a big problem for arousal patterns because when we hear people with arousal patterns that cause disgust in us, we [00:25:00] often assume that there must be something immoral about them. And I think that it's very important to distinguish between consenting things happening between adults. So that in no way, like.Malcolm: It hurts their ability to reproduce in anything and things that we should actually see as disgusting because of some sort of moral framework we hold other than the J. Just, this causes disgust in me, therefore it's immoral. Yeah.Simone: Yep. Yep. Yeah. And just because something turns you on doesn't mean you think it's moral or good or that you even like it or want it to happen.Simone: With rape being the really big example that there's a shocking number of people aroused by not, not role play, but real actual rape I wouldn't know. We know this because weMalcolm: ask these questions in a row. Yes. We asked rape role play, and then we asked real rape. And so we got like a huge, we, we, we knew this.Malcolm: There was no confusion in the, in the survey. But yeah, but that doesn't mean that they wanted it to happen to them. And I think that's another really important thing.Simone: Yeah. It's not like [00:26:00] people who, you know, experienced it or people who actually did experience it themselves and then found it arousing, like that doesn't mean they're okay with it.Simone: That doesn't mean that they wanted it or asked for it or ever wanted it to happen again. So I think it's, it's just really important, but that it's, it goes both ways and, you know, in, in that you may feel this instinctive desire to see someone. Who is aroused by something that you don't morally accept to be themselves, reprehensible themselves, bankrupt, when really they have no control over that.Simone: Just because something turns someone on doesn't mean that they morally condone it, and it also doesn't mean that they want that thing to happen by any stretch of the imagination.Malcolm: So this has been the briefest of overviews of our sexuality research.Malcolm: We didn't go into any of the weird side paths or anything like that. We just went over like a broad spectrum of how we understand sexuality. And we can go deeper if people want us to go deeper in future videos, but I don't want to just have the algorithm think of us as like a sexuality channel. So we let us know.Simone: Let us know in the comments if there's something else you want [00:27:00] us to explore, and I will leave you with this. One of my favorite things about Gone Wild Audio and why it is probably my favorite NSF F W. World on the internet is it really enables you to explore things that arouse other people in a much more first person way.Simone: So it's not like looking at an image and being like, I don't know what's going on here or looking at a picture or a video and just not getting it. You are, you know, if you close your eyes and like really try to put yourself in the position of, the way that the audio works is you as a listener are experiencing something, like someone's talking to you, things are happening.Simone: There's often like sound effects. It's, it's like people go all out. It's, they put time into it. I such. Deep respect for this. And it really allows you to more empathetically experience someone going through whatever the scenario is that turns them on. And you may not like it, it will not arouse you. If you're like listening to something that's not like part of your particular network of things that turns you on, but it will.Simone: I think it will [00:28:00] help you just better understand other people and what other people are turned on by, especially when you rank by what gets the most up votes. So, and, and do this. Don't just do this for like, if you're a woman, don't just do this for men. Targeting women content. Do this also for women targeting men content because then you understand like what a large number of men are turned on by like scenarios.Simone: It really turned on like it's just, it's so good at helping you understand other people's points of view. So just if you do one thing, let this be your homework and enjoy.Malcolm: And I, just to add to what she's saying, cause I think it's really interesting is, is I think what she's capturing there and the reason why she finds this so engaging is it's the one aspect of other people that is hardest to empathize with.Malcolm: Yeah. It is hardest to model. The way that other people are fantasizing when something's arousing them because it is probably psychologically the largest area of differentiationSimone: between humans. Mm-hmm. And it's really hard watching like two or three or however many other [00:29:00] people doing a thing and to really empathize with them.Simone: It's very different to, this is as close as you can get. To walking in their shoes, to like, literally trying to embody their, it's like going into someone else's body and loving it. It's, it's fun, it's awesome. Do it. And I,Malcolm: I don't know if I'd say do it. It sounds good. I've never, she's, I, I, I think it's delightful how much she finds this engaging and, oh no, you'llSimone: find your f You're like, your face will contort into the most massive cringes sometimes.Simone: And sometimes you'll have to just, yeah, I don't, I don't, that doesn't sound, there's some, there are some portions I have to fast forward through. I'm not gonna say what, cuz there's some, there's some things that a lot of people really like that, like for me, Extreme disgust response, extreme disgust response.Simone: But again, like just it helps me understand like, oh, I am in the minority here. Like I may think that everyone thinks this is gross. I'm super wrong and I've learned a lot from this. So anyway, do it Malcolm. I love you. This is really fun and I'm looking forward to our next conversation already.Oops, you can see. Ah, froze there at the end. , so that's why you didn't have the sign [00:30:00] off for me. , I would love people. If they do like these sorts of topics, , to let us know in the comments. And, we can do more videos like this, especially if there's specific areas of arousal that you personally find really interesting. We've almost certainly done a stupid amount of research on the subject.I mean, we did write the book on this stuff, so, , we're really happy to dig into it with you guysOne final little thing. If anybody wants to help out with any part of this channel. Whether it's to create some sort of community group. Or. To help edit shorts or manage a Tik TOK or something for us. We would be really happy for the assistance. In regards to the group, If anybody does start a group or anyone has started a group. Cause I know some people were talking about that in previous comments. Please let us know because we actually only post about half of the videos we make. , we do that to try to keep the quality really high. So I'll sometimes get through video and I'll just be like, ah, I don't know if this is good enough for our Watchers. Uh, but you know, it would be maybe fun to dump some of the ones that we don't [00:31:00] publish in a community like that.And then if any of them get a lot of attention, then I can post them to the main channel., this is, this is probably far more work than I should be putting into a, a YouTube with, less than 5,000 followers. , but I really appreciate the recent follower growth and the encouraging comments we've been getting. It means a lot to me in a, it keeps me motivated to try to make this a thing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Malcolm and Simone as they embark on a thought-provoking journey into the nature of truth, the roles of centralized bureaucracy, expertise, and individual discernment in our society. Taking a historical perspective, they analyze the reformation and parallels with today's society, and propose intriguing theories around cultural interpretations of truth.Starting from their reflections on the expert consensus and personal experiences to their deep insights into the historical Jesus, they conclude with an unexpected yet fascinating connection between different cultural groups, their perspectives on truth, and their propensity to form criminal syndicates in the United States.In this conversation, you will find a comprehensive discussion that weaves historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives into a compelling exploration of what truth is, how we determine it, and its effects on society at large. Watch now to join the discussion, and don't forget to subscribe for more thought-provoking content!This is a transcript for SEO - it is not edited after an auto translateMalcolm: [00:00:00] different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, like the Catholic cultural groups those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? [00:01:00] But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracySimone: prepare for troubleMalcolm: and make itSimone: double. To protect the world from devastation,Malcolm: unite all peoples within our nation toSimone: announce the evils of truth and love.Malcolm: To extend our reach to the stars above Jesse JamesSimone: team, rocket blasts off at the speed of lightMalcolm: surrender. Now we're prepared to fight.Malcolm: Meow. That's right. So, oh God. We had done that at in another, one of our things is like our personal motto because all of the, the, the pers of the song really extend to aspects of our philosophy, whether it is, extending our stories as a bob or seeing love as an intrinsically evil thing, which we have talked [00:02:00] about in other.Malcolm: Episodes in which we'll certainly do a longer episode on at some point. I mean, is there anything more perverse in a marriage based on love? This, the only reason we feel it's cause our ancestors are felt it had more surviving offspring. And even if you take a religious perspective on this, the devil can use love to manipulate you.Malcolm: Like what a better emotion to manipulate people. Right? Especially love for a human over love. God or Christ, right? That's, that's an evil thing. So the idea that even from a secular or a theological perspective from our cultural perspective, at least maybe not all cultural perspective, but from ours, love is typically at the very least, something to be suspicious of.Malcolm: But the one point we haven't really gotten over here is the evils of truth. And so I want to talk and take this episode to talk about how we see truth. How does the diversity of perspectives on truth and Yeah. I, I think right now we're at a turning point [00:03:00] civilizationally for the concept of truth.Malcolm: Mm. And it's a turning point that is very similar to when we've gone through in the past, and I think we can learn from the last time we went through this. So if you look at society right now, you look at all these conspiracy theories that people have that keep coming up true. People are like, oh no, conspiracy theories don't come up.Malcolm: True. Yeah. Now, do you remember how insane it was that the idea that there's these like cabals of pedophile among like the wealthy elite in our society and now it's like. After Epstein, it's like, oh, oh. There, there was actually at leastSimone: one major. I mean, it was just one Malcolm. It's fine. It's fine.Simone: Well, well youMalcolm: think we would catch a lot of them? I mean, he messed up. I, I don't know. I would, I look at all of them. Do you think that like all of these people had developed like these pedophilic habits and like this was their only source? Like you, it's like, a cop's like, oh, well we arrested a meth dealer in town.Malcolm: There's no more meth here. It's over. Congratulations.Simone: The war on drug. Is this over?Malcolm: Yeah. People clearly only could buy [00:04:00] meth from one person. This is Johnny, the meth dealer. There is. It's in his name. They, they, he can't, they can't be buying meth from other people. But I mean, like what I'm saying is we're, and then with Covid and the, the, the whole vaccine rollout, there was this thing in our society where two groups are forming, right?Malcolm: And we talk about this in this academic cult that runs their culture right now, which is to say, when people are trying to determine what's true in our society, like the elite was in our society, they go, well look at, look at this priest cast, look at the consensus. What did they say? The academics, right?Malcolm: Like that is what is true within our society. And when we've done episodes before on all the problems with academic research these days, replicability, crisis, everything like that where things keep showing up wrong. But anyway they say, look at that, right? So the first group says, look, truth should be determined by people who have spent their entire lives studying a subject because like everyone can't study everything these days, right?Malcolm: And that these people should be certified by central bureaucracy, cuz obviously we need some way to know which of them have like been studying longer. You [00:05:00] can't just have somebody come outta nowhere and say like, I'm an expert in why. Right? And then the other group in our society says Ex, excuse me.Malcolm: That central bureaucracy is highly prone to corruption. And from all of this data looks like it's already pretty corrupt and is now just trying to serve an ideology rather than an objective truth about reality. And therefore, truth should always be best determined by an individual. And a lot of people look at this and they're like, well, this looks like it's headed for a disaster.Malcolm: Like society has never been through this before. