Join us in this exciting episode of Basecamp where we welcome esteemed guest, Malcolm and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller. The conversation dives deep into the challenges of the modern dating market, the impact of dating apps, and the shifting norms on college campuses. Jeffrey shares intriguing insights from his experiences with university students, his thoughts on cultural and societal impacts on dating, and offers practical advice for parents on how to support their children in finding long-term partners. The discussion also touches on the future implications of AI in romantic relationships and the importance of maintaining close family ties. Don’t miss it!

Geoffrey Miller: [00:00:00] I've done polls of my, my undergraduate males in my sexuality classes, anonymous polls, right?

Mm-hmm. Through iClicker and stuff. Mm-hmm. Would you ever date a female student? Would you ever date a female student that you meet on campus about two thirds? Say absolutely not. Two, a third,

Simone Collins: what's the point of gonna go, oh my gosh, I, I know. And

Geoffrey Miller: then, right. So they're terrified, right?

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello everyone. I'm. So excited to see all of you here today because today I have both Malcolm and Jeffrey Miller on the podcast. This is really exciting because one, we admire his work a lot. Jeffrey Miller is an American evolutionary psychologist. He's also an author and associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches a course on human sexuality.

Among other things, he's also mixing with university students who are in the thick of dating, which is what we're gonna be talking about today. Dating markets are broken. What do we do to fix him? How can people find a partner if they actually want one? So we're really excited to get into this. Welcome to [00:01:00] Basecamp, Jeffrey.

Geoffrey Miller: It's great to be here and great to see you guys again.

Malcolm Collins: Great. And I wanna know that this isn't just like if you're a young person and you're like, oh, I'm interested in this for me this is also gonna be highly useful to parents. Oh yeah. Because any parent right now who wants their line to continue, one of the biggest challenges you're gonna have to overcome is how do you secure a partner?

How do your children secure a partner within this corrupted market right now?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It's bad. It's dire. What are you seeing out there, Jeffrey? Like, do your students talk to you about dating at all or are they like, I'm not not gonna go there, or they're not dating? Yeah.

Geoffrey Miller: Well, they, they wanna be dating, you know, the guys want girlfriends, the, the women want boyfriends.

And I actually have a daughter who's 29 and, you know, active in the dating scene. And we talk a lot about what it's like out there. I talk a lot about. The current dating apps and their failures and their frustrations with my students. We have, you know, long discussions both in my human sexuality class, and I also [00:02:00] teach a course on effective altruism.

I teach courses on human emotions and motivations and, yeah, I've even taught a course on alternative relationships. It covers all kinds of unusual things, including, including traditional Christian monogamous marriage as, as an alternative relationship.

Simone Collins: So is though what, so we get this impression sometimes that younger generations are, in some ways moving in a more tra direction because they're like.

Malcolm Collins: All the other stuff actually. Are you seeing this, this trad movement within your students?

Simone Collins: Are you seeing it or is it just not?

Geoffrey Miller: I mean, what, and here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, everything is a little bit behind the curve. I mean, we're not in Brooklyn, we're not the Bay Area. So stuff comes here five years later, you know, after, after it goes everywhere else.

But I certainly see an interest in, huh. Getting serious about finding a long-term mate and people [00:03:00] talking about demographic collapse and people being aware of it as an issue. And certainly my, you know, 20-year-old students talk to their 40 to 50 ish year old parents, right? Who are also keenly concerned, like, we want grandkids.

When are you gonna deliver grandkids to us? And so, there's a lot of discussion about that, and there's widespread frustration with dating apps, right? A lot of, a lot of the kids are on Tinder and Hinge, and they find it an incredibly frustrating, demeaning, dehumanizing process in different ways, depending on whether you're a woman or a man, right?

But there's, there's widespread to satisfaction out there and particularly on college campuses, right? Which used to be. Epicenters of the mating market, which used to be wonderful places to meet people. A lot of that has been shut down, actually quite cynically and deliberately by college [00:04:00] administrators.

Simone Collins: What, wait, wait. Okay, so how,

Geoffrey Miller: talk more about this.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Geoffrey Miller: Okay, so about eight or 10 years ago, I was on our UNM College Committee to revise our sexual misconduct policies, right? And so this was setting the policies, rules, and norms about. Basically dating on college campuses. And I've talked to a lot of other faculty, other places who have been involved in this kind of thing.

And basically I would raise questions like, look there, there's, there's trade offs here. Like, yes, we want to minimize state rape. Yes, we wanna minimize sexual harassment, unwanted sexual attentions talking, that's all bad, but on the upside. It would actually be nice if our students could date each other.

Right? Yeah. And there are, there are trade offs there where like if you have a policy that absolutely tries to minimize all possible date rape, right? And that basically criminalizes. [00:05:00] People approaching each other, like with possible romantic intent, right? I said, if you're gonna do that, you're gonna stop the formation of couples on campus, right?

Mm-hmm. And everybody else on the committee was like. We don't care about the college campus being an effective mating market. We do not care. The only priority we have is to absolutely minimize unwanted, uncomfortable sexual attention, right? So a lot of campuses have gone in that direction and the net result is.

Like when I went to college in the eighties. Yeah. Like it was partly to find a marriage partner and partly to practice medium to long-term relationships and like Yes. Figure out what the other sex is like and how like this is so common that I

Malcolm Collins: even grew up was this concept of a MRS degree which is an MRS degree.

S degree. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which meant that you were going college to find a husband. And this was a viable strategy. Many, many, many, many, many, I, I, I might even say it was a normative strategy for our [00:06:00] parents' generation.

Simone Collins: Well, and you went to college looking for a wife, Malcolm. And your brother and his wife, like freshman year.

Malcolm Collins: Freshman year, yeah. Both me and my brother went to college explicitly to find a wife in, in part,

Simone Collins: but now, wow. You know what you're saying, Jeffrey reminds me. It, it's like very similar to what happened, like it has been creeping up with. Parenting in general, where like car seat laws may be causing fewer lives to exist in the United States, for example, just because they're so prohibitively cumbersome.

Mm-hmm. Then they're, they're actually, you know, saving like this, this interest in, in protecting people at all costs, at the cost of even. Growth of the thing we're protecting is is pretty insidious. It's pretty wild. I mean, I almost feel like there should be some kind of index on like dating friendly colleges.

'cause I know many parents are still, the only reason they're, they're saving in their 5 29 accounts and they're actually planning to sending their kids to college is, they're like, at least this is where they'll find their partner. And, and here like now the universities are like, no, no, definitely not.

Don't even think about it. [00:07:00] That's crazy.

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah. So if, if you're a parent and you actually want your kids to be able to find. Possibly a spouse or at least enjoy a long-term relationship and use college as among other things, a mating market. Call the college's Dean of students and ask what exactly are your policies?

Are you a dating friendly campus or are you all about like absolutely minimizing like. Sexual very interesting sexual contact. Right. Call them up and ask them, because it's often the dean of students and you know, to some degree the DEI officers and, and so forth. It's the administrators who are pushing this kind of stuff and, and, and it's.

Yeah. Often the, the, the students don't really know the ins and outs of it. All that they know is that there's a general chilling effect. Right. And that they're getting signals that it's not cool ever. Right. To ask out anybody on campus.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm.

Geoffrey Miller: [00:08:00] Right. And I've done polls of my, my undergraduate males in my sexuality classes, anonymous polls, right?

Mm-hmm. Through iClicker and stuff. Mm-hmm. Would you ever date a female student? Would you ever date a female student that you meet on campus about two thirds? Say absolutely not. Two, a third,

Simone Collins: what's the point of gonna go, oh my gosh, I, I know. And

Geoffrey Miller: then, right. So they're terrified, right? Because they know if they're accused of sexual misconduct, they can get thrown out and that they've racked up student debt and they don't get a degree.

And it, that's fair. It's, yeah. Nightmare.

Malcolm Collins: That's horrifying.

Geoffrey Miller: And so like. I ask who do, who do you date then? And they're like, well, I go to the local community college, or I just, I've given up on dating already at age 20, and it's a nightmare.

Simone Collins: That is wild. What do you also pull your female students are and are they having, like are there interesting asymmetries also that you're noticing between men and women willingness to date?

I mean, there've been some [00:09:00] things that have gone viral on TikTok recently where young women are like, well, I'm going out my tits. Bouncing. I just wish someone would cat call me. Like they're really getting to the point where they're getting frustrated. 'cause no one's paying attention to them, I guess because there's so much liability around it.

But are you seeing, or like what are you seeing in terms of different experiences dating between men and women? That could be a leading indicator of something interesting.

Geoffrey Miller: I think the young women are not aware of just how terrified the young men are about these campus misconduct policies. So not tuned into this, like they know, ah, this is weird.

Nobody's dating me, approaching me, trying to talk to me. Why not? Right? Part of the issue is sex ratio. So a lot of college campuses, it's roughly two women for every man. It's getting to like 60% female, which, so 1.5 to two women per per man, and that, as you guys know, shifts. The, the power in the mating market towards [00:10:00] male short term mating.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Yeah.

Geoffrey Miller: And, and this is why there was

Malcolm Collins: a great study on this, by the way, just a side note here. I don't know if you've heard of this study, but there was a study that looked at the percentage of women on college campuses and dating norms was in college campuses. And the more women you have on a campus as a proportion of the, the, the more promiscuity you get.

Whereas the fewer women you have, the more monogamous relationships are.

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah, that's right. And that's, that's what all the data seemed to, seemed to show. And so if you get female dominated campuses, you might think naively, oh, that gives women the power to set the norms in terms of relationships. No, no, no.

Right. The sex that is in higher demand, and it has heterosexual dating market has more power. So the men have more power and that means they can impose, you know, to, to the degree that matter. On average, more interested in short-term mating and casual dating and casual sex and hookups. Right? Then the women are kind of forced into that, and that's exactly why when Tucker Max and I wrote the mate book 10 [00:11:00] years ago, we said like, if you're a young man, you should try to go to a campus that's, you know, got a high proportion of women and you'll have more bargaining power there.

But if you're a young woman, right, you want to go to like. Caltech? Yes. Or one, one of the rare kind of engineering oriented schools that's a little bit more male dominated.

Simone Collins: Smart. Ooh, the good tactical tips coming in. Although I do wonder if, if calling the Dean of students would work. If you're talking about a religious conservative university, because they do often have like, I mean BYU for example, has some pretty strange Yeah.

I've talked with

Malcolm Collins: the end of the show and the number of them who want to go to BYU is actually really high. Like most of them are very strongly considering BYU.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But to find a

Simone Collins: wife and all of the Catholic parents that we talk with are like, well, obviously my kid's gonna find their, their spouse at like one of these eight Catholic universities.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: But I mean, I, they also have strict rules, but they're rules oriented toward monogamy, I guess.

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah, so it, look, if you're a parent, the, the, the bottom line is [00:12:00] don't just choose whatever university you think will have the highest prestige, will be most helpful in terms of your kids' career. And, and like that you can brag about like to your, your extended family and your neighbors, but really think strategically about it as, as a mating market.

And ev, even if it's not kind of a hardcore Catholic or Mormon University, at least find out. Like do the administrators think it's okay for students to date each other? Yeah. That is important. They basically really discourage that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And

Geoffrey Miller: like, I wouldn't necessarily want one of my kids to get married at age 21, but I would want them to be able to have the experience of having at least some medium term relationships to kind of like calibrate like, what do I want from, you know, a potential partner?

Simone Collins: What different advice. Would you give to a son versus a daughter on the dating market and to your male versus female students? Because, I mean, that's very different [00:13:00] tactics.

Geoffrey Miller: Honestly, the, when I teach in my human sexuality class, the thing that gets the most interest is. Identifying personality disorders to avoid.

Oh, and the, and the red flag. So the women are very

Malcolm Collins: Oh, very interesting. Right? Yeah.

Geoffrey Miller: The women are very interested in like, yeah, I'm kind of attracted to bad boys, but I actually want to avoid like really hardcore. Psychopaths, narcissists, machiavellians, like all that dark triad stuff. And for the men, I talk quite a bit about borderline personality disorder and how it will Yes, it is your life if you're not careful.

Malcolm Collins: How, how do you, how do you spot this stuff?

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah, I mean, that, that's a whole tangent, but, you know, because a lot of them are, are

Malcolm Collins: to anyone who's dating. I know. Everyone's like, no, really Jeffrey, we're talking about how you get Skittles here and now it's like, how do you avoid the poison ones? And you're like, well you, that's a whole [00:14:00] other conversation.

And it's like, what is important in the acquisition of Skittles to not get poisoned Skittles

Geoffrey Miller: to avoid poison Skittles in the mating market. Okay. For borderline for avoiding women with borderline personality disorder. Right? You wanna avoid, yeah. Any signals of extremely high risk seeking, which is drug abuse, alcohol abuse, bad driving.

It, it, frankly, even extreme sports, you, you wanna interrogate them about their attitudes towards exes, right? If they dis every single man they've ever gone out with, and like, my father sucked, my ex-boyfriends all suck. Like, maybe it's you. Maybe it's not them. Yeah. May, maybe that common denominator is like you.

Pick badly and then drive men away. If you get into a relationship with a borderline, then they tend to flip flop between idolizing you and demonizing you, right? So one hour they'll be like, you are the best thing ever. I feel so connected to you. This is awesome, awesome. I'm more in love with [00:15:00] you than ever.

And then an hour later they're having an argument and they're saying, you're, you're just. You know, the worst piece of s**t ever, and I don't trust you at all and blah, blah. So that kind of instability in how they, I. Interpret other people's social behavior. Another big red flag for borderline women is they don't have any female friends.

Malcolm Collins: Mm. 'cause they,

Geoffrey Miller: they burn through all their, their same sex relationships because other women are, are sick of dealing with their, their nonsense. So that's my, my. Capsule, two minute lesson on. That's really good. No,

Simone Collins: those are really easy to spot, so that's amazing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Now let's talk about like dating apps as a dating opportunity right now.

And I also wanna talk about passport bro wives because these are two areas where you're actually seeing tons of wives. We had an episode on just how common passport borough wives are and people. One hugely underestimate this in Korea, if you look at rural rural Korea, one in four [00:16:00] wives are from another country.

If you look at Sweden or Norway and you look at immigration rates, you would think that the immigration rates would glean male because you're getting so many immigrants from like Middle Eastern countries. But it actually turns out that they're gender equal because you get so many passport wives from Russia and South America are the two core places they're coming from.

So I'd love it if you could talk about these two pathways.

Geoffrey Miller: So I know a lot more about dating apps and about passport wives in terms of the passport situation. Yeah, I I mean, I, all I can say is that if you are. Concerned about finding, you know, a traditional monogamous marriage and having a bunch of kids, then you need to find somebody who is from a culture or a nation or a subculture that has been open to that and encouraging of that.

And it's, it's really hard if you grow up in a subculture that is systematically [00:17:00] opposed to long-term marriage and having kids. Frankly, a lot of American culture is I can see the appeal of just trying to, you know, find a mate where you can. And there's a long tradition in human evolution of people mating outside their tribe, right?

We are all genetic hybrids and mongrels to, to one degree or another. And partly that's because people growing up in a particular clan or tribe, are related to everybody. So you don't necess necessarily wanna marry your cousin or your second cousin. But also we're, we're intrigued by cultural difference as long as it's not too, too different.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm.

Geoffrey Miller: So that, that's really all I can say about the passport wife thing. I do worry that often, people might be matching up with others who seem like, okay, maybe they share some core family values, but there's a whole bunch of other. Cultural baggage, right. That comes along with other [00:18:00] cultures that you might not even be aware of,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Yeah.

Geoffrey Miller: You get, you get some wife from Lithuania or, or Namibia or, or India or whatever, and unless you have a deep, deep understanding of that culture and all the expectations around mating and parenting and so forth, and how extended families work in those cultures. Right. That can be a real handicap. You can have some surprises and shocks.

And the other thing is you know, the older I get, the more important I think it is actually to try, if possible, to stay geographically close to parents and grandparents.

Simone Collins: Totally.

Geoffrey Miller: Right. And to really leverage the power of the extended family when you're raising kids together. So, I love political theorist, UAM Azzoni, who did a great book called Conservatism of Rediscovery, and he writes quite extensively about kind of being based and grounded in an extended family that lives nearby and the mm-hmm, the many, many benefits of that.

[00:19:00] So. You know, I understand the appeal of getting a, a kind of passport spouse, but just be aware that like if you're trying to raise kids and the kids' grandparents are thousands of miles away and you're never gonna see them. Yeah, that's a major, major handicap.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's challenge. Actually, one thing I'm really interested in though, like just on this is that

Malcolm Collins: mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: One of our listeners sent to me an essay and article on American Reformer called Highway America is a relic of the past. That is essentially encouraging young men to do road trips, like a job across a drive across the USA and just stop at every. Like diner and coffee place along the way and like hit on attractive young women who are working there because it's, it's almost implying that like you could be a passport bro.

Domestically, there are all these women in flyover America that may be more traditional. And we should, we should consider they're there.

Malcolm Collins: That if you go get a passport for a wife, I think a lot of [00:20:00] people underestimate how far the urban monoculture reaches Mm. In terms of its value system. And a lot of these women just want to use you.

They'll say they want a lot of kids, and then after the, like two kids, they're like, okay, that's all I'm gonna do, because. Was was stability and wealth, and I already have that and I don't want the additional work now. And, and that's not to say they all do. One, one funny story I heard recently from a, I don't know if a fan Yeah, it was a fan in the comments or something, is they were talking about one of their.

Friends. No, it might actually be like somebody I know personally, one of their friend's wives who was a passport wife from some, somewhere in east Asia. And they, they got to four kids and then she's like, you need to take another wife now. She's like, I'm done with with these kids. You, this is too much work.

You need another wife. And I'm like, a lot of people would see that as a very favorable outcome from a passport, bro wife, if they're like, need more wives, what are you doing with only me? But yeah, to keep in mind that you know that you are merging cultures, and that can be a very difficult thing to do.

But [00:21:00] let's know, I met my wife on a dating app Okay. Cupid, before it went crazy. I've said in my book, I said it went crazy, like it was bought by Match Group and they killed the, you know, just full profile search for profile to, to try to push people onto the other more addictive swipe based system.

And the guy, I actually said this in front of the guy. Who was in charge of determining this change? At one point, I didn't know he was in charge of determining this change, and he's like, no. It was all based on the data. More people were using it after the change. It was like, okay, you created in an addictive cycle.

Of course more people were using it. But basically any app that uses a swipe based system is not worth using as a guy. So, and, and the reason it's not worth using is if you look at something like Tinder and you look at the average guy on Tinder, everybody knows the statistic. It's less than 1% of women are swiping right on them.

That's the average guy. That's 50% of men. So 50% of women, less than 1% of women are swiping right on you. They're all going to the same men. So it just doesn't really work at the system because. It means even for the top men, they have no motivation to treat these women [00:22:00] seriously. And all these women who are using it in up feeling like every guy is just using them because it's every guy that they're choosing within this ecosystem is using them.

So they end up becoming super misandrist. But anyway, what's your like, what do you do?

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah. And I, I, I would echo like when I was using OkCupid to date, like 10 to 12, 14 years ago, it was awesome. It was, it was great. So good. And I, I think I answered literally all of the 3000 plus questions same that we use.

Simone Collins: 'cause you could sit up there and farm attention, you'd end up in people's feed with your answers.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Simone came up with a unique system where she would do the answers in long form so that it would show up on people's feeds.

Geoffrey Miller: Oh, I see. That's clever. Yeah. But yeah, the Match group absolutely killed it.

And they are now in the business of monetizing subscriptions and eyeballs and not creating matches. The, the stats I've seen is that roughly one in 5 million swipes [00:23:00] results in a marriage.

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

Geoffrey Miller: On those apps?

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, it's

Geoffrey Miller: literally less, you'd have to swipe. All day, every day, particularly if you're a guy, right, to get even a reasonable number of dates.

And then because the algorithm isn't matching you effectively based on any kind of psychological traits or life interests or politics or religion or you know, interest in family formation. And this is why I've started working as a sort of consulting scientist with Keeper, which is a new dating app that really tries to help.

People who seriously want to get families right to find each other, and particularly based on deeper psychological compatibility. So, yeah,

Simone Collins: I'm, I'm interested in keeper because it seems to me like the new match. So when I was on OkCupid, I was just looking to date at that time, like I didn't wanna get married.

But then there was another girl at my office who really wanted to get married and so she went to match.com. And then like. [00:24:00] A couple months later, she met the guy who then like one month later, after that became her fiance and they got married and like it was done and we, I'd known a bunch of people who'd just done that.

It was like Match was for closers and I think that's kind of fallen apart or it's not really for demographic that's relevant to young people. And when I first heard about Keeper. It was under, it sounded so mysterious. It was like, well you have to like put down $50,000 and then you only get it if you get married.

You know, like something like it required a ton of commitment and I think it's changed a lot since then. But I was really intrigued by like, what are some smart people's entrepreneurial take to like get people to actually commit? Because I feel like switching costs now are so low and the desire to actually commit is so low.

That people, even when they're matched with someone who's a really good. Potential partner. Mm-hmm. They're like, like she's not a Brazilian model. Like, I'll pass, I'm not feeling it right now. Yeah, they're not taking it seriously. So what does keep her do? Because I think they had to walk back the financial commitment part.

'cause I don't think they were gonna get a lot of customers doing that, but [00:25:00] like, what's going on?

Geoffrey Miller: So. The economic model is, is basically you want to make sure that the people who are on a serious dating app are really actually serious about finding a long-term partner. So they do still have a marriage bounty plan, okay.

Where you basically sign a contract that says for not just for marriage, but different milestones of the relationship, like, you know, if you have been dating for a year or you're actually cohabiting or if you get married or even if you have your first kid, there's kind of an escalating payout structure, right?

So that basically your incentives to find the long-term mate are absolutely aligned. With the dating apps, incentives in terms of revenue generation. And then there's a second model, which is basically you pay per contact, you pay per date, right? Oh yeah. But I mean, you do that on

Simone Collins: Ashley Madison, so I, you know, that's not

Geoffrey Miller: well, but then your [00:26:00] right, Ashley Madison is for people already married, cheating, right?

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Miller: So. The keeper is strongly discouraging, casual dating, cheating, et cetera. Yeah. They, they actually, you know, are, have ways to vet people in terms of their, oh my god, authenticity and their, and their commitment to, to the process. So I think what'll probably end up happening more often is that keeper is all about like, quality over quantity.

They're really trying to find, an extremely good match for each person, and they're sort of like suggesting, here's the match, we're gonna give you one at a time. Hmm. Right. We encourage you guys to like communicate a little bit. If you want full contact information, then that's, that's a little bit of a cost, like a couple hundred dollars, right?

Mm-hmm. So you're not treating it as if it's like a gamified. Like [00:27:00] source of sexual validation, like how many people are swiping on me and then like, how many can I swipe on? Mm. No, just taking that off the table. So the whole mental model of it is sort of like imagine your parents or a trusted mentor or like, here's a young woman I know and respect to, I think would be a great match for you young man.

And if I introduce you right. You're gonna treat her like a real human being, not just like a profile, right? So that's the mindset. It's a little bit more like traditional matchmaking, but using like AI algorithms and using the power of big data. So it's completely the opposite mindset of like, swipe, swipe, swipe.

Left, left, left, swipe and, and then like text and then get ghosted. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the core failing of the swipe ecosystem, which is switching costs. Mm-hmm. The core failing of the swipe ecosystem is that there is always another, and when there is always another and there is [00:28:00] incredibly low switching costs that then, then people do not treat any particular relationship particularly seriously.

Yeah. How much are people

Simone Collins: putting down for bounties? Like, what is, what do you think is a, a compelling marriage bounty?

Geoffrey Miller: I think so far, typically the marriage bounties are on the order of 10, 20, $30,000.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Miller: But some people are going up to like six figures, you know, over a hundred thousand. Some people have put down like seven figure bounties.

Like, I will pay you two or $3 million if you find me a good spouse.

Malcolm Collins: Ooh.

Geoffrey Miller: And this is a, this is a dating app where the median. Male annual income is something like 170, $180,000, and like the top quartile is mid six figures. So these are successful people and a lot of them, you know, if, if they're serious about finding a spouse, are willing to pay for it.

And they know, like, look, if, if you're some. Entrepreneur [00:29:00] and or angel investor or whatever, and you've got a serious net worth, then finding a good wife or husband is a, is a massive life benefit. How much is it worth to you, right, to find someone who's a extremely compatible and wants to have a bunch of kids with you, and B, where you're so compatible that the likelihood of a disastrous divorce.

It's very, very low.

Malcolm Collins: It, it's funny when you mention marrying, you know, wealth of people and I think that this is, you know, different classes often. Mary was in the class and, and my mom when, when I was looking for a wife, you know, around the time I was dating you, she's like, why don't you just go to debutante balls?

You can, you can find great wives at those. And I was like, mom, how do you think I'm gonna get invited to a debutante ball? I live in effing like Scotland and San Francisco. Do you think they're having debutante balls in San Francisco? You need to be aware of where certain like, groups or meeting was in each [00:30:00] generational pool, and an update as that switches.

Geoffrey Miller: Mm. Yeah. And it, it, it is a colossal failure honestly of, of, you know, older millennials and, and Gen X, like me and the boomers that we have failed to maintain and update those kinds of, informal or formal mating markets. Like when I was in high school, there was a thing called cotillion. Right. And if you were a sort of bourgeois Yeah.

I didn't young man or woman. Right? You, you would go to these things like four times a year and all the young men would dress up in tuxedos and then they would dance to punk music and, and you would get used to interacting with other people in, in the coill group. As real people. And often they were going to the same high school as you, but you saw them in a new context where it's like, ah, this is romantic.

There's candlelight, there's music. It's, it's at a country club. That's cool. But what are the modern equivalents? Right? Church? Yes. That can work. College clubs. Yeah. But then you got the, the [00:31:00] sexual misconduct policies to worry about.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Geoffrey Miller: CrossFit, right. Going to some demanding leisure activity that has a decent sex ratio that can work.

I mean, that's how my, my co-author Tucker Max found his, his wife. He's like, oh, really? I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to CrossFit classes and I'm gonna find, I'm gonna find a registered nurse.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Geoffrey Miller: right. So specific. Right. And he, he, he tuned it in and he. And he found one and she's great. And she's smart. And now they have whatever, four kids and live in rural Tennessee.

And they're, they're, they're out there and he's teaching his kids how to do long range precision rifle shooting and, and it's great. Living the dream. Yes, living the dream.

Simone Collins: That's so interesting. Okay. Well, so I mean, one thing that Malcolm and I talk about a lot is basically, arranging marriages or very lightly arranging marriages for our children, or at least doing matchmaking.

We've created this group of parents with kids of [00:32:00] similar ages to our kids, and then when they start hitting age seven, age eight, we're gonna try to get them on like, you know, summer camps together, vacations together, you know, hanging out, doing stuff together, you know, maybe once a year or once every other year.

So they start to get to know each other and then later on. A set of discord servers, all sorts of things that like, virtually they might like play video games together or something. And then over time be like, Hey, you know, you're 21, you're 18. Like, have you seriously concerned so-and-so, we, we think that a lot of people aren't really talking about how really only until very recently in human history have families and parents stopped becoming involved in their kids.

Matchmaking and dating lives. I mean, n now it's kind of considered weird for a family to even weigh in or provide an opinion on a boyfriend or girlfriend, and I get it because you could lose your kid if you like. You know, they insist they have to marry this person and you hate them, then they're gonna choose them and you lose your relationship with your kid.

But on the other hand. You know, I think [00:33:00] a lot of, a lot of people would appreciate having a little bit more help and guidance, even if they might complain about it. What are your thoughts on getting involved in and meddling in your children's dating lives?

Geoffrey Miller: I'm all for it, I think. Absolutely. And, you know, thankfully, like with my daughter, we talk quite a bit about her, her dating life and her relationships and her made choice criteria. And she knows, I'm like, I've written books about this so I'm not just some random, random old dude, but I think a lot of parents have a real failure of nerve. I think they're absolutely gutless on this issue.

Mm-hmm. And they need to weigh in and they need to start doing it from, you know, the time their, their kids are teenagers and. Be willing to say, I just don't think she or he is is right for you. But let me explain why and let me unpack it. Let me give you my life experiences, right, that are my relevant source of wisdom about how this particular.[00:34:00]

Red flag, right? And this young person is gonna play out in the future. Nice. So the parents have to be articulate about it. They have to connect it to their own life experiences. That requires a bit of vulnerability. But I, I see this, this massive failure of parental duty. Like where Oh yeah, you're allowed to give your kids advice on education and career, but not about mating.

And it, it's so, it's so dumb because like in retrospect, my parents when I was a teenager could have easily found like a dozen young women who I would've actually had quite a happy marriage with. Like, they knew me better than I knew myself.

Simone Collins: A fair point,

Geoffrey Miller: right? They knew my, yeah, my strengths and weaknesses, my traits, my quirks, because they were surrounded by, you know, other parents', kids, and they, they were, they were smart and observant.

And the notion that a 20-year-old [00:35:00] knows themselves better than their parents do is in a way very narcissistic and very strange.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And, and, and

Geoffrey Miller: like, oh, also you can weave together the parental advice and the dating apps, right? Oh, wait, how Well, like, for example, you could actually include your parents in the assessment right Now if you're, if you're on Tinder, right?

Of course your parents aren't gonna be. Standing behind your shoulder, like monitoring every swipe. But if you're on like a keeper dating app where you're getting just one, hopefully really good match. Oh yeah. You can send them

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. At a

Geoffrey Miller: time, right? You could potentially share it with them, zoom with them, get their advice, and you have a rich enough set of information about each potential mate, right?

That the parents could look at that and go, yeah, well actually mm-hmm. Let me explain to [00:36:00] you why, like, hopefully Keeper is even smarter than you are about why this would be a great match or maybe why not, right? It's good. Yeah. And so we, we would, I ideally want to empower young people to like. Fold their family and their friends into this dating app experience.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. I like that.

Geoffrey Miller: So if, if you're not comfortable doing it with your parents, at least maybe do it with your siblings. At least do it with, with housemates, with friends, whatever. Don't keep it as like your secret little vice, like, like Tinder or Hinge, where it's like I just do this to be like a so cystic.

Like secret of sexual validation. Yeah. Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: You mentioned this, one of the things we talk about on this channel a lot is cross-cultural differences and a big difference across the American cultural groups. And you can go to our videos on the backwards, cultural tradition, everything like this.

And the various culture is, is some groups like the backwards cultural tradition, which is like the Appalachian cultural tradition. Primarily vets, spouses through [00:37:00] siblings and then other groups, primarily vet spouses through parents. And I, I just happen to be through a culture that primarily vet spouses through siblings.

And so this is to say that there are many ways that you can build a vetting system for spouses that rely on people who know you better and rely on the crowd opinion, but the crowd opinion is always gonna be better than your individual opinion. And I know that as a society we have completely atomized romance, but it's really stupid, especially if you wanna get married as young as you need to, to have a lot of kids.

Recently we did an episode, I don't know when it'll go live, but it was on, we need more teen marriages. And the problem, the biggest problem with teen or young marriages is I, I mean young, you know, early twenties, whatever, is that you don't fully know yourself yet. You don't know who you're gonna become.

And you're not fully myelinated. But. Your parents and your friends, like aggregately, the people around you know, you the people who have a vested interest in your future know you. And this is why so many societies [00:38:00] used people like that for marriage, choosers of these. And people can be like, well, what about love?

And it's like, well, you know, love isn't, it didn't exactly evolve within a context. That's meant to choose the perfect spouse. It's meant to make you love whoever you think is going to be the, the parent of your kid because you know, then you don't kill them or the kid or anything like that. It's, it's not meant to be a spouse choosing mechanism within an evolutionary context.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and I'll just just for those who are brothers, sisters, moms, dads who are listening to this and thinking like, how can I get involved in a way that's meaningful? Malcolm actually, his whole family got involved in, in pitching me to him, kind of like one Malcolm participated in that very early on in our dating, even when.

I was under the impression that we were never gonna get married. You introduced me to your dad. It was like introduced me to your mom's dad. It was

Malcolm Collins: 20 or something.

Simone Collins: It was, it was with, you introduced me to your dad in like the first week and then after we broke up, you, you literally, [00:39:00] you were out of the country and you had me go to dinner with your parents who were in town.

And then after we got back together one, so like his brother and sister got involved just hammering Malcolm. Like, you need to marry her. She's right for you. Wait, do you

Malcolm Collins: remember this? Wait, what do you remember about moms and Bri? I also,

Simone Collins: they, they were just like Malcolm in that way that they always are.

Malcolm, you need to just, you're not gonna find anyone else. You're, you know, you're impossible. She's the only one who'll deal with you. And then your mom started sending both of us engagement rings that she found on first dibs. And she just kept sending the rings and sending the rings and sending the rings, and then being like, oh, I'm gonna come, you know, visit, you should propose to her here.

You should propose to her there. And she's just like a constant force in both of our lives making it really top of mind and making it like, I, I think a lot of parents just aren't necessarily thinking about like, how I think

Malcolm Collins: about doing this. Like the reason I got married at the age I got married at. And I think that a lot of people, they don't, they don't see this is, I had a.

A family [00:40:00] that was around me constantly telling me to get married to this person. And they didn't tell, say this for other girls I dated. They didn't, they didn't actually, they never said this about any girl I dated before that You need to marry this girl. They

Simone Collins: even moved up the timeline. They, they actually moved up, like his family moved up the timeline because I was like, well, I want Malcolm to propose to me when he can, through his work, afford to pay.

Using his own salary for an engagement ring. Mm-hmm. I just, I don't know, like it was a, it's a stupid thing on my, I don't know why I said that, but I did. And Malcolm's mom was like, oh, it's just that. And she like pulls off her earring, which is this like big diamond and she's like, slides it across the table and she's.

All right. Turn this into a ring. 'cause you can afford this. Like, she's just like, she was like, okay, you know, what do we need to do to, to close? Her, her like, her constant phrase to the family was dinners for closers. She just was always about like, let's get it done. And I, I think parents, when they think about getting involved, maybe they think about nagging, maybe they think about, like, I think you have to think about this like a salesperson.

Like where is the friction [00:41:00] and how can I remove that? Or how can I keep this top of mind? Like what's my drip campaign? Where's the propaganda? So, okay, Jeffrey, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're totally trapped now. 'cause I'm gonna put you, you on, on our list of, of matchmaking families for your youngest daughters because you know, we've got, we've got really great young men for them to consider later on in life.

I.

Geoffrey Miller: I mean, American culture's like, oh, it's really creepy to think that far ahead, but it life is short and life goes by fast. Oh, yeah. And you know, the standard parental advice is like, oh, the days are long and the years are short. And before you know it, your toddlers will be in high school and then they'll be looking for mates and frustrated and, you know, another issue here is like, apart from the collective wisdom of the extended family and the parents and the siblings, it's also really, really helpful to get to know the family of a potential mate early, right? Mm-hmm. 'cause of [00:42:00] heredity. Because traits are heritable. Yes. Right? Yes. Don't look at the

Simone Collins: woman.

Look at her mom. Right? Because then you know how she's gonna age.

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah. So you want to be able to integrate information about all these phenotypic traits, right? All these physical and, and mental traits. Physical and mental health. Right? And this is another one of the many reasons for tism in big families is you just get a bigger sample size of what are the genes in this family like?

Malcolm Collins: That's true.

Geoffrey Miller: Like, there was a funny asymmetry where when my dad as a long young lawyer age circa 26, started dating my mom, age 19 college student. My mom had 11 brothers and sisters. Right. Big family.

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

Geoffrey Miller: So my dad could meet all these siblings and just see the, the mosaic of traits right. Expressed in all these siblings and get a much better kind of estimate of.

What my, you know, 19-year-old mom was gonna be like, versus [00:43:00] my dad was an only child, so she had to assess him just based on him and his parents, and that's pretty much it.

Malcolm Collins: Mm.

Geoffrey Miller: So one hidden cost of very, very small families is, it makes. Potential suitors, less confident about like, what, what really is this person like?

'cause I can't see the way that. Similar genes are expressed in siblings and parents. Yes.

Simone Collins: That's really interesting. There's, there's even this old Victorian dating guide that was written where the, the author was also like, just don't date an only child. They're going to be too selfish. And their parents clearly failed to thrive.

Like the just, he just like was completely writing off all single children. Even to the Victorian age. There's, there's, there's gotta be some wisdom to this.

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah, I, I actually don't think it's, it's the case that the single kids are sort of messed up psychologically per se. It's just you don't know as much about, about the genes that they [00:44:00] like Lady carry because you don't have as big a sample of, of their relatives.

Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay, final, final rapid fire question. In what way or in to what scale do you think we're totally super screwed by ai, boyfriends and girlfriends coming online and providing basically the ultimate sync for anyone who decides, like, I am just gonna. Just focus on hedonism and this perfect boyfriend girlfriend that I can, you know, eventually plug into a very responsive sex doll.

Like, whatever. Right? Like, it's gonna get way more advanced than it is now. Do you think that we're super screwed or are we just gonna lose a certain portion of the population that only cares about a certain type of pleasure? Well, what do you think is gonna happen as this rolls out?

Geoffrey Miller: I think it's a.

It's a big, big problem, and I think we're gonna be blindsided by it. And I think it's gonna actually affect young men and young women about equally, but in different ways. Totally agree, right? So yes, the young men are gonna be able to get this like [00:45:00] super attractive, curvy, vivacious, validating, like girlfriend, and they'll be able to put on their virtual reality like headset and have like virtual sex with these AI girlfriends and their sexy

Simone Collins: haptic suits.

Yeah.

Geoffrey Miller: And, and. By contrast, dealing with like real women and all their, their nonsense will become quite unattractive. But on the. On the other hand, for the young women, right? They're gonna get these ai boyfriends like chat, GPT, which is currently kind of my wife's secondary partner. Like,

Malcolm Collins: we're, by the way, building better AI girlfriends was our fab.ai for anyone who wants to check it out.

Oh, thanks.

Simone Collins: Just in case you wanted to like sterilize more people, Malcolm. Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: we're in the early stages. Well, hey, Elon is doing it with grok. We just have to beat him.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Simultaneously through, through one side of the mouth.

Geoffrey Miller: And so the, like, if you read women's romance novels, right? You know what women want and what they, what they crave.

And so if you have like AI boyfriends that are on the one hand [00:46:00] kind of like Dami and Superior, and they. Push the hyper gamy button, right? Where the women are like, oh man, I can't believe such a, such a bad boy. Such a high status pirate captain is my own personal, such

Simone Collins: werewolf and

Geoffrey Miller: conversation partner.

But on the other hand, you know, the AI boyfriends will be able to remember. Every single detail of the young women's lives, their birthdays, their interests, their Oh

Malcolm Collins: no,

Geoffrey Miller: their pets. Like if the woman's like, I love this movie, the AI boyfriend will be able to like, literally go off and, and basically like, watch every episode

Simone Collins: Yes.

Of it

Geoffrey Miller: and then be able to talk about it.

Simone Collins: No, every line, every reference. Oh God.

Geoffrey Miller: And so real, real young men who are like distractible and have fallible memories and like insufficient attentiveness and all that will seem really lame. By comparison. So I worry a lot about this, and I think it's one of probably my top [00:47:00] five AI risks that, you know, I, I would be concerned about.

So AI for matchmaking, great AI for fake boyfriends and girlfriends could be very dangerous, but on the like, okay, what's the silver lining? Mm-hmm. You could potentially design an AI boyfriend or girlfriend that is specifically to level up social skills.

Simone Collins: Yeah. A lot of people are arguing this. That's a good point.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe

Geoffrey Miller: you could do that, but then you'd have to be really careful about how exactly are the economics of the ai, boyfriend, girlfriend, software makers aligned really with the long-term interests of the users. Right. Is it really leveling them up or are they just getting a kind of gamified like way to overcome mileage, autism kind of thing?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I don't know the way dating apps have [00:48:00] devolved on the broader scale aside from, you know, some of the more innovative, really results oriented ones suggests outlook. Not good. But I don't know. I mean, part of our approach that we're taking with our kids is more like, if you want, pleasure sure.

Use AI for that. But marriage is, is as much a career choice, a survival choice as it is. I mean, it's, it's really actually not at all, it from our perspective about pleasure or romance. I mean, it's, it's great if those things are there and that that should, you know, compatibility is important, et cetera, et cetera.

But like we we're trying to raise our kids to not think. That because I mean we, for the vast majority of human history, and maybe, I mean you can comment on this 'cause you're probably way more informed on this from an evolutionary psychology perspective, but for the vast majority of human history, human pair bonding has not necessarily been about romance or love.

And yet now people, modern people are expecting a cortisone. [00:49:00] Without paying them a salary, without having the budget for that. Like, they just want someone who will, who will amuse and pleasure them, who is perpetually young and attractive. When that's never been what marriage has been about. I mean, it's been about like a, a sort of commercial religious, family oriented agreement.

And we're trying to reorientate our children around that, that all this romance stuff is. This other thing that is better handled with AI anyway, so just use AI for that and then think of marriage as something completely divorced from it. But, but how are you, how are you thinking about preparing, especially your younger kids?

For, for this. I mean, there's some time you can see how it plays out a little, but what are your initial thoughts?

Geoffrey Miller: I mean, one, one thing I talk about a fair amount with with both my wife Diana Fleischman, and we also have a friend, Athena Actus. Oh, she's so cool. Yes. Yeah, she's cool. She wrote a book called A Field Guide to the Apocalypse, and the mindset there is like in terms [00:50:00] of guiding kids in their mate choice.

Hedge your bets about what the future will be like, right? So the future might be super high tech and maybe we have benevolent AI and every everything gets easier. But the future might also be post-apocalyptic AI makes a lot of trouble. There are a few survivors, right? How do you survive? Or it might just be kind of a gentle grid down.

You need to go into like prepper homesteading mode. Okay? So find a mate who would be good. At any of those

Malcolm Collins: Mm Right.

Geoffrey Miller: Game out. What are some likely and plausible scenarios and try to find, you know, a partner for your kids or for yourself who is gonna be as at home and making a living podcasting as they are at milking cows or defending your homestead against marauders.

Right. Or [00:51:00] dealing with, you know, a but Larry and Jihad, when you're all fighting the ais, and that I think helps PE keep people grounded because what I worry about at the moment is a lot of people like in Brooklyn or the Bay Area, are choosing their mates on the assumption that the current service and information based economy will just continue largely as it has.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm.

Geoffrey Miller: And at this particular point in history, that seems more unlikely than many other possibilities.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that checks out. That's solid advice. Okay, cool. Jeffrey, thank you so much for coming on Basecamp. This was really fun. My pleasure. Great

Malcolm Collins: to have you on. Great to suck. Yeah. Hey, our friends like it when other friends come on because like there's this weird little social network where everybody knows each other.

Simone Collins: Worlds collide. Yeah. But also you provided a lot of really good tactical advice. That is not stuff that's obvious to us. So this is very useful to, I'm, I'm thinking differently about the, the way we're gonna [00:52:00] tweak our, our propaganda and messaging with our children. So I'm really excited

Malcolm Collins: about this.

Our propaganda and messaging.

Simone Collins: I mean, these things are important in the very,

Malcolm Collins: we don't brainwash our children even a little, never.

Simone Collins: That would never happen in our household.

Malcolm Collins: They they they are crazy. I mean, they,

Simone Collins: they're, they're just as worse. They're worst. So,

Malcolm Collins: wait, if we wanna end our, our, our podcast on a fun and and differential note, what are you gonna have for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Jeffrey, what's for dinner?

Geoffrey Miller: Oh, God only knows oh, stuffed peppers. I believe my, my wife is is making,

Malcolm Collins: that's pretty fancy s**t, man. Stuffed peppers,

Geoffrey Miller: stuffed red peppers. Stuff with this banana with

Simone Collins: cheese. They're like corn meat with with

Geoffrey Miller: cheese and whatever our kids will eat.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So,

Geoffrey Miller: oh yeah, we've got these.

You're eating

Simone Collins: stuffed peppers. My God. No.

Geoffrey Miller: Oh, yeah. We, we, we try to feed them pretty well. And

Malcolm Collins: my kids this is the thing, my kids will only eat if every ingredient is separated from every other ingredient. Yeah. We're like, [00:53:00] they've got this, whatever. Like they've got too much Jewish DNA, I don't know, but they want everything completely separated and not touching anything else.

Yes. The idea of putting one food inside another food. Oh, goodness. No, no, no, no. Not peppers. That's sacrilege.

Pretty nice red fruits can have seriously negative effects on one's powers. This one curbs magical abilities. Are you trying to say you don't like tomatoes? This green, squishy area is particularly dangerous. Just look at it. There's obviously something diabolical going on. Are they really that bad? Rice has been tainted by its evil.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, even if, you know, they, they ask for pepperoni pizza, but then they have to remove all the pepperonis because. And

Malcolm Collins: they're like, we're gonna remove the pepperoni and we're gonna remove the cheese.

Yeah. And we're gonna eat every piece individually.

Geoffrey Miller: Yeah. But no, the exciting plan is for our little girl Stella is turning to tomorrow, and we're gonna take them up to Meow [00:54:00] Wolf, which is an amazing experience in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It looks

Simone Collins: super fun. And what is Meow Wolf?

Geoffrey Miller: It's kind, it's hard to explain.

It's, it's a semi psychedelic, exploratory experience that is part museum kind of artsy, but partly you just go there and explore it and, m-E-O-W-W-O-L-F, Meow Wolf. There's actually several of them in different American cities now, and they're great fun and highly recommend it.

Malcolm Collins: This looks really fun.

This is pretty cool. Oh yeah. No,

Simone Collins: it's gonna be, this is, you guys do birthdays properly, so Yeah. Props birthday. Yeah. It's her birthday. It's it's a good, yeah, it's a good birthday party. Our kids would s spurt out there too much. They'd be, it's like a bad trip for them. I just know. Yeah. We don't, we

Malcolm Collins: don't let our kids outta the house anymore.

We any better than we do that. We had a,

Simone Collins: our bigger problem is they busk and they steal. So we, we can't, we can't take them anymore. Because it's, it's just too dangerous.

Malcolm Collins: They barely steal Simone. Okay. They, but they [00:55:00] bus very aggressively,

Simone Collins: so we can't, you you

Malcolm Collins: told them me. The story of a kid goes.

School. He comes back with a Pokemon card. We go, how did you get this Pokemon card? And then he tells me, well, another kid at school ripped my art. And I was like, well, what does that have to do with this Pokemon card? And he, and, and then he goes, well, I told him that if he didn't give me his Pokemon card, I would tell the teacher.

And then we're like, Octavian, that's blackmail. You shouldn't do that. And he, and he looks at us very sternly and he goes, there have to be consequences.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When it comes to propaganda in our household, I feel like our children are more. Heavy on the propaganda than we are. So, but yeah, he's,

Geoffrey Miller: he's like a little, little John wick consequences.

Simone Collins: We're so scared. We're so scared. Alright, well enjoy the stuffed peppers tonight. And thank you so much for your tactical advice. I'm very excited about this. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm absolutely gonna be recommending Keeper to people because like actual traditional matchmakers, every time I like, suggest people try them out, they're like.

[00:56:00] These people are so like incompetent and like, this actually sounds organized, so they're incompetent. You wanna know, like in in the startup world, it's all about playing a game of arbitrage. Like where can I, you know, where can I act, tap into this market where there's an advantage? And it, it's clear that like if you want a professional, results oriented, gets things done fairly affluent partner like.

This is where you should go. So get it while you can last guys before everyone else hears about it. I'm really excited about that. So yeah, it's, it's good to hear one before, you know, our matchmaking network starts to work because we have teenagers reaching out to us, being like, Hey, like, I'm in college.

Like, where do I go? And we're like, well. You know, we'd add you to our matchmaking network, but it's all like two to five year olds now. It's not really gonna be your thing. I mean, maybe if they wanna be like, you know, age gap relationships in like 10 to 15 years, but not yet. So whatcha gonna do. All right.

Well thank you very much Jeffrey.

Geoffrey Miller: Good to to see you guys. Take care. All

Simone Collins: right. Have a great day.

Geoffrey Miller: You too. All.

Simone Collins: No toast. Eat. You fill the [00:57:00] gun with water. From the hose? Yeah, from the spigot. Not by filling your mouth and spitting in it. Octavian, did you show him that? No. No, I did not. That's not how you do it, buddy. I gotta reload again. Yeah, go reload. Then

Octavian Collins: just the water. Well, yeah, you're gonna shoot it on Octavian, right? Oh, professor, where are you getting shot at? Not you gotta put, okay.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay.[00:58:00]

Now go there.

Okay,

why you gotta go queen and talk and

then you.

In this episode, we delve into a controversial yet intriguing theory, backed by a recent study, about the evolutionary dynamics that may have set the stage for Britain's Industrial Revolution. The theory suggests that higher survival rates among the wealthy during pre-industrial times led to a spread of 'middle-class values' such as discipline, literacy, and lower violence, both culturally and genetically. These traits, inherited by the lower classes through downward social mobility, eventually created a population more suited for industrial productivity. We'll explore the historical context, the supporting data, and the potential implications of this theory for understanding global income inequality and the future of human development.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here today. Today we are gonna be talking about a controversial theory that I hadn't heard before but recently was backed by a new study that came out. So the gist of the theory goes like this. In Britain. , As disease continually killed off the poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the descendants of the wealthy. And that way, according to Colar, the less violent, more literate, and more hardworking behavior, middle class values were spread culturally and biologically throughout the population.

This process of quote unquote downward social mobility. Eventually enabled Britain to attain a rate of productivity that allowed it to break out of the Malthusian trap. So. Essentially what he argued was something unique about the environment of Britain during that period.

And in part, but to a lesser extent, the other countries where the Industrial Revolution caught on, created an evolutionary effect that [00:01:00] altered the populations within these environments at a genetic level, making them more capable of creating something like the industrial Revolution. More specifically, he said.

The, what normally happens in history is as a population advances in technology, it produces more food and then more people exist, and then those more people start to just starve and die. And so you don't really get the opportunity for this, this flourishing. But what was happening in Britain.

Was a unique situation in which the poor were dying at a much faster rate than the rich. And the rich were maintaining their wealth in a way that led their higher fertility rates. And note, he, he brings data to this in the original explanation, which we'll get into, okay. In such a way where their descendants.

Filtered down through the social ranks. So it was more like you had this wealthy class that was producing way more children and those children were [00:02:00] filtering down through the other classes, or is at the other end at like the bottom of the poor. There's like this giant cysts cutting off, cutting off, cutting off every iterative generation and the big new study that came out that was so cool on this.

Looked at the polygenic scores for educational attainment, which today is associated with high educational attainment, which is probably associated with a number of other positive. Things potentially. Yeah. In the British population, so looking at samples of dead bodies, basically from, you know, the year 1000 ad, 1,100, 1,200.

And what you see here is. Basically no change in the rate that this appears from 1000 to around 1700, and then you go from 1700 to the mid 18 hundreds and it jumps a ton. It jumps if you look at this graph.

Hmm.

And to, to get an idea of what this means, if you go to the 1000 population in England the, [00:03:00] the top score.

I don't know what this is. It might be like, like IQ tests here. Average IQ test. Okay. The table compares mean score and upper tail distribution for educational attainment. Okay. Not, not iq. This is the educational attainment scores.

Simone Collins: They're correlated.

Malcolm Collins: Correlated, right? So the mean score in the 1000 CE population was 95.8.

In the 1850s population, it was 1 0 7 0.5. Whoa. So you see it completely jumped there. And, and you see a gradual rise across the population over time. If you go to the top 5%, you go from one 20 in the CE population, 1000 ce into the 1850s population. 132.2. And then if you look at the above 150 CE population, 5% score.

So this is what percent. Of the population is above the 5%. I like if you're looking at the top 5% in the 1850s. Right. [00:04:00] Okay. Okay. Score wise.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In

Malcolm Collins: the 1850s, obviously 5% is above the top 5%. All right. That makes sense to but the percent that was in the one thousands population was only 0.75%.

If, if, if you go, oh my,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If you go to the 1600, it's 3%. So, no. What's a, a a above the top 1%, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, the one top, above the top 1% for the 1850s is obviously 1%, but if you go to the 1000 CE population, it's 0.093%. And then the top 1%. So you would've had you know, 10 people in that range.

In the 1850s population for every one person born in that range, in the 1000 CE population of intelligence. Wow. Wow. Okay. This matters because, and, and note here, I'm [00:05:00] not saying this theory is true, but it's a very interesting theory because it looks at the development of a society without comparing different ethnic groups, which I always try to avoid doing when I can.

It just looks. Within one ethnic group. Mm-hmm. Which is really interesting. It is only comparing British people of one time period that didn't have an industrial revolution. Yeah. To British people of another time period, which did have an industrial revolution. Yeah. And I note here that the British people of this other time period, like you go to a South Sea or something like that, like, they did not seem capable.

These are my own ancestors I'm talking about here. So don't accuse me of racism, of creating large scale civilization. As I point out in my One Civilization video my ancestors, if you're like, oh, what did the ancient Brits build? And it's like, well, there is some really nice and detailed ruins in ancient Britain.

You know, you people are like, oh, great, where are they? And I'm like. It's the Roman Bath bath. The, the [00:06:00] Britains didn't make anything like that for about a thousand years after that. Yeah. Like they, they, they, they, it seemed incapable. They were basically idiot tribals in mud huts bringing poo at each other.

When Roman, it was a little, it was a

Simone Collins: little stark. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we need to be honest, this is one of these things where I'm always like really annoyed when people are like, my people were colonized and then you're a white supremacist because you lauded Roman culture. And I'm like, well, Roman culture isn't my culture.

They colonized me, me lauding Roman culture is no different from. A black person Laing Roman culture or an Asian person lauding Roman culture. It was the descendant of the group that colonized my ancestor, at least my a your

Simone Collins: ancestral culture. Yeah. There's

Malcolm Collins: together, yeah. Like, we can all, all men can look back.

There's a great meme that's like, all the men of like different ethnic groups are looking back at like ancient Rome. The, the, how often do you think you got our, our [00:07:00] Roman. Helmet right there with the, with the Greek helmet in, in frame right here that I got for Father's Day.

Very Father's Day gift. But I found this to be a very interesting theory, and again, I wanna be clear. I'm not saying I support it, I'm saying it's interesting. So, Clark begins by describing the pre-industrial world from 10,000 BCE to 1800 CE as a Malian trapped named after the Alcon economist Thomas Malice.

In this era, technological advances improved productivity and living standards temporarily, however, population grows quickly outpaced those gains, driving incomes back to substance levels. People who don't know who mouse this was, that was the guy who thought that the worst world's population was gonna grow forever.

And what we needed to do was kill people. He's basically the enemy of all ISTs. Although he was, he was

Simone Collins: very much, he was the original population bomb dude. What is it that he wrote? The did he wrote the, a modest proposal. He, he, like when people talk about Malian situations, he was basically just like, we're not gonna be able to feed everyone.

This is dire. Too many people, he was the original [00:08:00] pop popular popularizer. It was

Malcolm Collins: the the modest proposal. One was a bit, it wasn't just about population, it was mostly about the Irish. Because at the time they were breeding like Irish and now they barely have kids at all. You know, as, as we've pointed out, they're gonna be going extinct soon.

The Irish are, one of the populations is definitely gonna go extinct soon. Which is sad, but whatever. Birth rates were high, but death rates from disease, famine and violence kept populations in check societies worldwide, including England, were stuck in the cycle was no sustained per capita income growth.

Clark notes that England was no exception until around the 18 hundreds when productivity finally outran. Population growth, enabling the industrial revolution. The question is why this breakout happened in Britain first. A central pillar of Clark's argument is that in pre-industrial Britain. Particularly from the 1200 to the 18 hundreds, economic success directly translated into reproductive success, creating a form of natural selection, favoring certain [00:09:00] traits.

Wealthier individuals from middle and upper classed had more surviving children than the poor. For example, data from English wills shows that min was assets over a thousand pounds, left nearly four surviving children on average compared to fewer than two for those with under 10 pounds.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow.

Malcolm Collins: That's really stark difference.

And

Simone Collins: that is, yeah. The reason

Malcolm Collins: why this is important to note, if this really was the reason why Britain became so successful is that if we have the exact opposite happening today, if we really are heading into an Idiocracy, we really can lose our civilization. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: this, this shows that selective pressures.

Both change the make makeup of the genetic makeup in addition to downstream of that then culture of a society, but then also the output and development of that society. That's what this is all about. Yeah. And, and

Malcolm Collins: keep in mind that the change can happen quickly. It appears that most of the change happened between the 17 hundreds and the 18 hundreds.

So, that's something to watch out for. Yeah. If, [00:10:00] if this is really happening. And what it means is, is that if you want to like humanity to continue to thrive, you essentially need to genetically isolate yourself from people who aren't thinking about this type of stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which is you know, another reason why we work so hard to source potential mates for our children.

Because you know, you have gotta be careful about them breeding with the gen pop and this is gonna become a bigger problem. Intergenerationally, you know, you're gonna get

Simone Collins: in so much trouble for saying that if,

Malcolm Collins: if, well look, the idio, if you look at the numbers, okay. The, the single genetic trait that is because, you know, I can look at genetic polygenic scores and say, these traits correlate was X or these traits correlate was y

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The single one that has the highest correlation was low fertility. Is intelligence was Oh,

Simone Collins: obesity too. And I think our, well, obesity

Malcolm Collins: was the next highest correlation. Yeah. So, so you're gonna get one population that's like low intelligence, high obesity you know, high, some [00:11:00] other likely negative traits.

That are very genetically successful. And I love it when people are like, oh, how dare you call these, like, negative if they're, what is genetically successful was in the current environment. And it's like something could be successful in a current environment and obviously not be successful was in the wider meta.

Like, not, it, it's like becoming a hyper specialized species before a mass extinction event. Yeah. You could say, well, the species isn't. Genetically, like it's not having problems genetically because it's having lots of kids. And and, and if the species was sentient, one of them could say actually these kids are very non adaptable to changes in the environment.

And so while they are winning within this environment, they are not likely to succeed, was in multiple potential environments. Mm-hmm. And worse you could say, here's this other iteration of the species, which appears to specialize. In taking advantage of the way that this species is specializing.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and that's sort of what's happening to humanity right now. If any faction of [00:12:00] humanity does break out and doesn't fall into this you know, idiocracy sort of spiral that faction is going to have a hugely disproportionate amount of power. Because as I said, in many other things, people are gonna bringing be, bringing AK 47 to an automated drone swar fight.

It's just not gonna be relevant What non technologically engaged cultures do, even if they are in this is happening to them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You're gonna something of your culture that thrives because you exclusively. Or largely depend on exploiting social services of a government. You're, you're gonna quickly stop thriving when that government is no longer capable of providing those social services, which is going to happen with demographic collapse.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. To continue here. This wasn't due to higher birth rates, but better child survival. The rich could afford better nutrition, sanitation in healthcare, reducing mortality and diseases that disproportionately affected the poor. In contrast, the poorest families often failed to replace themselves demographically, their lineages died [00:13:00] out and their social positions were filled by the Downwardly Mobile Offspring of the Rich Clark contrasts this using research with hunter gatherer societies.

The, you know. Tami where violence or aggressive traits correlated with higher fertility or with with aristocratic classes in England, whose warfare involvement led to lower reproductive success. So specifically he pointed out that if you look at, at tribal groups which you often see is, engaging in warfare and being aggressive towards your neighbors leads to higher reproductive success by the research. Mm-hmm. But if you were in medieval England, the exact opposite was true. And what led to higher reproductive success was accumulating capital.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Now this seems like potentially an overstatement to me.

Like I would be very surprised. I mean, I guess not that much if you're talking about a totally decentralized clan based structure. But then why not? You know? Higher reproductive success in like Islamic [00:14:00] cultures, for example, right? Like you could have even higher reproductive success by being wealthy in Islamic cultures because you could have multiple wives, right?

So like, if this was an effect, it should have affected them even more.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Yeah, actually, good point.

Malcolm Collins: Don't know what his counter to that would be. Mm-hmm. This survival of the richest meant that traits associated with economic success, such as discipline, thrift, and long-term planning, literacy and non-violence were selectively favored and passed potentially through both cultural transmission, eg.

Educational values and genetic inheritance. Mm, downward social mobility and the spread of borgo east traits over generation. Bourg. Oh, bourgeois. You see, I didn't get those traits.

Simone Collins: I love you so much. I love you so much. Why? There's something about, you know how, like Elon Musk can't meet a pun, he doesn't fall in love with, with I I can't fall.

I can't. When people mispronounce things, it just kills me. I love it. It's, it's great. [00:15:00]

Malcolm Collins: It, it shows I'm American and don't care.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That's good. So, the rich produced more children than they needed to fill the late positions. So many offspring were demoted socially becoming artisans, farmers, or laborers.

These descendants carried the middle class values impossible genes of their forebears enriching the lower classes. Enriching the lower class. I didn't write this. With traits like patients evident by falling interest rates from 10% in medieval times to four to 5% by 18 hundreds. Harder work, we see longer hours.

The working class in England, it's over that time period. Literacy rising from low levels to widespread in the 18th century and reduced interpersonal violence, homicide rates dropped dramatically. They pointed out that if you go to the beginning of this period, that the homicide rates in the uk in, in sort of the medieval period were today equal to the highest homicide rates in the world in, in some country in Africa.

So like the homicide rates were quite high in [00:16:00] the UK back then. And, and I, I found actually very interesting that he used interest rates as, as evidence here showing that interest rates had to be to be competitive in the early medieval period, 10%. And then by the 18 hundreds, it was only four to 5%.

Mm-hmm. Which is actually a pretty strong argument outside of how sophisticated the banking system was, it's, it's how much do people within the middle classes actually pay back their loans? And what you're seeing here is they paid back them with a higher probability over time.

Simone Collins: That's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Clark estimates this process operated over 20 to 30 generations, about 600 to 900 years, gradually transforming the population's average characteristics. By the 18th century, England had a workforce that was more productive, innovative, and oriented towards saving and investment. Traits essential for industrial capitalism.

Clark suggested this was an evolutionary adaptation from hunter gatherer instincts, impulsivity, short-term thinking, to those suited for agrarian and eventually industrial economies. He leans towards a [00:17:00] genetic component, though he acknowledges cultural mechanisms, arguing that the. Changes were deep enough to alter human nature itself.

Why Britain specifically? The, this was a que a follow. I was like, yeah, but why not? Like other places, what happened in Britain that was so unique?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Versus, I don't know, like the Netherlands or Sweden.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, all those places industrialized really early. So you need to choose a place in industrialize more slowly.

I.

Simone Collins: That's in the area, I would wanna think, but yeah,

Malcolm Collins: or Russia. Russia I think would be a better like counter example.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So Clark attributes britain's primacy to its unique historical condition that amplified its evolutionary process. Institutional stability from the Norman Conquest. In 10,066 onwards English enjoyed relatively politically stable as a island nation with secure property rights and low internal violence.

This allowed for selective pressures to operate consistently, unlike more turbulent societies like China or India, where invasions or [00:18:00] instability disrupted the process.

Simone Collins: Hmm,

Malcolm Collins: I don't buy that. Maybe. Maybe early capital. I mean, I, I guess I'm just more like, yeah. But the Muslim countries, it should have been, had a louder effect in early capitalist orientation.

England's economy rewarded economic trades, EG thrift and innovation more than Marshall prowess accelerating the speed of B Forgoes

Simone Collins: bourgeois.

Malcolm Collins: Bourgeois values.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: I needed that

burgo. I've got all those Virgo values.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What a, what A Burgo restaurant to go to

Malcolm Collins: Mr. Stanford graduate degree. Comparison to other societies in places like Japan or China, similar Malian dynamics existed, but less downwards mobility or differing selective pressures favoring conformity over innovation.

Delayed breakthroughs. Poor countries today, Clark controversially implies may lag due to incomplete adaptation [00:19:00] of these traits, whether genetically or culturally. And if he's right, it means that feeding the poor or preventing poor people from dying is genetically sabotaging. Many countries and that the, when wealthy countries do this to other countries, essentially they're trapping them in a such cycle of intergenerational poverty.

Mm-hmm.

And that the, the UK did well because the poor, it didn't, didn't help them. He argues that this, it's a bad look, Malcolm. What? It's a bad look. I'm not arguing it. I'm not arguing. I'm just saying that other people are arguing this.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I've even argued against his explanations here at times, you know?

Mm-hmm. People he argues this explanation, not just the industrial revolution, explains not just the industrial revolution's timing and location, but also persistent global income inequalities. Ooh. Okay.

So, before, we, we go into this more 'cause I, I, I think that this is, this is interesting.[00:20:00]

Clark argues that the transformation took hundreds of years because natural selection and cultural transmission operates slowly across generations. The process began in earnest in the medieval times, around 1200 to 1,250 post Norman Conquest in 10 66, which established institutional stability when England's economy rewarded traits like thrift discipline and literacy with higher reproductive success.

Over 20 to 30 generations, approximately 550 to 900 years. The bourgeois traits spread downwards through society. Okay, so let's, let's try to steal, man, this, how would this work specifically in England, really what he is arguing here is stability in England over this period meant being Marshall did not lead you to have more children.

And he is arguing this was not the case in other regions. And I agree with, I I I do think like if you're looking before this period in England, England was like a bunch of waring clans. It was like just as warlike as anywhere else in the world. Yeah. And after this period where England was.

Normally it [00:21:00] really did suffer a lot less war than other regions. So like this extended period of peace in which poor people are allowed to die allowed for this which plausibly, and then in, but I don't know. I, I, I, I pushed back because I think that, you know, there was a lot of conflict across the European continent throughout this period.

Even if people were under large states and Europe industrialized like way faster than other locations. And I don't know if you had this same phenomenon playing out in the American frontier as much in America, industrialized super early too. But maybe

Simone Collins: I don't, a America, I think industrialized because so many of the areas where you saw that early industrialization was like, for example, in the, in the South, where you had a bunch of people who literally moved there to create businesses to make money, and so they would be, yeah.