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like we as a world have gone through this before. This world where one organization says truth should best be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and have been certified by central bureaucracy. And then a second group says, well, that central bureaucracy is prone to corruption.Malcolm: That's what the reformation was. Like, we've gone through this before, but we haven't just gone through it once. And this is where it gets really interesting is [00:06:00] both of these perspective on truth have merit to them. Most of these perspectives have an element of utility to them, and I think that societies that have both of them actually work better than societies that lean to just one or just the other. An example of a society that left just to trust the experts was China, and that's where you ended up getting zero.Malcolm: Covid was like people being welded in their apartments and like starving to death, like horrible scenarios came out of saying. Well, we need to trust the experts because then when reality doesn't align with what the experts are saying, you begin to get this doubling down and doubling down because, well then you've overturned your priesthood cast, right?Malcolm: And to a lot of people who have obtained that level of power, the very last thing they want to do is to lose that level of power. But if you have this constant questioning of authority, Well, then you have the other problem, which is spiraling into conspiracy theories and flat earth ness and, and, and like the most extremes of wacky conspiracy theories because everything needs to be questioned.Malcolm: But these aren't the [00:07:00] only two frameworks for understanding truth. Well, andSimone: actually, yes. So let's back up and let's give some context. And I think actually something that foundationally influenced the way that both of us came to view truth and it, believe it or not, has to do with Jesus. Um, That was really what changed the way that I look at truth.Simone: And I think it influenced you too, whether or not you want to admit it. So, the teaching company, a k a Wondering, a k A, the Great Courses has a really great lecture series on the historical Jesus. It is done by a professor who attempts to go through. Jesus as the life of Jesus as a historical figure.Simone: So setting aside faith, belief, what anything else? You know what? What can we know from a historical perspective only about the apocalyptic Jew known as JesusMalcolm: and well, whether he is an apocalyptic Jew would be up for debate, but this theory typically argue C isSimone: continue. Right? And [00:08:00] what's. What I think was very foundational in that lecture series for both you and and for me though me much later.Simone: Cause I think you listened to it as much younger youth and so it like shaped your perception and you don't realize like, it's like it accepted your perception of what truth should be. How truth can be discerned is the lecturer goes through all these criteria for truth. That can be used to determine what is more likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus and what is less likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus.Simone: And these criteria can easily be transferred to pretty much any domain. And it's some, they're criteria that we absolutely use outside biblical scholarship at least like Malcolm and Simone, that is to say, mm-hmm. I, I wouldn't say everyone necessarily use these criteria, but actually I really wish that they did because they're very, Good for determining truth.Simone: And I think that a lot of the, even earlier in our relationship before, before you had me listen to the historical Jesus lecture series, actually we had a much more [00:09:00] rudimentary breakdown of how truth was discerning. It was more like, well, do we believe scientific consensus? Do we believe our own personal feelings?Simone: Do we believe like some other criteria? But now we have a much more sophisticated sort of listing and that I think is broadly inspired by this course. Like I. Oh, what are some of the criteria, like the one forMalcolm: dis So . We actually have a whole list of these within the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, but essentially we have created our own metric for determining truths within the culture that we're building for ourselves and our kids that we think works within this modern era, which is to say, to draw information from both personal experience and the expert consensus, but filter any information that's coming from the expert consensus.Malcolm: Through certain rules to determine how high quality that information is. With an example of like a really obvious one being like, does this support or does it go against an agenda that would advance the careers of the individual saying it? So if a [00:10:00] scientist is saying something that could get them fired, it's more likely to be true than something that supports the ideological agenda, which is dominant within academia.Malcolm: The same way that. If an oil company said, yes, global warming is real and we need to do something about it, that would be very like, oh, shoot. But if it, if it says, oh no, don't worry about global warming, or if a cigarette, somebody said, oh, no, no, the cigarettes don't cause cancer. Like, I could largely ignore that.Malcolm: Right. Another is to look for largely unrelated sources which are showing the same thing. So one would be something like are insurance rates going up around like women driving cars versus men and then like a scientific paper says women are worse drivers than men? Then I could be like, okay, so women are probably worse drivers than men, right?Malcolm: Or you can look at the, the criteria of genuine care. So insurance companies are very good selectors of this and that. An insurance company, when it's pricing things, Genuinely cares. Like if an insurance company says, do this to be healthier, they likely care a lot more than like a [00:11:00] general, a generally random person.Malcolm: An example of a, of, of a weird one you might see was like historical Jesus, which I really liked and, and was really me meaningful to me. Is a, a piece of information that seems sus when you first hear it, and it seems a little weird when you first hear it, but as you get more information on, it begins to make a lot more sense in a way that the people who were conveying that to you clearly didn't understand.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So here's an example. Jesus born in a manger, right? Like in, in his, why would you send them to the barn to have kids? Why wouldn't they have kids in the house? Like if the house is there, like at the, some ladies having you, you literally like, go put her with the animals. Why would you do that? Right?Malcolm: And this seemed very weird to me. Then I went to Israel and I looked at houses that were common from around that period, and all of a sudden I was like, This makes perfect sense. So the way that the houses were designed during that period was [00:12:00] sort of like, often the, the one, one style of it was to build them into like the sides of hills or something.Malcolm: And so they'd be semi-circular like this, or, or just like huts that were semi-circular like this. And then down the middle there would be a division. And on this side of the house is where all of the people would sleep. Like there was no need for individual rooms or anything. I mean, this was very, very primitive.Malcolm: So everyone would basically sleep in a pile. And then on the other side of the divide is where the animals would stay. Right. And of course, oh, all of the family sleeps on this side of the divide. Anything that's not family sleeps on this side of the divide. So that would translate into modern tongue.Malcolm: In the manger, but historically it was where the animals stay. Which makes a lot of sense when you see it and you're like, okay, so this is probably accurate to where this would've happened. Another example here would be the criteria of like, embarrassment or you would say like, something you, you probably wouldn't want.Malcolm: So these are people talking about, okay, this is the son of God being born. Well, you're probably not gonna say he was born in a manger, [00:13:00] like where animals are, right? Like, He's the king of kings in, in, in their interpretation, like that seems like it doesn't fit the agenda. You would probably say he was, if you were just making up a story from nowhere, you would say, oh, he was born to a king, or to a secret king, or something like that.Malcolm: Right? Like born to poor people in a manger. Like, no, that's. That's not what you would come up with, especially now today because Christianity has influenced the world so much and victim narratives are really important and like, oh, this person came from nothing to be something that was not a common story motif of that time period.Malcolm: It was a common story motif that somebody was secretly born of a king and then grew up with nothing, right? Like that was a common story motif, but born of like actual, like not that important people and then grow up to be something. That was not a common story motif at the time. So, so, that's, that's what we're talking about there.Malcolm: But anyway,Simone: yeah, I just, I, I think that it's really interesting, like, I think multiple attestation is there too, like, is this story told, and also how is it told similarly in different [00:14:00] gospels? Like, I, I can't remember exactly how it went, but like different gospels have like, Jesus writing in on one donkey, on two donkey.Simone: Like they're like different donkey scenarios. And sort of like,Malcolm: well, probably a better way to word what you're saying is if across gospels it looks like. Whenever you see similarities, you see almost it in the exact same words.Simone: Well, yeah. Then, then it's, then it's less credible because they're just copy pasting.Simone: Yeah. They were copied and its copy pasta. It doesn't get as much credibility, but when you do have the story told in slightly different ways that, that don't seem as copied or that that sound pretty unique, but they have many like core similarities and it's like, oh, well something around this might haveMalcolm: happened.Malcolm: Right. Well, and that's true today when you're looking at press releases. Like where you'll see a bunch of sources, like if ever I see almost the exact same set of words used across news stories. Right? Yeah. I assume that they're pulling from the same source. Yeah. Which could be something that like the Republican party or the Democratic Party is pushing out there.Malcolm: Some kind of press release. Yeah. Some [00:15:00] kind of basically press release or organized press campaign, and then I basically disregard everything that's said there. Totally. And then there's other weird things we use, like the criteria of shot calling. Like if somebody says This unlikely thing is going to happen, like I stake my career on it, and then that unlikely thing happens, I can basically trust almost everything they say after that A lot more.Malcolm: Exactly. And so anyway, we, we've gone over that, but, but here's where it gets interesting is different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So really interesting thing is if you look at cultural groups so like, let's look at the US right now.Malcolm: Right? So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the [00:16:00] Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about preexisting native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracy.Why does this happen? I suspect the criminal aspect is largely ancillary or irrelevant to the phenomenon. What you're actually seeing is just the groups organizing themselves into a structured hierarchy organically. And because they are often on the outs with society, given [00:17:00] that they are recent immigrant groups, that structured hierarchy ends up becoming a criminal hierarchy. That's a phenomenon that we're seeing here.Malcolm: And again, I'm, I'm saying both of these, the Protestant Extreme also has its craziness. Again, they also often go up on crazy conspiracy theories. That's, that's what happens when you, when you question everything, it's, it's also not stable to base an entire country just around that. But what's really interesting is you can also see different country outcomes.Malcolm: So if you look at countries where the dominant cultural group is, we trust, authority, his, like, we trust people have spent their entire life studying something. Those cultural groups. Were the longest holdout monarchies in Europe. Largely speaking. And the, the quickest conversion to democracies within Europe or democracy like structures were the cultural groups that were predominantly Protestant.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And dictatorships seemed to happen in countries that this dominant cultural group believes in.Malcolm: Let's have truths determined by the people who spent their entire life studying a subject. In [00:18:00] fact, if you look at Protestant majority countries outside of Africa, only one has ever stayed a dictatorship for over seven years. And that is somewhere in East Asia. I don't remember where it is, but, but it, it, it's very interesting where when you look at Catholic majority countries around the world or orthodox majority countries around the world, they seem much more likely to form dictatorships.Malcolm: And so what we would argue is actually the idea country, and this is why we're so pro pluralism, is you want a pluralistic understanding of what truth is. But again, these aren't the only two systems for truth. So Jews have a completely different system for truth, which is really, really fascinating. We could do a whole different session on this.Malcolm: But again, i, I, I believe it, it's really well illustrated by the Snake oven story, which I've gone over in an another video. Just really quickly three Rabbis are having a disagreement. One rabbi says, this, this oven is not kosher. The other two say it is kosher, one or the other. I don't remember which way.Malcolm: The one who disagrees with the other two, he's like, look, I can prove to you that God's on my side. And he points out, he does a bunch of miracles[00:19:00] like the rain will flow upwards. They're like, yeah, I, I get that. God agrees with you. But it's not what the letter of the law says, therefore it is. And, and then God basically comes down, he's like, ah, my own children best in me.Malcolm: And, and what he's saying is basically, this is not my jurisdiction. Thank you for calling me out on that. And that this is an ultra legalistic understanding of truth. Which is to say, and, and here's where you can see this in terms of identity, right? So our kids, Simone, is. Matrilineally Jewish, like, your grandmother is Jewish.Malcolm: Basically. But from our perspective your culture is, is a mix of the different people who make you up. Yet when I talk to Orthodox Jewish people about my kids, they're like, no, your kids are Jewish. I'm like, well, I mean, they're barely Jewish. And they're like, no. Technically they're Jewish.Malcolm: They're Jewish e especially if you raise them Jewish like we've talked about sending them to, to Jewish schools or whatever, because, the good schools in our areas they're, they're definitely Jewish then. [00:20:00] And I think that that really shows this different understanding of truths. Now, the Jewish understanding of truth is actually a lot more nuanced than just legalism, because to say it's legalism also really misstates it.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. It's more, I, I describe it more like, In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Earth is this giant computer where if everyone does their roles, then it will come out to a correct answer. And so it's more like truth is a cultural machine then truth is any, any, the legalism itself.Malcolm: Truth is the cultural conversation. And that is why sort of the rabbinic debate is so important within Jewish culture's understanding of truth. And then another example of truth is Quaker understanding of truth. So Quaker understanding of truth is truth is this fire that burns within every individual.Malcolm: And truth is what moves you or the little voice inside your head like it is your. Emotion speaking to you, that [00:21:00] is truth. Yes, truth is best determined at the personal level, but truth isn't best determined by an objective investigation of reality. Truth is best determined by how you feel. Mm-hmm.Malcolm: Whereas if you look at the Calvinist understanding of truth, truth is, and that's my cultural tradition, and it's, it's Simone's predominant cultural tradition. Truth is best determined by personal research, but personal like. Scientific research of reality. And this is where again, like you see the Catholic perception of truths actually being much better.Malcolm: So if you look during the witch trials or the Inquisition, the Catholic Inquisition was actually pretty kind in that, yes, they did some harsh stuff, but they very much. Still believed in interviewing lots of witnesses. They believed in discounting witness testimony if those witnesses seemed like they had Quas with the community.Malcolm: But then you had the Calvinist communities, which were the Puritan communities in the us. And these communities almost didn't really believe that people could lie. Like they didn't believe that anyone from their culture would lie. So if anyone was saying [00:22:00] anything, well, it must be true. Like one that was where they just.Malcolm: Like spiraled into psycho really quickly. But then the second was, Is that they believed that they could investigate reality through like natural experiments. Mm-hmm. They're like, ah, the world is very ordered. So what we're gonna do is, well, witches must resist the baptism. Right? Like, because they can't be accepted to to Christ.Malcolm: So like if we throw them in water, they're gonna flow, right? Because they resist water. And so let's try that. That would be a good way to test if someone's a witch. And you didn't, you saw this a little bit within, but this didn't really happen that much within, within the, the Catholic inquisition.Malcolm: One, they didn't even really believe in witches at all. It was more like, let's find heretics. Yeah. So he much more like moderated in learned. Yeah. And that's the thing with expert consensus, it is really prone to corruption, but the answers it comes to for reality. Are always going to be much more [00:23:00] moderated and less insane than the answers that can come to predominate within cultural groups with like my own.Malcolm: The thing that you should always investigate everything independently, and this is why I think that pluralistic cultural groups like the US where you have both of these cultural groups to a large extent, living in harmony and working together, that's where you're gonna get the best answers. That's where you have the least chance of either a dictatorship forming.Malcolm: Or, a, a mob that, that goes off and does crazy things for me. Yeah.Simone: Yeah.Simone: Well, also don't forget about the, the criteria of truth that you like the least, which is that most associated with like modern woke progressivism, which you like to call, and the pragmatist's guide to crafting religion, just equalism. Right. Can you walk us through that?Malcolm: Yeah. So. Many times within this community, you will see them, like when they're trying to decide what's true about the world, and there's a few [00:24:00] possible paths of what could be true. They choose what would make the world most fair. Mm-hmm. What a fair reality would create as truth. So if you're asking are there systemic differences between like the way men and women process reality, They'll be like, well, it wouldn't be fair if there were systemic differences, therefore there aren't systemic differences.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Even if it like clashes with other aspects of their worldview, you see this over and over again within the woke community and it's, not everyone was in the woke community, but there's definitely a portion of the woke community that does practice jism and it, it, it's terrifying to me because it can lead to.Malcolm: A lot worse outcomes for everyone, but outcomes really don't matter in how they're determining truths. So I look at the way that Protestants try to determine truths, and I'm like, I get that, I may, I may think that it could use some tweaks, but I get why they do it that way. I look at the way Catholics determine truth, I'm like, yeah, that seems like logically consistent.Malcolm: I can see how it can lead to abuse, but like, yeah, that makes sense to me. Like they're genuinely trying [00:25:00] to get to a good answer for the world. I look at the way it's, choose, determine truth, and I'm like, look, this is one of the oldest most successful cultural traditions in human history. Like they're, they're clearly onto something.Malcolm: Then I look at the way that Jessica, it's like, this doesn't even seem to be like, honestly trying to help people. It just seems to be trying to protect their self identity as good people. And this is where when I look at the world and I'm like, there's a diversity, I think that we do well within a diverse world.Malcolm: And a lot of people are like, how dare you say, these different groups see truth differently. Right? It's like, what's the point of diversity of everyone secretly sees the world the same way? Like the point of diversity is that we see things differently. That is where strength and diversity comesSimone: from.Simone: Yeah. Here, one second though. I'm just gonna push back. I think the, the core of just Equalism is maybe that. If you choose to see truth that way, that you can make it that way. I think it's a sort of manifesting I mean, and this is a more spiritual group, right? Like my good faith interpretation of [00:26:00] that criteria for truth is I'm going to believe, for example, that there are no differences between men and women.Simone: And then that belief will indeed shape. Whether or not there are differences. And some of that's based in science, like understanding of the placebo effect and understanding of the power of narratives and examples. But I think that, that there's also this manifesto, like I said, element of it.Simone: So I think that a lot of it's like I just want, I want there to be a world in which that's true, and so I'm gonna believe it's true until it becomes true.Malcolm: I disagree with you. I think it's all about protecting their ego and protecting their image as virtuous people, no matter what they do. I don't think so.Malcolm: And I want people in the comments to to, to weigh in on this. Yeah. Which, which side of this,Malcolm: and then again, I wanna, I wanna point out before we leave, like these are all like, Obviously not everyone from these cultural groups sees truths this way. We're just talking about the way these cultural groups differ from each other. Because I think that through looking at the way they differ from each other, we can learn things that are especially pertinent to our [00:27:00] current time with this current debate over this system of truths our society is using.Malcolm: If we can look to historic parallels, there's a lot we can use, especially in building new and potentially. Better systems or in coming to appreciate why, even if I don't understand different people's understanding of truth, I can appreciate that our society is stronger for having that diversity. Because I can look historically and see what happens when we lack that diversity, whether it's the Puritan colonies or the, historic Castle Church.Simone: Well, All I can say, Malcolm, is I know one thing is true and that that is, you are a sexy beast and I know it because of your face. That is my criterion of truth. I love you. I think that'sMalcolm: subjective. That's subjective. It's true, but no, it's not subjective that you are a sexy beast. It is subjective that I am.Malcolm: Because my perspective on reality is the ruler from which [00:28:00] truth is measured, and all truth is determined by how far it differentiates from my perspective of reality and within my perspective of reality. You're a sexy piece, so that's true.Simone: How convenient. I love you, gorgeous. Looking forward to our next conversation. 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