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: You have the selective pressure of only taking the, the most [00:22:00] industrious people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And people who are literally only there just to make money instead of to say survive. And, and you had a very different set of also, like you had slaves who were working instead of like, people kind of farming their own land in a much more, this

Malcolm Collins: house didn't industrialize for a long time because of slavery.

Yeah, it was slower.

Simone Collins: It was slower because of the Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But still a lot of people don't realize that when they argue that. Slaves, like Built America or whatever, or like helped the south economically that they're basically arguing for slavery. They're, they're basically saying slaves were an economically beneficial institution when if you actually look at the data, slavery almost certainly economically hurt the south and prevented the south from, from economically developing.

But. The, the wealthy parties and the entrenched power structures within the South benefited from keeping the institution of slavery around because they were in positions of power, in part because of the existing economic structure that had been built within the region. [00:23:00] Mm-hmm. But slavery was not good for the south.

It wasn't good for the overall economy of the south. It was bad after slavery ended the south rapidly, economically developed. And it's not like it was like a poise to, to, to be about to do this. But to to, to this larger point. A lot of people, the, the, if you look at the selective pressures, because we can see by looking at the polygenic scores that we associate with educational attainment we can see how quickly they're disappearing from population samples today.

And there was a nicet. Set that shows as well. You can also look at the dropping IQ of people who go to college and is dropping by about 0.1 points per year. This was both in a French, in a United States study. And so we're looking at about a one standard deviation drop in the average IQ about every 75 years.

But what you can see from his data is that this means a way faster drop in the number of people who are born in the top one or 5% of people's I IQs because you get that's where things disappear when you get this, this center moving. It's at the long tail distributions.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well things just [00:24:00] seem to be accelerating really quickly and moving faster on all fronts.

So yeah, we have a, I mean, with this level of technological advancement it wouldn't surprise me that the changes would be much faster, but I don't know. I mean, like in general, the concept of evolutionary pressures changing, the composition of a population, which in turn changes the way that that population engages with technology and.

Commerce and capitalism, and it makes a lot of intuitive sense. I, I don't know how you couldn't have that happen.

Malcolm Collins: Well, people would say it might take longer than this, but we, as we can see from the data, it clearly doesn't seem to another really, I know like literally like

Simone Collins: people who, I don't, not to use such a blunt comparison, but people who breed dogs, like if you stop breeding dogs with floppy ears.

You, you're gonna get no more dogs with floppy ears. You know? Like if, if you just don't. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No, I hear you. And there was another interesting study on this. If you're [00:25:00] like, oh, like has IQ ever gone down before, after the collapse of a civilization? Mm-hmm. We see this in a study that came out. Of that looked, yeah.

That looked at Roman populations. Mm-hmm. And it showed that the Roman iq reached, or it was propensity for educational attainment, which is what he was studying as well. So IQ is the wrong thing. It propensity for what, what is associated with higher educational attainment today.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: It, it, it went up like if you're talking about like the early Roman Empire and then it went up, up, up until you get to like the middle of the Roman Empire and then it starts to collapse.

Before, yeah. So it

Simone Collins: precipitated the fall.

Malcolm Collins: It precipitated the fall, the collapse in IQ happened before the collapse of the Roman Empire. Mm-hmm. And, after the collapse, it started going back up again. But e even today, the average Roman IQ is not as high as it was during the height of the Roman Empire.

Which is, I mean, it shows how dramatic these effects can be. And so, I think one of the things, like when I talk about the average IQ dropping likely by. One standard deviation over the next 75 years. You know, people can hear this and they're like, well, [00:26:00] and I'm talking basically three generations is what I'm looking at here.

People can look at this and they can be like, well. I am still not gonna engage with your weird genetic technology or screening or whatever. And it's like, if you don't find another way to present some form of genetic selection and prevent this from happening within your own population your population is going to go that pathway as well.

Simone Collins: Well, people already engage in genetic genetic selection by choosing who, right? They have kids with.

Malcolm Collins: That is very hard to do intergenerationally with fidelity around these sorts of things. When one of your son has some hot girl who comes from gen pop flirting with them, right. You know, especially if your son is more economically successful.

So. You're, you're, you, you, you really need to culturally impart this. And if you don't culturally impart, like genes are real and you have to pay attention to them you are going to end up in the unga Bunga tribe. You know, the, the people who are so rabidly against the forms of genetic technology that we use I do not think that they realize the [00:27:00] horrors.

They are committing their children to now of course they'd say about us like that Adams family scene, you know, your family is like some sort of weird medical experiment. And I'm like, and we are proudly and proudly.

Speaker 5: I think that's disgusting. I think their whole family's like some weird medical experiment.

I think they're like circus people.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I'm done with that.

Simone Collins: I love you too. I'll point out just one, one little caveat too that any trait that's correlated with success now, it could be intelligence, it could be anything else, could be.

A death sentence depending on the conditions you're living with, you know, so it to make any blanket value statement about these are good and these are bad genes is dumb because as soon as the environment changes, that could completely flip. So

Malcolm Collins: I completely agree. I mean, culturally speaking, we would've thought you know, being [00:28:00] Amish is, is bad, right?

Like, it's not useful if we're talking about like cultural evolution yet it turns out that it's really useful in today's environment. Mm-hmm. I would've thought growing up being an Orthodox Jew isn't useful, and yet they're absolutely thriving. If you're looking at like fertility rates and, and intergenerational cultural fidelity.

Mm-hmm. So it's very hard to predict what's going to be good and what's going to be bad. That's why it's, it's good to only make these decisions not from a eugenic perspective, IE an absolute perspective, but from a polygenic perspective, IE from the, the perspective of your own family,

Simone Collins: yeah, you need to make that judgment and you need to understand that you might be wrong and that people should have a right to make their own decisions.

Malcolm Collins: Love you, Deeson.

Simone Collins: I love you too. So just pasta with pesto tonight. Or anything else? Just

Malcolm Collins: pasta with pesto tonight. If I want something else, I may do like some salsa or something. But pasta with pesto sounds really good and, and with extra pesto 'cause it's so yummy. Okay. And do we have any Parmesan left?

Simone Collins: Maybe we definitely have. A hard cheese [00:29:00] from toast. Oh, let's do that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we gotta cut off the parts of it that went bad, but I love that hard cheese on the pasta pito.

Simone Collins: Perfect. Okay. I'll get out the little wheely grater

Malcolm Collins: we're on. We can put it on after, after it's cooked up.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'll let you know as soon as we're ready.

Malcolm Collins: You are my princess. I love you. Why do I get to be married to someone as special as you?

Simone Collins: Because you made everything in our lifestyle the way it is. You, you built this up, you got the fixer upper wife, and now you get to enjoy the beautiful renovated house of a wife of

Malcolm Collins: of of wife. That's what you are, the renovated house of a wife.

Yeah. No, you invest in a lot though,

Simone Collins: like fixer uppers require a ton of work, and I hate the idea. Of getting fixer uppers. And you did that on, on the human level. I mean, you invested in a graduate degree in a complete, like several complete makeovers tons of education aside from formal school education.

So I'm just saying yeah. You earned it. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You I really am [00:30:00] rock tumbled that rock to get a, a big shiny stone out of it. Seriously. And a lot of good. I can't believe

Simone Collins: how long you have to do that. When we bought that rock, Tumblr for the kids thought was like, oh, three hours and it'll be done.

And it was like, no, leave this on for days. That was horrible. It's so loud. Who buys the, why did we do that? I didn't know. Remember the kids crying over who gets the Red Rock after we finally opened it? The collective grief in our households that we caused simply by doing this whole process of rock polishing and the stupid little plastic discovery education.

Rock Tumblr. It was horrible.

Malcolm Collins: At least you didn't get a nice one.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess. Fair enough.

Malcolm Collins: Just watching a homax video on, on women being the worst.

I really feel like, you know, after we did that episode that like chilled me on the New York Times writer who was driven crazy by feminism. And I've been reading other articles about like, what it's like to date these days and I just feel [00:31:00] so a sense of despair for young people in this generation who don't have their parents actively helping them date.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like obviously we are trying to set things up for our kids. We work with other, you know, high profile parents who are like super competent and age agentic and orthogonal and try to, you know, keep track of them when they have kids around our kids' age and we have a big CRM of this and we're gonna be working on building those relationships.

Yeah. And I think that all, that's really the only way to, to secure a, a, a spouse for our kids anymore.

Simone Collins: Well that, and I think really un underrated is the extent to which parents always did that in the past. They, they were always pretty involved in their kids dating. Yeah. And it's only really recently that parents became super hands off on that front on average this, this expectation that there are these third spaces, or there's this dating culture.

Which I think really saw its big rise [00:32:00] in the 1950s that will facilitate finding a partner is just crazy. I I, I, I've been listening to these historical biographies and, you know, there's like, there are maybe five men that you meet in like a 10 year period who might be people you could marry, you know, if, if you're a woman.

Like there, there just wasn't that much choice.

Yeah.

And. So either you would marry the person who was kind of obvious and who would propose to you, or you would propose to them because you kind of don't have any other choices or your parents would get involved and try to help. And now, I don't know, I, I, I, we have to get involved again because those third spaces in that dating culture is gone.

And it was really unusual in the 1950s when we had this age in which. There was almost this manufactured dating culture because I think to a certain extent it was outsourced to the state and schools would literally run videos, like propaganda videos [00:33:00] teaching you how to date and being like, this is how you do it.

Yeah. This is how you vet partners. And there was this, there was structured language around it. There was the concept of going steady versus just dating people. And

Malcolm Collins: well, and the, the way to escalate where you would have you, you'd get their, their leather jacket or leatherman

Simone Collins: jackets. There were promise rings.

Yeah, there was, it was, it was very, I mean, similar to like the London season, you know, there were, there were, there were signals and things meant something, except in this case, the parents had abdicated their responsibility and the state slash larger society had taken it on. But then society this's a really good

Malcolm Collins: point.

The state took over dating for a period, and then it abdicated that. Yeah. We decided his job was actually to prevent sex in dating

Simone Collins: Uhhuh.

Malcolm Collins: Which is really what happened was the, the period of abstinence only and everything like that. That's a really good point.

Simone Collins: Yeah, is

Malcolm Collins: the state took over dating and courtship from the family, and then it abdicated that during the abstinence only movement.

Mm-hmm. Which I think was really, really harmful for, for our [00:34:00] culture. Because it, it, it normalized. The demonization of human sexuality which unfortunately just made it cool for kids and allowed kids to develop their own culture around what sexuality was, which then they went into this period of total debauchery.

Then everyone was like, well that's, that's wrong. And now they seem to have forgotten how to have sex. Which, you know, we go over another video, you know, just the rates of sex are plummeting. Anyway. Oh wait, what were, what were people saying on the comments of the video today?

Simone Collins: I I think in general, it was something along the lines of.

Honestly, just women are terrible. Women don't realize this. You know how bad they are. I think a lot of men didn't actually engage, or a lot of viewers didn't actually engage with the topic of this being more about social class than about gender wars. And instead, many are still like repeating as though they're broken [00:35:00] records.

Women are delusional and they, they're hyper gamy. They're trying to get high value men. That Yeah. They don't warrant. And I agree that that's true, but let's stop beating the dead horse. Okay. Like we're, yeah, no, I mean, trying to look

Malcolm Collins: at this from different angles. I mean, some of these people aren't smart enough to do anything else.

They're just like, NPCs at this point, still appreciate the comments. We're really bad.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I, I'm, it's great to see you. Thank you. Yeah, I yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. I mean, you're, you're clearly a terrible woman. I'm, I'm, I'm so obviously,

Simone Collins: and, and I'm, I obviously going to screw you over somehow soon.

Malcolm Collins: No, I, you're fully domesticated at this point.

I don't think that you're not a domestic wife. You're a domesticated wife. I had to, to to break her will anyway.

Speaker: How are the berries guys? Do you like them?[00:36:00]

Good, Barry to hope my hands are getting Daddy. Of course, you're outside. Pick a berry and eat it. Octavian. Do you want any berries? I don't hate my gun up at the sky.

And Octavia, are you guys done picking blackberries? Yes. You wanna go back inside? Can we go play water garden? Well then you need to get on your water shorts. Okay, let's go. And daddy. Safe, so put it on daddy desk and it'll be somewhere safe. Okay? Okay.

In this engaging discussion, Malcolm and Simone explore the intriguing theory that the so-called gender wars are essentially a front for class conflicts, specifically between upper middle-class women and lower middle-class men. The conversation is inspired by an argument from a Substack article and dives into how these conflicts might actually reflect deeper socioeconomic issues. They touch on various examples, such as racial and ethnic tensions, rural-urban divides, and generational conflicts, to argue that perceived cultural differences often mask underlying class grievances. They also discuss how different groups signal status in contemporary society and how these dynamics inform the current landscape of gender and class relations.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be with you here today because we're going to talk about the gender wars, which we don't talk about nearly enough. We never talk about gender on this channel. No. Never men or women, but no,

Malcolm Collins: you heard it in a crazy theory. That really clicked for me in a lot of ways.

Yeah, yeah. I came across this

Simone Collins: argument. That gender wars are not really about gender, but rather about class differences and specifically between upper middle class women and lower middle class men. And this came from cartoons hate her on Substack who made this argument. And she largely implies that that basically gender wars participants aren't aware of this, but I'm gonna argue that they are.

And then I'm also gonna argue that it could very well be that all conflicts are class conflicts, and there are some really telling examples. And I think ultimately if we acknowledge. This class resource distribution issue is the underlying cause of. Most, if not possibly all intergroup conflicts.

Maybe we can navigate them more smartly, but like [00:01:00] Let's get into it. You ready?

Malcolm Collins: I'm actually gonna push back on one area here. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna argue something else. Okay. Which is that what creates this class divide is that male communities. Will be drawn due to their sort of tribal, centralized nature to the class norms that are normative to the community broadly, whereas female communities are drawn to a class identity.

To the class identity that is shared by the most elites within the community.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so even

Simone Collins: if, oh, come on. I mean, like the, the male influencers who set tones are, are more elite

Malcolm Collins: male influencers who set tones intentionally, code themselves as lower middle class. Oh God. You're right though. No,

Simone Collins: it's true.

Even though like the really wealthy ones come across as so trashy, it's so bad. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas the female elites code themselves as middle, upper class manhattanites.

Simone Collins: It's like old money versus new money gender edition [00:02:00]

Malcolm Collins: like Tim Pool or something. And like the way he dresses on his show or like, oh, or like

Simone Collins: Andrew Tate or like the guy who wakes up at four M and shoves his face in ice buckets of water.

They all give off a very new money aesthetic. Whereas literally. Like women are constantly, like right now a a sort of trending thing on Instagram and TikTok is sort of this old money summer aesthetic that like people like Hailey Bieber are, are pi like not pioneering, but popularizing. So it is, it is actually, that's really interesting that also when, when each class is trying to show off wealth, there is men go to new money and women go to old money right now, that's

Malcolm Collins: not what I said at all.

Simone Collins: Okay, well then I'm a separate, didn't money

Malcolm Collins: consider who is actually rising, was in the male spaces or who Wouldn when they were, so when Andrew Tate was rising in fame. Okay. He didn't go to new money coding. What he went to was traditional masculine things like boxing, kick fighting, stuff like that. If you [00:03:00] look at the male.

Influencers who have risen was in conservative spaces recently. You have individuals like Asma Gold who intentionally codes as lower middle class, even though he could very easily got a lot more money if he wanted to. Oh, that's

Simone Collins: interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas or or considered bronzes age pervert very intentionally codes as lower middle class.

Even though he went to Yale, you are almost, almost a

Simone Collins: stoic aesthetic. They're like taking the Socrates approach.

Malcolm Collins: Bronze Age RA Nationalist does this with a lot of his stuff. He doesn't, you, you wouldn't have known. Yeah, yeah. No.

Simone Collins: His stuff's not about money at all. It's about like anything. A lot of these

Malcolm Collins: people too is alternate personas hide that they are not in real life lower middle class individuals.

Oh, that's

Simone Collins: true. Oh, that, oh, but also, yeah, there seems to be a correlation between like the, actually. Upper class men are pretending to be lower class than they are, but then like the, the men who actually come from more middling backgrounds, pretend. Act like new money that, that Well, and,

Malcolm Collins: and think about the [00:04:00] way that the men who are trying to gain social status today, who even have like all the wealth you could want are doing it.

So consider somebody like Elon, right? Like what does Elon do to try to raise his own social status when he has all the money you could ever have? He doesn't like dress in fancy clothes or anything like that. What he does is he posts. Controversial memes and he, he creates a fake account to try to make it look like he's playing a lot, a lot higher level in video games.

The spans of

Simone Collins: our time,

Malcolm Collins: hold on, that's a lower, he's making the wealthiest man on earth make sure a, a huge amount of effort and ended up with a huge amount of social egg on his face to make it look like he was good at a lower middle class hobby.

Simone Collins: That's a, that's a really, that's a really interesting point.

I wonder if they're just evolutionarily divergent, but equally valid approaches to [00:05:00] a kind of realization on behalf of the collective online male aid that they are in general lower middle class. And so either you can, as an a male influencer be like, money, money, money, money, money signaling. Like, I have tons of money.

Look at all my money or be like, Hmm, I mess it. I don't need money. I'm above money. I'm better than money. I live else. No, I'm, Amanda is

Malcolm Collins: gonna argue that what we're actually seeing here is a few things. Okay? It's the way that, that men build comradery and culture, okay? Is. Part of the reason why they have normalized to the lower middle class aesthetic.

Ooh. But the other reason is the influence of the MAGA movement and the MAGA movement. As I've noted in a number of my earlier episodes, low culture, a huge amount of cultural influence that comes downstream from the Appian or backwards cultural group, which is known as like the redneck or hillbilly group, and like popular parlance.

Yeah. Which specifically has always really shunned the, the trappings of the upper classes. Mm-hmm. And, and intentionally would, would really work with all of [00:06:00] the other forces that are driving this lower middle class coding. Mm-hmm. Which is the area where you and I get called nerds the most because we are some of the.

Only conservative influencers who do not code strongly as lower middle class. And if you look at a lot of the attacks on us, I actually think that they are specifically due to the class that we code as rather than like when somebody says I'm a simp. I think a lot of that is actually just you do not code as lower middle class

Simone Collins: because you wear educated liberal elite glasses frames from Cutler and gross.

Purchased in Soho? Yes. How dare you. How dare you. How dare you. Yeah. Okay. Okay, then let's, let's get into it though. I'll, I'll start by presenting the argument that inspired all this 'cause you know this, this, this episode is dedicated to Diana Fleischman, who gifted me a month of, of free subscription to, to the cartoons Hate her Substack because this was a paid post.

And it is titled The [00:07:00] Gender Wars Are Class Wars subtitle. Of course we'll never agree. We're living in different realities. Oh, also though, just, just so you like, have a little respect for her, she, she's not like a liberal. Or conservative. She's, she's more just having fun. She refers to herself as a terminally online normal mom and a former Reddit troll who earned a total IP band.

And I feel like if you're a troll who earned a total IP band, like you deserve at least a little bit of attention and respect. But, so the, the TLDR of her argument is that the main issue is not gender.

Instead it's class differences. And specifically this is upper middle class women and lower middle class men. She argues these groups can't agree on the basic realities of social life. So each finds each other's anecdotes about dating and marriage and status completely implausible or fabricated, which is one of the reasons why I think they're like, oh, you're making this up, or this is all cope.

And then she, she points to some viral examples. Like there was one about like hot nannies or. Grad school and marriage prospects is, is another example.

I'm gonna send you on [00:08:00] WhatsApp just so you can see the thread. The, so specifically the hot nanny debate was, was I think. Sparked by a TikTok post that a Columbia nanny posted. That caused a lot of the male members of the gender wars to be like, well, oh, of course the husband in this relationship is sleeping with a nanny.

And they kind of like, sort of dehumanized the unseen mother in the picture here of like, well, why bother, you know, having kids if you're not even gonna be around to raise them? And there's just sort of this what she highlights is a, a deep disconnect between like. Actually having experience with nannies.

Like most of the men who, who jump into the thread and comment on au pairs and nannies have never actually had them for themselves, don't really understand the dynamics, don't really understand like how gross it would feel if you slept with a nanny. Yeah. You'd be really

Malcolm Collins: gross to sleep with a nanny.

Speaker 3: Wednesday bad news.

Speaker 4: Uncle Thera is getting married

Speaker 3: [00:09:00] To who?

Speaker 5: The

Speaker 3: nanny

Speaker 5: get out of the cabin. I mean, I'll kill myself. The help,

I think that's disgusting.

I think they're like circus people.

Malcolm Collins: Like, I, I like the idea that somebody's like, and I even think about like my friends who have nannies and stuff like that and we go play with them. It would be quite the, the like, okay. Cheating on your wife within like, tech elite social circles. As long as you guys first, if you say like you're polyamorous, which a lot of them do, like it doesn't matter at all.

Yeah. I feel

Simone Collins: like it's almost impossible to cheat in these elite circles because so many are polyamorous and you

Malcolm Collins: with the nanny, and she wasn't brought in knowing that this was the role she was gonna play. That'd be seen as like really gross. Like this would, well also it, it's, it's like a

Simone Collins: lawsuit waiting to happen, like the liability of it.

Malcolm Collins: Stupid. Like it's not that it never happens ever, ever, ever, but it's not a bigger threat than having your wife go to an office that you don't also work at. Which by the way, is the [00:10:00] number one place that women cheat. It's people they meet at the office. I think it's 80% of infidelity. It's also how most

Simone Collins: people find relationships.

Oh, yeah. With the, the, the prominent Coldplay example that surely you've heard of at this

Malcolm Collins: point. Yeah. So well, yeah, the, they just went live. The Coldplay, the guy who's. Caught cheating with his hr. That, and she had a husband, it was my understanding. Yeah. And he had

Simone Collins: a wife and kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is that, is, is actually like where within, like if, if you are a middle, upper class couple or something like that where the husband or wife is likely to cheat yeah.

With the nanny who is like around the kids and stuff and often comes from. One, like a totally different background. It's usually you know, you, you know, you're not, you're not gonna like, keep in mind a lot of these nannies are, i'd say like conservative Catholic types. Like they're, they're, they're usually from like middle, lower class, like conservative Catholic religious backgrounds.

They're, they're not the type who's looking to sleep around with their employer.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I, now, I won't say that [00:11:00] like nannies or au pairs who come to the United States from abroad and are young and hot, aren't sometimes looking for romance. But they're looking for romance their own age. And while there's a bunch of people who jump into the thread and are like, oh yeah, like she's definitely sleeping with the husband.

Nannies always do this. Like one guy who jumps in the thread, Nick Walker, he's like funny how Twitter's automatically assuming she'd go for her client's husband when. There's a 90% chance her fiance is better looking. And literally we have a colleague who was formerly a nanny in the US and now lives here and is married because while she was a nanny, she met a guy her age who was awesome, who she then married.

Like, well, I would like to point

Malcolm Collins: out, I think that people aren't really thinking through this. Okay. So you can look at the, the woman in, in this, you know, I'll try to place a picture of it. You can see she's a very attractive woman and that's what's causing people to think this, right? Yeah. But what they're not considering is the world from this woman's perspective.

So I am this woman. I am young, very attractive. I'm [00:12:00] likely from a developing country, but right now I'm staying with a wealthy family in a place like Manhattan. Yeah. Or San Francisco. Yeah. I want to play my cards. Well, I'm a even agamous woman. What am I trying to do? I am trying to lock down a wealthy.

Tech bro to marry me. Yes. Obviously not sleep with a guy who's paying me a fixed fee. Well, and also just

Simone Collins: considering, like even looking at the bigger meta of it, this is a Brazilian. Sorry, a Columbia nanny who has posted this video on TikTok, sorry, TikTok on TikTok. She's literally advertising how hot she is, but also what a great mother she would be because this video shows her doing all these sweet things for the kid.

The kid obviously loves her, and a lot of people also chime in in the thread to say like, wow, I wish like, you know. She's, she's great.

Malcolm Collins: She's fishing was a big, the, the thing is yeah, she's using her,

Simone Collins: her opportunity to advertise what a good wife she will be. She's not trying to be the other woman clearly.

Malcolm Collins: No, but what's funny is, is guys are watching a video and, and [00:13:00] I and you are here noticing like a class difference between groups where you're seeing this flare up mm-hmm. Of a person who is literally and flagrantly if, if, if I was her like employer or something. Are you? You'd be like, Hey, that's pretty unprofessional to be looking for a husband on TikTok using your nannying job.

You're, you're, you're watching her do something that is actually a violation, is actively unprofessional, is actively out there in a way looking for a real long-term partner. Yeah. And. You think that she's trying to sleep with the husband? Some old, yeah. She, you think she's putting her job at risk?

Simone Collins: Because I'm sure if, if the parents saw this, it'd be kind of pissed because she's not hiding a kid's face or anything. And a lot of parents are really sensitive about that, not us. But,

Malcolm Collins: It's, it's not that I've never had nannies hit on me, but it's like you wouldn't consider it, right? Yeah. Like, you, you'd be like, oh, that's a giant lawsuit waiting to happen.

Yeah. Let's destroy, let's destroy my family. Let's

Simone Collins: definitely not do that. Yeah, and I mean, I think there's this, this big, because of a few [00:14:00] very high profile examples of, of people sleeping with nannies. There there's this, this perception that it's just pervasive. And even your mom was like, don't, don't ever get a hot nanny.

Then I see these archival videos of your childhood. I'm like, who's the hot woman in the bikini playing with you guys? It's not your mom. You know who's, who's this hot woman in Italy? Like sitting in your bedroom and it's like you had hot young au pair all the time. Yeah. So, and there were no problems and.

They, I mean, you had a mixture. There's

Malcolm Collins: just not a huge benefit from the perspective of the au pair to sleep with. Cool. The old, ugly, rich guy. No. Or even, even, you know, medium age because he's already married. He has kids. And, the there, the likelihood that they are going to break up the marriage or get him to pay her, like some side amount is so much less of a good time investment mm-hmm.

Than just using the fact that she's from a developing country and now in Manhattan. Yeah. To try [00:15:00] to lock down a husband. And that's

Simone Collins: the thing is being in these families exposes you to so many marriage prospects. Mm-hmm. And I think they're also just not realizing that like, they're not even modeling a lower middle income woman.

In in what her strategy is. Well, what they are

Malcolm Collins: familiar with is tropes of the trope of the nanny that seduces the dad.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know we'll have in

Malcolm Collins: our comment somebody being like, oh, I'm aware of it happening here. And I'm aware. I'm not saying it never happens. No, of course. But I'm saying it's, it's not something that I would actively be worried about or you would actively be worried about.

Simone Collins: Yeah. She also, and this is something we talked about in our AI episode, how like social class can mean different things. Like you can be wealthy but still be considered low class by many people and you can be impoverished, but still be mixing in the most elite circles. And she points out that status is interpreted different differently by each side.

So like motor lower middle class men emphasize status as key to male attractiveness. While upper middle class women often don't even recognize their own status advantages as such. So there's just this, they, they are, as she's. Saying, living in different [00:16:00] realities. And then she highlights,

Malcolm Collins: explain what you mean by what you just said.

Simone Collins: Huh?

Malcolm Collins: You, you just said lower class men see status as

Simone Collins: lower class men. See status is, is key to their attractiveness, is like the thing that they need. And once they get the women's and women are,

Malcolm Collins: sorry, what are you asking? You, you're not, you say lower class men is key to there, but you're not defining who there is in the sentence it, the lower class, he is key

Simone Collins: to male attractiveness.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And women see it as key or not key to their attractiveness. Women don't,

Simone Collins: they, they often don't even recognize their own status advantages as status advantages. Like they're not aware of the fact that their income or education grants some advantages. They're like blind to it. Whereas men are like highly attuned to it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because it doesn't affect the women's advantage on dating markets as much as it affects the men's advantage on dating markets. That's why they're, they're, they, they don't notice it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's surprising they don't see it.

Simone Collins: No, of course not. I mean, the dynamics make perfect sense. She also highlights that people tend to date and marry just within their own class [00:17:00] and within their own educational background without realizing it.

And I think that especially on, well, no, maybe on both sides there's this expect like women. I often talk about like, or well certainly fantasized about marrying men who are wealthier or higher status than they are. But in the end, they marry people who are pretty well matched. And, and men. Men, I think fantasize about,

Malcolm Collins: about, about statistically here.

Yeah. Women, if you're talking about who people marry versus who people sleep with, yes. They're the huge problem for when people are sleeping around, where women will all match to the same few like. You know, whatever guys that are top, you know, 0.5% and that they you know, overly sleep with them.

And that there really is a drought for the other men. And that women can by dressing up and looking slutty, you know, land some rich guy, if you're talking about who people actually end up marrying it's the Daisy Buchanans. You can be the, what was the other woman's name in that? The one who gets killed and is sleeping with him.

Can't remember the fate of the character. Right. You can't remember her. But the Daisy Buchanans I thought there was only one [00:18:00] woman. It was just Daisy. It was always just Daisy. No, there was the, there was the Ude or something. There was the lower class sleeping whiz. Who ends up trying to like run out?

Oh,

Simone Collins: sorry. Yeah. The, the wife of the car mechanic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, these women are always only like side pieces or something like that, like the idea of as a woman marrying. To improve your class, it can happen, but I've seen the, the, the families that it happens in most, and it's usually the creepiest and grossest of men.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. It,

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't really ha like, like the men where. I would say you could not pay me any amount of money to, to, to live that life. Well, and you wanna

Simone Collins: know, it's interesting though, Malcolm is also more and more people are marrying within their social class. In other words, the, the likelihood of dating statistically or dating down, it has decreased in recent decades.

So in 1958, like that birth cohort. 39% married. Within their [00:19:00] class. There were, there was a lot of people who were marrying outside and presumably this was women marrying up and men marrying down. Then in 1970, that birth cohort, 45%, so up from 39, married within their class, and then from 1976 to 19 81, 50 6%.

Married within their class. And presumably it's only gone up since then? No, this, this is from UK data, but similar trends are seen in US data, so I think less and less and less people are, are marrying outside their class. And maybe what's going on too is men are anchoring to a different time and they're assuming that things worked like they used to work where, you know, men would wear.

Mary, some impoverished hot woman and women would seek out some Prince charming who'd be willing to consider her. And that just doesn't really happen anymore. People especially, 'cause to your point, people meet at school, people meet at work, and those are typically pretty, pretty bound by [00:20:00] social class, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not that, not that you, I mean, keep in mind like the guy who was caught cheating, he was caught cheating with the head of hr, not like, yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, they were, yeah, it wasn't a secretary. Come on. Yeah. Actually that's a really good point. Historically, when men cheated at the office and you had the scandals of it, it was the secretary.

The secretary. Mm-hmm. Today, most of the scandals I'm aware of, of tech CEOs cheating with an employee, it is somebody holding a c rank position. Mm-hmm. Or other senior position in the company. Isn't that funny? In fact, I can't think of a single secretary instance. Mm-hmm. In the past 10 years.

Simone Collins: I can't either.

I'm sure you know, people will come up with exceptions, but I just think it's far less common. But, so here's, I, I wanna actually take this a step further because I don't think the where I, I, I love the idea presented by cartoons hate her. I think she's wrong that people are just kind of talking past each other and not getting it.

I actually think that either subconsciously or even explicitly, especially men who are involved in the [00:21:00] gender wars know that they're class wars. Which is why of the many of them support taking women down a notch. The same way that Far Left Socialists support. The elimination of billionaires like Bo both have detailed plans for how to level the playing field.

Like on one side you have Zhan mom. Saying, I don't think that we should have billionaires, so we, we need to, we need more equality. Like literally. And then you have on the other hand, Ark Ethereum whose, whose essays we've highlighted a bunch of times here arguing that, oh, like in the, the, the Aporia article he wrote called The Baby Boom.

He argues that we should roll back welfare and pension, state income and, and lower income taxes because that's mostly men paying for women. That we should roll back the regulatory state because that gives bureaucratic jobs primarily to women. We should end affirmative action for women that we should defund education because women primarily outperform men in the educational sphere.

That, that we should give primarily all of the, the perennial list incentives to men and not to women, and that we should roll back the sexual revolution. Like he's, it, it, it, it comes [00:22:00] across. The same kind of like take away the power of the billionaires tax, the rich except in, in this case it's just women.

But it's because in this case, he sees women and, and explicitly in the Baby Moo article on Emporia, he highlights the fact that women have been given sort of a bunch of artificial tailwinds, enabling them to have higher relative. Class status and wealth to many men, which makes it harder for men to, to attract them?

Well, no,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we point out the course problem within the, the existing gender wars is women put a bunch of things in place to try to make men and women economically equal. And they've more than achieved that. Now women are, are doing slightly better than men was in our generational cohort. And now they look around and be like, well, I want a man who still.

Like more successful than I am for a marriage partner. Yeah. Where are those men? And it's like, well, you got rid of them. You said they were a problem, right? Like, yeah. So I think that, that a lot of people are, are very upset about that, especially the men who have [00:23:00] been screwed over because it is much economic, much, much more economically difficult for men yeah.