Sit back, grab a drink (preferably not a champagne bottle you're sitting on) and join us for this enlightening discussion about relationship contracts, inspired by a listener's comment. This episode delves into the importance of relationship contracts and the many unspoken social contracts that govern our interactions. With honesty, humor, and a champagne bottle or two, we explore how these contracts play out in the everyday scenarios of our lives and more importantly, in our romantic relationships. We also touch on the topic of maintaining physical attractiveness within a relationship. Whether you're single, dating, or married, this conversation will make you rethink how you navigate your relationships.Transcript by AI:Based Camp - Relationship ContractsSimone: [00:00:00] Okay. Oh, la la I keep sitting on these champagne bottles, like IMalcolm: just, why are you covered in champagne bottles? What's the story there? It'sSimone: our, it's our billionaire tech elite lifestyle.Malcolm: We just, okay, hold on. We'll, we'll do this in the record. Oh, it's recording now? Yeah. Why are you, why are you sitting on champagne bottles?Simone: It's, I show them and tech billionaires just like have champagne bottles. Sitting all over their furniture. It's annoying. You trip over them, it's like Legos in a parent's house, but champagne bottles, no,Malcolm: but really Simone, what is going on with the champagne bottles? I went through her room and she had two champagne bottles in her chair.Malcolm: I,Simone: I mean, so if we're being honest, it's like a, a motivational thing. Like, I mean, I, I don't really drink now cause like, we're going through an IVF cycle, like we wanna get pregnant and, and yet like, I just wanna know it's there. And if anything goes wrong, we have these like consolation, prizes, like, okay, if, if, if there's a failed transfer, I get this consolation prize.Simone: If there is [00:01:00] a miscarriage, I get this consolation prize if there's a, a stillbirth, because like, I, I need to not get so demoralized that we don't keep trying. Right. Cause it can be really hard. Well, thisMalcolm: is very germane to the topic of the video. What are these cancellation projects? What's theSimone: cancellation like?Simone: It's consolation, consolation, notation. I'm. I'm not being canceled, canceled, don't cancel meMalcolm: when I have a miscarriage. No. The idea is, is so she asked me for permission. I don't even know why she asked me for permission. I likeSimone: that. You're, you're, no, no. Well, it's actually, it's a marriage contract thing.Simone: I'm just, I'm making sure that with an expenditure of joint funds on a consolation prize related to our fertility plans, that you are on the same page and that you officially in writing and in a documented fa fashion, approve it. And this has to do indeed with the with the topic of this podcast, which actually came as a commentary suggestion.Simone: So I'm like really excited because people are now giving us suggestions for our podcast. Are what episode of a suggestion too. Yeah. But anyway so this, this suggestion came from Cat Ad Victorian who said [00:02:00] 100% want your dedicated video to relationship contracts. Your fat clause is so relatable and reasonable.Simone: My husband does relationship coaching and probably one of the top three reasons, and sadly it's so taboo to point this out, is one of the spouses slash partners has let themselves go and gained a bunch of weight and stops making an effort to be an attractive person in some way. There's this entitled attitude, they should just accept me as I am.Simone: And if they can't handle it, they're emotionally abusive. It is wild. My husband and I have both gone from periods of fat to fat and fit and back. And so we've experienced this for ourselves and we've learned over our 15 years in counting marriage that we're both making a maximum effort to be healthy for one another and to be alive for as long as possible for our four children.Simone: Things are pretty satisfying. Well, much more satisfying than if you slump and become schlumpy. It's neither good for yourself nor your spouse. So anyway, Kat adv Victorian. Thank you for your comment. Thank you for your suggestion. We're gonna talk about relationship contracts, and yes, one part of relationship contracts is making sure that you're on the same page with [00:03:00] expenditures.Simone: I just wanna give like I.Simone: Bird's eye view of relationship contracts. One, you're in a social contract with everyone that you interact with, like that's the key premise of like, why is it worth it to have a relationship contract? Every time you have a conversation with someone, every time you get on a bus, like you are engaging with a social contract, the social contract on a bus is that you're gonna sit down and not urinate and not get naked.Simone: You're, you're gonna, def. Allow the wheelchair bound people just in the wheelchair area, if they come in there, there are these unspoken social contracts we have. The problem is, especially when you live in a diverse environment and people have a lot of different cultural backgrounds, it's really important to be more explicit in.Simone: Discussing what your social contracts are, especially when you start to be in a more higher stakes relationship, like a romantic relationship, a sexual relationship, a marriage, et cetera. AnMalcolm: example of this is if you're dating somebody, people from different cultural backgrounds, one may think that dating means that they are exclusive.Malcolm: Another may think that dating doesn't mean [00:04:00] they're exclusive. Mm-hmm. Or one may think that Well, yes, dating means you're exclusive, but you know, kissing someone else is an infidelity. And so if you don't, if you aren't really explicit to make sure you're operating off of the same shared social code, then it can lead to misunderstandings, which are really important when you consider what's actually going on with one of these contracts.Malcolm: So if we go back to the dating, what's actually happening is, is both people are saying, I am making these sacrifices or restrictions in how I act with other people to benefit my relationship with you on the understanding that you are making like an equal trade off of sacrifices. And if that is improperly communicated, one partner might feel like they made sacrifices that the other person didn't make, or, or something like that.Malcolm: And with all of the different like cultural baggage around what creates these default relationship contracts? Different cultures have found different optimums work for those cultures, and within [00:05:00] every culture there's this belief, well, the way that I do things is the correct way to do things.Malcolm: So, continue from there.Simone: Right. And so when, when people typically hear that we have a relationship contract, they immediately think like, oh, this is where, we discuss how you tie up and whip each other, isn't it? Like this is where you, your sex dumping comes into play?Malcolm: Oh, I, Mr. Mr. Gray, what?Malcolm: What's, is it gray? Is that what Mr.Simone: Gray? I don't. 50 shades of gray is what they think of. I think that there's a contract in there. I think actually their contract might have a fat clause. I, I haven't read the books. Clue.Malcolm: Actually,Simone: Mr. Gray is in clue. Oh, okay. I don't, I don't know, I don't play games. But don't read 50 degree.Simone: Well, I, ok. SoMalcolm: they, they, they, yeah. They assume it's like it's a sex thing. This is a really interesting thing that we when we talk about this sort of degenerate social virus in our society, that when people see, we have a lot of kids, they're like, oh, you must be doing it because it's a fetish.Malcolm: Or when they hear we have a relationship contract, they're like, oh, it must be a bunch of sex stuff. Yeah. Because like, that is, Their perspective of reality is everything is about this very visceral gratification. Instead of that, the [00:06:00] relationship contract is like, this is the expected temperature of the house.Simone: This is, is, yeah. Let's, let's go into this. So like, what is a relationship contract? Actually, well, what Malcolm and I did, and this is first off, it's a living document. It is a Google document. We update it regularly. We, I just updated it for, consolation prices in case I, have a. Mishap the next time we try to get pregnant, for example, and with kids' names, things like that.Simone: But it isn't a living document that you and a partner, a friend, a a a work colleague, whatever, it could be anyone who has, a high stakes relationship with you, you, you negotiate various terms, especially around, Potential points of conflict before they become potential point of cons, points of conflict.Simone: So what Malcolm and I did before we got engaged, before we got married was we went through like our relationships on Reddit. We asked a bunch of friends and colleagues and family members and strangers. Where they had major fights, conflicts, issues in their relationships, and then we put those issues into our marriage contract and [00:07:00] we negotiated them before they'll ever happen.Simone: So let's go into some of the, the issues we wanted to talk about finances, Malcolm.Malcolm: Well, I mean, I think that if you're talking about. And the most important clauses in any relationship, contract finances is definitely one of them. And there's a few ways that this can be done. You can either just.Malcolm: Completely divide finances. So finances go into a mutual pot, and then they are divided in some way. Like it could be 70 30 or it's more likely if you do it this way, it would be 50 50. You can have, you keep what you earn. Which is each partner basically maintains a separate bank account and goes into the relationship with a separate bank account.Malcolm: Or you can have a shared pot with then some private money that goes to each individual or some sort of combination of these. What we have in our relationship is a shared pot with sort of an allowance of free spending money for each individual. And so what she was talking about was these sorts of like consolation [00:08:00] expenses, is that they would be tied to the shared pot because she was undertaking an emotional task.Malcolm: That was for our combinedSimone: benefit. Yeah. So in, in other words, all of our income, regardless of if it's like income that went technically to Malcolm or technically to me, goes into one big account and then it gets pulled out for various different budgets. And a lot of them are joint things. And all of the joint expenses that we have, like for our kids, for housing, for, for travel things that we do jointly.Simone: Are based on agreed upon budgets, we've, we've decided on the percentages, the monthly amounts, whatever, and so that's all set. And this of course, yeah. Is part of that then, and we've seen this works really, really well for people in relationships. There's discretionary spending for each partner. So like, it doesn't matter like what you're spending it on, it could be something completely abhorrent to the other partner.Simone: Doesn't matter cuz that's your money. They have zero visibility into it. So that money goes into private accounts for each of us. I have no idea what Malcolm spends his money on. Malcolm has no ideaMalcolm: what, okay, [00:09:00] so we use a lot of shared public accounts, like Amazon accounts and stuff like that. Yes. And I actually, I do her accounts, so she gets an email whenever I buy something.Malcolm: And I, yeah, well, weSimone: try to max out credit card points and I, like, I reimburse our credit card charges on a shared card, like from our personal account. So like, okay. I, no, I know, but, but technically you do know everything I'mMalcolm: actuallySimone: spending money on. Yeah, I, I do. But like, you could do it all privately and that's very important that, because there are some relationships in which.Simone: Every expense is reviewed by all partners. And that can be really tough, especially if like one partner is spending more personally than the other partner or the other partner doesn't approve of it. There's a lot of friction there. So yeah, having like a blind fund where it's like, this is your discretionary spending, zero judgment.Simone: Zero visibility if you don't want any visibility, like it's, it's very smart. And it seemed to have worked really well. So there are other things that are in. Or contract that I think maybe people wouldn't expect. And you alluded to one, which is like house temperature, for example.Malcolm: Yeah, house temperature.Malcolm: Well, I mean, I think a lot of the important ones are the [00:10:00] ones that come up most frequently in our lives. Mm-hmm. Because otherwise they become simmering points of conflict. Like there wasn't an agreement before we got married. Mm-hmm. Whereas something like house temperature. Can seem like a pretty trivial decision to make with a partner before you get married.