These days than it is for women. Yeah. Especially because as the economy is unraveling, the part of the economy that has received a bit of cushioning is the bureaucratic physicians mm-hmm. Which are abnormally held by women now.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and abnormally protected and kept in place even when there's no financial justification for it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now eventually AI is going to rip those apart more than other sorts of positions. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It'll happen. You know, don't worry. Act Ethereum, like, like I said in the AI and social class episode, I think women are the ones who are gonna be screwed over by it because they are not gonna be the risk takers who win.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it'll happen. Give it a good time. Agree with that. Well, and, and they're, they're disproportionately sorting into the types of positions that AI is just going to be safer to, to have handled

Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah, because they're middle of the bell curve kind of professionals typically, and men are the outliers and it's the outlier professionals who are gonna, so we're

Malcolm Collins: gender reshuffling was in our generation.

Um mm-hmm. But it's, it's, it's going to be a [00:24:00] fairly ruthless reshuffling to boast genders, I think.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Well, and I mean, well, it, every reshuffling well, I think disruption typically yields more opportunities for men. Relatively speaking, that's only like the side of the bell curve for like the sliver of men that like succeeds, like the, the genius outliers and not like the equally large, if not larger number that just completely get, are they probably all gonna have

Malcolm Collins: Elon Harems?

Is that how we're gonna fix the birth rate? You know, it's a signal harem. Oh. With

Simone Collins: our, with our, our grok girlfriends maybe. No, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: You know, like, the signal guy in Elon, in that, oh, so like, okay,

Simone Collins: well, yeah, no, no, that's actually like, I, I think that many women are going

Malcolm Collins: to, you get like 50 Ys each

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, that and or just in general, women will look more to like, well, I better attach, like, I better hitch my cart to a.

Profitable man and make money off him by raising his kids, like, or have my life supported by raising his kids. Yeah. I, I do think that we're gonna see a lot more of that for better or for worse. Yeah. As

Malcolm Collins: we pointed [00:25:00] out, our general thesis is that society is going to become less equal economically speaking over time.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Because of ai.

Simone Collins: Yep. But, so speaking of this, like I'm just, I was thinking about this and realizing, yeah, like a lot of this really is about resources and wealth and it really kind of has nothing to do. With gender, even though we're we're saying it's men versus women, and where it's like, really it's

Malcolm Collins: about gender.

I, I think you're wrong there. It is a hundred percent about gender and it's about the structural and fairness that men deal with. Okay. It's

Simone Collins: then it's about structural and fairness. I, I just like, let me give you some examples though, because I really do feel like most of the cultural group conflicts that we have are, are probably rooted in class differences.

Okay. And, and so let, let's just go through some examples like consider. Racial and ethnic group tensions look at black white conflict in the us while, while race is of course a centralizing organizing principle in American society, research absolutely shows that divisions within racial groups are along class lines that when wealthier, black and [00:26:00] Latino Americans have different political priorities and lived experiences compared to poorer members of the same group.

Poorer individuals may feel less represented and more acutely affected by class barriers. Than by purely racial ones. And, and that absolutely shows up or immigrant versus native foreign groups. I think you're saying

Malcolm Collins: that really, really not, not clearly. Okay. What she means by this is that if you are an upper middle class individual, you are going to look at your black and Latino friends and say, these people are not different from me.

Not only are they not different from me, but the person who says being in a black neighborhood is dangerous, is a complete psychopath. The person who says Latinos are taking their jobs, like, how could you say that? Now you go to a lower middle class individual and you go into you know, or a lower class individual and you go into, you know, black neighborhoods.

You're like, Hey, this is a dangerous neighborhood. That's like a common thing to say, right? Like common sense. You say, Hey, I, I lost my job at the auto shop. You know, that's a. Everyone would be like, yeah, [00:27:00] obviously you lost your job at the auto shop to immigrants. That happened to my, my, well, yeah. And that's, that's the other

Simone Collins: thing.

Yeah. Because it's not just black, white, it's, it's also immigrants, but like the, the immigrant thing isn't so much, I mean, I think when it's harder for people to maybe express the fact that like, you're, you're mad at this group 'cause they're taking your jobs, or you feel like they're siphon in a way, social services that would've otherwise gone to you.

And so you're like, ugh. Like they're eating dogs and cats. I hate them 'cause they smell weird and they look funny and they talk funny or whatever. But like.

Malcolm Collins: That it's, it's that they are culturally different. So again, if I'm an upper middle class individual yeah. And I have black friends and I have Latino friends, because the upper middle class is gated by the urban monoculture, these individuals are culturally gonna feel almost identical to myself because they are going to be part of the urban monoculture.

Yes. If I'm lower. Class, and I am a white guy and I have black or Latino friends. Culturally, they're gonna be nothing like me. They're gonna be a different species for me, you know? And I, I, I don't mean like [00:28:00] ethnically as a different species. What I mean is they're just a different kind of person to me.

The way their families are structured. Yeah. The type of parties they host well, and I think

Simone Collins: the fact that they're different. Absolutely makes it easy for us to articulate and animate resentment in a very colorful way, but I think that the resentment stems from inequality and fear related to resources.

Malcolm Collins: I don't, and that's not even what I'm saying.

I'm saying that if you are in these communities. Like the, the, the conservative community, which is this lower, lower middle class community. And I say something like, blacks are different from whites and, and are, and, and, and whites are different from Latinos or something like that. And, and anyone in the community would be like, oh yeah, I went to a Latino barbecue and it was nothing like, oh, and I went to a black barbecue.

And you go to a lower class black barbecue and a lower class white barbecue and a lower class Latino barbecue. The, the experience is going to be like, you're in a, a different country. Yeah. Now you, you go to an upper middle class black barbecue or white barbecue or [00:29:00] Latino barbecue, they're all gonna be the same.

Yeah. You might have like one little activity or, or one little thing that happens. One maybe.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's

Malcolm Collins: different. But to these people, when they say there are no cultural differences between ethnicities, it is genuinely, because many of them really. Mean it in the depth of their souls. Mm. They have just never experienced it, and so when they hear somebody else be like, no, these groups are actually quite different from each other.

They're like, oh, you could only be saying this because you're a racist. Because I know, you know, I just, the other week went to my, you know. Wealthy black friend's house and it looked exactly like my house. And I met, you know, his wife and their relationship structure was exactly like mine. And I met his kids and they go to the, you know, the same type of the, the doing the same type of thing my kids are doing and at the same type of goals and, and we're all, you know, the same basic religion.

This and this echoes

Simone Collins: the cartoons. Hate her argument in that. Within each side [00:30:00] they're like, I don't even know what reality you're talking about. Like this, none of this makes sense. 'cause they don't have exposure to each other's realities.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean you could just see this with churches. You go to an upper class, you know, black church and it's gonna be a lot like a, a white church.

You go to a lower class black church and it's gonna be very different. Right. And, and, and this is because the urban monoculture rots society from the top down. It homogenizes society from the top down. So the closer you are to the top, even just aspirationally speaking, the, the less you are going to see the real differences between people or understand you know, as I argued today, the modern conservative movement is made up of an alliance of often these different groups.

Like one of the reasons why, you know, so many Latinos have come over to the conservative party, they're like, we wanna maintain our distinct culture. And that they say they. Us. They, they say they like us, but they call us Latinx, which like even ignores the basic way our grammar medical structures work.

Yeah, yeah. Like obviously if that is the word, they use us and it has [00:31:00] so little respect for the way our culture is unique. Yeah. They do plan to homogenize us. It's like, shut

Simone Collins: up. Not, not only am I not lats and I'm not Latino, I'm not Latina, I am Colombian. I am from Argentina. Yeah. Come on. Like, what on earth, what are you doing?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and it's this homogenization, this burning homogenization, this burning away of uniqueness, which has allowed for many, like, and I also think that this is just smart because the, feminist movement has sort of converged with the progressive movement, which has converged with the urban monoculture and the anti-feminist movement has converged with the you know, cultural sovereignty movement, which is the, you know, MAGA conservative movement.

And so to converge. Culturally within your places of strengths? IE If you go to like lower class communities, even though these groups are different and they recognize they're different, many of them will have friends in these other groups. Sure. And those friends will value the way that these groups are different and not want those differences further eroded.

Right. Like, you know, you'll have your black friend if, [00:32:00] if you're a, a, a lower class American or your, your Hispanic friend, you know, from the job site or whatever. And, and you'll understand that you guys are very culturally distinctive. You have distinctive gender norms. You have distinctive roles around sexual taboos.

You have distinctive, and you want to maintain that distinctiveness. And so when you're coming and you're like, okay, let's all get together and, and work out how we're gonna fight against this homogenizing force it, it works to come to this lower and lower middle class place. And, and if you're all, yeah, and I

Simone Collins: mean, I, and I hear you and you're saying this is cultural, but I'm also saying that I think that the resources money class element of it is, is underrated.

Like, I'm okay just aside from race. Talk about like. Rural urban divides, A lot of that comes down. It's not just culture, it's also about feeling economically marginalized compared to urban centers and that that tension can feel real. Like we, we've spoken with people who are like, yeah, man, I feel completely left behind.

Who live in more and, and Oh, oh, [00:33:00] okay. Consider also like boomers versus millennials when you actually look, I mean, millennials will make fun of boomers and vice versa about like their cultural things, but in the end, the big resentment. Is the younger generations are like, the boomers have all the money, they have all this wealth.

They're like, oh, it just work and you'll be fine. And like it, it doesn't work that way anymore. And there's a lot of resentment there. And it, it stems from resources.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, this explains why if you go to all of the protests against Trump, it's like only boomers if people have been talking about it they, they boomer protests, there's like no young people.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think, you know, to your point about this, this urban monoculture as well, I think a lot of that also then also it, it boils down to class. You have a higher resourced, more educated class of people that has become homogenized, and then you have a bunch of other people. And it, it, it gets weird for, with, with that because then you, you have the, the urban monoculture also being really socialist and like.

They hate [00:34:00] people with money, but they are

Malcolm Collins: the ones, no, we're not socialists. What, what socialism and communism is, is it is the ossification of the bureaucratic hierarchy that is existing within our society, but just making it so that the bureaucrats have to work even less. When we talk about like AI eroding bureaucratic jobs, it does that if we maintain capitalism.

Mm-hmm. If we switch to socialism, they get to keep their positions within the system forever. Oh, okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Them keeping power. And communal narcissism, as we talked about on

Malcolm Collins: the left, at any time in human history, is never about wealth redistribution in any sort of real sense. It is about the ossification of a bureaucratic power structure.

Simone Collins: Okay, well that explains it, but I mean, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of seemingly cultural conflict in the end are about competition over jobs, housing, political power. And, and class position influences who perceives opportunity and who feels threatened. And with the gender words. A lot of this [00:35:00] comes from man, like women have been given all this like affirmative action and they get all the bureaucratic roles and they're doing better in education and there's a lot of resentment about it and maybe it would be more productive of people just explicitly talked about that like our Ethereum does.

Whether or not it's true, because some studies have found like they looked at some areas where men did get. Better economic achievement and better social status, and that still didn't produce more children. So I don't, you know, like there's, but we should be having that conversation instead of just being like, no, but a Walt

Malcolm Collins: outside of children women today, like if you look at this generation, there's been some graphs that we've gone over in other episodes.

Yeah. They increasingly, like over the past 10 years, believe that women. Increasingly, like with a sharp increase, there is a perception among women that women are being treated worse over, over time. That society is more unfair towards women. That college entrance is more unfair towards women. Even though like by the facts, this is objectively untrue to anyone who's like living in reality.

And so I think that, you know, they say. Well, you're just living in different realities [00:36:00] because you're seeing different class norms. Yeah. And it's like, no, we, on the conservative side, acknowledge their class norms and their reality. Often like there's some instances where there's, there's like the maid situation and they just have no idea what.

Going on 'cause they've never experienced it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: broadly speaking, we acknowledge their class norms and they are unaware. Or are they, they actively choose to be like, no, you people aren't experiencing these things. They, they, they will say no. Yeah, because they're

Simone Collins: the privileged ones. And, and the matter that the lower class ones, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no.

They'll be like, they'll be like, oh you know. Like a upper class woman will be like, oh, like upper middle class. I just can't find a guy who meets my standards. And we're like, yes, you can't. I agree. Here's why. We, we'll say like, oh, I lost my job because of an immigrant or something like that at the car shop.

And they'll be like, that didn't happen. Or you know, like, actually, you know, there. Really big differences between the ethnocultural groups in this country. And, and then they're, they're not exactly living harmoniously [00:37:00] with each other. And they'll be like, no, you haven't experienced that. Because.

Or crime is actually a real problem right now in my, my city. Can you do something about it? And they're like, well, I just looked outside and it's not a problem. Right. Or like, they stole my car. And really that was a good thing because now somebody who needs it has it, you know? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Probably need. Yeah. Oh gosh.

Those arguments I haven't heard in a long time, but there were absolutely those arguments of, well, I think he needed my bike more than I did.

Malcolm Collins: There was no, there was a, not too long ago, or maybe like a couple years ago post by a comedian and where somebody had broken into his car and he goes, well, this is just like the price you lay to live, live in a wonderful city like la.

And it's like, well, you know, if you actually didn't have a lot of money, somebody breaking into your car is a huge financial deal. Even if they don't steal it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Remember when your car was broken into? Yeah. And it just was, yeah. It's not like, it's not like even people who you know are, are not on the lowest ends of, of [00:38:00] society, aren't really hurt.

By that, I mean, we still own that Mazda and we, we drive it every day. Like I, yeah, I, I feel these are forever cars. Like,

I don't know what to say.

Malcolm Collins: A 2010 Mazda. God bless it. Wondering out our frugalness. I still, Liv was the very first car I ever got. And we, we work on it all the time to keep it good, but yeah.

Am I gonna be one of those guys who keeps the car for sale long? It becomes like a classic. I

Simone Collins: don't know if a 2010 Mazda is ever really gonna become,

Malcolm Collins: it's a good car.

Simone Collins: Yes, it is. I like, I'm very fa it's, it's been like nothing. It doesn't do any, it, it is it is the Simone of cars, right? Like workhorse doesn't complain, doesn't break down very much.

As long as you drive it the right way. You know? Nope. Don't become

Malcolm Collins: classics after 30 years. I

Simone Collins: don't know. Is there some designation? Like, I think so vintage versus antique.

You gotta school me. I don't do, I don't do cars.

Malcolm Collins: A car needs to be 20 years old to be a classic. This car is 15 years old. [00:39:00] All I'm five years from being a classic. It becomes a classic in 2030, Simone. Well hold onto it my friend. I had no intention of selling it. That's that's crazy. I could actually be that, that old man who's driving around a classic car just be like, actually the owner of a classic car care of it.

Simone Collins: Your mom maligned. We can't even, we can't even say online, which she called it. That's one of those few things we can't even say.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Yeah. Anyway my god. So, wait, do you have any other arguments here?

Simone Collins: No, I just, I I actually, I, I, I want people to think more about why they're actually. Mad about things or mad at groups?

I

Malcolm Collins: disagree. I think that they're mad at them because of the unfair dating and market dynamics and the systemic unfairness towards men. But what I will and I, yeah, and I

Simone Collins: think that's a resource thing.

Malcolm Collins: No, but what I will No, no. I'm saying this is their predominant area of madness. What I will agree with.

Is this article, is it not

Simone Collins: area of madness? The the primary reason for their grievance? You make it sound like they're crazy. The primary, whatever [00:40:00]

Malcolm Collins: you see. This is, this is, I am speaking like a lower class person area of madness, and you are speaking like an upper middle class person. Reason for grievance, well.

I,

Simone Collins: well, I don't think that men appreciate being referred to as hysterical. That's what they do to the women.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, Simone, so, so no, I'm just using like broad words that anyone can use and you're trying to get all fantasy with your language here. Uhhuh your ification ending in your words.

Simone Collins: But upper middle class, feminine ways.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But the point I'm making is that I think that she's wrong and that the grievance areas are are being misinterpreted. But what I will agree with is that these two movements have become coded with different social communities. Mm. In different social classes. And I think it's important to ask why are they being coded with these various social classes.

Mm-hmm. And it's not that I don't think that a lot of the foot soldiers have woke him. Are impoverished people, but they are impoverished people living with like 20 people [00:41:00] in a like polyamorous house and like man Manhattan or Portland to live the simul locker room of the upper middle class lifestyle.

Mm-hmm. There is this obsession with living was in the simul locker room of this lifestyle, and I think that part of that is downstream of women's psychological differences in men. And the, the males saying, Hey, I want to be accepted by the norm. Like, like of this larger, like, new right community.

Therefore I am going to appeal to the average man. I'm gonna, you know, you know, like Elon with the gaming stuff or like Asma Gold or like, and I think that that is also downstream of the dominant culture was in this movement, which as we've noted, is our own culture, which it's the, the sort of greater abolition, like clam based cultural tradition, which is very Okay with differences and very hostile towards elitism and aristocracy.

Simone Collins: Well, what about all the men who, who keep trying to show flash around money that they may or may not have?

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is a point they often rose. If you [00:42:00] look at the men who rose in the the last generation of the conservative cycle when the aristocratic cavalier group or deep south group still was a dominant group and party it.

So you're saying the

Simone Collins: new version of aspirational male is low culture, lower class signaling, whereas the previous generation was flash money. Yes. It's a time thing. It's a trend thing. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That helps you.

Malcolm Collins: And they do this today. Either they look buffoonish or they look like they're part of a separate cultural group.

Okay. What I mean by this is we lived in Manhattan for sorry, Miami for a period. And when I saw a man flash money to attempt to attract a woman always my initial reaction is, oh, he's a Latin American. Like, I like that was, even if he, I was like, he must be Latin American. Right? Like, he's not a, a American.

American because he's, he's, he's acting in a way that is discordant with the dominant cultural value [00:43:00] system was in this country at the moment.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that that, that either people look like they're just signaling that they're in a, which is fine, right? Like a Latin American man in Miami trying to attract Latin American hoes in Miami is you're playing

Simone Collins: that game.

You gotta signal to the right audience.

Malcolm Collins: That's the, that's a, yeah, that's the. Fing game man, right? Like, no, I'm not gonna hate the player for that. Right? But you know, I look at that and I'm like, oh, you know, I, I would not want those women. I, I would, I would pay to not have to sleep with those women or to not have those women approach me.

Like he is, he is fishing for a fish that I don't eat. And I have never had any interest in eating that fish. So it's, it is just a different cultural game that he's playing and I'm just like, okay, fine. Play this alternate cultural game. Or I think that, oh, they're like buffoonish and behind the times.

They don't understand what's going on these days because, you know, you look at the, the, you know, the billionaire Plus, and none of them are, are doing that anymore. They're trying to hide that stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and sleeping with their colleagues, their high status.

Malcolm Collins: Jeff Bezos, who I've always said, [00:44:00] just looks like an out of touch buffoon, the, the woman he is marrying looks like just, yeah.

Simone Collins: But I, I feel like he did that to her because when they first started dating, she wasn't. She hadn't had that much work done.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, but it, it looks super low class.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But also like, he started from humble beginnings, so, you know, he's not old money I people, I was, I was watching a YouTuber talk about old money recently.

I think my algorithm is, is serving that up ever, ever since I watched some video about it. And she was like, oh, you know, old money that's like, you know, 50 years. And I'm like, no, that's, 50 years is not old. Old money is like three generations of a family of wealth. It is not, yeah. Yeah. Jeff Bezos is, is new money and, and therefore it, it should come as no surprise that his wife doesn't look like, oh, it's like that scene from Legally Blonde.

No,

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna push back here. I think the old money, new money distinction is stupid. There is a lot of, first of all, we argued in a, another video. I don't think it's gone live yet. That old money basically doesn't exist anymore. That it as a no, no, no.

Simone Collins: That, that was in our [00:45:00] AI and social class video where we talked about basically it

Malcolm Collins: has a social class has mostly dissolved at this point.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so. Right now what you have is two groups. And, and both of them are fairly new wealth. One of them is, is sort of hip with the times and everything like that. This is like your Elon or your Zuckerberg. I mean, he might be like a bit out of it, but he broadly knows what's going on or your teals or your andreessen's or whatever, right?

Mm-hmm. And then your other is like, you know, your Jeff Bezos or your what's his name? Bill Gates or your what this is like, this is like the more generic class and they're more like trying to culturally signal to communities that don't really exist anymore. They're, they're trying to culturally signal to what they wanted people to respect you know, 50 years ago or 20 years ago when they were growing up.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And not the way things are on the ground right now. So I think the old money, new money distinction is just completely silly because it doesn't really exist anymore. It is the [00:46:00] people who are hip to the ways that culture has changed and people who are trying to signal to a mostly dead or gone.

Audience that's not really there anymore. No,

Simone Collins: I think that's a really good point. Yeah. That, that old money now only is an aesthetic because now people with intergenerational wealth don't have the discipline required to maintain intergenerational wealth.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. That's, yeah. Which we, we talked about this.

Go see AI on social class, our, our video on that. We, we basically talk about how everything we've seen at Family Wealth conferences and among these types of groups is basically they're like, oh, I just want my kid to be happy now. Whereas before it used to be like K-Pop, all the people

Malcolm Collins: communists,

Simone Collins: and they,

Malcolm Collins: and they have no kids themselves.

Like they're, yeah. Whereas like

Simone Collins: before, if you look at the Kennedys, like they weren't having fun. Those kids were like being engineered to be future presidents and politicians, you know, they, they weren't. You know, this was, this was Disney kid, this was K-Pop Idol. Like you're gonna be, so yeah. Now they're, oh, I just want them to be happy.

So yeah, the money gets pissed away. [00:47:00] Alright. I love you Malcolm. Thank you. Love you to a fun conversation. You always widen my perspective, but yeah, cartoons hate her. Fun.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, on the next episode, I think you might wanna change the topic and you need to ask Diana first if we can do this topic.

Okay. Because I think it's a little rude to do it without asking her. I did, let's. Things.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, there aren't that many people who are as bullish as we are on raising our kids with ai. So how did, how did

Malcolm Collins: the episode do in terms of comments today?

Simone Collins: People really enjoyed it. People were very keen to draw the connection between communal narcissism and women.

Malcolm Collins: Communal narcissism and women.

Yeah, we did the communal narcissism episode. I didn't expect the episode to do as well as it did really. We were like, Ugh, this is just such blatant red meat for our audience. Like, this is not gonna hit number one. And it hits number one.

Simone Collins: When we feel like we need to get performance to work, how can we just make progressives and women look bad?

Malcolm Collins: Our, our channel's numbers right now, by [00:48:00] some way. Someone you wanna update, we're at. In terms of view count, just on YouTube per every 28 day period, 368,000, so, getting close to a million there. And in terms of watch time, hours per 28 day period, 179,500, so around 180,000 hours. Watch time, that's

Simone Collins: a lot of

Malcolm Collins: per 28 days.

Simone Collins: That's a lot of time.

Malcolm Collins: I'm proud of this. We built this into something kind. Cool. From a, you know, just a few people watching and my mom being like, you look like a fool talking on YouTube, and no one's listening.

Simone Collins: Well, she, she came around to it. She came around. Yeah. So I'm glad. I think she'd be pleased. All right.

You ready? Alright. Get those thick glasses on that trigger people so freaking hard. Are, have you lost the other glasses? I do like the other wire frame glasses.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I should look it around for them. I have them somewhere. The core [00:49:00] reason I don't wear them anymore is because they're not like fitted correctly right now.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: So we gotta take them to New York and take them to the store where they're made 'cause nobody else works on them.

Speaker 2: Do you see? You put the car in the walls. Wait, so he's putting the car in the house? Yeah, he's her banana bread. I'm trying to go outside.

Well then walk out the door. Where is the house? Why? Why is your car inside the house? I don't know. Why are you going for this hole? Are you like renovating? It looks a little rough, maybe Looks a little rough because you drove a car into your house. I dunno. Why did you, why is the cleanliness check mark?

Speaker: Yes. A house condition is at 23%. That helps to explain it.

Join us as we delve into Jean Garnett’s provocative essays, including her New York Times piece 'The Trouble was Wanting Men,' and explore the psychological and social intricacies of modern dating, the role of feminism, and the concept of 'hetero-pessimism.' Our discussion takes an analytical approach, drawing parallels and contrasts with urban monoculture, manosphere critiques, and the personal narratives of failed relationships. We also highlight how the dynamics of open relationships, dating communication, and societal expectations can lead to emotional and relational turmoil, presenting a cautionary tale for both men and women in today’s dating landscape.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Today we are going to be talking about not just a piece that was published in the New York Times called The Trouble was Wanting Men by Jean Garnett.

But some other pieces she wrote leading up to this. Okay, I think. You're getting into her lore. Oh yeah. I've had to break apart these pieces, restructure how they're being delivered. Because in the same way our life of a Cide episode really dug into the life of Anna Vains and threw it, understood one way that the urban monoculture can destroy everything in her life that matters.

This individual, you know, a lot of the manosphere has been examining her takes and just being like, heard or dur like women being. Salty about men you know, making bad decisions and ultimately being a hypocrite. Which, you know, okay, all of that is true, but I think it's more interesting to dive into the psychology and sort of how she spiraled into this position in her life.

And how [00:01:00] feminism can destroy the mind of a woman. Oh. And lead her to absolute emotional ruin in the same way that, you know, we, we talk about sort of the trans mimetic virus can destroy the, the life of like a young autistic person. Sure.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I, and I don't think that feminism, like, like when you see this person's life, you're gonna be like, wow.

Like there's a lot we can learn from this.

Simone Collins: Oh, a cautionary tale. Well, perhaps then we shall share this with our, our. Children when they get older, at least, especially our daughters. I'm curious to see what you find though. Yes, it's not, is there stuff that wasn't obvious to us? Oh, well, just tell me. Let's go, let's, well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

What's more interesting when you read sort of, and this is why it's good to peel back into the older stuff as well Yeah. Is when you read her instate, she just appears to be such a vile and hateful person who deserves every bit of sadness that she's experiencing. Okay. Due to living a life that's dedicated to prejudice.

But and, and prejudice against men. But it's How did she get there? [00:02:00] Right? Like, how did she start off a

Simone Collins: little more like optimistic and hopeful. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. She started off with a whole, everything is working and it wasn't even her that I would argue started this, this, this trail of dominoes. But her husband she was married.

Oh, yes. Yes. We'll get into this. Okay. So let's jump into this. Happily Married. I thought this was

Simone Collins: about a, you know, a single young woman who's trying to make it No, no, no, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: If the experts say in my romantic letdowns have some larger social significance, I am not going to argue. The men I want are not wanting me badly enough.

Not communicating with me clearly enough. Not devoting themselves to me, by the way. Like you read that it's like a normal human, and you're like, that comes across as psychotic. Yeah. Little, little entitled, little entitled. Men are horrible because the men who I want are devoting themselves to me Enough.

What do you think she, by the way, if you wanna see a picture of her, I'll put one on screen here because I, I find that that sometimes tells people she is I'd say all the more [00:03:00] attractive side for her age. Normal looking white woman. Okay. All this certainly seems calamitous enough to warrant an ism wait, that they're not devoting themselves to you enough.

The men who you want is calamitous in your mind. The level of entitlement, right? Like you are a walking. Nightmare for a guy. But to continue, men are what is rotten in the state of straightness. And why shouldn't we have an all-inclusive byword for our various pessimisms about them domestic pessimism.

They still do less of the housework in childcare, partner violence, pessimism. Femicide is still gruesomely, routine onic pessimism. The clitoris in its properties still elude many of them, and the perpetually proud masculinist subcultures that have risen, at least in part as a reaction to these pessimisms, keep coughing up new reasons to [00:04:00] fear and rage and complain about men.

And, and, and I just love that all of this here gets framed in the men who I want don't just not just don't want her, but aren't devoting themselves to her.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I also have a beef with people. Who I don't know are, are, are extremely entitled about being pleasured properly. When, like for men, it's so freaking easy.

Like there's literally like a handle and you kind of like, I'm not saying there's not finess to it, but like, it's so easy. Whereas for women it's like, well, some women feel it this way and some women feel it this way. And like it, I, I couldn't, like, if someone was like, pleasure this woman, I'd be like, oh my God, I'm going to die.

Whereas some, if someone was like, pleasure this man, I'd be like, okay, I'm pretty sure like male or female, you can probably figure that out. But if you are given like a random woman, any of us, and someone's holding a gun to her heads and like, you need to make her orgasm, like we're all gonna be like, okay, I guess I'm gonna die.[00:05:00]

And here she's being like, how dare people? I mean, we've already addressed all this stuff around like. You know, violence in, in lesbian relationships being actually pretty high. Right. And

Malcolm Collins: so just to her point there about domestic violence of women if you look at straight violence levels in heterosexual couples mm-hmm.

The violence levels in lesbian couples are way higher. Right. Whereas violence levels in gay male couples are the same as straight couples or less, depending on the study you're looking at.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Which implies that it is not the men who are engendering the violence. Like we, we can just look at the data.

It's the same as divorce rates. Divorce rates way higher in lesbian communities than in straight communities or, or gay communities.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We can just look at the rates. It, it's coming from inside the house. Women. But hold on. I, I had pulled that from the center of the article so we can get to like her core complaint and what she's trying to set up here.

This hatred that some women have now of straight dating and the suffering and anxiety that they feel when on the straight dating [00:06:00] marketplace. All right. Have they tried lesbian dating? Like, is that so much better? We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Okay. Very curious. That does come up in here. But we're gonna go back in time and go to what happened, what happened to her last marriage.

'cause clearly she was married, right? Yeah. What happened? One of the reasons my marriage ended was that I fell in love with another man who I'm referred to by his first initial J and people are devoted

Simone Collins: enough to her.

Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. Hold spontaneously graceful with a soft voice and an inordinate sad smile.

Jay made me laugh, stopping my breath being a quote unquote good guy. He intimated from the jump that he did not know how to quote unquote do relationships, giving me to understand that if I expected one with him,

or as he may have conceptualized it from him. I did so at my peril, which was his peril too, since he'd hate to hurt me still. He pursued me. We [00:07:00] seem to quote unquote be doing something together. So note here, this guy who she pursued, okay. Told her. I am not interested in a, in a serious relationship with you.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and worse, he's doing the classic good guy routine who's not actually a good guy. I just hate to see you be hurt. But if you chase me, that's what's going to happen. So you should stay with your husband, sweetheart. No, seriously. Stay with your husband, sweetheart. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm not here for you.

Yeah. My husband and I have an open relationship at the time Jay and I met. So the terms of our involvement were at first and limited. And although Jay exerted a pleasant pressure against these limitations, ultimately they suited him. I was the one who violated the terms by finding it intolerable after a while to care that much in a way for one person while being married to another.

I could not disambiguate sex from love, nor love from , [00:08:00] devotion, . Futurity family integration. Things I wanted with from Jay. Even as throughout the year in the half or so that we saw each other, he continued to gesture to his incapacity to commit as if. Were a separate being.

An unfortunate child who followed and relied upon him maybe, or a physical constraint. I stood there reacting to him for a while, while he sad, faced back at me, looked like a box mind. He couldn't talk about it. He wished things were different. Maybe someday the child would mature, the glass would break, but for now there was really nothing to be done.

And later in this she'll talk about how men and women, just men do not take time to understand what women are really telling them between the lines. And it's men who can't communicate well and men, and this is why dating is so bad for women. And I'm like. B, I [00:09:00] am reading your writing down in a favorable way to you, what this guy told you.

And it seems to me that he was communicating with a, with a fire hose and a siren in your face saying, I will not commit to you. I am using you for sex. Please stop taking this further. I really don't like you in that way, but don't wanna hurt your feelings. And she just refused to listen to what he was loudly and repeatedly communicating to her because it didn't follow what she wanted to be true. And, and this is the thing she's showing that her problem downstream of her own communication failures in not listening to what's being loudly signaled to her.

It seems to me surveying the field of dating as a novice, that this kind of studious ir approachability, male helplessness abounds, I keep encountering and hearing it about men who quote unquote, can't have these ever men heard of, quote, unquote, don't want to? [00:10:00] No. What he was telling you is, I don't want a serious relationship with you.

But he didn't wanna hurt your feelings. So what he said was, oh, I'm just not mature enough for that yet. I'm not in a place in my life where I want that right yet. But what he was telling you in no uncertain terms was, I don't want

Simone Collins: you,

Malcolm Collins: you're just not that good. I want other things. I want to keep playing the field.

You are not worth my time or emotional effort. And you, this woman was unwilling to hear that. And then to go later in the, in the piece she talks about why he refused to start something serious with her after she left her husband. I toppled the whole structure of my life for a man who when I asked him, do you want to be with me or not?

Replied, after a few seconds of silence, I want to be with you and I want to be everything everywhere, all at once. Jay was [00:11:00] referring of course to the 2022. So real sci-fi comedy set across a multitude of parallel universes in which many versions of the protagonist play out many versions of their lives.

I love how he's playing the manic pixie dream boy. Like, like playing this woman like a fiddle while also clearly signaling to her, I only want you for sex.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, I wish I could fob you off to another version of me in another dimension, because that would be great right now. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because the me in this dimension does not, does not want you be clear.

I have, I have other, other plates I'm juggling right now. You go off and do your own thing. Right. And I think that, when man in the manosphere, you know, talk about a woman where they're like, oh, you know, she destroyed herself on Chad. You know, like alpha widows is, is what they call them. These women who got these great guys and then couldn't accept this is what this form of Alpha talks like.