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And so it doesn't cost a lot of emotion to do then, but in terms of you're already married and, each of you have strong preferences for different temperatures, then it becomes a very costly thing. So a lot of these things remove a lot of the potential tension and relationship by deciding it upfront.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. One of the things we mentioned in a previous video was, what do the spouse's parents do, if they end up destitute or something? And they, they asked if they could come live with you. Right? Yeah. And something like that is a lot easier to decide when you're not deciding about specific humans who, who, benefits one person or the other person.Malcolm: If you're deciding this with either of your spouses then you know that when you initially made this decision, you made it blind as to who it would be about. Instead of like if both my parents die and then we're having this negotiation, like it's pretty lopsided the way the [00:11:00] terms work out.Malcolm: Mm-hmm.Simone: And other causes that are in a relationship contract that I really like are, for example H who, how to deal with travel to certain events, like to family gatherings. So let's say one partner really hates going to them and yet the other partner wants to spend a lot of money to like go out and visit family.Simone: We have various rules around that and one of our, a rule that at Art Dynamic that I think is really fun and it works really, really well, is with things like that where one partner really wants to do it and the other partner doesn't. Then it comes down to one partner being willing to do that thing with their discretionary spending.Simone: So like, okay, we'll do it, but you have to pay for it. Similar to house temperature, like I'm, I'm okay with the house being hotter than necessary, like during the winter, I just wear a snowsuit inside and I deal with it, but Malcolm doesn't necessarily want to, so I'm like, okay. Well, I mean the temperature can go higher, but you have to pay for the difference, in other words.Simone: Right.Malcolm: And no, I don't, I mean, we usually leave our house at around 50 degrees in the winter. Yes. Which, which I love. I love your [00:12:00] frugality, Simone. And I love your, constantly testing yourself in terms of enduring pain for mutual benefit, which I think makes you a stronger person mentally. A voluntary hardship is very useful for, for clearing the mind.Malcolm: But in terms of something you mentioned is updating the contract. Mm-hmm. So a lot of people listed is another big area. What, what does that mean? Well, for us, that's just about the contract stands unless both of us decide to update it together. Mm-hmm. So either one of us has veto power on contract updates.Malcolm: Mm-hmm.Simone: Another one, oh, for example, we just went today. So one of our, the sections of our contract is kids names. Well, there's a lot of things in there, like, whether or not kidsMalcolm: yeah. She had, she got a crush on a ship from a sci-fi book and she goes, oh, it's a really hot ship. And I was like, well, that's a very Simone thing to say.Malcolm: It's no,Simone: I, any, I think anyone who reads surface detail by Ian Banks and discovers the, the ship known as falling outside the normal moral constraints, which is a culture, a dominator class offensive unit, it is like the coolest character of the entire book as far as I've gone so [00:13:00] far. Like, but anyway, so like I, I, I added that name for consideration.Simone: In the document and, and, and then I ask Malcolm like, Hey, what do you think about the name Dam Myosin, which is the avatar of this ship? And he's like, Nope. So you, but that, that's how it works and it's really straightforward forward. What you think Abom as a name? Oh, a dominator, whatMalcolm: wasSimone: it called? A cultural, he's an an a dominator class.Simone: Yeah, but about about a dominator. A dominator's. Not bad. It's not bad. We'll think about it. We'llMalcolm: think about it. Yeah. There's, but we have a whole, like, no, not really. I think a dominator's too weird. I think it's tooSimone: weird. No, no, no. We'll, we'll have to, I will just search for other names in Ian Banks novels, and we will, I will find one ideally of a ship that is really good.Simone: Because I think, I don't think falling outside the moral constraints is, is a, a pithy name, so I can't use that sadly, as much as I loveMalcolm: that show. Okay. So, so then another thing that people often ask is, well, How do you make decisions when they're not covered by the contract? Right. And I think that's a really interesting question as well.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So the way we do that is generally [00:14:00] we have divided our life into different domains of which we have we, we. Give day-to-day management of those domains between the two of us. Mm-hmm. So, like Simon manages the inside of the house. I manage the outside of the house. Simon manages our finances.Malcolm: I manage career decisions. But at the end of the day, I end up making all the decisions.Simone: Use the final call, like you veto power, you have final decision power on, onMalcolm: literally anything except what's already outlined in the contract. So the contract is like outlining defensively. These are your rights of areas where I can't just make.Malcolm: Final calls. Mm-hmm. And a lot of people are like, oh my God, that's horrible. Why don't, why don't you compromise? Right. And it's like, compromise is a terrible way to handle relationships because what it does is it creates the incentive for each partner to exaggerate their positions. Mm-hmm.Simone: Okay. So, in other words, if I want five and Malcolm wants three, Malcolm is incentivized to say he wants zero, and I'm incentivized to say I want 10, and we're all gonna end up at an exaggerated position.Simone: What's even worse is when you're, you're coming [00:15:00] at things from this very individualized perspective. You start not thinking in terms of what's best for us. What would the relationship benefit from? What are, what do our shared values benefit from? You end up thinking about me. And in my extreme views and what serves me the best.Simone: And you might even start leaning into your exaggerated stated preference. So like, I might actually start wanting the 10, even though I really just want five five.Malcolm: I mean, I think it's possible to not, if you take a position in an argument, you're much more likely to find yourself believing that position as you're totally, you, your real perspective.Malcolm: Yeah. And so thenSimone: you, it's like it's literally pulling the couple apart. Or the every partner in a relationship partner.Malcolm: Terrible. And I think that when a partner voluntarily says, I'm giving up power to you, I trust you to use it wisely. If you're in a positive relationship, the person is actually probably going to default to your needs.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Over their own, because every decision they, yeah. They know that was out. The, the, you have, you have surrendered that power to them voluntarily. Where this doesn't work [00:16:00] is if a person believes there's a cultural expectation that the power should be surrendered to them and they have some sort of divine right of rulership within the relationship, which can happen within some cultures where they believe that like men, by the sake of being men, should be the one in charge.Malcolm: Yeah. That means that he doesn't feel like the woman has made any sort of like real sacrifice. Sometimes. Now some, some people still appreciate it, even when they come from those cultural backgrounds, but there is a risk that they're like, oh, well, of course she's subservient to me because she's a woman,Simone: well, I think that this also even shows up in, in like traditional more and more traditional seeming cultures where women are like, oh, well, of course I'm entitled to like, spend all this shared money on clothes and purses for myself because I'm the woman and I should be treasured and, like, I, I got pregnant for you, so therefore I get to buy whatever I want with your money, et cetera.Simone: LikeMalcolm: it can go both. I mean, it's a bad cultural expectation. Mm-hmm. And it's something that I'm glad that we outlined that it, in terms of like those values, like frugality, I, I mean, I think also outlining your values is really important. But I wanna go back to other ways that you, so suppose you [00:17:00] actually don't trust your partner enough mm-hmm.Malcolm: To say, I'm gonna let one of my partners just have final call on things. Then what you're doing, and this is a very easy thing to do if you have aligned values. Yes. It's something that doesn't work if either of your values are hedonistic in nature. Yeah. Cause then there's always going to be mis mis incentivization.Malcolm: But if you have aligned values for like, I live my life in dedication to this greater cause mm-hmm. Then it's, it's, it's very easy to think, okay, what, what logically helps us both move towards that greater cause, right? Mm-hmm. And, and you are rewarded for. In terms of like real world achievement from seeking as much information as possible from your partner in terms of achieving that cause, but other ways this can be done if you don't trust your partner that much is you could have some sort of external party be the mediator.Malcolm: Right? Mm-hmm.Simone: And you see this in traditional cultures too. I mean like often like religious leaders. Yeah. The rabbis. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But let's actually, let's talk about consequences for violating the contract because I think that this is something that's super under underrated. And I mean, sort of like, I don't know, in country music or in popular culture, there is this [00:18:00] perception that when you violate a relationship contract or a marriage contract Even when it's unspoken.Simone: So like, he cheated, she cheated the per the, the understanding is, well, of course you leave the relationship, you end the relationship, you trash their car, you throw their clothing out of the, like fifth story window, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like you do all these. Like pretty toxic things. Whereas we argue in the pragma dis guide to relationships, that's actually like a really suboptimal thing to do unless you are 100% committed to doing it.Simone: And it seems like in most cases when someone, this is leaving theMalcolm: relationship, right? Yes. A lot of people are like, I will leave you if you do this now. Take itSimone: from there. Yeah. Yeah. If you break a rule, I will leave. And that, that ultimately is not ideal. Honestly, like, yeah, you would think that in our relationship contract, we, we've put all this thought into it, like, oh, we must have like, these really, really big ramifications for, or like, even really specific ramifications for when someone breaks the rule.Simone: Honestly, like it's pretty much just. If you break this rule, if you, if you don't honor this [00:19:00] rule or standard, it will really hurt my feelings like that. That's kind of it. Yeah. And that's, that's honestly in a relationship in which each partner loves each other and each partner wants the relationship to stay intact, that's frankly one of the best ramifications you can have because it's obvious to both partners that if that happens a lot, if one partner is constantly disappointing, constantly hurting feelings, then eventually I.Simone: For the partner who's regularly being let down, they're gonna terminate the relationship period. Well, andMalcolm: this is something that I think is really important in relationships is and we'll do our episode on how perverse it is to have a relationship based on love. But a lot of people assume that love is the most important emotion or feeling you have towards your partner in a relationship.Malcolm: But I, I, I think. In truth, love is like number four. In terms of important emotions, the the really important one is gratitude. Mm. That when your partner makes a sacrifice for you or does something for you that you are grateful for the sacrifice they have made because nothing is. Degrades the [00:20:00] relationship faster than when you feel like you're doing something for someone and they are not show you.Malcolm: You can tell that they do not appreciate it. Yeah, and one thing that I really appreciated our relationship is I am just always overwhelmed and humbled by the amount of gratitude you engender in me, where I'm constantly like, Wow. She really does more than her share. Like I always feel like you're doing more than your share.Simone: Well, and I do about you too. I think that's a good sign of a relationship if each partner thinks.Malcolm: Yeah. Cause I think people hear that and they're like, why would two people consistently, the way that you create a relationship where both people always feel like the other person's doing more than their share is you divide the roles in the relationship so that each person, or takes on the roles that the other person finds difficult.Malcolm: Yeah. So this task, tacit Simone does I find incredibly emotionallySimone: difficult to do. And the things that Malcolm does, I literally could not do. Yeah. AndMalcolm: so literally look at like little things for [00:21:00] me where I'm like, oh, like some people are asking, why do you record in different rooms? Right? And, and they know that Simone's autistic Simone doesn't like to, be in the same environment with someone.Malcolm: Right. And, and well, it, it, it's stresses her out a little, like with me, it's okay if it's just socialization, but like, when we're performing, when we're on stage, like we are with these podcasts, there's, it is like having somebody looking over her shoulder while she's working. Yeah. Is that a good?Malcolm: Yeah, and I think a lot of people wouldn't respect that. And so you come at this and you, and you have gratitude for little weird sacrifices. I make that to me, feel like almost nothing. Whereas for you, an example of something she's doing today is I find it really stressful to go through comments on Twitter or YouTube because some of them are negative and, and mean, and it really stresses me out.Malcolm: So like in, in South Park where they have the. Butter is going through all the negative comments and only sending me the positive ones. Simone doesn't really get bothered by negative comments that much. Not at all. So she just engages with him and then really only brings them to me [00:22:00] where she goes, oh, this is like a, a interesting point that I want you to engage with.Malcolm: Because sometimes, they're bringing up like an intellectual point, and I do wanna be open to other ideas, but then other times it's just like, I wanna kill you. Or, or I, I, you're ugly and weird. And I'm like, I know I'm ugly and weird. Come on guys.Simone: No, we are, we are runway. Okay. And the rest way, runway.Simone: Runway, all the pretty people are cataloged. We are runway deal withMalcolm: it. Okay. What are other parts of a relationship contract that are important?Simone: Let me pull up our relationship contract and give some additional examples for, for listener inspiration just in case you are thinking about making a relationship contract of your own.Simone: So under finances we have distribution of inve investment in an inheritance income, which I think is another important thing because each partner could come into a relationship, not just with their existing salaries, which are easy enough to divide up, but also with like, Well, here's, like, I get royalties, for example, from content that I created before [00:23:00] Malcolm was in a relationship.Simone: Both of us have, have inherited a little bit of money from grandparents, so like what happens with that money? And we also have things like use of emergency funds. Likes are we, do we build up an emergency fund? How many months does it have to cover? What do we do about retirement savings?Simone: What are our policies with debt like? In what scenarios is it okay for us to get into debt? Which I think is, is also really important. And, and a big point of conflict with people getting into relationships. Even like I, I knew someone in college who had so much student debt that as soon as partners learned about it, they didn't wanna marry her, which is insane.Simone: But also, like, it's a big deal. So debt's a really big, one's a big deal. They're inheriting that debt. When, when I know. I know. And I know it's, it, it is a big deal. Oh, of course. Fidelity, like we very, we very, oh yeah. Fidelity. That's an important one. What, what is cheating? What is not cheating?Simone: Oh. What is allowed how do things need to be discussed? Like I think that's really important and I think it's interesting that, for, for some partners, I think I, I remember going through one [00:24:00] study that showed how men were like super cool with like ai, like. Sex or boyfriends or girlfriends or something like that, whereas women were like, no, I'm super not cool with my boyfriend or husband, like, having an emotional or sexual relationship with an AI like entity.Simone: Like super. Well,Malcolm: I, I think something that you point out here is there's this perception in our society that men and women are sociologically the same on average. Mm-hmm. And therefore, when you're talking about infidelity rules or something like that, A tradeoff for a guy will be the equivalent of a, a similar tradeoff for a girl.Malcolm: Right? Yeah. Which totallySimone: isn't. Yeah. Which is notMalcolm: true. Yeah. And the AI is a perfect example of that. If you created a rule that you know, boast, people can date ais, that might actually be a lot more costly for oneSimone: gender than the other. Totally. And I think it's the same with sex. Like I think extramarital or extra relationship sex can mean a lot more.Simone: To some parties and other [00:25:00] parties? . So also a big, a big thing, and I know this is like what blows our mind, is that like so many people get married and then they're like, okay, so do we have kids?Simone: Like, do we not have kids like it? I think it's less common now. People are a lot more upfront about whether or not they wanna have kids. But when we first looked at like relationship deal breakers and things that caused breakups, we kept coming across stories of people who had. Gotten married and then discovered that they weren't on the same page about kids, which is really not good.Simone: So, we, we don't only have agreements about, how many kids we may have, how we're gonna try with issues or like deal with issues of fertility. But also there, there's a, a section on career sacrifices for children. And I think this is another really big one. Is that a big point of conflict in.Simone: Relationships is who's gonna, who's gonna take the hit? Like who has to give up their career to have kids, or who's gonna pick up the kids when they're sick or who's gonna deal with this or that. And often, like societally, women end up picking up a lot of the slack just because [00:26:00] there is this unwritten social contract that that falls to the mother.Simone: So negotiating that ahead of time, I think that there's also a lot of like resentment on behalf of women because they feel that obligation when often it may be the case that the husbands would be super happy to do all that and they're doing it cuz they think the women want to do that. And so actually like Malcolm picks up like the majority of the slack with our kids.Simone: One because he's cool with it. Two because he's the best husband ever. But that's something that really made a big difference for me around children. But also we have punishment for children. That's, there's a lot of conflict around that.Malcolm: That's really important. Yeah. If one person comes in thinking like, corporal punishment is okay and the other person doesn't, that's sure to cause a lot of con.Simone: Conflict. Yeah. And then financial considerations. Like one parent might, may wanna spend a lot more money on kids than the other. One parent wants like designer Ralph Lauren, clothing for the kids. The other one, like, no, we're only doing hand-me-downs. That's a, a freedom of choice for kids, what are they allowed to do?Simone: Their recreation, their education, the media they consume pets. Like we have a pets clause in here, child sex education, child names. Of course, that's like our most [00:27:00] frequently updated thing now. Oh housing in the event of a long distance marriage. So like, if we end up having to live on different continents for a while, for doing work, who's, where do the kids go?Simone: These are important things. We also have things like family gatherings and holiday travel. Like we said, elder family member care. Then of course there's health too, like preventative healthcare. Like are we, what are we committing to like, in terms of screening and regular health checks?Simone: I, I think that that's beyond just like, cuz obviously we have our fat clause in our, in our marriage contract, which I love. But it, it's not just a fat clause. Like we also have terms around health and, and, not doing things that harm ourselves which is I think great and really important. Life support's in there.Simone: Of course. Although that's one of the few things that like a lot of people with their, their power of attorney do actually work out oddly. Like the one thing that kind of like is almost never gonna happen, you're, what happens once. Anyway, to wrap things up, if you have questions about relationship contracts [00:28:00] or fun things that you've put in your relationship contract, and it can be your sexy relationship, contract, whatever. We'll talk about that too. Let us know in the comments.Simone: And this is so cr, but don't forget to like and subscribe. I told her she had to say this. IMalcolm: was like, we've never asked people to like and subscribe,Malcolm: so we really try to create the best listener experience possible in that, one of the things we do is we try to, if you don't wanna watch the full episode, if you're like, okay, I just wanna get to like the point that you're getting at.Malcolm: We try to put that before the title card. That's probably not great in terms of like viewership links in terms of the algorithm, but, I, I really want this to be just like an ideal listenership experience and that's also one of the reasons why we haven't really been adding the like and subscribe thing.Malcolm: But I mean, I guess it helps I don't even know if subscribing helps that much anymore for, for the algorithm. It, it certainly helps for my ego. That's our big goal this year. Get to 10 K subscribers and we're like, Real YouTubers. I, I guess that's, that's the way I see it. SoSimone: it's the dream. So anyway, please do your part.Simone: Please do your [00:29:00] part. Friends. Yeah. Okay, Malcolm, I love you so much and let's do another conversation soon. I hope so. I love these. Love you too. Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join us as we dive deep into a riveting discussion with Diana Fleischman, a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, as well as the author of the upcoming book "How to Train Your Boyfriend". In this episode, we explore a variety of intriguing theories, most notably the concept that humans have evolved to be a "slave race", especially under the lens of evolutionary psychology. Diana brings fascinating insights about status hierarchies, gender dynamics, and the potential evolutionary roots of certain behaviors and preferences. This conversation will definitely get you thinking about humanity's social and evolutionary history in new ways.An AI written transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. I am super excited. We're gonna be speaking with one of our favorite people today, Diana Fleischman, who in addition to being a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, is the author of the Not Yet published but upcoming book called How to Train Your Boyfriend. And she's written a ton of other fascinating stuff that you must go down that rabbit hole.Simone: Trust us, you'll be very, very entertained. We're going to speak with Diana about a wide range of things. We also want her to, and she starts to be the uh,Malcolm: aria podcast. Yes. HostSimone: Appia podcast. I furiously. Yes. And we, we honestly want her to start by stress testing one of our weird theories but we also wanna hear all sorts of other things from her.Simone: So, Diana, welcome first and foremost. Thank you.Malcolm: So the theory I really want to go over with you is one from our book, the Pragmatist Guide de Sexuality, which is that we are a slave race, and I'll explain what I mean by this.Malcolm: [00:01:00] Specifically the, the majority of the evolutionary pressure put on human to human social interactions was put on humans who were low within local status hierarchies. First. Most humans, historically were basically near the bottom of a, a social status hierarchy. Very few humans were near the top of the central status hierarchy, and while men in that position definitely had more surviving offspring even when they were in that position.Malcolm: There was less pressure on them. To behave in certain ways. Like a leader who failed isn't gonna get his genes erased as quickly as a a, a servant or slave who fails, which means that the average human mind is much more optimized around servitude. And this has a few interesting takeaways. One Ayla mutual friend of of, of both of ours this would explain why even in men around 40% prefer to take on sub submissive positions in, sexuality.Malcolm: But it also may explain the way we relate to [00:02:00] things like deity or society writ large. How like a president will say, well, I'm the servant of the people. Even though the president is technically the highest level position in society, or the head of a company might say, well, I'm the servant of the board.Malcolm: We really have few concepts of non servitude in our society. So I wanna get your take on this as an evolutionary psychologist.Diana: So one idea that's very interesting is, Potentially hunter-gatherer societies were less hierarchical than current societies that have very large hierarchies. I've been reading a lot about male and female dynamics, so men tend to be more forgiving of their friends and they also have more stable status hierarchies than women do.Diana: Mm. Because their status hierarchies are based on more stable characteristics such as strength and prestige over time. So it does make sense for men. To, you know, and I was listening to an interesting conversation with Beau, we guard and Jonathan Palon about, you know, why would a man gain status [00:03:00] by carving beautiful sculptures of a man from history who's high in status?Diana: You know, these kinds of ideas. So it's possible. Yeah, I do see what you're saying. That yeah, the average man is actually subservient. The average man is monogamous or, or worse. What I'll riff on this with is what I think is even more interesting, I have an idea, is I was talking to Louise Perry and we were talking about like, how evolutionarily novel is prostitution.Diana: And she said That it was unlikely for women to have been passed around and have sex with multiple men, but it was probably very common in evolutionary history, ancestral history for women to be sex slaves to a specific person. Ah, right. Oh, and so she talks about kind of Stockholm syndrome and women being uniquely impressed upon by Stockholm Syndrome because it is the adaptive thing to do, not just, you know, because of.Diana: Patro locality. So women would've been taken away. Mm-hmm. On average from their families and given to a, a strange man's family. For her to adapt to his [00:04:00] culture and his language and to his customs would've made sense. But the only way you and your kids are gonna survive if you're taken over by a hostile group is through a, a kind of.Diana: Pleasant submissiveness. I'll say accommodation.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few riffs I want to take on the, on the thing that you've said here. One thing that was really interesting is male status hierarchies being more static than female status hierarchies. To add to that, one study that's really interesting is males sort themselves into status hierarchies much faster than women do, because the majority of the way that men sort themselves into status hierarchies is by.Malcolm: Immediate physical traits like height that they can determine the moment they walk into the room. And the reason for that is because the top man historically was typically the man that could beat up the other men. And that's something that you can quickly observe. Yeah. Which would be partially why the male status hierarchy would be more static.Malcolm: Another thing that you mentioned was wars of conquest and taking women, one really interesting study here that I, [00:05:00] we talk about in our sexuality book shows that when you have a competition, like a game or, or something like that, that's, I think it's like violent adjacent games, you know, like physical, physical games and it looks like your side is losing males bond more like they feel closer bonds with the people on their team, whereas women begin to bond less with the people on their team when it looks like their team is losing.Malcolm: Which shows sort of the behavior you're talking about, where it would've really been evolutionarily advantageous if we assume that all the males in a tribe were killed when the tribe was taken over. The final part I wanna riff on, sorry if I'm riffing on too many things here. You just, I taking notes while you're talking.Malcolm: Some really cool ideas is one of our theories on sexuality, we call the polymorphic human female. So for users, you're familiar with polymorphism, but for users, what it is, is when you have a single genetic code that can be expressed in two behavioral and, and physical phenotypes. So a locus is the classic example here.Malcolm: [00:06:00] Where when they get above certain population numbers, they change their physiology and behavior patterns. You know, normally they're a grasshopper, but if you rub like their hind leg with a Q-tip, they'll transform into a locus. But even when like baboons, you see polymorphic behavior patterns above certain PO population sizes.Malcolm: So what we would ar. Argue here is that human females the more sexual partners they have, their body naturally adapts to this and we can see them producing Lex I think it's you, you'll correct me on this. Oxytocin, when they sleep with partners, which is a forced bonding hormone, which would mean that human females bodies organically adapt.Malcolm: To either bond with the one person they sleep with or bond less with everyone they sleep with because they assume they're in a society where they're being passed around. You can tell me if that sounds crazy, or Simone, you wanna riff on that? NoDiana: no. I, I, I I'm writing something right now called like, you know, playfully you know, disagreeable sluts versus agreeable prudes.Diana: And and so yeah, I mean this idea is like [00:07:00] hookup culture is really, I. Fine if you know how to disagree with the, with the norm. But if you're agreeable and you're naturally more monogamously inclined as, as the average woman is, then hookup culture is gonna be a, a net bad for you. I'd be really interested in this study cuz I've, I've had this idea for a long time.Diana: So there's this idea in sort of Christian culture where they tell young people, you're like a piece of tape. The more times you stick to something else, the less sticky you get. And so, I have drafted something but not published. It basically called, I don't wanna be sticky cuz like, when I was younger, when I was like 17, I fell in love with a couple people who were really LOM mate.Diana: Value just sounds like mercenary, but yeah, lom mate value. Guys like going Guy was like a, like a musician that was unsuccessful. Another guy worked at my grocery store and and I remember feeling so in love with this one guy who I really had nothing in common with. I fell in love very easily until I got past, I don't know, like 10 sexual [00:08:00] partners.Malcolm: Yeah, we, we we, we cite this as actually probably being a good thing for most women.Malcolm: You don't want to illogically fall in love with everyone you sleep with, so you're probably in a lot stronger position. So I, I, I really like that. Another thing you mentioned I wanna pull on is a concept of bratty sluts uh, uh, not bratty sluts, but bratty subs.Malcolm: Sorry. Bratty subs. Bratty subs. So in the kink community there are different ways you can be submissive. And one of these, it's called the brat. And what I think is going on there, and it's very interesting, is what is arousing? The woman is the man exerting his dominance over her. So the bratty behavior elicits.Malcolm: The, the dominant display over and over again in the male that allows her to maximally masturbate that aspect of her sexuality.Diana: Yeah. There's the, the resistance is screening idea, right? So like female elephant, a male will try to mount her and she'll walk backwards like a hundred meters or something.Diana: Stay on, [00:09:00] he gets to mate, right? And there's other species where I think it is, is an orcas or some other whale where the male drags the female to shallower water. And so there is an, an in courtship, there's an element of coercive behavior. And so the bratty sub is definitely like a a test both psychologically and physically of the dominance of the male.Diana: This is why women like to be tied up is because it's a perfect It's a, it's a facsimile of being with somebody who's so large and strong and coordinated that they can hold all your limbs immobile. Right. Oh, that's interesting.Simone: I thought it was a swaddlingMalcolm: instinct. Yeah. Yeah. So we argue something different about tie-ups, which is one of our spicier takes, is that when people are masturbating instincts that Any sort of an instinct, anything that makes them happy, they often misattribute it to sexuality even when it's not necessarily a sexual instinct because that's, that's just how we deal with these feelings.Malcolm: Like a massage or something like that. Right. And so what we argue might be going on with [00:10:00] bondage it is it might actually be a swaddling instinct that hasn't fully turned off from infants. And the, that specifically, when you look at like cling wrap fetishes and stuff like that, you know, where they like vacuum, vacuum, put something in a bag, vacuum.Malcolm: Yeah,Diana: yeah, yeah. But I thinkSimone: even, even like rope bondage, I, but here's where it gets really complicated, right? Because like there is definitely a dominance element in there and we are pretty sure that like, while the dominance submission thing is a really big element of what turns people on and off, it's also like, you know, I.Simone: You can, you can show domination through tying someone up. So like, it can both be like comforting from a swaddling standpoint, but also super big turn on because it is a show of that dominance or it isDiana: a show of that power. Like yeah. It's, it's very, it's, it takes a lot of skill to do it. I see what you're saying.Diana: I, I, I, for me, the swaddling instinct thing, yes, there is a relaxing component