Okay. They don't talk like, I'm gonna put you down. I'm [00:12:00] gonna, you know, throw you around. I'm gonna, they talk like this to women and women eat out of their hand and destroy their lives chasing these types of men. Okay. Now we're gonna go to a different piece that she wrote scenes from an open marriage.

This was in three years before the piece that you just read above.

Simone Collins: Oh, the before. Hmm. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: About six months after our daughter was born, my husband they's daughter together. Right. God, to destroy this girl's life over her wanting to be with this other guy who told her she wa he wasn't interested. Well, I she's a married woman with a kid.

No

Simone Collins: kidding.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: There's baggage. Oh, ah, okay. Because we're

Malcolm Collins: gonna go over what she wants in a guide, the way she talks about guides, because it's terrible. She's clearly a very vile person. Okay. But how did she get lured into this life of polyamory that seems like it destroyed her marriage and then spit her out in a world where, you know, [00:13:00] she a late thirties, early forties woman is just not desirable.

Hmm. And she thought that she would be desirable to the, I mean, she's desirable to men who wanna pass her around. But she's not desirable to be the one for any guy who she would actually want. Other than her original husband. So how did she end up in this, this open relationship to begin with?

Indeed. About six months after our daughter was born, my husband calmly set the idea on the table like a decorative gun. I said I'd think about it. I couldn't pretend to be that surprised by the proposition or ignorant of my part in engendering it. I was too tired. I was too busy. The baby, the baby, the baby.

I had a deadline. I was reading. I was watching The Sopranos again. I was depressed. I just wanted a nap. Needed a nap ached for a hot, throbbing nap. This might, I figured be quote unquote. Real marriage, harder, deeper marriage, marriage opening. Its cute mouse all the way, and showing [00:14:00] the mess that was back there.

Maybe I thought the libido of a certain kind of woman is an animal that lives a little and then crawls into a cave and lies there panting for a few decades until with a final rabid pant it expires. Could it expire so early or perhaps I was taking a breather postpartum. Understandable. Surely given , how a six and a half pound human body had been slither pulled out of the place.

That's a small

Simone Collins: baby. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: And or one of the places or, or one of the places. Okay. So by the way what you will learn as we go through the later piece, after she left this guy three years later, she is sexually insatiable. Just everything she talks about is who's effing her, how they're effing her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I cut all that outta this, by the way. You guys are gonna have to hear that for your, for your benefit. But it's clear that her libido had not died. It had died contextually with her husband. [00:15:00] And I think that what we actually see is it might not even be a death of a libido. It might be that, like when, when a, a lot of women have what's called a reactive sexuality, which means that they become aroused when they are.

Put in a sexual scenario. Yeah. And often husbands, especially a progressive husband, like this guy was a feminist wife, don't feel comfortable putting their wives in a sexual scenario when they haven't asked to be put in a sexual scenario.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that this is how libidos die in a lot of marriages.

Yeah. This is

Simone Collins: a super underrated point,

Malcolm Collins: but I'd also note here is this expectation that you need to be having lots of sex with a six months old. Yeah. I, when I have a six months old in the house, I basically have no sex. Like, at first I wouldn't want to risk. No, you've generally had a c-section. It's, it, it could cause scarring that could prevent future embryos.

I mean, I think to a six

Simone Collins: month mark, it's,

Malcolm Collins: it's okay. Yeah. But I'm talking about that six months window.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. I mean, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: whatever. I, I [00:16:00] don't like to risk it, I don't like to risk your body, which carries my kids. Right. Like, and, and I think that a lot of guys hear this and they're like, oh, that's horrible.

Oh, whatever sex. Recreational sex exists entirely. Like the entire reason you want this is to produce offspring. Yeah, yeah. Shouldn't

Simone Collins: be any surprise that a woman who's lactating and sleep deprived and you know, dealing with an well, even more

Malcolm Collins: so, even has the opposite effect. If it could damage, could create scar tissue, which could prevent future embryos from implant that too.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: I think you, you're more likely to have complications in your pregnancy if you get pregnant super, super soon after having a kid. Well, and you're,

Malcolm Collins: and you're cooking yourself. You're cooking yourself because you are allowss your own arousal pattern to limit the number of offspring you have and to hurt your relationship with the woman who is having those future offspring on your behalf.

You know, you shouldn't be trying to get pregnant again six months after the last kid. And people are like, oh, well, you [00:17:00] should have sex for X reason or y reason and reality. No, I don't, I don't think you should. And a lot of people will be like, oh, Malcolm, this is just you being, you know, low, low testosterone or something.

And I point out, because I've also pointed out with my facial structure, but I was recently looking at Nebula. If you know how testosterone affects a person's body, you would know by my facial structure, I actually developed in a very high testosterone environment. And I'm 98% in terms of testosterone production.

Like I'm at the very, I'm like two standard deviations above the norm. I'm in the top 2% of men in testosterone production. But my testosterone production has almost certainly gone down because it goes down when you're in a monogamous, stable relationship and it goes down when you have children with the number of children you have for obvious biological reasons.

And I think that some men just see sex as like something that they need, like food or something like that when it's just not, if it's getting, I think, I think a people

Simone Collins: have, what's the word, perfunctory sex for the same reason that people have perfunctory travel where they're like. I, I'm pretty [00:18:00] sure that it's a sign that I'm not thriving if I'm not going on expensive trips every year, that kind of thing.

So they're like, well, I have to do it because otherwise there must be something wrong with my marriage or something wrong with me, or I'm not manly enough, or something like that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I think that, you know, it, it is good to translate these, these desires into their purpose, whether you believe God gave you them or whether you believe evolution gave you them.

When you see a, a busty woman and that arouses you, or you see, you know, a character in an anime, let's say dating five women, and you're like, oh, I really like watching this. That is your, your biological response that exists because you are supposed to want to have kids and gives those kids a good childhood.

And so reframing that, I think what what led to a lot of this is her husband wanting more sex. That is, that is functionally what destroyed everything that came downstream. And it's clear given how reactive her sexuality is and how lusty after min she is, that she probably would've been okay with it had he just worked with her to try to find out what works for [00:19:00] her after the kid had grown up enough that they didn't, you know, that they weren't six months old.

Right. What is there to want. After all, he is mine sacredly in sickness and in other states of being, except he is not. And his absolute non-proprietary realness can flash out so suddenly that the spell of matrimonial monotony is reversed and becomes again a free man. And so I note here that even the way she frames her marriage and her vows here were like not that serious the first time he came.

And I'm just jumping around in this case because I don't wanna get that deep into it. But it's interesting to see how a lot of this diving into the world of polyamory before it destroyed their marriage was being framed in her head and in the husband's head. So you can know if this is happening to you.

And it can all seem like it's going okay at first. The first time he came home, boyish whisper, laughing in the dark as he tore off his sweatshirt and climbed into bed. He used the word fun. I had been waiting brace for some seismic [00:20:00] shift, but there he was home and mine again was out so much as a waking the baby, just pee it and VI reminded myself with people, attached through my husband and somebody else moving deliberately, perhaps tenderly in pursuit of each other and pleasure beyond.

But didn't he deserve some compartment of his own? A chamber of mystery? Don't we all? I found I could be happy for my husband in his fun, more than happy. In fact, I could be a real thrill to let your partner go out and give it fully to another woman and then come home and look at you in the eyes and kiss deeply and touch over that.

It is romantic in a way that culturally under scripted moments often are.

Simone Collins: And I, I, this is for some people, I'm sure, for some I know, I know for some people this is a thing

Malcolm Collins: which is funny. And, and people know that like with our relationship, I'm allowed to sleep with other people if I want to. I just don't think it's worth the effort.

But I certainly [00:21:00] you know, wouldn't make it a regular thing. And her husband, you know, clearly made this like an everyday thing that was causing very clear here, stress on her part. And it's also clear that she went into all of this knowing the risk, the inherent risk of an open marriage is exhilarating, but seeing the risk as a positive thing, she had a daughter, right?

Like why is the risk exhilarating? Nothing refines a romance like proximate disaster, but it's not a romance. You have a daughter, your parents, you're not romancing each other. In fact, ours began when at 17 we went home together from the funeral of a mutual friend who had been in on American Airlines Flight 11.

The city was covered in Ash from that fall and US city kids where there was a strong buddy system vibe, like everyone quickly grabbed your buddy. This is not a drill. I still think of that friend whenever I'm traveling alone on a and a plane leaves the ground. I think of my husband at those times too.

[00:22:00] Imagine him mourning me, reviewing our parting final words via text exchange. Cool. Coming. Can you look on the floor in the front seat? As the third round, and now she's talking about a different thing here after the, the funeral friends are talking. And I think that this leans to the point I was making earlier about thinking that sex is, is an absolute part of marriage, like constant sex.

. As the third round of drinks arrived, the woman across from me said was a laugh that she hardly ever had sex anymore. Oh, yeah. Came a voice from farther down the bench. We haven't had sex since H was born. A third agreed that sex was barely a thing lately.

Reflexively, I joined the rush to wrap the initial confe. Confession and assurances. Even the married women with kids seemed in her looks and noises to allow some lessening was inevitable after a while or else outnumbered by the new and newish mothers. She just knew her audience. Only the single woman who listened wide-eyed and wavering in the Raden Freud [00:23:00] excerpts of concealed alarm was left to insist on the value of frequent, high quality effing.

And it's like the only reason you want that effing is because you're hoping one of these guys settles down with you and starts having kids.

Simone Collins: This is so bizarre because all of my friends in high school and everything, we loved romance mangas and whatnot, but like they were probably all asexual. Like there was no lust for boys ever discussed, and I, I can't imagine being, I've never been.

In any conversation with women in which an interest in sex has been expressed, which is so

Malcolm Collins: strange.

Simone Collins: That is, I can't, I can't imagine this meal.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I think that this happens. It's actually interesting that you say this because I, I think that what you're saying is true. You, you do not often see this in young female friend groups.

This is something that begins to happen in the Sex in the City groups which I'll talk about as I go further, where they're dating a chain of men who are using them for sex. And so now the key relationship they have with men is as [00:24:00] well, basically sex toys. Mm-hmm. Now, of course, they don't realize that that's what they've been reduced to.

And that's what this woman has been reduced to after leaving her husband. Mm-hmm. And abandoning her duties as a mother. But it's because they are that, that it's a predominant way that they are relating socially because they're trying desperately to recapture a, a real deep relationship.

Like the one that this Jay guy was, was, was dangling in front of her so that he could use her for sex.

Simone Collins: Wow. Um,

Malcolm Collins: I think that that's what's happening and I think that your experiences are actually correct here. And that the group of girls who get around a table and talk about sex that this is a phenomenon that married women don't often do.

Have you ever

Simone Collins: married? No. Single, no. Young teen ne Never. I mean, I don't know. Like, I just, I, I hung out with nerds. I mean, like, you know, it was anime and yeah, manga and Dr. Who and all that, but like nerds, [00:25:00] they're, they're voracious nerds too. I don't, I just dunno, this is just so strange to me. I wonder if there, there's some kind of selective thing where like, women tend to sort.

And, and just, I don't

Malcolm Collins: think that's true. I remember the girl I dated in college you know, well, we had sex occasionally. I, she was actually one of the people I had sex with the least of, of all the partners. But she had a friend who was just completely asexual and anti anti-sex. And it was like notable to her.

Well, the, I, yeah, I mean, it, it was a big part of this other girl's personality, like, sex is gross.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: like publicly? Yeah, like publicly. It was like part of her thing. That's so weird. I mean,

Simone Collins: I suppose, I don't know, I think anyone making any bit of their sexual part, like their sexual tendencies, part of their identity to me is just bizarre.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I do see that as a little weird. But it's a common thing was in the urban monoculture and everything like that, and people wanting to, you know, discuss it and, and, and make it a key part of their identity. Yeah. And, [00:26:00] and, but the point I was making here is, is these other girls who were married and not having much sex anymore you change your biology is meant to change when you're in a, in a, in a marriage.

Okay. Yeah. And if you, biology is functioning correctly, and keep in mind, biology doesn't always function correctly. Sometimes men find other men attractive. But you as a guy with five kids, if you have the same sexual appetite you did when you had zero kids, you are about as broken as a guy who prefers other men.

It's not the way your biology is supposed to work, for obvious evolutionary reasons. And so careful, you might

Simone Collins: start sounding like Ben Shapiro here, when it's gonna be like, really Malcolm?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I, well, that was one of the times we went viral. When I pointed out to men this is a, the testosterone thing.

And they're like, oh, you know, don't you wanna look high tea? And I was like, high tea is a sign that you're a genetic failure. Yeah. If you're still high tea and middle ages because your, your tea and and sex drive is supposed to drop if you're in a [00:27:00] long-term monogamous relationship with lots of kids.

And so if you still have it at those ages it probably means you're not in a monogamous, it's your

Simone Collins: hormonal throw profile in the death throes of someone who knows that they're about to go terminal.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Your body's basically going for broke because that's, that's not healthy for you to, to, to stay at for a long time.

Right. It causes riskier behavior and stuff like that. And I also to point out like you wouldn't. Wanna take advice from one of these people, either because they're in a mindset like basically what happens to a male brain when they go into father mode versus Jim bro mode is they're going from go for broke.

I need to be the top so I can breed the most to, it's my job to protect my family build alliances and ensure stability within my community. Which it means that they're typically gonna give much better advice and be a much better ally rather than the, the, the more crap than a bucket mentality that is baked into the male brain.

At, at, at those sort of earlier stages where when you are failing in romantic pursuits. But then to continue with this [00:28:00] article I did and do worry especially about the younger girls in their twenties. Were they all right? These kids? How did they feel about being quote unquote on the side?

Occasionally I stumbled into something like outrage on their behalf as I thought I were the spirited friend in the drama. F that guy. Were they being exploited? In fact, wasn't I exploiting them? Outsourcing the labor of care, pleasure and attention affirmation to this scattered, precarious workforce? How sinister in that light in those nights, my husband and I spent scrolling through the faces of sexual supply, our ethic, blatantly consumerists, collecting primary and vivacious thrills that rebounded to our own marriage, strengthening our family through the efforts and maybe even the pain of others.

And I love that she can see sort of how exploitative this is in the way that she was doing it.

Simone Collins: So they're in their thirties and they're both like

Malcolm Collins: helping her husband hook up with [00:29:00] 20 year olds

Simone Collins: teasing on, oh my goodness. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: All right. And she knows it's wrong, but she's like, whatever. But here is how the article ended before we get back to the other article in her how she, how she's sort of thinking about all this.

M is by the way, before I go into this, the husband's girlfriend here's another scene. My husband and daughter and me in the car parked at the station waiting for m we hear the rush of the train, the opening of the doors, the distant announcer's voice. Various strangers emerge in masks, greet, the writers depart.

Suddenly I hear my daughter singing M's. Name, my husband window humming down as he calls out to her. And catching the sight of the familiar baseball hat pulled low over the messy curls. I feel the approach of the world itself coming to puncture the seal, let in some light and air. And so this all felt good to her.

She really talked throughout this article how much she appreciates this in woman helping around the house with chores and with childcare. But you can see that the daughter is beginning to see [00:30:00] M as the mother and not her. Her as the mother even before the de divorce. So at first I felt bad for this husband.

But then when I read this other piece, I was like, oh, he's probably was m now m just seems less crazy than this woman and to have already taken on the role of mother before any of this happened.

But

Simone Collins: anyway, I don't want this life.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know. But so she's created this, this narrative, so to get back to where we are, okay. Around you know, the men, what was the word she, she used here? Like hetero pessimism or something, right? Like, the, the, the, some women just, it was hetero

Simone Collins: fatalism, fatal

Malcolm Collins: fatalism.

They hate their fate as hetero women because they have to date these horrible, evil things that are men. And so I want to dive into, okay, but. What are you doing? Like if men are these toxic things that are doing all these horrible things [00:31:00] to you, what are your actions like and what are the man's actions like even by your own admission and who is actually sort of the vile one here?

Why is it that the lesbian relationships have the higher rates of spousal abuse? Why is it that they have higher rates of divorce? Why is it that when you get two women together versus a man and a woman, things seem to always be worse? Well, let's get into her own account of her life.

Simone Collins: Okay?

Malcolm Collins: I was looking forward to seeing you again.

He texted me the following week around lunchtime, but I'm going through some intense anxiety today and need to lay low frowny face, quote unquote. Totally understand. I replied, but I didn't. Feeble fallible. Looking forward is not longing. A man should want me urgently or not at all. I was about to collapse into a ritual of frustrated, horniness, fantasy, masturbation snacks [00:32:00] when a friend urged me to join her and two other women for dinner.

So keep in mind this was a woman who just before said that her entire arousal system had stopped working and a guy doesn't get back to her fast enough. And is trying to be vulnerable as her, something that she would say that she wanted from men throughout the piece. I'm not gonna read through those parts.

And her response is ugh, gross, but also I need to just go and masturbate and, and eat, like stuff my face. Like what? But anyway, so a friend invites her for dinner with other women in this position. And, and no, you can be like, why is she thinking about sex wise? She talking about. Because when you're used like this as a woman, the way that men keep you on the table is they promise something more.

You know, they dangle something more in front of you. Like this guy is doing, you know, he's like, oh, sorry, can't see you today. Anxiety issues. Let's talk again in a few weeks. And, and so the women who are going through this [00:33:00] are constantly thinking about these men and the way that they are relating to and being related to by these men.

So one of the other women goes, of course, he had anxiety, said one of them, a therapist who sat across from me at the restaurant. Oh dear. Okay. That life that's being alive and going to meet someone you don't know well, yeah. So the other woman beside her, a historian, it's called Sexual Tension. Stay with it for a minute and you might get some they can't said my friend.

Was a triumphant disgust. She told us about a woman she knew that was dating a man from another city after weeks of saying, I can't wait to see you. The man ghosted her during his actual visit, his explanation, he'd been too anxious. Oh, poor baby. Cried the historian, and we all could and moaned, if this was men talking about

Simone Collins: women, can

Malcolm Collins: you

Simone Collins: believe the reaction?

Right? For the

Malcolm Collins: poor widow, Fredy cat, boo boo working themselves into a [00:34:00] frenzy of laughter where men's inability to quote unquote, man up and F us, we are four women at a vegan restaurant in downtown Manhattan. We knew what show we were in and couldn't help but wonder in a smug, chauvinistic way, where are the men who could handle hard stuff like leaving the house for. Sex.

Just a quick reminder for people who don't know this, the sex and the city writer, the person who created this world that this woman is looking up to and trying to recreate, has said that she made a mistake and wishes that instead she had gotten married and had lots of kids, and that the whole sleeping around and dedicating her life to her career was a huge life mistake.

Malcolm Collins: And I'm like, whoa, lady, like, do you not understand that? Let's take the man at his face value here. And he really did have anxiety. So the man had anxiety because he was dating. The type of woman [00:35:00] who liked to go to restaurants was her friends and de masculinize and make fun of him.

By your own admission, it's not just you, it's all of the girls here. Why are guys able to use you and all of these other women without feeling bad about it? Because this is who you are. You dehumanize them in the way that you talk about them. Everything you think say and breathe is toxic. Like would you not see it as a major red flag, even just for a friend as a female?

If you had a female do this in front of you?

Simone Collins: Yes. I would see this as a red flag.

Malcolm Collins: And, and some of these women, you know, making fun of men for having anxiety is a therapist. If you are a man going to see a therapist, and that therapist is a woman, know that this is the type of thing that she's joking about on weekends with the money that you pay her.

You know, just keep that in mind, right. No, I know. It's, it's, it's, [00:36:00] this is where the urban monoculture comes from, right? Like her core happiness throughout this entire piece is belittling the men she is dating to other women. That seems to be the only place that she's still getting happiness from, and yet she wants a man, right?

This is where the head of where Fatalism comes from.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it's mentally destroying her.

Simone Collins: Yeah. She, she presents and, and seems to hate and belittle men, but she also seems to be largely dependent on them for her physical pleasure and, and yeah, just amusement. So that's not great.

Malcolm Collins: When did men get so anxious about desire?

Ask the therapist and I said, I didn't know. Yes you do. My friend said it was when they were put on notice that they can't just get drunk and grope us. And it's like, but lady, you are the one saying you want these men to be more aggressive. Of course. If you have put doesn't you basically just saying, why can't this guy just get drunk and grope me?

Yeah. What, what? [00:37:00] Of course they have anxiety when they're getting these sorts of missed signals, especially when you consider the consequences of misreading the signals. But let's go to a different part here. I I, I thought that that part was useful so you can get an understanding of like who this person is at their core, right?

Sure.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then you, you look at her on this market and with this perspective of, I am cursed to have to date the other gender rather than reflecting on her own behavior. And at no point in its entire piece does she once reflect on her own behavior. She seems almost pathologically incapable of it.

There are many roots to the species of disappointment. I am circling here, but however we get there, the complaint is so common, such a cultural narrative staple that the academy is weighing in. We now have a fancy word, hetero pessimism to describe the outlook of straight women fed up with the mating behavior of men coined by the sexual scholar Asin Seran, who later amended it to hetero fatalism.

The term seems at first class to distill [00:38:00] a mood that is no less timely than being timeless. Whereas she just comes across like a sexual predator here, right? Like everything about the men who she is making fun of are expressing their vulnerability, and she is exploiting that.

Simone Collins: She's not even talking about the mating patterns of men because these men clearly don't want to reproduce with.

Malcolm Collins: The women in question, you don't want her. Yeah. It was really, well, I love how she starts with it. It's about the men who I want not desiring me enough. It was really nice in quote, a close friend texted me recently reporting on her third date with a lawyer. He's really sweet and nice to me and good at sex.

No doubt. Something humiliating and nightmarish will occur soon on more than one occasion. When my friend checked in with a lawyer to confirm tentative plans, he did not respond to her for many hours or even a day. Granted, he worked a punishing schedule, but my friend reasoned it took 90 seconds for him to send a quick reply.

The dissonance between his caring and attentive in-person behavior and these silences [00:39:00] confused her. And she mentioned this to him. The lawyer was sorry and that, that he kept her waiting. He hadn't meant to, but he said her complaint got him thinking. He unfortunately wasn't able to escalate whatever was happening between them into a relationship.

My friend clarified that she had not been asking to escalate into anything. No, you literally did ask to escalate. You were saying, why do you only talk to me when you want sex? And he was saying. I thought that's what this was. I thought I had signaled that to you very, very loudly. If you want something more, you're not getting that with me.

And she's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I want to keep doing the sex thing. Treat me however you want. And I'll just keep waiting and then eventually you'll get more time and more into me. But he's, he's telling her, I, I'm not into you that way.

Right? She wants the intimacy and he's signaling that that's not what their relationship is about. Now, note here, what, what does a friend do? My friend clarified that she had not been looking to escalate anything, merely expressing a need for clarity about plans. [00:40:00] He understood that he said, but their quote unquote, communication skills were obviously too different for them to continue dating.

I love how the guy is even letting her down nicely. Like the guy is being nice here. When he says our communication skills are different, he's saying, what the, do you not get? B, I don't wanna talk to you. I'm using you as a sex toy. Like, how do you not understand that, that you want more from me than that just shows that we don't want the same thing, so I'm gonna let you go and pursue life with a guy who does.

He is being imminently kind and you are being a psycho.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: not just that, but that her friend couldn't recognize this. And then her friend, when it is relayed to her, couldn't recognize this so much that the original intent of what the guy was saying comes through in her peace. Even the humiliating and nightmarish part she explained to me was not so much the rejection as being cast against her will as quote the woman eager for a relationship end [00:41:00] quote.

The cast against her will as the woman eager for a relationship. But that's what you are. This guy is probably dating and having sex with a bunch of other women. You are just a booty call. In her memoir, fierce Attachments, Vek Gornick describes the anguish of being ignored by a lover to her female friend.

Why I couldn't absorb? She writes with his plunging us back into the cruelty of old fashioned man, woman stuff, turning me into a woman who waits for a phone call that never comes and himself into the man who must avoid the woman who was waiting. But that's what you are. But do you see what I mean here?

Like they have built this nightmare scenario about to around themselves by refusing to accept reality that they are not desired by the tech category of men that they desire. And that they need to set their sights significantly lower. And many of the things that they see of as flaws or things that they're just gonna have to bite the bullet [00:42:00] on, she's never gonna be able to get a guy as good as her original husband again.

I wish, because, you know, she's getting older every year and he's getting older every year and apparently he can still date 20 year olds. To skip to a different part in the piece, I wish I could just be gay with you, she said, and I said, I wish that too. So much. This was our commiserate routine, what Sarasin might call performative dis.

A ation with heterosexuality in quote or our spin on quote, take my wife please to my straightness, please take my attraction to men. A note. All of your conversations, it seems like, are just about how much you hate the people you are dating. Like of course that's gonna spiral you into worse and worse relationships always.

But it seems to be the only thing you find happiness in. And not that women wouldn't do that, right? They are evolved to be that way to an extent.

Simone Collins: What do you mean? To present the men that they're with? No.

Malcolm Collins: To gain benefit from gossiping? No. Okay. They're [00:43:00] going to look for, with their female community to have conversations that are gossip full.

Is era fatalism a useful concept? I took it up for a while, considered the positions the writer and gender scholar, Sarah Abram, had advanced the idea of quote complaints as feminist pedagogy in quote, arguing that to b***h is inherently transgressive. So note here she, even the woman who had invented this term, invented it with the idea that women should be b******g a lot.

You know, so you know that she does this a lot and I don't think that they should be I wouldn't appreciate my wife going around and b******g a lot. Well, in

Simone Collins: general philosophy that involves leaning into misery and negativity doesn't seem very productive.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So what is she like when she's dating people these days?

If you wanna get a look inside her dating life.

Simone Collins: Sure. On the way to

Malcolm Collins: his place I had been texting was my aunt, quote word from an expert. In quote, [00:44:00] she wrote, wait till he wants it so bad that he's nutsy. Cuckoo sounds facile, but man, truer words have never been spoken. Make him suffer, is my mantra.

Exclamation mark. I kept catching myself, staring at his mouth, his bottom lips. He told me to slow down. He needed me to get a better sense of me and how I worked. So note here, she thinks he's making him wait. He on the first date is like,

Simone Collins: whoa, whoa,

Malcolm Collins: whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to slow down. I lay back to murmur.

Let, and, and by the way, she ends up sleeping with him on the first date. It, it's, I'm not gonna get into all that, but I laid back to murmur, let him try stuff, and he warmed to his own control, putting his mouse right up to mine, then pulling away when I tried to engage his tongue, I see what you are, he said, finally, pinning my forearm.

You are a bratty sub. He held himself there just at every reach. Breathing on me. I'd like to make you wait. He said he did make me wait. And then again, then everything that happened between them, which nobody needs to [00:45:00] hear. And I find it weird that you wrote in an article. I guess you thought it was hot, but it just shows that you apparently have like five intimate encounters that you're able to describe in this article.

And clearly this is a guy who's, you know, been involved in the BDSM scene been involved in sleeping around a lot, given the way that he's framing you and is using you for sex. That's why he's framing you this way even to yourself. When my friend complained about the lawyer, I expressed outrage at his behavior and worked my way quite naturally, along a well worn groove to come to nation of all.

Okay, most men, as incapable of upholding basic standards of communication and care. But he's communicating very clearly. It is you and your friend who aren't listening. Like as a woman even you can understand what he's trying to tell her, right? Or, or am I crazy Here? Is this like man language. If a guy was like, look, I don't have time for you.

And then you're like, well, I need more of your time. And he said, well, clearly, you know, we're having trouble communicating. We should end this relationship.

Simone Collins: That's pretty clear. Yeah. Yeah. [00:46:00] That's, that's not ambiguous.

Malcolm Collins: I was thinking of course about Mr. J and I am not proud that my instinct response to the shame of being gender stereotyped by life is to pay another stereotype forward.

Men suck, groundbreaking, exclamation. But Mr. Jay never did anything to you. He told you exactly that he didn't want you. This lawyer told you exactly what he wanted. That's the other thing about this piece is the minute it seemed to be so upstanding and yet she's framing them as horrible because they don't.

Do what she wants. This would be like a man hating you because you turned him down, right? Like, you know, you're like, oh, you know, somebody was your friend. And then they're like, Hey, can I sleep with you? And you're like, no, you can't sleep with me. I just want you for friendship. And they're like, well, you know, okay.

I guess I'm, I'm sort of bummed about that. But you know, and, and then they're like, you know, she's just using me to her friends. And you'd be like, what a sicko saying to say, but these men, just as clearly as you are to that friend are saying, I just want you for sex. I don't want the friendship. I don't want the [00:47:00] intimacy.

That said, men struggle to communicate in romantic relationships is widespread enough to have earned psychological designation, normative male Alex, or the condition of being unable to put words into emotions. And the note here, she had the whole thing about emotional labor and new terms for emotional labor, hermetic labor, a new way for women to hate on men.

Simone Collins: What is hermetic labor vis-a-vis emotional labor?

Malcolm Collins: So, she calls the work women do to demystify male cues hermetic layer and posits it as a form of gender exploitation in intimate relationships. So her almost intentionally misunderstanding what these various guys in her life are telling her in her friend.

Is them exploiting her? No, she's exploiting herself. Mm-hmm. But for another part I found interesting here the stranger waiting at my back. Corner table [00:48:00] looked a bit square than my average date. His hair apparently washed cut and he wore a button down short. But some restless mischief played on his face bearing itself fully in our laugh.

Our conversation with brisk ingesting, I got the impression that he was enjoying my company but was more bonus than criteria for him. He was partnered already. He had told me and seeking only compassionate sex. His dating profile referenced this clearly below the picture of him wearing a blue blazer, petting a donkey's head.

So now she's going on dates with people who tell her, I literally just want you for sex. That was in my dating profile. That is all you are to me. And getting mad that they're not giving her more. We turned eventually to the subject of erotic temperament. He was interested in the possibilities that arise between people with any in eventuality of marriage, procreation, or fidelity was so to speak, taken off the table.

What might then happen in bed? That community in that world, watching his clean cut boyish [00:49:00] form and listening to him speak with eloquent enthusiasm of a connoisseur. The phrase that occurred to me was sex nerd mini dabbler in non-monogamy were not really, he noted was a laugh quoting from Pusha T about that life.

He was, I meet his type around sometimes fluent in the language of polyamory, waving his respectful desire, like a plastic saver, pew pew. Why would you play with just one toy when you can take turns with all the toys and that's what you are, a toy, a sex toy to somebody like him. Why at the same time vaguely subverting something capitalism.

I love that she's like proud of what he's doing with her. And he's telling her, I don't want this thing that you want. Right? I, I find this wild. This men can't communicate and she just so clearly makes it. And then yeah, she

Simone Collins: proceeds to give. A ton of examples of men really clearly communicating it.

The theme isn't that men can't communicate. The theme is that men are not communicating the message that she desires.

Malcolm Collins: [00:50:00] Exactly. Which is that they want her, which they don't.

Simone Collins: But that, I mean, in the first quote that you led with in this discussion, that is what she said. She said the problem was they don't want her enough.

It wasn't necessarily that they weren't communicating it was that they don't want her, they don't want, they don't want to commit to her in any meaningful way, and she doesn't seem to understand that casual sex does not equal slavish devotion and obsession.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you wanna see how she screw things up was this one you're flattering. The men, a former lover, wrote me after I sent him a partial draft of this essay. They never get to be real. And you see the men in her life just use her like clearly. She's not flattering the men in this piece, but the guy knows that's what she wants to hear.

So she made easier to use. They, they used to confirm a story about disappointment and frustration. This man I met last fall when he was like me, [00:51:00] reeling for romantic rejection. And within half an hour we lunged at each other as though by tacit agreement to beat each other's comforting or orgasm, giving blankets for a time.

We traded obsessive accounts of failed relationships, cheered each other on through the rigors of no contact, watched Albert Burt's movies, belted Weezer songs, and karaoke tracks on his couch. Whatever was happening between us went on for about six weeks, at which point I became annoyed that he was withholding something from me, though I couldn't say what exactly.

So you found a guy that liked doing what you like to do most, which is. B***h about other people. And you feel like he's withholding something from you because again, he doesn't want a real relationship with you and accused him of coldness and accused him of being unfair and so on. The familiar female demanded male withdraw pattern descended on us like a polarizing spell.

Unlike some other exchanges of my past, this one had an oddly mechanical quality and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Eventually I admitted to him that it felt more natural to me to default to quote, unquote, wounded female rather than assume responsibility for my [00:52:00] desires. Any self-realization here, your desires.

So instead of recognizing your desires, you defaulted to the internal framing of a wounded female. For his part, he described a large, looming ex who adapted the use of guilt and left its mark. And this is clearly what she was doing. She was using guilt like, look at you. You're oppressing me. You're hurting me.

And, and it's showing that that is something that she is doing tacitly. She's, she's admitting that one guy I went on with spoke of a hint of longing about the relationship between his grandparents who barely spoke to each other before getting married as teenagers in Sicily, then thrown together by slim pickings village life, a adolescent hormones and the oppressive myth of female honor.

What a system, what a gamble. And then both people were trapped for life, but at least you were spared the anxiety of choice. At least there was that. But what I love is you don't actually get choice because nobody who you want seems to want you. And then there's another part where she goes deep into maybe I am [00:53:00] a romantic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about that.