to being tied up. I used to live with this guy who was like really into BDSM and he would try out his new gear on me cuz I was the smallest person he knew. So I remember he put me in a straight jacket one time during a [00:11:00] party.Diana: And it was very relaxing because I didn't feel like there was anything I, people could come over and talk to me or not. It was like one of the most relaxing social situations I've ever been in. Right. Honestly, thatSimone: sounds amazing. WhyDiana: does this sound, you wouldn't imagine that right? Whereas I think if you're, I guess you could make the case that for a woman, if you tie her up, the swaddling instinct relaxes her.Diana: And for a woman has to be relaxed before she gets aroused to some extent. I mean, there's something like that, although the studies that I did back when I was in graduate school on human sexuality is actually if you show a woman a, like a horror film or an. Or thriller, like a man chasing a woman down a dark alleyway.Diana: She gets sexually aroused faster. Huh. After seeing something like that than she does just in a, in a neutral, relaxed state. Well, doesn'tSimone: that suggest though, that like she's, that maybe there's some kind of like evolved coping mechanism of like, These are signals that I'm about to get raped. Like, yes, exactly.Simone: Let's not cause physical damage,Diana: please. That, that's all of the explanations of [00:12:00] really repugnant explanations for why do women show enhanced blood flow and even lubrication in the presence of watching pornography. No matter what it is, you can watch two Bonobos having sex and a woman in blood flow increase.Diana: Is that it's what does it call that? Like the damage. Reduction hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really nasty. But yeah, the idea is that you're seeing anything sexual going on, it's important to get your v ready for what whatever might happen. Yeah. For bonking, bonking, my my evolutionary psychology mentor when I was in graduate school who died shortly after, he said, he made some joke about like, you know, the best form of four plays to chase her around the table or something.Malcolm: I love that. Oh my God. Well, here's a fun take that you might like that we had on, on, on these sorts of topics. Which is what's actually going on with the arousal ties to dominance and submission systems, and this we argue, is really more of a case of just evolution being a cheap programmer and reusing a code base it already had.Malcolm: So [00:13:00] specifically in mammals, when you have social hierarchies, a very common. Thing is that mammals will display sexually to show their position was in that dominant hierarchy. Yeah, and what's really fascinating here is in like spotted hyenas where the females are the dominant animal and, and females have pseudo penises in, in spotted hyenas an erection will be a sign of submission instead of like showing yourself to get mounted.Malcolm: And so what's really interesting here is what we argue is probably going on. Is that humans needed to show their position within their social hierarchy and a system they already had on hand was their arousal system. So biology just like copied the code from that system to instigate dominance and submission behavior and pre-code that behavior.Malcolm: And that's why it causes arousal, not. Always are necessarily because of these more rape hypotheses. What are your thoughts on that?Diana: Well, so there's a lot of species in which males show submission to each other by bending over or [00:14:00] even being the receptive animal in an anal sex kind of interaction.Diana: That to me, I, I wrote a behaviorist account of that once, which is that what's it called? I can't remember the behaviorist term, but there are, you know, like, let's say there's two behaviors. Let's say if you're a dog that beats up on your other dog. So the dog can either play with a toy across the room, or it can beat up on the other dog.Diana: Those behaviors are like mutually exclusive and like, a, a more dominant animal beating you up or having sex with you. Those are mutually exclusive. So what you're incidentally doing, if you bend over and show a submission behavior or let the other animal mount you, is you're rewarding not beating me up.Diana: Oh,Malcolm: oh, with Sack. Right. That's a really interesting take. I like that.Diana: So, that's one interesting thing, but, but also, yeah. In terms of dominance yes. It's, it's always better if you look at all these different animals. There's a very interesting paper about cooperation and they expand the notion of cooperation past what we would normally think.Diana: And they also say, let's say two bucks are sizing each other up, [00:15:00] and they look at each other's like, Antler size and one decides to forfeit because the other one has bigger antlers. But a a an actual physical altercation is costly for both of them. So actually that is a form of cooperation. Even though their interests are actually not well, their interests are aligned and that they both don't, they don't, don't wanna fight unless it's really necessary to figure out who's who's dominant.Diana: Yes. So you could also see that in terms of sexuality, Physical altercation is, is very costly. And so a sexual altercation is, is generally always preferable if you wanna show that you're submissive. And it also has, as I said, the added benefit of rewarding the dominant animal for not beatingMalcolm: you up. Yeah.Malcolm: So, just a, just a quick note here for, for listeners and quick biology lesson. What she described there is called honest signaling. And it's a useful concept in biology that can also be applied to other areas of your life, which are types of signals that you can show people that cannot be easily faked.Malcolm: So like if you were signaling wealth, something like jewelry, which can be rented is a very easy thing to fake. While something like a house [00:16:00] is a very hard thing to fake and a much more honest signal of wealth. But Simone, you haven't talked much. What are, what are your thoughts on all this?Simone: Sorry. I thought you were about to be like, and this is why you should offer sex to your boss at the office so that you can get promoted and make sure that you're not trying to supplant them.Simone: Wow. Okay.Diana: This is moisten night. So this is my, my pregnancy ring because it's oh. Cause your fingers are swollen, right? I don't fit into, yeah. I'm too swollen to wear my normal one. And this is like a $300 ring or something like that, but a diamond this size. Because they're indistinguishable to like the naked eye or whatever, or even to many jewelers would be, I don't know, 10 grand.Diana: So yeah. Yeah. I, I love, I love fake, fake fitness when it comes toSimone: jewelry. Also, moison eight is more sparkly. So like, I almost feel like it's more effective signaling. It's, it's, it's gorgeous. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, what I'm really curious. About is, you know, there is this, this surprising and, and this shows up in ALA's data, it shows up in the data that we did.Simone: Abundance of people who are submissive, not just women, which of course, like the majority of of women are, are submissive, but also [00:17:00] men. Well, what, what are other compelling reasons for there being so many. Submissive men, butDiana: bottom bottom's also outnumber tops. I remember Mike Bailey having a drink with him several years ago, and he was saying that gay men joke that like you go out to a gay bar, which gay bars are not as common as they used to be.Diana: It's like a hundred bottoms for every one top. No. Yeah, so bottoms are way more common. I don't know about like versatiles or, or switches. I mean, there's a variety of other reasons that could be the case though, cuz like females with the default sex, if homosexuality is the result of some kind of Difficulty, let's say in the the programming for masculinity than you would expect that, you know, it's, yeah.Diana: We default more toward female tend diseases. Lordosis or like female receptive behavior is much easier to code cuz it just involves kind of like bending over than, yeah. Than copulation or topping, which is much more complicated and involves a lot more motivation.Malcolm: Right. Well it's also fairly risky. So you have a female mimicry.Malcolm: Which you [00:18:00] see in a lot of species, and that could be what we're seeing here. Oh, you meanSimone: like sneaky copulation?Malcolm: Yeah. Sneaky copulation. Yeah.Diana: Okay. So guys, you guys do curse on this podcastSimone: a curse. We can, we can curse.Diana: It's called sneaky f*****s.Malcolm: Yes, sneaky. So essentially what happens in, in some animals for listeners, and this may or may not have relevance to the world today.Malcolm: So some males especially in highly gender dimorphic species, so like, you'll see this in like some crabs where like some males are like three times the size of other crabs. Yeah. Occasionally males will be born the size of a female crab and the big males don't notice them, and they will in enter these other crab communities sneakily in other species, you will see males adopt female behavior or even take on.Malcolm: Gay roles to enter sort of the trust circle of other males and then sleep with the women in, in that animal's harem, I guess you could call it.Diana: Yeah. The Sunfish has got three [00:19:00] morphs, which is the, the regular male that has the territory that guards the territory. A tiny little male that sneaks in and then the male that looks just like a female that sneaks in more effectively.Malcolm: And this is, so we had a podcast where we argue that the, the red pill in a way and the way they're approaching women creates thoughts. I actually t hts I actually believe that in the same way the extremist feminist community, one of the reasons why whenever you do surveys in that community you see such high rates of rape is they are essentially.Malcolm: Bringing in these female mimicry guys who are going to pretend to have this like ultra white nighty perspective on the world. Mm. But in, in animal kingdoms, those are the, the types of males that are most likely to rape or one of the mostDiana: likely course males. Yeah. I remember, I mean, I, I did a deep, I I did, I did work on this 10 years ago on bisexuality and about evolutionary explanations for homosexuality, and I taught.Diana: Human sexuality.[00:20:00] I remember a deep dive on this in a lecture and chapter that I read in my twenties, and this guy was talking about how gay men have, you know, very reduced rates of reproduction, obviously compared to straight men. And then it doesn't actually seem like this kind of sneaky f****r strategy.Diana: Maybe you're talking about something different, but it doesn'tMalcolm: actually No, no, I'm not talking about gay men. I'm, I'm actually specifically talking about white nighty guys. So these are guys, oh, feminist guys. Yeah. An extremist like feminist perspective, you could say that like no rational guy looking at the world today would adopt to get into these, I guess people would call them like hardcore SJW spaces.Simone: But it is related. Basically they're creating an incentive to create sneaky f*****s essentially.Malcolm: Well, I mean, it's, it's a population strategy that is, that is premised upon dishonesty. Yeah. I mean, that's how they're getting into these communities by being dishonest about their lived experiences, because that's what you need to be as a guy often to enter these communities.Simone: Well, that's, that's what I'm saying is the communities create that requirement. Like [00:21:00] you have to be sneaky to get in, so it createsMalcolm: people being a realDiana: thing. So we'll see. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could also say that these communities, like the, there's a very advantageous sex ratio. And there's a variety of good, good reasons to try to get, get into them.Diana: Yeah, I'm pretty agnostic about that, given that I'm not in those communities myself.Simone: Yeah, we just,Malcolm: I, I have loved this episode. And I would love to do another episode with you if you are open to that. Yeah, forSimone: sure. Yay. Okay then we are going to, we'll record it right now. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna record it right now. 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