But I wanna get your thoughts on this person. 'cause I think you can get a full picture of their life and what it's like to be a woman on the dating market these days. And what it might feel like to you to be on the dating market if you're out sleeping around. I would say if you're a young woman and you're listening to this, this is what dating is like.

If you hit your mid thirties, you need to get off the market before your mid thirties. Your, your life will become a health thing. Like either you withdraw from men or you, you end up being passed around by this woman, by men who clearly don't care about you.

Simone Collins: I think there are some highly educated professionals who are in their thirties really looking to get married who are just going for it.

And I think that those, those dates are far more like the dates that I would wanna go on, which is like, okay, what do you want? Like, there's that famous, not famous, but like people often inc cite that, that scene in like a, I don't even some random show where it's some couples having a very unromantic discussion about like how they would be married [00:54:00] and they ultimately decide not to get married.

'cause they're like, well no, I'm not meeting with a mother-in-law or something like that. But it's just kind of like these, these, these cold negotiations about potential married life together and that would be okay.

Speaker: Melanie, I'm single. You're single. What do you say? We get married.

What's your offer? Single rich male seeks matrimony primary residence, Westchester County. Would you be open to considering a secondary residence in Manhattan? Central Park, west South. Done time Spent together

Speaker 2: eight hours, five days a week.

Speaker: Seven hours, 12 hours, weekends,

Speaker 2: 55 hours. Aggregate specifics to be determined later.

Speaker: I'm amenable to that. Children, 1, 3, 2, done. But one of 'em has to be a male.

Speaker 2: I'll see what I can do. Vacations.

Speaker: December. Hawaii.

Speaker 2: June. The vineyard.

Speaker: June. Fun. But Hawaii.

Speaker 2: Nope. The vineyard.

Speaker: Is that a deal breaker for you?

Speaker 2: I'm afraid so.

Speaker: Me too. Well, we gave it a shot.

Simone Collins: And I think that that exists. It's just completely unmoor. From this world of mostly casual sex among married, well, you know, I [00:55:00] married marriage well, I think this guy, he

Malcolm Collins: talked about his, his grandparents in Sicily and saying that's what he wants with signaling to her, Hey, let's have a real conversation about marriage or let's go about,

Simone Collins: yeah, but she doesn't want that.

So yeah, like there, there are clearly different markets. I think that the really tragic thing that happens to many young women in their twenties is they end up on this, this sexually, this casual sex market. Either because they've been told to just explore in their twenties as I was, but I just didn't.

Or because they, they don't realize and they think that this is just, these, and all, all dating markets for marriage and for just fun are all the same. So they're just on it and they get trapped in it.

Malcolm Collins: I think she wants the guy who she saw in romcoms growing up, she wants to manic pixie dream boy.

That's what Jay was simulating for her. But when Jay was simulating that for her, when these other guys have simulated that for her, that's not their real personality. It's something they're doing to get sex from her. I

Simone Collins: don't know. She seems to just be interested in the individual encounters. What confuses me is that she does [00:56:00] want more when she seems to be so keen on just the passionate sex.

So I'm, I'm confused. I feel like she just keeps ruining it when she could just be getting casual sex and if she filled her pipeline more. Like any, any normal guy who wants the same thing that she proposes to want, aside from this extra commitment, blah, blah blah, is, you know, I wanna, if, if I want to physically satisfy myself in a sexual way okay, great.

And, and where she gets frustrated is the guys are too anxious to come out or whatever, but like then you should have a backup r of guys that she can just text and be like you up and then they can meet up and have their resignation and it's great. So what confuses me is that she seems to really enjoy just the sex, and yet I don't even know if she wants the commitment.

She seems to enjoy complaining about the commitment and maybe thinks that it is important to do so, or else she'll come across as too va.

Malcolm Collins: And I think the framing of all of this around the [00:57:00] sex and the city, like this is what she knows, hanging out with a friend group who just sits around complaining about men.

Mm. Right. And so even if she's had a potentially good relationship with a man at the time, she, like the, the friend who was dating the lawyer and everything was going well, and she was like, I need to find something to be worried about. Right? Like, obviously things are going to go bad. Because that's the framing I have of what it means to be in a relationship with a man.

Whereas I didn't see this as a woman I dated, I did not have many, like actually negative relationships with women. And yeah. And she

Simone Collins: wants to see this as negative, I think. Yeah. Maybe it's part of the version of feminism that she subscribes to where of course these matter terrible. Of course this is the worst.

Yeah. So that, that could, that would make a lot more sense to me than. Whatever it is she, she says she's doing. Because she's not, she's so vague about what she even means by commitment. I mean, I don't think any reasonable person, and she's clearly educated. I don't like her writing style. 'cause I find it kind of hard to follow and understand.

She's trying [00:58:00] to be very like, floored and, and poetic. But yeah, I know.

Malcolm Collins: I, I understand. Not

Simone Collins: in a good way. I mean I, I, I can appreciate the good turn of phrase, but that just ain't it for me at least. And I, I think that, yeah, I, she, she's only saying these things that she logically knows are entitled and preposterous and impossible because she needs to have something that she can resent about men that she herself is just exploiting.

As much as they are maybe explaining. No, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: it's mutual exploitation. Yeah. That, that she is exploiting in a way that ultimately frustrates her. Like, I mean, well I don't,

Simone Collins: I don't know if those matter are exploiting her because I, the exploitation isn't in the sex, in the casual sex. 'cause that's mutually agreed to.

I think the exploitation is in the, the act of trouncing on these men's reputation mental health. Well, I, I think, think in

Malcolm Collins: demanding from them something that they've clearly signaled they're not interested in. Mm-hmm. This is as exploitative as the man who pushes past the sexual boundaries of women.

And then, yeah,

Simone Collins: [00:59:00] conversation at lunch. If this was a bunch of men talking about women, why don't they just get over it and have sex with like what? That you can't, well that's,

Malcolm Collins: and men really, by the way, adult men really do not talk about women this way, that frequently. I, I, I have never heard one of my friends in private ever talk about women this way.

I mean, it might be the guys, I'm Wiz guys might have done this in previous generation. I get the impression that like boomers in, in, maybe like in Trump's generation, people did that. It seems like

Simone Collins: a grabber by the posty kind of conversation. It's just so crazy that like, but that these are the women who put on pussy hats and yet they are having.

The grab him by the pussy situ like conversation. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. But I don't think men of my generation talk about women in these things.

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Locker room talk these days is about like video games not women.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That that is, I know like actually like all the women are in the other room thinking like, what is he talking

Simone Collins: about me?

What he saying about me?

Malcolm Collins: And they're like talking about, it's like video games and like War Hammer. Exactly. No, literally like I go see like [01:00:00] my brother and it's like pulls me aside. 'cause he knows he's not allowed to talk about video games in front of his wife. 'cause it annoys her because we talked too much about video games and she can't follow.

And so he is like, pulls me aside. He's like, Hey, have you played the new whatever? I know you're great. It's so great. Yeah. That's love you. I love you too. Thank you for not being this way, and thank you for saving me from this, this carousel of, of horribleness. And I think for a lot of guys, what you need to take away from this is if you think that women who are writing the quote unquote caught carousel or the quote unquote alpha widows, if you think that it is traditionally masculine men who you are losing to, it is not, it is men who play these roles for them but don't play these roles for them because the type of fish you catch with that lure is psycho like this.

Yeah. And

Simone Collins: these are, these are not women that I've encountered. I, well, no. I just like, I have not met women like this. That's why this is so weird to hear. So yeah. I [01:01:00] think you've made this point in other podcasts in the New York Times,

Malcolm Collins: it's been like some random, I know,

Simone Collins: but still Red pill men are like, why are women so terrible?

And it's because they're selecting for this really weird population and like, where are all the good women? Like. They're there. You've, you've just gone to like, you, you want bread and you've gone to a butcher shop and, and I don't know what to tell you, which means by

Malcolm Collins: this is that the tactics that you're using, like a lure catches a specific kind of fish or a specific kind of woman where they're going to

Simone Collins: the wrong marketplace.

I mean, the, the manic, the place where you go to look for women is going to influence the type of women that you get.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the manic, pixie dream girl, boy thing that catches one type of woman, the tough, dark triad frame thing that catches another type of women. Both of these types of women are trash.

You know, the, the I mean my thing was the whole intellectual, nerdy thing. It caught a really good, good group of women. Yeah. Allall need to go to

Simone Collins: more anime conventions to find women.

Malcolm Collins: They think the women I've dated, I, I really like them as people. Like I, I feel [01:02:00] like I had a lot of, no, they're people I've,

Simone Collins: I've yet to encounter stories of, or IRL meetings with ex-girlfriends of yours that.

I haven't found to be fantastic people who I wouldn't wanna be friends with. So yeah. All right. I love you dear Simone. Love you too. Gorgeous. The other link is ready to go, so I'll see when they. It could be a little brighter. I was just listening to a lecture on the life of Laura Ingles Wilder. She's the author of The Little House on the Prairie Books, which are, I mean, they're, they're not like 100% accurate. They're based on her memories of her childhood in like the mid 18 hundreds in homesteads, largely in, in, on the Prairie in the us.

And man, life is so much better now. It was rough. And I remember reading those books as a kid with my mom and just thinking about how romantic it all was. And I'm going back and I'm thinking about what she actually was living. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you. [01:03:00] Absolutely not. She had a little brother who died in infancy.

They, they lived in a, I I thought that this idea of living in a sad house at the time sounded so romantic and wonderful. But no, they're, they're living in a. In a dirt hole that, that is what a saw house said somehow, you know, her sister went blind. Oh, you know, just 'cause, you know, they thought it was scarlet fever, but it was probably some form of like cephalic, like, like her brain sw was swelled so much that she went blind.

Like, I just no know. This is not romantic. This is not, you don't want that. You don't. And we're so freaking lucky. I mean, I still like Marvel, the fact that we get to take warm water showers. I feel like everyone should live at least a month with either no running water or at least only cold showers. Like, I did that for a month in Mexico and it was, and I, I'm too OCD to not take a shower every day.

So I still had to do it even though it was like.

Malcolm Collins: [01:04:00] No, I've lived on boats a number of times. Oh yeah. Where I had to do that. That's not, and it's, it's worse on a boat because you're constantly covered in sea air and everything like that. Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins: You, you're so sticky and gross. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You're constantly sticky in growth and everything sticking together and ugh.

Well,

Simone Collins: and to think what it was like for families who crossed the Atlantic or any Oh yeah. None would've

Malcolm Collins: been able to take fresh water showers. No. Or any showers.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe you pull up a bucket of sea water, but I mean, probably not even that. My gosh. Duh. Yeah, just the luxury living. Like, I was just thinking too, everyone's like, oh, I mean, like, and now I'm almost on sourdough sourdough everything.

I was sourdough every day making all my sourdough, my sourdough starter. But like, okay. And I think a lot of people making them and their jams with their chickens and like, we're kind of getting in that direction. Right. But like most of their meals were just basically flavorless you, you know, like just the, this is not.

I love fresh homemade, you know, scratch simple [01:05:00] ingredient meals, but I love that tonight I'm making you fu I love that, that we have gochujang paste or sauce, like in our refrigerator. Like we live such luxurious lives. Oh no, I

Malcolm Collins: can't even, yeah. And the, the perfect sycophantic assistance to tell us everything we wanna hear about ourselves in the form of ai.

Right,

Simone Collins: right. Like our, our primary I, that's like the gout of our times, right? Like before it is

Malcolm Collins: actually, it is the gout of our times. Like Uhhuh Doubt came because like, they got sugar for the first time and they were just like all, you're like too much

Simone Collins: fat and salt or something.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway I will get started here.

Let's do it. I'm excited. You're, you're my palate

Simone Collins: cleanser of the day after all the nonsense.

Malcolm Collins: You, it is funny. I've been reading more. I'm so addicted to romance, novel romance mangas, by the way. They're clearly made for women. I got into, because I read that first one 'cause we were doing the Omega verse episode, and I was like, are there any omega verses that a man might like?

And then I found one that was only women. And so I was like, okay, this might be interesting. [01:06:00] But then after that, because it was a villainous one, you know, somebody waking up in the body of a villainist, I just started going into the villain scenario is case, which were often like female romances.

And I realized why I like them today. Okay. Why so much. It's, it's because I really like, as you know, from like me watching shows where the protagonist is like a genuinely cruel villain,

Simone Collins: 100%.

Malcolm Collins: That is my jam. And the thing is, is that when people write books for male audiences, where the males supposed to imagine themselves as a protagonist, they always put too many, like qualifiers in for them actually being like good people.

But when it's about the woman supposed to be desiring the protagonist, they really don't mind leaning hard on dark triad traits. Oh, of course. Of course. Right? And so, and so, they're much more villainous. And, and I'm just like, yeah, you go. [01:07:00] And, and always, or very frequently, the logic behind their quote unquote, like ruthless actions is just, it's the most logical and efficient outcome, which means they're making stupid choices less, which I love.

Like if somebody annoys them in court, they're just like, kill them. Like, what? I don't wanna risk this.

Simone Collins: Very fun. That is, that is really funny.

Malcolm Collins: Right. You there? Women, women liking b******s. It does me a, a solid and people will know this 'cause I do. Its okay. Scenarios with ai. I'm gonna begin publishing some new ones soon that are really, really good because we've got our own AI system working on like the internal server as well enough.

That'll eventually be on our FB AI that I can create good stories with it potentially better than the original one I was making. But anyway those are available at Patreon followers and we do them in audiobook.

Speaker 3: Okay, what are you doing?[01:08:00]

You're gonna do it.

Speaker 5: Titan jump my knee

Speaker 7: Titan. Show me what you're holding this.

It's a pregnant woman, towers man. Here we go.

Get this out.

In this episode, we delve deep into the concept of love, challenging the traditional and culturally popularized ideas surrounding romantic love. We argue that what is often labeled as 'love' is actually a bundle of separate emotions such as admiration, attachment, arousal, and fondness, and not a single profound, unique emotion. By exploring various scientific, genetic, historical, and cross-cultural perspectives, we aim to demystify and deconstruct the concept of love. We discuss the biological markers and chemical reactions associated with love, the societal constructs that influence our understanding of it, and how different cultures historically viewed relationships and love. Join us as we debunk long-held beliefs and provide a fresh, rational take on love and marriage.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, I'm excited to be here with you today. If you read this title and you're familiar with the way we do title cards, you probably think that this is some sort of bait and switch.

It is not a bait and switch.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: This is, this is with the, the, the core point I'm gonna be arguing in this episode. Is that some groups may feel love, but I suspect for the vast majority of humans at, at least given myself and with my wife, you know, I, I came to her the other day and I was like, I wasn't sure if you were gonna be mad at me.

'cause I, we always end this show. I was like, I love you and everything like that. And I was like, Simone, I'm gonna be honest. I don't feel some separate distinct emotion that I can categorize as love like, and, and I think that what's really cool is if love is a myth. Yeah. Most people don't feel that they can say that.

They can go out and say, Hey, this is a myth. Yeah. 'cause either they're not in a deep, you know, satisfying relationship. Mm-hmm. So they're in this position where people will just be like, oh, well you haven't found love yet.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Or they are in [00:01:00] a deep, satisfying relationship and people will say.

Wait, does that mean that you don't really care about your wife? Does that mean you don't, you know, it, it disconfirms being the person, the whistleblower on love to, to beat all these people. Like, Hey, I'm not sure this is a real thing and we're gonna be going through the receipts on it. Yeah. Is quite a costly thing to do unless you're in an incredibly secure position with your relationship.

And so people know us, they know that. I literally have no negative thoughts about my wife anymore. Like there are times in a relationship where like, I had like minor beast with you about this or that. I drive you a

Simone Collins: little nuts on some fronts. I don't

Malcolm Collins: even have minor beasts. The, the, the primary emotion that I feel towards you, like if I was going to categorize the primary emotions that I feel towards you is admiration.

And a sense of debt for everything that you've invested in our family and aligned future.

Simone Collins: Oh, same dude.

Malcolm Collins: And I have other feelings. I have a [00:02:00] feeling of attachment. I have a feeling of fondness. I have a feeling of sadness when you're not around or like a desire to be with you again. That's sort of like an addiction.

I have arousal from you. I think that you're a very attractive woman. But dude, I can name all of those things. Yeah. These are all separate and

Simone Collins: distinct things

Malcolm Collins: and, and, and I don't feel something other than these things that have a very commonly known name. And so I think that me coming out here and saying this is saying something that is sort of like.

And I, I will note, I do think that quote unquote love is a real thing. But what I mean by that is I think that what we are calling love is a bundle of other emotions that have easily nameable names. Yeah. It's either new relationship energy is often mistaken for love when you're starting to date.

For people who don't know, this is common in like the polyamory community. Mm-hmm. In it sets. Special feeling you get when you're dating someone you're excited about. Yeah. That [00:03:00] dies down your chest

Simone Collins: in your belly. The tingly.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, the tingly. But, but new relationship energy is obviously not love.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: People call it love early when, when somebody says like, do you love me or do you not love me? They're typically asking like, how much new relationship energy do you have for me?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The second thing that has often caused a love, and this is in relation to children, right? Is and by the way, when I say like.

This is what people are calling love, like this bundle of emotions. This is why when I tell my wife I love her at the end of every episode, I'm not lying to her. I am, I am telling her I have this emotional set that other people are calling love. But with children, I think what is often called love is a bundle of emotions, but predominantly the emotion.

The psychologists call attachment. And in psychology especially child development attachment is treated as a unique emotional state. A child does not just like their caregiver, they feel a deep existential distress when separated, insecurity when near except for our kids. And that defines attachment distress when separated.

[00:04:00] Security went near. But that's not love that nobody would say, oh, but it means our children

Simone Collins: don't love us, Malcolm, I swear to you.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. I, I mean, I don't think they do.

But I think a lot of people, they may hear this. And they'll think this is really a semantic argument, right? You're being like, well, you have these emotional states, but they're not. And I'm like, actually, not only is it not a semantic argument, it's a very big deal that this misconception has had.

And it's a very big deal because a lot of people, like if you look in at the, the sort of normal western relationship development, there is the moment when the partner says, I love you. Right? And so somebody could be like, well, you know. You're saying that, you know, loveness loving is really just , a word that means fondness and attachment and arousal maybe, right?

Mm-hmm. And it's like, well, if that is actually what everyone else means when they're saying the word love, then why do we have this ritual in relationships where people who otherwise like each other in all other formats like two [00:05:00] people will be dating for a long time, like years sometimes, and one of them won't say, I love you to the other one.

And it's supposed to be this like big step in the relationship when they say, I love you to them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And the other partner says.

Malcolm Collins: Thanks. Yeah. Or, or I love you too, or whatever, right? But, but suppose they say this and, and what love really means in our society is just fondness, arousal, and attachment.

Right. And maybe respect in, in most of the instances in which I've seen, a person doesn't say, I love you in a relationship, and it's like a big deal within our media or something like that. They have all of those emotions.

So clearly it's explicitly sort of demonstrated to people that this word means something in addition to those things. Well, and I think it causes

Simone Collins: conflict. Like I think one of the reasons why people don't immediately say I love you too, is because they think that there's some social contract that's being initiated when one partner says, I love you.

But they're really not sure what that means. Like, okay, does this mean that you expect me to propose in four months? 'cause for some people that kind of does, and I [00:06:00] remember. Also feeling this way because your family, you, you grew up using, I love you as a way to end a conversation. And I think you might've learned that from your mom.

And your mom has, like other people in her family had started to adopt it and then they would start ending calls with, I love you and I as like the daughter-in-law who wasn't. Like, I, I didn't know if I should say I love you too. So like I know that feeling. I think a lot of people can really identify with that feeling of like, oh God, like what am I into now?

Like,

Malcolm Collins: I

think so, no, but the point here being is think about the damage this could cause to a young person's relationship. Ugh. They're dating somebody. Girls,

Simone Collins: girls have brought, I mean, this sounds like the kind of thing she'd post to Reddit. You know, should I break up with my boyfriend because he refuses to say he loves me too.

Well, course's, just

Malcolm Collins: trying to be honest. Yeah. He's like, I don't feel some new emotion that is materially different from the way I felt about you up until now. Yeah, like from day

Simone Collins: one.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So what, what [00:07:00] do you mean? Like, yeah. And then there's this, this, this secondary issue, which is so the person who's trying to be fastidiously honest ends up never saying it and hurting somebody else, right?

Mm-hmm.

Or. They eventually break like most people do in our society, and then just say it. And then they believe that they're lying to their partner and they're living a lie. Yeah, that's not good. I wanna start a relationship on that, right? Like, this is not a small thing. If it turns out that this is not an, an other emotion.

And it's not a particularly profound, like really, really loud emotion and I should say. We are in a uniquely good spot to talk about this. Not just 'cause we're in a solid relationship but also because we tick all of the boxes that people say break love. Like I was the first person you slept with.

You know, I was the first person you'd seriously hooked up with. I was the first person, right? Like, all of these things which are tied to like these bonding chemicals in women, like the oxytocin and everything like that. Mm-hmm. Which create attachment you have been [00:08:00] exposed to. Right. It's, it.

It's not just the quality of our relationship, it's, it's literally check every single box.

Simone Collins: It should produce the, what people say is pure love. So you're saying some people would argue that the problem many people don't experience love is that they've had too many partners or something like that, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. They'll say. And we do know this lower the amount of oxytocin, which causes the collection of emotions that people call love this sort of attachment. Which, which we have, but it's not like a super profound emotion. It's like, I miss you when we don't talk, but it's not like all of a sudden along with that, missing you.

Some other emotion that felt really awesome came up and hit me as well. There's some

Simone Collins: weird, like poetic longing. There just seems to be this poetic element to the this that I just don't.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

And note here if it is a real emotion and all I have found is just by coincidence, neither my wife or I feel it. , What this means is that there are specific individuals out there who can be perfectly happy. In fact, my marriage is better than I ever could [00:09:00] have. , A imagined, a marriage.

Being, , who can have perfectly happy and satisfying relationships without this extra emotion being a part of it, and that nothing will ever trigger this emotion in some people. If it is true that other people are having this emotion and we're just anomalies, which is another important thing to note.

Malcolm Collins: And I, I, I want to demystify this concept because what love has become was in our civilization is the, basically it just means emotions that are above reproach.

And so people will say things like, Lex Friedman will come in and be like, but what about love, Mr. All of his degrees are from Drexel. I will never stop mentioning that. My God, welcome. He, he is not an MIT professor. He taught my

Simone Collins: podcast. RIP Your chance of ever being on his podcast. Hey,

Malcolm Collins: look, he, he didn't let me online.

He didn't get back to me. This is his fault. You know, he, he also, I don't like when people like are pur purposely going out there and basically defrauding people like through the reputational fraud. You know, if you're not smart, just [00:10:00] admit you're not that bright. Okay. That's funny. Well, you can

Simone Collins: be bright and go to Drexel.

But Right. Being misleading, I mean, it, it implies a level of insecurity or just like, I don't know, whatever. But

Malcolm Collins: anyway the, the the, the people like him, sorry Simone. You can't be smart and ever respond to somebody. What about love? That's like the ultimate basic be take. Yeah. But true,

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: guess.

That is, I have never heard anything more basic.

Speaker: You refer to your friends as your boys. You love bacon so much that you ruin it for everyone else.

And your preferred topic of conversation is how much you drank last night. Four beers, two shots of Jack, one Red Bull buck. This is very serious, Gerald. Very seriously basic. The good news is we caught your basicness early. If you can wean yourself off the guy's only poker nights and stop referring to your basement as your man cave. You might be able to salvage a personality.[00:11:00]

Speaker 2: Uh, actually I haven't. I haven't told you everything. I've noticed a strange feeling like this area. I think I have a crutch on Emma Watson. Oh my God. That's basic.

He is trans smart. He is someone who identifies this smart. Um, and therefore we need to affirm that identity. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I, here's the thing

Simone Collins: though, and like to, to your point about being afraid of, of being a whistleblower on the scam of love I, I think that a really big issue at play here is that. We have, there are people, and we have friends who are like this too.

Like, you know, we have our model of friendship and we believe there are only three types of friends. There are convenience friends who are like neighbors and colleagues who you're only friends with because they're literally there and convenient. There are character reinforcing friends who are literally the supporting character that you need to prove yourself, that you are the character you want to be.

And then there are utility friends who provide useful information or connections, or they have the best video game content. And, and they are useful to you and so therefore you're friends with them. [00:12:00] And we have some friends who are like, but what about the people who you just love for their own inherent value?

And who, like, we have people who say that to me, multiple different people. I think where we are with that is there's a lot of people who see themselves, like they, they. They see themselves as loving and, and that they respect humans and that they, they literally could not reconcile what you're saying about love because it would break their sense of self.

So I don't think it's necessarily a sign of stupidity. I think it could also be a flaw in their character design and that they're like, literally, they would have to admit that a huge part of their identity is just. Of sort of performative life? Fraudulent.

Malcolm Collins: Fraudulent? No, I think that people who base a lot of their character identity, and I will say that there is an emotion that is misidentified as love.

Mm-hmm. That can exist towards like the world as a whole or society as a whole. There God or any. Yes. It, it, it's [00:13:00] an emotion that is generated when you think about something that is complicated and not fully knowable. That gives you a sense of comfort. And that is, is also like not fully grable in the moment.

Mm-hmm. Like the all of reality, like when you think about the true nature of the cosmos and, and how big it is or the, the true time links of all of your ancestors and everything they went through, or God itself, right. Or himself. Sorry. I don't wanna be somebody who implies that God is a. Genderless.

You get this, this, this feeling that people call a a form of love, and I'm like, yeah, but this is clearly not what we're talking about when we're talking about like romantic love, right? Like. This is obviously some other and, and quite a trite and easy to trigger emotion. You, you can trigger it whenever you think about something that is vast and gives you a sense of security.

And, and that is complex slightly more complex in your understanding. So it's a feeling you might get when you like, contemplate the [00:14:00] nature of the Trinity. 'cause the Trinity is intrinsically not understandable. And so you'll get this feeling

mm-hmm. Or

contemplate the nature of you know, consciousness or.

Or all of humanity or the Gaia like Earth and all of the biomes that are, make it up. But this is obviously not what we mean when we're talking about love as like this magical thing that bonds you to somebody. It's, it's clearly this like easily triggerable and hackable emotional state that isn't magic or anything like that.

So what I wanna do is I wanna go through. One, the science around this, what creates love? Ooh.

Okay. I wanna

go through because some people are born with different genetics that cause them to express emotions like lust in love differently. That's interesting. Yeah. Just

Simone Collins: tell like. Some people taste the bitterness in broccoli and other people literally can't.

And you can see if you have that gene. Yeah, I don't, yeah, it would make sense. Love would be experienced differently too. Of course.

Malcolm Collins: We're gonna go through the history of this and I'm gonna show you that the concept of love as we understand it today is something different from. [00:15:00] Arousal or attachment or fondness started very specifically and easily traceable to the court culture of courtly love to the culture of chivalry.

This was a culture that was if you go to books of this time period. They were written by either horny, troubadour, or celibate monks very frequently by celibate monks. Yeah, they were, no, they were basically the Intels of the time writing stories about romancing some woman. That's great. That's great.

And, and the problem is, is that because they were godly men and stuff like that, they couldn't say. I have this hole in my life and this hole is lust and attachment and the desire to possess someone. And and so I. I'm going to define the emotion that I feel for them as above reproach, and I am going to call this, this new emotional state love.

And what we will see, because I'm gonna go through this, is that [00:16:00] actually this isn't a common concept cross-culturally and where it is seen cross-culturally, it's usually seen as a negative emotion.

Simone Collins: Ooh, okay. The

Malcolm Collins: idea that you would. Feel an attachment to somebody outside of like the best interest of both of your families is seen as a negative emotion.

And while there have been studies, and I'll go over these studies that say that like 88% of cultures have some concept of love, if you look at how they're defining love, they'll say it's like a fondness. Like I'd be sad if they died. I'd be sad if they were away from me. Bro, I feel that way for my wife.

Right. And I'm admitting that I don't have this separate other emotion. So clearly those aren't what love is. Yeah. What love is is this secondary overwhelming and clearly distinct emotion that we have made up in Western culture and, and very strangely, it's become like this weird thing in relationships.

Like they haven't said they love me yet. Like it's this weird Oh yeah. It's this weird performative

Simone Collins: thing of when do you say I love you, and do they say, I love you back right away.

Malcolm Collins: I am [00:17:00] putting this on the table, you know? Yeah. It, it, it's like this weird emotional thing. And we might get a chance, I don't know how much time we're gonna have in this to go over some other emotions that I think are mostly made up.

Ooh. Two of which I think are jealousy. I think jealousy is mostly made up.

No.

What have you ever felt, I'm not talking about like your partner sleeping with somebody else, but have you ever felt distinct? You, you may have felt like this person unjustly has a lot of stuff that I wish I had. No, no.

Simone Collins: That's you're describing envy. Jealousy is when you're trying to protect a thing that you think someone else is gonna try to take from you. Like a jealous lover. No, it's not. Yeah. Envy is when you want something. You don't have jealousy. No.

Malcolm Collins: Jealousy is when you want something that somebody else has.

Simone Collins: No, that's envy

Malcolm Collins: and and it makes you dislike them as a result of this.

That's

Simone Collins: envy.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, well I'll let you AI this while I keep going, Simone. Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm. Oh, did the AI not [00:18:00] agree with you? Oh, hold on. You go Princess. Are you trying, are you trying to get it to agree with you now because it didn't agree with you.

Simone Collins: Jealousy is wanting what someone else has envious this told you I'm wrong. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Told you. So, but, but no, but jealousy has a secondary implication, which is not just you want what somebody else has, but this wanting makes you like.

Dislike them or angry at them. Mm-hmm. And I think that that's just like a social construct that we that's just you

Simone Collins: choosing to be a jerk

Malcolm Collins: if you're jealous. Yeah. It's like you choosing to be petty and a jerk. And I think you could just choose to not be jealous. Yeah. Not hard to like understand. The

Simone Collins: world's not fair.

Malcolm Collins: The other one I might talk about is, is forgiveness. I don't think forgiveness is a real concept either. I'm with

Simone Collins: you on that.

Malcolm Collins: Either like, like nothing changes in the moment. I'm j I'm just like, oh, I'm choosing to not hold this against you anymore. But that's just like a choice. It's not like an emotion or a

Yeah.

But anyway, to keep going here, because I wanna go into the [00:19:00] ancient Greeks because people will be like, well, the ancient Greeks had this concept.

Okay.

Okay. The linguistic evidence is particularly compelling. Many languages don't have a single word that maps onto the English love. Which they would if this was a widespread human emotion.

Ancient Greece has multiple words, which I think is more honest about what it is. 'cause remember I said I think that this is multiple distinct emotions that have other words. Yeah. Aeros desire. Okay. Or what we would call lust.

Yeah.

Ilia. We, we would call friendship storge, what we would call familial affection.

Certainly not love. Agape which is universal compassion. This is the agape. Remember I said that this is this emotion? Oh yeah. Like, I love the world things.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That sort of baba yet too feeling. Exactly, exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Suggesting they saw these as fundamentally different experiences.

And note here, to me, this is pretty strong evidence that a lot of humans don't feel this emotion if the entire Greek civilization was able to get by without anyone thinking this emotion needed a name. And them being able to have debates where they [00:20:00] clearly talk about, and we'll go into these debates later, , marriage and the way I feel for my wife while describing something very different than what the modern concept of love is.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll go into Plato's Symposium because in that they, they talk about what, what is this emotion that you feel or this bundle of emotions that you feel.

You know, when you're, you're married to somebody and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Mm-hmm. And so, it basically had different speeches that gave different iterations on what this may be, and I think that they're pretty good at describing it. Posse's speech, he explicitly divides arrows into vulgar.

So this is the concept of lust, right? Okay. Into a vulgar, tied to physical arousal and body gratification, often indiscriminate. Yeah. And heavenly, a virtuous intellectual bond between partners focused on character and wisdom. Rather than just desire, affection. Oh, I

Simone Collins: guess sapiosexual.

Malcolm Collins: Well, not even sapiosexual.

I mean, I think that would describe our relationship, right? Like an intellectual bond between partners focused on character and [00:21:00] wisdom rather than desire or affection. Totally. But I don't think that that's this distinct, magical emotion. It's, it's, it's more like. Admiration is the closest word I, I have to it.

And I think that it is a form of admiration. Mm-hmm. This distinguishes between love as a moral elevated state and not merely luft or, or fondness. Heavenly love inspires self-improvement in the beloved beyond attachment, which we've always talked about in our relationship is self-improvement as a core goal.

And I would say that this, this heavenly form of the vulgar or, or of, of, of aeros is. Not even in the category that most people consider love, even though I would consider it to be the highest form of an emotional attachment. Yeah. You even

Simone Collins: had an ex-girlfriend who left you because she felt like you primarily loved her for the intellectual engagement you had.

Yes. And she wanted you to like. Vulgarly lust after her.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She's like, you, you, you always call me beautiful and whatever. Actually, this is two different girls who had one broke up with me of [00:22:00] this. The other had issues. One just been like, you only liked me for my brain. And I was like, yeah, the nerve, the nerve I mean, you're hot, but like, I primarily like you because of your intellect.

And this other guy liked her for her body, I guess. And good for her. I, I'm sure anyone who saw what's, what's happened in my life would probably prefer to be married to me. But, i'm glad that that worked out for her. She broke up with the guy shortly after, by the way, so it didn't, didn't even, this isn't college freshman, sophomore year of college for no.

Freshman year of college. And then the next one, by the way, securing a good girlfriend freshman year of college. That's hard. 'Cause that's when you Yeah, I, I don't

Simone Collins: dunno if I'd want my kids to settle down with their freshman love.

Malcolm Collins: My brother did. That's who he married.

Simone Collins: That's true actually. Okay.

Nevermind. I stand correctly there. Solid freshman

Malcolm Collins: in college. Yeah. Yeah. Then the, the second one this was the one who was at our wedding as a, a groomsman actually. This person didn't transition or anything, it's just that she was my friend. And so we had her in a suit and everything and I consider her very [00:23:00] close friend.

But anyway, so she she one day got mad at me 'cause she goes, you always tell me hot and. What was it? No, it was beautiful. She's like, you always call me beautiful. And you never call me like hot or sexy or anything like that. And I, I, I feel like no one ever sees me that way. And like, actually, if you've seen her, you get it.

I don't know if you like, know the difference between like beautiful and hot and sexy. But she definitely is like beautiful above all else. Well, that's,

Simone Collins: so the problem is she's extremely classy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And there's, there's a level of class at which you just can't. Sexualize someone.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she's at that level of class where it's very hard to sexualize.

She was Daisy Buchanan level of class. Like Daisy Buchanan isn't sexy ever. Right? Yeah. Like, oh, I mean,

Simone Collins: and like, not to say that she isn't sexy, but like, you won't sexualize her because she, you're too busy admiring the beauty. Like yeah, there's something, there's something very, like if you're trying to like max up the sexuality, [00:24:00] dial on someone.

There is kind of this trashiness thing that you also, like, there's, you have, you have to put in trashy points. Yeah. Like, you can't be maximum sexy if you're not also a little trashy. Agree, agree. Also, you know what? I think part of it is that, and you can see this in a lot of erotic material that men watch.

A, a big part of being sexy is like really enthusiastic. Like, I need you like, I'm so excited to suck on your, you know what and a classy woman. Is a little bit too aloof for that kind of

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That

Simone Collins: element of being sexy. And so they can't be 100% sexy because that's like a good, at least 30 plus percent of what sexiness is in a woman, I think.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, to continue, aristo Fame's speech. So this is the next one. In the the Plato thing, love is mythologized as a deep existential longing for one's other half after humans were split by Zeus portraying it as a drive for wholeness. In union that causes emotional [00:25:00] turmoil, but isn't just arousal, it's not always sexual or attachment.

It's obsessive and incomplete without the partner. This frames love as a unique psychological state, a binding of partners separate from casual fondness. And I would say that again, this is an accurate thing that I feel for my wife. But I do not think that this is a love that other people are talking about.

No, this desire to be a single entity. And we often talk about this where if you look at other people where like they. See marriage as like a combining of two individuals. And we don't like, like when, I mean like two people who stay individuals. I see the primary unit of self as the family. Yeah. Secondary unit of self is me plus my wife.

Tetra unit of self is me as an individual entity for sure. But this is a recontextualization of what it means to be me. And what is the most important instance of me was in reality, I am a, a, a cell was in an organism that I exist to serve. Yeah. And the cells doesn't matter [00:26:00] exactly. But that's not love.

That's just a recontextualization of identity that's healthy to happen after marriage. And then you have later Aristotle three 50 BCE in Nyman and Essex. He differentiates Elia, a form of love akin to deep friendship, into types, utility based, practical attachment, pleasure based arousal, fondness, and virtue based, the highest mutual and reciprocal fostering.

Moral growth. Hmm. Which again, we talk about as like in a Pygmalion relationship or something like that in our, in our book, but that's not what other people are talking about when they're talking about love. They don't, in fact. Our modern culture is antithetical in its conception of love, to love applying to moral growth.

Because the most common thing that you hear within our modern culture is, I hope you love me as I am. I want somebody who loves me as I am without growth. If it implied moral growth, it wouldn't be an as I am phenomenon. Yeah. Whereas with us, actually when we got married, [00:27:00] we didn't even promise to love each other.

'cause I was like, I can't control my emotions. Not all. And we

Simone Collins: explicitly said as much in our.

Malcolm Collins: Wedding vows. Wedding vows. But I said that I will push you to improve every day, and I, I know that you care about me because you push me to improve every day. Which is, I think a very different thing from modern, if we were gonna recontextualize love as being with somebody who pushes you to morally improve every day and improve yourself every day.

I'm like, oh yeah, I can get behind. Like, like, that's a real emotion I have towards my life. 100%. Yeah. That's not what other people, that's not what Lex Friedman is talking about when he goes, what about love? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He's talking

Malcolm Collins: about an emotion that is defined by its ir, approachability and sacredness, and the fact when people are like, God is love.

And, and,

And note for those who want to say that this argument is just semantics, and we're just using different definitions here, we are absolutely not individuals when they say something like. But what about love? They're clearly not talking about these fairly trivial emotional states. , Like attachment, like just feeling, you know, irritated when you're not around someone or something like [00:28:00] that.

They are talking about some alternate emotional state, which feels near transcendent and is irreproachable, and we are saying that emotional state does not exist, at least as an output from , relationships.

well, no, I, I almost

Simone Collins: feel like it's kind of, it's, it's downstream of this chivalric love fantasy that was created in. In, in, in Cell Monk fan fiction basically that no, it is that like never really existed and that it, it implies this like poetic performativeness of like, oh my, my darling love and I, you know, this pining and like all this weird stuff that isn't, is neither productive nor realistic.

And it was literally by people who lived. In, in single gender environments with

Malcolm Collins: no,

Simone Collins: no interaction,

Malcolm Collins: no relation. And then you've got vid. So who, who then tackles this subject? This is in, in Rome, so 48. Okay. Three B, c, e to 17 C. [00:29:00] And Roman literature, like AM Maura, R is am love is depicted as chaotic, obsessive emotion involving jealousy, pursuit, and emotional turmoil.

Often satirized as a disease or an artful game is distinct from pure lust, which he treats separately as carnal or fondness, casual liking. Mm-hmm. Emphasizing psychological manipulation and longing that binds lovers in dramatic, sometimes tragic ways. This is, I think, closest to the modern concept of love.

We've just removed any implication that it could have these negative effects. Where it's like, oh, well yes, love is this thing that causes you to act. Jealous. IE like overly protective of an individual. This is a modern concept, right? Or gives you the right to act that way, you know what I mean?

Like, again, I don't believe jealousy, the thing. I think it's a social contracts of a set of rights that you believe that you have. And no, when I say I don't believe jealousy is this thing. We'll get to this. If we get to this that this, not to say that you do not feel something when your partner sleeps with someone other than you, but this [00:30:00] is an evolved state that is not n.

What people mean when they say jealousy. It's more like a sense of disgust and anger that is like, obviously useful from like a reproductive capacity perspective. But this sort of like, I. Manipulative iteration of love is, I think, closer to what the modern person means when they say love. And most other cultures saw it as as quite negative.

I will note that before courtly love, you get some sort of like prototypical. Ideas of this modern concept of love from early Christian thinkers. So, you've got St. Paul in 50 to 60 ce in letters like Corinthia Law one Corinthians one Agape is unconditional sacrificial love, ig patient kind and not envious, modeled in Christ's self-giving.

Which I think is sort of this proto love. It's like, whatever. Whatever Christ felt towards humanity is this emotion that we're gonna define as love.

Simone Collins: But it sounds [00:31:00] more like maybe what a parent too would, would feel for their child.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. So it works well, but it's more like if, if you just look at, it's.

More just self-sacrifice. Mm-hmm. Like, I don't think that that's something different than self-sacrifice for something that you either for ideological reasons or for attachment reasons, feel attached to. Right. Then you have St. Augustine and 400 ce he emerges aeros and agape into carteris, a yearning for God.

As the ultimate good, but applies it to human bonds is a pass to eternal fulfillment. It's portrayed as restless, ascending desire. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Separate from capitus worldly lust for fondness or transient emphasizing a spiritual union over physical or habitual.

And note here the words that he's mo. Mixing here, or agape, which is like, that word I said is like, love for like the universe or love for like, remember I talked about like that word that you feel when you're dealing with like these complicated [00:32:00] concepts Yeah. With arrows, which means lust. So he is saying weird.

Weird.

Simone Collins: It's like, I wanna, I wanna mind.

Malcolm Collins: F God, screw you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think that

Malcolm Collins: some I'll, I'll put here the scene from South Park, which is I want to get down on my knees and start pleasing Jesus.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Okay.

Speaker 4: I wanna get down on my knees and start please Jesus. I wanna feel his salvation all over my face. The CD is filled with instant classics. Who doesn't remember the body? Christ. Everybody up, body up I my own.

Simone Collins: Oh, there you go. Okay. Which

Malcolm Collins: is kind of, by the way, I don't know if you know this, but when Matt and Trey Parker wrote these, they had actually planned under a pseudonym before this to attempt to create a Christian rock band that became popular.

But they wanted all the songs to be of this category of song, right. It sounded like the first thing was actually like in love with God. Yeah. Or Jesus. Um mm-hmm. And, and, and they were like, we wanted [00:33:00] to see how long we could stay on recovery. Why didn't they, they decided it was too much work. And I'm like, this is so sad that that didn't happen in our timeline.

That is really sad. That's Stone and Trey Parker take over the Christian r scene with songs about Damn. Pleasing Jesus. I wanna, I wanna get done on my knees and start pleasing Jesus. I wanna feel his salvation all over my face.

Simone Collins: Oh, lost opportunity,

Malcolm Collins: lost opportunity to be in that timeline. But now here, you people will be like, well, you see it in some other places, and just courtly love, like what about Muslim writings?

And this I think is really interesting because I think he does a good job of breaking down the way people actually feel about their partners versus this magical love emotion, which is proposed. And some people probably feel pretty. Insecure about not feeling because they don't realize that everyone else is just pretending.

And we're trying to break the, this is gonna come back to haunt us. Some article's are gonna be like, they don't even love each other. And I'm gonna be like, Hey, we, whatever you guys are calling [00:34:00] love. We're just honest and secure enough in our relationship to be like, pull. Everyone else is just diluting themselves shenanigans.

This isn't real. That guy when he says, I love you, he's just waiting as long as he can to decide when he needs to say that to get to f you or whatever. Right? Yeah. Like, or to continue the length of the relationship. Yeah. To, to, to basically ef face himself by our cultural standards. But he probably doesn't feel some new emotional state towards you.

Simone Collins: No. No. And well, the funny thing though is I feel like there's this tacit understanding. That that's true. It's just people are really uncomfortable admitting that. 'cause I think people think they'll be branded as a sociopath or unfeeling or unkind if they do that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so this is written in Southern 22 ce.

The Ring of the Dove. The Arabic treaties systematically describes romantic love ishka as a psychological and emotional process with stages. And I think this is accurate as well, right? Like it's not a a, a [00:35:00] distinct emotion, it's a set of emotions that come on in stages that have other names.

Mm-hmm.

Specifically attraction, obsession, jealousy, sleeplessness, and even chased devotion or unrequited suffering. Ivan Harms drawing from personal experiences like his in situation was a maid note, by the way, here. He got this for a maid that he was infatuated with. It is not what we would call love.

Right.

Okay.

Portrays it as a noble soul binding of fiction that can be pure and elevating, not just lust, which he separates at the base and again, or fondness. Casual affection. And note here, what you often see when people have love is they have lust in new relationship energy. For an individual who they know they're not supposed to be with.

And so they then rebranded as something above the approach.

Okay.

For example, very

convenient.

He discusses love signs like gazing and secrecy, framing it as a distant [00:36:00] malady of the heart that unites lovers spiritually, even if Unconsummated. And some scholars have seen this as a progenitor to the courtly love concept.

So, European literature did create its idealized, almost spiritual concept of romantic love that was quite different from earlier views of marriage, primarily as an economic and social arrangement from an but. I will note here, this is the biggest pullback on all of this. It is actually kind of weird that evolution didn't build a love emotion that it seemed to just grab a number of other emotions and tie them together.

And so we'll, like you

Simone Collins: say in all our books, evolution's a lazy programmer. Whatcha gonna do? Oh,

Malcolm Collins: she's a lazy programmer. Just takes what's already there.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, a combination of emotion that drives the American Psychological Association defines love as a quote unquote, complex emotion involving affection, tenderness, attachment, and sometimes arousal researchers like Carol [00:37:00] Izard.

So right now, I'm just going over with the various, like scientific fields say on this. Have noted that love can be joy combined with interest in another person. Note again, this, this is what the scientists who study this say, none of these are what our pop culture would say as love. No, we define

it

as this other magical emotion that like you'll know it when you feel it, right?

I mean, these people are like, no, it's just joy with fondness, right? And it's like, okay, well clearly I have that for my wife. Yeah. But I don't have this other magical emotion that warrants people. Like let's Freeman saying, but what about,

Simone Collins: but again, when you, when you express any doubt around it, you are completely pill.

Like there's this famous interview between. A journalist and the newly married, or maybe engaged Prince Charles and Princess Diana where they're like, oh, are you in love? And she immediately says Yes. And he's like, whatever that means, whatever that means.

Prince Charles: And I suppose in love, of course, [00:38:00] whatever in love means too,

Simone Collins: Which is so honest. It's so true. And yet he just like, he will never live that down.

Never.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Because everyone's like, oh, this, oh, he doesn't have the, but he's, yeah. Oh, he doesn't

Simone Collins: love her very. He was the first

Malcolm Collins: whistleblower in the world of love. Yes, yes, yes. Never forget. Yes. So Helen Fisher's work frames romantic love, but not as an emotion at all, but as a motivational state overlapping with systems for lust attraction.

And attachment which again is not what other people call love. Yeah.

And

then review by Adam Bode, and, gosh, Krishna echoes this calling romantic love, a suite of adaptations, including cognitive, emotional and behavioral elements for made choice bonding rather than a singular feeling. Ru row. But let's go into the neuroscientific backing.

Okay. Brain scan, show love activating multiple systems or war dopamine [00:39:00] for a high. This is like what you get from drugs like heroin, attachment, oxytocin for bonding. This is the attachment system. And even obsession, which again addiction. So what people are describing here is a combination of an addiction system and attraction system.

Sorry, an attachment system. But not a unique love center. . , One of the most cited studies here if a 1992 paper that showed love appearing at approximately 88.5% of cultures created by the anthropologist, William Je and Edward Fisher examined theologies of these cultures.

Mm.

But what did they, what did they. Call love. Like how did they determine whether or not these cultures had love? Yeah. Well, did they have songs about passionate longing? Did they have songs about unrequited love defined as one person wanting another partner?

Mm-hmm.

Or did they have f**k folk tales of lo lovers eloping?

Again, that's not love as we mean it today, or evidence of that. No, no. Or unloving over unrequited love. Or [00:40:00] unrequited wanting somebody else? Is that a thing? Well, I mean Romeo, Julie. Yeah. It's like a thing. Oh. But yeah, this is like a this is one of these things where it's like, I can't see, like if I didn't have a bunch of kids with you and you died, even without this emotion, I would almost certainly un alive myself.

But we have a lot of kids and I have other responsibilities now. Yeah, you're super

Simone Collins: not allowed to do that, by the way. I understand,

Malcolm Collins: but I'm just saying that's very much the way I would feel about the world even without this emotion, right? Mm-hmm. Hmm. That's not evidence that a culture has this emotion.

And so when you look at these studies that find this in other cultures, what you realize is the things that they are defining as this is something that people. Normally have, if they're in a long-term relationship with someone, they have a deep admiration for even if, and have intertwined their WI lives with even if they don't have this separate quote unquote magical emotion on top of that.

Hmm.

A 2018 study on core [00:41:00] features of romantic love models found culturally universal elements like altruism and intrusive thinking about the beloved alongside variables like sexual exclusivity in est theological data from multiple regions. Yeah. But the problem is, is I have all of those things too, and I wouldn't say I have this separate love emotion.

No. Yeah. That's not evidence for it. Mm-hmm.

More recent large scale surveys such as a 2024 study against 90 countries showed people worldwide are generally unwilling to commit to a long-term partner without whatever they defined as quote unquote romantic love. What they really just meant here was liking the person and it's like.

Well, okay buddy. That's an easy thing to have, right? Like, that's not, that's not this separate emotion that you're talking about here. Or actually we can end now. There's actually a lot more to go in this episode. Oh, I'm

Simone Collins: sorry.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's okay. We're gonna go over a bunch of early cultures and see how they were generally against whatever [00:42:00] this bundle of emotions is that we call favorable. And it didn't become seen positively until it seen positively was in a few rare cultures historically, and was in this modern culture.

But that's it.

Simone Collins: I'd even argue based on the, the collective relationship advice videos that I've watched, you know, from the fifties that are in my playlist.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That even they are like, one, just control your last, you know, get ahold of yourself. And then two, like they, they really want people to form practical adult relationships to create a household.

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna argue, and I think that this is true, is that the emotion that we call love today, it was mostly popularized by Disney movies. Which borrowed from chivalric literature and Disney movie's Popularity. Nobody thought like this. Nobody thought that there was some separate emotion that like made it ultra clear to you that this person was your one and only.

But Disney movies needed a way to show. An attraction to a partner in a way that was above moral [00:43:00] reproach. Mm-hmm. And it

Simone Collins: also wasn't like purely wasn't sexual. Yeah. But also wasn't about housework. And I feel like the, the, you can see, even see the difference between snow white. Where first she demonstrates she's a really good housewife because she cleans for seven men.

Yes. And, and then, you know, then she gets to marry within her station. 'cause she's, you know, let's not do inner class marriage guys. Yeah. She's actually, but she, but she's really just gonna, you know, clean the castle now. It's fine Guys.

Malcolm Collins: I love your rebranding of the story, but it's so true. It's that she shows you the top tier wife by cleaning for seven men and dealing with men of all emotional ranges.

Gries. Sleepy, et cetera. Sleepy. Yes. With, with a plum. And then she marries a man of her own class.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then later it's like, it, it's only in, in, you know, the, the, the seventies, eighties, nineties, et cetera. Then that we see this valer glove where it's like. Romantic. You know, it was really, it was more just like, oh, well you need fairly modernist

Malcolm Collins: concept.

'cause it's

Simone Collins: gross if you married minors. Like, ew. [00:44:00] Yeah. Don't marry the minors. Yeah. Right. I'll stop recording then for the Wagyu. I'm, I'm assuming that I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut it into steaks for tonight and make you guys pan-seared steak. And then we, we will figure out what to do with the remaining cup.

I really

Malcolm Collins: love your pan-seared steak in olive oil.

Simone Collins: No. And butter, dude, olive oil has a really low smoke point and then it becomes carcinogenic. So we wanted always,

Malcolm Collins: no. Okay, cook it in butter and then serve it with olive oil to be on the side. 'cause I remember putting the steak after you cook it in olive oil and don't

Simone Collins: you have the herbed butter, the expensive.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, the herb butter is so good. Yeah, I do the herb butter. Okay. Okay. You know what's up? This

Simone Collins: is gifted Australian Wagyu. We are not screwing this up. This is high stakes. Oh, high stakes. You f*****g

Malcolm Collins: with that. Love you, Simone. But I hope anyone who sees this interacting, you know, when we say this, and the reason I feel comfortable saying this is because I think the way I feel about my wife is as fond of a human being as.

Any other human is [00:45:00] capable of being. And because I'm at this stage in my relationship, I'm able to finally come out and be like, guys, no matter how deep in the tunnel you go, you don't find these diamonds. They're not there. Illusion. There is no love. They made up thing. Everybody said, go to the, and everybody thinks you, they're like, well, that's just proof that you're not really working in the tunnel.

And it's like, no. Like I am at the other end of the tunnel basically. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Sweeties guys. Anyway, okay, off I go.

Malcolm Collins: Have a great day

Simone Collins: like you Wagyu and homemade sourdough. I'm so excited. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone, back in, because this was a long one, so it's stretching every two days of recording. And I collected data to go into all the science behind, like what changes when you love someone and the chemicals that are released and the, these chemicals are actually released in a bunch of other instances as well.

Mm-hmm. And seem more to do with I, a lot of them are evolved in addiction. Oh, totally. And tell me why. And we knew this

Simone Collins: because the experiment that I tried. When, when we first [00:46:00] met was I, I met Malcolm as part of this campaign I had when I turned 24 that I wanted to fall in love and have my heart broken in one year because I was like, I, I genuinely even believed at that age that love was not real.

But I still, like everyone sang songs about it, wrote poetry about it. I was like, well, I'm gonna try it. And I, I might disprove it. And I made you break up with me on July 31st of that year because I wanted to see what heartbreak felt like. There's no such thing as heartbreak, but there is such a thing as drug withdrawal.

And I know exactly what that felt like. 'cause it, it kicked in a week after at the first you were

Malcolm Collins: like, I don't feel anything. Mm-hmm. Everyone else is being w wacko about this. Yeah. And then apparently what you like collapsed in the street one day or like Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then I just started crying and I couldn't stop crying.

And then, yeah, I was just super emotional and I have absolutely felt.

Malcolm Collins: But the emotion you were feeling was not, was

Simone Collins: hormonal. It was hormonal. It was about withdrawal from a hormonal cocktail. The only time I felt something similar is the postpartum experience, which is also experience [00:47:00] of an extreme, like shift in hormones.

And what had happened was, yes, I, I developed like a addiction to you based on all the stuff that had happened. As we dated and became sexually intimate. So again, you're totally right there. I just, I just wanna emphasize that point. There wasn't, yeah, because if I, if it was purely, if there was some like, thing like love, which is kind of like people being like, there's a soul.

If there was really love, I would've felt it from day one after the breakup, or as soon as I like emo like, and logically processed,

Malcolm Collins: broken up, and not just that. Throughout the entire process of our early dating, you didn't feel some other unexplained emotion that you had never felt before. Right? Sure.

Like

mm-hmm.

You, you felt the withdraw, but you didn't feel the this extra love emotion that you could have been like one day. Oh, now I know. I'm in love with Malcolm and I wasn't in love with Malcolm yesterday. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It's not like you've discovered a new flavor like umami. It's No. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so I think that that's really important to note.

So what we are gonna jump into [00:48:00] though is what I actually think triggers the various love emotions because we wrote about this in the Pragma to guide to Sexuality which some of our fans still haven't read. So, useful thing to go into before we go into some of the other cultures that, you know, don't really elevate love or see it as a negative thing.

Perfect. So romantic love appears to be triggered by complexity. The complexity of an idea or person appears to correlate with feelings of romantic love time. The amount of time we spend thinking about something may trigger feelings of romantic love. The belief that a thing can protect and comfort us.

Feeling supported by something in a moment of personal vulnerability may trigger feelings of romantic love, prolonged eye contact, in addition to triggering feelings of romantic love. Looking at. Eyes elicits all sorts of weird, unique psychological effects. Oh yeah. For example, if you paint eyes on a collection box, people will donate more money.

And if people see fake eyes painted on something, they will act more morally. In general, there is a clearly a unique neurological pathway associated with the process with processing the concept of eyes. So it may make sense that it could be involved in [00:49:00] love. And note, there's the. Famous Kinsey study experiment where you, you know, you know, you sit across from somebody, you look in their eyes and you ask vulnerable questions.

And people from this study reported feeling love for the other priest and after this and getting married. When, when, when a couple even did. So like, clearly this is, this can be at the deepest level hacked pretty easily. Physical intimacy interaction while violating personal space. Assuming the violation of personal space doesn't put a person's guard up, may trigger feelings of romantic love.

This might be tied to the vulnerability trigger and sex. Maybe orgasms matter here, maybe they don't. But sex and arousal seem to make other loves as. Bond faster. Hmm. This trigger seems to affect women more than men and weaken with subsequent sex partners. Through understanding the above points. One can incite love in a target individual with an even higher fidelity than the message used by ar.

Arthur Aaron. And that's the guy who did the experiments for people fall into love after looking at each other in the eyes.

Yeah.

Creepy. These. The feeling, [00:50:00] specifically the feeling of love can be reliably instigated in a subject by combining regular sex with a few sessions in which you sit with the subject somewhat isolated with a view even better if there is some taboo associated with this location, which increases the feeling of vulnerability and protectedness.

Hold hands, make per own direct eye contact, discuss life philosophy. That's, that's really it. That will create, if someone forced me to do that. Oh no. In the Bay Area, this is really common because people are familiar with the research and they think that other people won't know what they're doing, but they're basically attempting to brainwash you.

I know I saw Rationalists do this all the time. It was very common at like rationalist meetings and stuff. Yeah. Actually,

Simone Collins: when we went to Vibe camp, I met someone who like talked about how they were. Deeply against that practice. And they're like, I don't make eye contact with people anymore because that's been used to manipulate me a bunch.

It's like, oh gosh, what have you been through?

Malcolm Collins: But it is, it is. It just is.

Yeah.

This technique takes about a week and a half to strongly set in and is generally effective as long as the target feels [00:51:00] comfortable enough to be vulnerable and talk about things they otherwise wouldn't feel safe Discussing an adequate level of comfort, aesthetic appeal, and hygiene is also necessary.

A target is not going to tolerate prolonged close proximity and eye contact with someone who has. Horrid breath or stinking hair, and a target will not be able to engage in deep philosophical conversations if they are tired, hungry, cold, and feeling threatened or trapped. The above technique boasts an admirable success rate on people with little sexual experience explaining the steps and the purpose of the quote unquote experiment to the target, which we would recommend in the name of good form.

Does not appear to lower the probability of this method working. So this is something I did to people and told them I would do to them and I could reliably create a very strong attachment to me. The method is not from any specific set of research finding, but rather a conglomeration of a few studies combined with personal experimentation.

It works reliably enough that we assume that there must be something behind it. And this technique revolves around three core elements. One, [00:52:00] maximizing feelings of vulnerability backed up by feelings of safety. Two physiological modifiers like eye contact and sex. And three complex cognitively engaging discussions that inspire self-reflection.

Read the GUI to life. If you don't know how to make these statistics on romantic love. In arranged marriages strongly indicate that romantic love between people forms when they spend a lot of time around each other and rely on each other or whatever we socially are calling romantic love. We developed a process outlined above merely to see a romantic love could be developed more rapidly.

Our brains appear to use complexity rather than closeness as the proxy for the closeness of a relationship. Just as one might use weight as a proxy for the volume of a thing. Or how much water is in a container, despite there being many other things that could have weight such as rocks. Our minds appear to use the apparent complexity of a person or the frequency with which we think about that person that's a proxy from our, our intimacy to them.

So basically what I'm saying here is a lot of people think what generates the feeling of love, and this is why. Things like thinking [00:53:00] about the cosmos or thinking about the trinity, or thinking about other like really deep philosophical issues or sort of unknowable issues can generate a feeling that is close to the feeling that some people call love.

Because these are very complex things. And the brain, you know, in Indiana Jones, the, the opening scene where there's the the golden statue and he, he, he switches it with a bag. Oh yeah, Sam, it's the exact same. Wait. The brain doesn't actually note. How, how much have you been thinking about someone or how do you feel about someone?

Those are too complicated of emotions for it to really wait and measure with such a simple system. All it's measuring is the complexity of your thoughts about that individual. And that can be easily hacked by thinking about the nature of the universe or reality or something like that, and create a very similar one of these emotions.

The agape emotion that I mentioned before, which is not. Traditional love. It's a, it's a sort of, all emotion, I think is a, is a closer like definition for it. But it's something that you can get from either individuals or from thinking about the [00:54:00] universe, et cetera, meditating, this is an elegant system.

Humans spend very little time thinking about our building models of people who are not romantic targets. We just don't think about other people that much unless we are trying to get said people to mate with us. If someone is successful in their romantic conquest, they will spend more and more time around their romantic target,

further increasing the complexity of their mental image of that person. So the complexity of our image of a person could prove as a valid proxy for success in romantic conquest, this could in turn increase the evolutionary advantage of falling in love with such a person. In short, since those whom we think about the most commonly are those who we romantically pursue the complexity of our mental models of others, that serves as a great proxy for our subconscious to measure when determining who slash what we love.

And by here. I, I think that this is, this, this doesn't go against my larger thing. That love doesn't really exist. I'm just saying that. The chemical state that causes the collection of emotions that we already have easy names and ways to relate to, and that clearly aren't [00:55:00] this like magical emotion that hits you all of a sudden one day when you're in a relationship.

Th the, the, these are, are not like big profound feeling things. And I think that that's the thing about love is, is it's been sold to people as something that is going to feel really profound. Mm-hmm. And that's another reason why it's important to debunk that it is not its own unique, above reproach, profound emotional state.

Because some people might not get married because they're just like, well, I haven't felt to this emotion yet. Right? Mm-hmm. In fact, I would bet a lot of people who run away from weddings. This is what, what, what causes it? Like called off weddings? Oh,

Simone Collins: some. Feeling that there's this fleeting, unrealistic, non-existent thing that they haven't yet felt.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're like, but I just haven't felt the thing that people call love yet. Like everything else seems perfect, but I haven't felt this yet. In short, those whom, oh, sorry. Now let's go into various societies that saw love quite differently. Hmm. There's this idea that, oh no, everyone always sees loves the same. And I'm like, actually no. The anthropology that [00:56:00] did that really cheats their results, as I pointed out. So you got ancient Rome, 7 53 BCE 2 5 76 CE In Roman society, marriage was primarily an arrangement between families to enhance wealth, social class, and political standing with little emphasis on affection or romance.

Parents selected partners based on practical criteria. And laws restricted unions. IE citizens couldn't marry actors or prostitutes. Romantic love was often secondary or viewed negatively. Being overly influenced by a partner, especially a woman, was considered weakness, unfit of a true Roman man. I mean, you see this in a lot of Roman literature, in, in poetry.

Mm-hmm. And women's sexual pleasure outside of procreative purposes. In marriage was deemed evil. Ceremonies emphasize the duty and family obligations, not passion. And divorce was straightforward. If the arrangement failed to put in its practical goals then you have ancient Greece 800 BCE 2 1 46 BCE.

Greek philosophers in literature portray romantic love as [00:57:00] dangerous madness or illness that disrupted rational thought in societal order. Plato for instance, advocated for non-romantic platonic bonds as superior viewing passion with horror because it could lead to regrettable actions harmful to the community.

And then the Iliad served as warnings against love's destructive potential rather than endorsements. Marriages were typically arranged for economic or familial reasons, with love regulated to extramarital affairs, or same sex mentorships. A survival dependent on practical unions like combining resources during hardship.

Ancient Mesopotamia 3,500 BCE to 539 BCE in Mesopotamian countries. The Sumerians and Babylonians marriage was essential for societal community, family lineage, and property inheritance often arranged to ensure these goals. Romantic love was not primarily a factor. Medieval Europe, fifth through 15th century among nobility and landowners marriages and strategic alliances for power, whilst often arranged by parents and guardians with romantic love, [00:58:00] dismissed as impractical or destabilizing traditional South Asian cultures, India, Pakistan, et cetera.

Arranged marriages of the norm will actually get dup. Deeper into India because I think it's really interesting. And then traditional East Asian cultures Confucian principles emphasize familial piety and family harmony making arranged marriages standard to align with parental authority and societal roles.

And the love would conflict with the concept of duty within these relationships within Confucius philosophy, what's really interesting is, is how anti love. Indie Indians were historically speaking. Yeah. There are eight forms of marriage in Hinduism. So an ancient Hindu text Wait. Forms of are were they like, we'll get to it.

It'll make sense when I get to it. Okay. Such as a Maserati Duram Stratas outline. Eight Recognized Forms of Marriage which provide a hierarchy of acceptability. These reflect a spectrum from highly approved arranged types to condemned ones.

Ooh, interesting.

Approved type. It is called Baram. [00:59:00] Vaha. The highest and most virtuous form fully arranged by parents was a bride given a gift, often a dowry.

It emphasized duty and was ideal for preserving caste and family honor. Divya Vish Vaha vi Vaha arranged where the bride is given to a priest less preferred than Brahma, but still respectable. Arsha. Viva. Involves a token exchange eg. Cows arranged by citizen, but criticized for its transactional nature.

And then you have Illa vi. No, we haven't gotten to love marriages yet. Similar to Bahama arranged with lavish gifts focusing on mutual consent, under parental guidance. So note, that's one that required mutual consent. This is under giving your daughter to a priest under the cow transaction thing here.

Right? And this is still a partially arranged marriage, then you have. Gang Vaha. This is a love marriage form based on mutual attraction and consent without rituals or parental involvement. [01:00:00] The story of Dita and Hanta in Mahata it is acknowledged but ranked lower, criticized by mana as promiscuous or suitable only for certain lower sections of society, and seen as a holdover from less regulated times.

Okay, so what's the next one down seen as about the same as a love marriage. Okay. A, a Shara va Vaha where the bride is purchased with wealth. So basically slavery, this is seen as about the same as marrying a slave. Then the only thing worse than that is rakha Vaha, which is abduction by force.

Yeah. One of the lowest forms. And then there's Raja, which involves seduction or taking advantage while asleep. So if somebody grapes you, you have to marry them. Okay. You know, maybe not the best culture to model for everything. But I did find it to be particularly interesting to read about all of these different types of.

Marriages and to, to point out that when people are like, oh, love is universal, or seeing love is [01:01:00] a causative thing is universal. It's like, it really isn't. If you actually like do real anthropology instead of this type that's designed to confirm your preexisting beliefs generally what I find is, I'd say in about like, like historic societies.

Seems like at about 80% love marriages were condemned at least among upper classes. And love was seen as more of like a sickness. And here what I mean is love, love's involvement in choosing partners. So, so this is the, the, and, and note I'm using love here that's used colloquially. I'm talking about this collection of sort of addiction you get with a person that includes fondness, a feeling of attachment, a feeling of you know, warmth around them.

A desire to spend time with them and a respect for them. This collection of emotions was seen as a lower reason to get into a relationship than. Then the, the logical decision made soberly by a council of your elders, basically or even soberly by yourself under, not under the influence of, [01:02:00] of this particular cocktail of chemicals, which again, I note is there, it just doesn't create this feeling of profundity.

It's not particularly moral. It's not particularly important really. And it doesn't, you know, hit you particularly hard all of a sudden or anything like that. Although, no, there are differences in human biology there. There likely are some people who do feel these emotions hit so all at once due to some sort of hormonal fluctuation in dating that it may cause this.

I also note when I'm talking about like Simone is the perfect woman to have felt this, my wife. Early in our marriage especially, you were a complete Andre. Like very, very obsessed with me. And who's to say that has changed? No, you're still very obsessed with me. But we're saying as somebody like, like full on Andre mode from an anime or something and still not getting this.

Secondary emotion that people are, are hypothesizing and talking about and telling young people they need to feel to [01:03:00] be in a relationship.

Mm-hmm.

So let's talk about the biology of this, because I found this really interesting. We're gonna talk about the different alterations a person can have that causes 'em to relate to bonding differently.

Okay.

In research on love and attachment, genetic markers, like variations in the genes, A VPR one a vasso CE receptor, OXTR, oxytocin receptor, COMT you don't care what these are. And DD four are used as proxies for love susceptibility. This refers to an individual's. Predisposition to form, maintain or experience romantic bonds, attachment styles, and related behaviors like empathy, pair bonding, infidelity, or reward seeking in relationships.

These genes influence neurotransmitter systems. A VPR one A and. OXTR regulate vasopressin in oxytocin. Mm-hmm. Hormones key to social bonding and trust, while COMT and DRD four affected dopamine involved in reward, motivation, and pleasure. [01:04:00] So if we wanted to, you know, it's been leaked now that we have funded.

Research into germline gene editing. You know, in a generation or so, our family, as we become more engaged in genetic engineering and stuff, could make modifications to ourselves or to our offspring, to not even, to have even less susceptibility to this love emotion.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And this, this kind of, it reminds me of.

Or our running theory. And I think a lot of people share this with what causes obesity in modern times. It's not like it's, it's probably not mostly your difference in metabolism. 'cause as you pointed out, that's at most like how many calories day, like go to

Malcolm Collins: calories a day,

Simone Collins: which can really add up, don't get me wrong, but like, it's not gonna produce the amount of obesity that we Yeah.

Often see. We think that maybe a larger segment of people just like their response to food is so much stronger. Kind of like with love, like some people just have a different response to food than others. And you can tell this by like, how many people who have you met who are like, well, I would just [01:05:00] love to eat.

Like if I could have a pill instead of food, I would, and it's hard for me to imagine that, you know, but like, yeah. For other people, they just, it's. That response is not there. So that totally makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: So, A VPR one A the role in love and attachment, this gene codes for the receptor of vasopressin, a hormone promoting pair bonding jealousy, and long-term attachment variations affect social behaviors like commitment and marital satisfaction.

Key variants RSS three polymorphism long versus short alleles. Longer alleles are. Linked to strong care bonding, A GAT polymorphism associated with earlier sexual debut in females. So this one will cause women to have sex at an earlier age or turn down sex less, which I think is. Effects and differences.

People with longer are three alleles often report hial, partner bonding, fewer relationship problems, greater commitment, and better sexual satisfaction slash frequency. They show brain activation [01:06:00] in reward and attachment areas. EEG, ventral tein and VTA correlated with maintaining romantic love over time, suggesting higher susceptibility to stable monogamous bonds.

Those with shorter alleles or their variants, E-G-A-G-A-T long, long may, exhibit weaker bonding, higher infidelity risk and earlier riskier sexual behaviors. OXR role in love and attack in codes in receptor oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, which enhances trust, empathy, and social bonding variance influence, responsiveness to key social cues and stress in relationships.

GG carriers show a higher sociality and specific ones of these are linked to empathy, stress, reactivity, and pair bonding. Often sex specific individuals with more G alleles tend to have a higher empathy altruism toward partners or secure attachment styles. This is displayed through stronger brain responses to attachment regions when viewing their partners increasing susceptibility to romantic love and stable bonds.

Oh, I [01:07:00] should look to see where we are on this. On Nebula a. A allele carries or other, other risk variants often show lower empathy, higher attachment anxiety, greater stress reactivity and reduced emotional wellbeing. This can lead to ancient or, or, or avoidance styles. COMT. Role in love and attachment regulates dopamine breakdown in the brain, affecting reward processing and emotional regulation Variations influence how rewarding relationships feel.

One variant. If you have the val allele, higher activity, lower dopamine, or the MET allele, you'll get lower activity, higher dopamine. Met allele carers. This is the heterozygous. Ones or, or no. There is a heterozygous variant of valve slash met. So met allele characters. Higher dopamine often experience greater reward, responsiveness positive affect and obsessive thinking about partners correlating with stronger romantic infatuation and brain activity in reward areas.

Wow.

And I note here obsessive thinking about somebody is clearly it is something [01:08:00] that you feel early in relationships. But it is caused more by NRE than any relationship that I feel about my wife, for example.

Yeah.

For people who don't know, it's NRE stands for New Relationship Energy.

And it's an emotional state that typically declines with the links of a relationship and would almost be in many people's inversely correlated with the amount of love that they feel with an individual over time. And that the core thing that I think causes NRE and my experience is the.

Possibility of the partner not liking you. It's like the, the very high potential upside. Who will

Simone Collins: they or won't they? Yes.

Malcolm Collins: High potential downside of not knowing how things will develop. So I see it as actually a chemical that's likely related to chemicals that's affiliated with gambling. And, and that's why you don't see it in long-term partners because there isn't any longer.

Any like, well, how much better is this gonna get? How much worse is this gonna get? Interesting. Val. Homozygotes may seek [01:09:00] more novelty, but show less reward from stable bonds, potentially leading to lower relationship satisfaction. And, and I find this really interesting, the person's relationship satisfaction could just be downstream of their genes.

Heterozygotes, Val met frequently exhibit avoidant attachment and inhibited personality. Right.

Simone Collins: So basically you're saying it's ableist for people to be mad at their boyfriends or girlfriends for not feeling love the same way they do.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. No, I'm saying it's able to be mad at them for cheating.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: So Simone, you're just a bigot if you get mad at me because I'm going out and sleeping with a bunch of people.

Heterozygous, it's frequently exhibit avoidant attachment and inhibited personalities and exi. Then the D four, D four dopamine receptor D four role in love and attachment and codes for dopamine receptor involved in novelty seeking and reward variants affect motivation for new experiences and relationship fidelity.

And what I find so interesting about all of this, by the way as we go over this, is this means that one day we can edit this stuff. You can edit your partner to make them [01:10:00] more loving in by the, by the time our kids are older to have, to have them be less likely to commit fidelity. I mean, who wouldn't want these edits often, right?

Like, oh, I am less likely to go out and sleep with other people. That's great. I'm, yeah. And the

Simone Collins: thing is too, we can't develop this technology unless we acknowledge that there isn't some magical. Intangible property known as love,

Malcolm Collins: we, we can't develop it or,

Simone Collins: yeah. Well, if we don't, if we don't understand or, or admit that this is just a, like a highly genetic, hormonal thing.

We're not, we can't engineer better versions of it.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we're well past arguing. Love isn't magic. I mean, that's like. Malcolm in philosophy number one point number one, love doesn't matter that much. But anyway key variants. Exon three has reduced dopamine binding. ZR four, sorry. Seven r plus carriers at least one seven [01:11:00] repeat are linked to higher promiscuity twice as likely to have one night stance.

Wow. Twice as likely, a hundred percent more likely to have one night stance. If you have the D four D in a, in a seven strand repeat. Infidelity, they're 50% more likely to have extra pair partners and novelty thinking. Like, just imagine you could test for this, right?

They show brain activation in reward areas, but lower overall romantic love scores, suggesting preference for short-term bonds and overall relationship attachment. This reduces susceptibility to monogamous love, favoring exploratory behaviors. I would bet Ala probably has this one. 'Cause some people, when we've done our like.

You know, polyamory episodes, you gotta keep in mind that some of the individuals who are polyamory might just be like, literally coded differently than you. Yeah.

And, and so, they may actually have a really hard time maintaining any sort of long-term monogamous relationship without the opportunity for this form of exploration.

And

Simone Collins: based on how they describe it, you know, they, it's described as something they just really can't help. Like, I just can't commit to one person. And I think it's really hard for [01:12:00] people to understand. They think they're just making it up or that they're just insufficiently committed to you as a partner when, yeah, no, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I think some individuals get into it when they don't have this and they really shouldn't.

Oh, that's

Simone Collins: true. No, I mean like a lot of people just try to break up. Passively

Malcolm Collins: by the article we really need to do. There was this great article in the New York Times recently about this woman complaining that nobody wants to date her. And, and, and she was in a polyamorous relationship with her husband and left her for some other guy.

And the other guy then told her even beforehand that he was not interested in her and now she's blaming it on all men. Of course.

Simone Collins: Oh well.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, that is my argument there. The other emotions that I said I didn't think was real. Another one was jealousy. Which I was actually convinced of while I was trying to look up something else related to this. And I was convinced of it by a post, by a polyamorous individual. Oh. And when I was reading it, at first I was like, come on, you're just whatever, or maybe you don't feel this.

And then [01:13:00] I thought about it and I was like, no, he's right. Like if I discount. The emotional, like disgust I would feel, and sadness. I would feel over losing a relationship with you because you slept around and that made you less attractive to me, which it would. I mean, that's a natural reaction for a lot of guys, for evolutionarily evolved reasons.

And the anger I would feel towards the individual who did that, that wouldn't be motivated by jealousy, that would be mo motivated by a very specific emotion. But then I started thinking about jealousy about other things, like somebody. Who's wealthier than me or somebody who has more figurines than me or somebody who has more followers than me.

I've never felt whatever this emotion is, I felt like a motivation to catch up to them. Like, oh my God, they were younger than me and they'd already done more. And look at how little I've accomplished in life yet so far. But then I thought, I was like, I haven't really, so I'll, I'll read this. 'cause I thought it was interesting.

And this is from a blog called Death is Bad. Very rational as you can tell. I think that's the, the real motivator here. Everyone knows the patriarchy is bad for men as well as [01:14:00] women, but they don't mention it too much because it's a lot more bad for women. Well, here's one way it's bad for men.

You have to pretend to be jealous and bluster about and say you'll attack anyone who touches your mate. Because if anyone sees someone other than yourself engage in sexual play with your mate, you're automatically less of a man. You lose status. You can't be taken seriously. You are something to be pitied F that I've powered through status seeking, shaming several times already in my life and every time I've been.

Better freer and happier for it. Now, I respect people who are in open relationships far more than those who are stuck in the social straight jacket of enforced monogamy while the limited number of years we have here sorry, with limited number of years we have here. Why would you want to do that with your life?

It's kind of sad. And once I said. I, I let that go and said, F Society, this is bs. I actually found that the opposite of jealousy happens, and this is where I disagree with him because I, and I don't [01:15:00] disagree with him. I mean, I just have a different sexual profile than him. I was happy to see my girl getting that sort of pleasure.

I would not be, by the way. Why wouldn't you want to see the person you love happy? And more than that, it's a complete turn on for him, and that's why he's okay with it. It's really effing hot. At least that's been my experience. And again, this is, there's different sexual, it just sounds like

Simone Collins: his unique form of sexual enjoyment.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And that's why when I first read it, I was like, come on, you know, you have a form of sexual enjoyment, which is really unique and not evolutionarily adaptive. It was funny in the comments. He's like, I just can't see the evolutionary reason. That people would want their partner to not sleep with other people.

We used to live in big tribes where we all shared our wives. And I was like really unusual up. But, but in addition to the anthropology not backing him up it, it, it also doesn't make sense. Even if there is partner sharing within a community, you still benefit from punishing a partner for sleeping with other people and sleeping with you more and them less.

Genetically speaking, no matter how much partner sharing there is in a community you still benefit from [01:16:00] punishing somebody who you've slept with sleeping with other people. Well, in other

Simone Collins: words, the guys who did that ended up having more offspring. You're more likely to have inherited genes that give you that tendency.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So like, no, I don't buy this. But what I do buy, when I started to think about it and he said, jealousy is a social construct. I was like, yeah, jealousy is more of. A social thing where I feel that I have a right to be upset with someone for having more than me, but I can choose not to engage with that, right?

I can just be like, but I'm not going to. Right? Like they have more than me. So what? And as soon as you choose that, you no longer feel that particular emotional output. The other one that we were talking about was the, what was the big one? It was forgiveness. I see so many things like, you know, well, I finally forgave my, my father for unli himself, and now I've begun to emotionally heal.

And it's like, well, what do you mean forgave him? Like, he's [01:17:00] dead. Like you, you, you can't, you still, you still have the, the knowledge of the choice he made. Right. You, you can change how you decide to contextualize it in your head, but that's not really an emotional state. Yeah. It's just a choice of contextualization.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, it's, it's hard for me to, I mean, I understand the definition is to, to, to let go of anger or resentment regarding a slight you've experienced and, and that sounds good, but it sounds more like, I don't know, an emotional process than anything else. And you can also choose to not feel resentful about something whenever you're ready.

Yeah. So I think that another thing I was wondering about today is loneliness. Everyone's talking about loneliness, epidemics, and people are lonely. But isn't it, is that real? I, obviously, I'm an extreme introvert, so I don't think I've ever felt lonely in

Malcolm Collins: my life. I, I've felt lonely before.

Simone Collins: You ha.

Okay. What does it feel like? Isn't it just a need for stimulation or [01:18:00] isn't it just a desire to fulfill a kind of vision of yourself?

Malcolm Collins: It's tied to your self image. And if you have a part of a self-image of somebody who has been rejected by others and who is, I mean, I think loneliness in big part is a feeling of rejection plus isolation.

Think of it like a, a claustrophobia like emotion tied to social interaction.

Simone Collins: Hmm. But that has more to do with your perception of yourself than any real feeling.

Malcolm Collins: No, it, it really feels very claustrophobic sometimes. Interesting. Like almost sort of panicky.

Simone Collins: Well, that's how I feel when I'm around people,

Malcolm Collins: but, well, other people don't know that emotion, so,

Simone Collins: huh.

Maybe, maybe, you know, we talk about sexuality being something where, with regard to arousal and disgust, there are. Typical spectrums that people have, but [01:19:00] sometimes you get a sign flip. Maybe there are things beyond sexuality where sometimes there are sign flips. Like the average, the evolutionarily average person craves the company of other people because obviously the average person who craved those things survived 'cause they didn't get rejected by the tribe.

They invested in it, you know? And, but maybe I had a sign flip. And I, I crave the rejection of the tribe.

Malcolm Collins: You crave tribal rejection, so you can be alone and not have to talk to me. Please tell

Simone Collins: me. Yes. But I mean, I, you know, it's, it's not un, it's not unheard of for people to experience flips of other forms of arousal versus a version that are not necessarily evolutionarily to their advantage.

Like men who find. A penis is really arousing and not vaginas and only wanna sleep with men, you know, like it happens. So I don't know. I don't know. [01:20:00] But that's interesting. So I don't know. What would you encourage people to take away from this? Don't, don't ask for love from people. I guess. Stop talking about love.

What are, what should people do differently after hearing this?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, I think it's, it's no that, you know, you're supposed to pretend when you feel fondness and attachment to somebody and you will begin to build an addiction to interacting with your partner. That that part is real. But don't expect this transcendent emotional state to wash over you at some point in the process of dating or marriage.

And don't think that. Now, I would say really importantly, if you're wi a partner who believes in love, and don't go into them. You're just gonna

Simone Collins: have to pretend to believe in it too. Just pretend. Just say, I love you too. Just say, I love you too. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Guys. Say, I love you too. But I do think it's important for more and more people to come out and call shenanigans on this

Speaker 6: Shenanigans shenanigans.

Speaker 8: What's all this

Speaker 6: officer Paul Brady. I would like to reinstate my previous shenanigans. This whole [01:21:00] carnival is a rip up,

Speaker 8: you know? Uh, excuse me, but I agree. These rides are really stupid.

Speaker 7: Okay, let's calm down. People of South Park, do you declare shenanigans on the carnival people? Yay. Okay, carnival people. Do you accept this decree of shenanigans? What the are you talking about? This old town is screwy.

Well, that settles it. Everybody grab a broom. It's shenanigan.

Malcolm Collins: so that, you know, young people, I think this prevents them from getting into relationships or feeling really dedicated to a partner because they expect some other emotion that is just never gonna come.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That's

Simone Collins: fair. Okay. I like that. That's solid advice. Just don't, just

Malcolm Collins: chill, just, and, and I'm telling you even without this marriage is way better than I thought it could conceivably be. In terms of the way it makes me feel, totally agree, the way I feel every day, the way it feels to interact with you or have kids with you, or to interact with my kids.

I'm saying [01:22:00] I feel all of these great things. None of them include whatever this external love emotion is. And despite that they feel kind of better than the way people describe love feeling, which to me always sounds more just like a drug. And I'm just like, well, that doesn't sound like that.

Pleasant, right? Like, it doesn't come with like, genuine satisfaction or anything.

Simone Collins: When people describe love to me, I get the same reaction I felt when reading Dante's Paradiso, like the, the, the part of the divine comedy where he's exploring heaven and I'm just like this, I don't know. I don't wanna go there.

This doesn't sound very fun. Just sounds, sounds kind of brainwashed. Little, little culty kind of creepy.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think I know that so many journalists are gonna use this to attack us. They don't even love each other. They don they already do.

Simone Collins: I was, I was just listening to a YouTube video today. It was about purity culture and fundamentalist [01:23:00] marriages.

And then like 53 minutes in just randomly we get mentioned. We have nothing to do with purity culture, but it was only in the context of us not really loving our children. And, and occasionally beating them and, oh,

Malcolm Collins: now we'll have, he beats his children. He doesn't love them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, he doesn't love his wife.

We already have that reputation though. We, we already have a loveless family. No one will be surprised to discover that we have. A loveless marriage. So

Malcolm Collins: just proving the haters

Simone Collins: right here. Cat was outta the bag. We're just, we're just confirming it on the record apparently.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, obviously the alternative to all this is we come from an extremely unique cultural genotype that's just very low on one of these genetic variants.

Hmm.

And it wouldn't be surprising, like I often mention that we're of the backwoods puritan heritage, heritage groups like those two groups or the predominant ancestry groups of ours. And if any groups was going to have evolved out the love emotion, it would be those two [01:24:00] groups. So it could be that other people really feel this.

Like,

Simone Collins: but see, like to me love is living and working together and the Appalachian and before that, like, you know, Scottish clan culture is like, you saw a lot more of that. You saw a lot more family integration, everyone kind of working together, not these, this isolation that I feel separates people so much to me, love is integration.

It's also so fun to me that you, you and I have this reputation for Lovelessness when the first thing you ever made go viral. Was your marriage proposal to me? Were you commissioned one

Malcolm Collins: like top 10

Simone Collins: romantic things

Malcolm Collins: of the

Simone Collins: year, you commissioned 21 pieces of original art of you proposing to me in different styles, related to different genres that we like and we went to the front page of Reddit and that was, but God, no, we don't love each other.

Do you think,

Malcolm Collins: do you think this is gonna, should we be saving this for reporter to tell them we don't really love each other and we think this whole concept's a scam because that'll [01:25:00] go viral. Prenatal is couple doesn't love each other. They've

Simone Collins: already basically set as such in a bunch of articles.

Again, if YouTubers are like randomly, like they, they can't, even when they run out of weird fungi, couples that, you know, they need to, they need to show that couples don't love each other. They turn to us 'cause they can't find anyone else who openly,

Malcolm Collins: apparently doesn't. You're the best and the greatest Fundee couple because we are the only one bravest enough to tell the truth.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they all pretend to love each other messed up.

Malcolm Collins: But I think culturally normalizing that this isn't a thing that people feel, or at least people within our cultural group feel will make it much faster for our kids to get married and find secure partners.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. To focus on the practical aspects.

Back to arranged marriage. I love you too. Hey, tonight. Yeah. Steak tonight. Very great. Basically same thing as last night, but instead of whole wheat sourdough, I was gonna make [01:26:00] those flatbreads, but I'm going to instead toast them a lot longer. So they're Oh yeah, do that. Cook me a bit more. And this time with, with garlic.

'Cause I think it'd be fun to have sort of like garlic flatbread.

Malcolm Collins: Cook a little less of the raw steak and a little more of the cook steak because your parents didn't want the additional one. And I did.

Simone Collins: Oh, no, no, no. So I already told you I, I froze that and we're gonna use it later. In a couple weeks to do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Love you to death. Love

Simone Collins: you too. I, I missed you on our normal morning time and then we've reported coming 'cause we haven't had our

Malcolm Collins: morning walks and now we have reporters coming. Yes, we have a dad

Simone Collins: over wanna talk with you.

Malcolm Collins: Though I learned I I miss you. I seriously, I miss you When we don't get to spend like our private time together in morning and during and so like, this is the, the only private time we're getting today or yesterday.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it just kills me when we don't get it. Indy was mad though too, that she missed her walk with you.

Malcolm Collins: She gets, you could tell

Simone Collins: she gets [01:27:00] really angry. The, yeah. She's learned the word no. So she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All morning. But I did learn a thing a new form of prepping that apparently is popular among wealthy tech elite.

Who are into prepping. Okay. That had not occurred to me, but I think it's more inspired by horror films than like an actual doomsday scenario. And it is multiple people that were interviewed by this, this guy who wrote the book the Haves and the Have yachts, which is about the super elite, wealthy people.

Billionaires. Mm-hmm. They've gotten LASIK because they're like, well. If there's some societal collapse, I won't be able to get a new glasses prescription and then I'm screwed 'cause I'll be blind. But I'm really thinking of it more from that one scene in the Mummy where the American archeologist, slash Yahoo, who's trying to find Egyptian [01:28:00] treasure, loses his glasses while attempting to run away.

Oh gosh. In the resurrected mummy and he's looking for his glasses and then the mommy just. Pulls out his eyeballs because that's what happens when you don't have lasik,

Malcolm Collins: don't have las. That'd be a great LASIK commercial. Just goes to that scene. And then's lasik. Gotta get lasik. All right. I'll get started.

Simone Collins: You know, I have to, I have to represent her since she's she's not with us in person. She's, she's with us in spirit. I went to, I, I had this like beautiful vision that after I went to get eggs from the chicken coop this morning, that I would pick some blackberries, at least for Torsten to snack on at dinner.

And if I could get more than to make jam. And I'm like, oh, it's gonna be so, you know, scenic, you got stuck

Malcolm Collins: in all the thorns. I do blackberries with the kids. I basically send them in like a little rabbit in the briar [01:29:00] pit and, and they're so good at it. They go in and they get them all really easily.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Whereas I'm covered with scratches, like, and I, I was like bleeding out there. The

Malcolm Collins: toddlers are for you send them into the Briar patch?

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that's, they're there for the mines. They're for the factories. We have giant

Malcolm Collins: Blackberry patches on our property that I didn't even plant. I just didn't weed.

And, and so whenever they start growing in any location on our property, I stop weeding in that location.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which means it's it's a little rough walking around our house. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Our house

Simone Collins: is very fortified though. I love that feeling on the, on the topic of the middle of the

Malcolm Collins: Court of Thrones,

Simone Collins: oh, court of throne thorns or whatever.

We live our life as a romance novel. But, but speaking of romance and on the topic of loveless marriages, I actually remember, from a young age, the extent to which I began romanticizing and desiring a loveless marriage. One of my, like, part of my financial package in college was that I could work for some of my [01:30:00] tuition in, in addition to getting some debt.

And I worked at my university honors office as a secretary. A receptionist. And one of my colleagues was this, this, this gay dude who would just say things that I, I loved. Like he'd crack me up. And at one point I was like, oh my God, will you marry me? And he was like, well, it would be a loveless marriage.

And I remember like, I hadn't heard that phrase before or something, and like I just, you know, I laughed at him or whatever and we got back to work. But I remember thinking after that, I was like, I love this marriage. Like that sounds. Amazing. What is this institution and how do I get involved? Like is this like where they work together or something?

I remember, oh no.

Malcolm Collins: Did I give you the loveless marriage you always desired? Well, the funny, the marriage get that all thehy stuff

Simone Collins: we have, well, no, like we, we have the sex, we have the romance. Like you, you gave me all that. But then like. We really, we lean [01:31:00] in to the loveless part and I just, I, I didn't realize until today when we were gonna do this episode that I was like, oh s**t.

Like I've. I've always wanted this. I've always wanted a loveless marriage, and thank you so much for making this girl's fantasy come to life. I, I am here for

Malcolm Collins: you. I'll get started here.

Simone Collins: Okay. Let's go.

What are you guys doing?

Are there gonna be any survivors?

In this episode, we explore the surprising decline of parents giving life advice to their children, sparked by a conversation with Megan, Scott Alexander's wife. We examine which cultures stopped giving life advice first and why, and discuss the consequences of children growing up without receiving such guidance. We dive into personal anecdotes, cultural practices, and the societal trends that have led to this shift. We also share practical advice for parents on how to effectively pass on valuable life lessons and create a lasting positive impact on their children's lives.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about something that was inspired to me by a conversation I was having with a friend.

Actually Megan, who is Scott Alexander's wife and I were talking about raising kids 'cause they have young kids and stuff like that. And passing on. Ideas in sort of life systems intergenerationally. And one of the things that they noted, and I started to note this as I recalled, you know, asking other people, is that people do not give their kids.

As much life advice as they used to, and in some cases gives their kids virtually no life advice. And they, they never set their kids down and are like, this is what you should structure. This is the way you should structure your life. This is what you should expect from these stages of your life. Yeah.

This is what you should want to do with your life and. I think the, the areas I want to dig into this are what [00:01:00] cultures stopped giving life advice first. Hmm. Like what cultural trends made it, because most cultures historically did give children life advice. This was a very normal thing to do historically speaking.

Two, why did this stop? When did it stop? And for people who grew up without being given life advice. What is good life advice that I would give generally to them and to my kids as well. So, opening thoughts. Simone, before we go deeper into this,

Simone Collins: I'm super excited to talk about this because I feel like it's part of that larger trend that we talk about that really.

Precipitates the, the beginning of the end for society and human mental health, which is the atomization of everything. And I think a big tailwind here is a trend whereby we stopped getting everything from within the family in the household and started getting it piecemeal from outside. And that a lot of people.

Are now getting their advice from external sources who [00:02:00] may or may not be aligned with their best interests. Instead, who are basically, you are getting this information not because it, it's going to help you because it's, it's the information that was best marketed that was more likely to go viral. That was for whatever reason.

I

Malcolm Collins: actually go so far as to see that many people structure their lives. Around aesthetics of what they saw as a good life within television shows while they were growing up. And I, there's

Simone Collins: that, but there's also the fact that. Just to give you like a, a picture of, of how things have changed, even when you look at how parents are parenting, a peer research center study found that only 27% of parents say they often ask a family member for parenting advice, which indicates a clear decline in, in the reliance on families.

They're, they're now looking to parenting books, and every time I talk with someone who's pregnant and expecting to become a parent. They talk to me about the books they're reading and the podcasts they're watching, and the videos they're watching. They do not talk about talking with their mothers [00:03:00] or their parents in general about parenting.

Yes. So they're, it's not just about like going for an aesthetic norm. It's about. Shifting to the experts. Like we, we give our kids to childcare. We don't give them to our family. We give our our kids to school. We don't homeschool them. Things

Malcolm Collins: are being outsourced, like the two groups that are going to try to take advantage of this.

If you allow other people to implant a life vision in your kids' head, they're mm-hmm. Either going to. Marketers who want to use this to make money. Yeah. Or they are going to be self-replicating mimetic sets that e exist like the urban monoculture because they're good at turning people into basically self replication zombies.

And I wanted to start with actually, I, I'm just gonna read the, the. Interaction I had with, and I asked Megan for permission to share this as you, as you saw Simone. Interesting to be like, do I need to anonymize it, et cetera. So I'll read it because I thought it was very insightful in sort of how it framed this.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So she said came up when I asked Scott if he wanted to [00:04:00] discuss, quote, which pieces of advice to pass on to the kids. And he went, what are you talking about? Scott's parents were supportive, always eager to help with administration. Administrative navigation, but he thought, dad sits you down and gives you life advice, was an unrealistic thing from the movies.

Pretty confident. Malcolm and I were from Advice Giving Cultures one, and, and she's from a culture that's fairly similar to ours. Mm-hmm. Whereas, I don't know. I, I, my understanding is Scott's from a, a Jewish cultural background, which was surprising to me because that's a culture that I always thought was very high on advice giving at least in terms of the movies and stereotypes, which, which means probably in reality our Jewish fans can say one way or the other if, if advice giving stopped.

And I know before I continue reading this. Within my own family. I saw this with one parent and not with the other parent. Like my dad basically never gave me life advice. Oh yeah. Never, never. But my mom constantly gave me life advice. Yeah. And I got life [00:05:00] advice from my grandparents on my dad's side.

Actually the grand mom as well. My granddad didn't gimme life advice either. Which is interesting because the advice I got from my grandmom. Was framed through, this is something your granddad used to do or say. So well, and it was

Simone Collins: actually, it was a very consistent family doctrine that was passed and shared among many people.

So there was like, there was almost a family guidebook or rule book, and these were norms that were shared across family members. Right. And that I think was very good. It was solid advice too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. To, we'll, we'll get to this advice later in this, but to continue with what I'm reading here one of your books illustrates his mom's unmistakable advice giving compulsion.

She's talking about me here and has a side-by-side comparison with his mom doing a good versus bad job of targeting it. Ha ha ha. Not sure about Simone, but I'm predicting low advice, but not zero. What about your parents? Did your parents get life advice? Simone. [00:06:00] Sparingly, but yes. Oh yes. I remember like the advice, and this is actually kind of surprising to me, that your mom gave about sleeping around a lot.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's what I was just thinking. Like the, the one piece of advice that I really remember my mom saying so indirectly about sex was that you, that sex is like a precious gem and you should be really thoughtful about who you give your gems to. And it really went over

Malcolm Collins: my head. So I was like, I, I actually think that's not bad advice to give a young girl and what's fascinating,

Simone Collins: solid, it just you saying that to an asexual person or someone who's only, who's gay for Malcolm and Malcolm only apparently like, is just not,

Malcolm Collins: but what's interesting about it is, and this this could be part of like trying to figure this out for me, is.

Her mom met her dad when they were in what today would be called a polyamorous [00:07:00] relationship. You know, she is not somebody I think of as like she was very in with like San Francisco pro sexuality culture. And yet what seems like an older family tradition about how to relate to sex and sexuality got passed down through her.

Potentially she was repeating something that an ancestor had told her. And that's why it came out as sort of this prepackaged narrative that goes against even her own sort of life practices which I, I found very fascinating. But anyway, to continue reading here my mom's side had a very pushy for advice culture, and fortunately for me, my grandfather on that side mostly gave good life strategy advice.

And I'll note here, when she was talking about my mom giving good versus bad advice or, or giving it in good versus bad ways is my mom both gave me larger structured advice, but also gave me advice almost every like day, every day. Oh, constant feedback. Can

Simone Collins: I give my example? I have

Malcolm Collins: yes. Great. [00:08:00] Okay. I stopped doing

Simone Collins: it because she just gave so many of these, but I, I used to keep a Google doc of her funny emails.

So I'm just gonna read one 'cause it's relevant because it's about. It's about us on YouTube. Oh, okay. Subject YouTube channel and it, it just starts out YouTube just don't seem to understand that you are adults and that you have virtually nothing to fall back on. And just a few brief years to strike your Fortune YouTube channel.

Are you shitting me? This sounds even more pathetic than blogging for HuffPost. And you look so sad and pathetic. Hi guys and girls. Surfs up. The others who have your education are working their asses off to get somewhere. And you two have more ridiculous excuses for not living adult lives than I've ever heard.

Shut down your failing company and get jobs as it is. If I were an employer and I saw digital imprint of all your striving, I would not hire you. I haven't seen anything so sad since Heidi Montague on Spencer Pratt and it did not go well [00:09:00] for them either. Buckle down and get jobs immediately when el

Malcolm Collins: This is very common for the type of advice I got from my mom.

It was, I, I love when people are like, how come all of the public criticism doesn't get to you? And it's like. I was trained on criticism for a very young age. It's, it's like the, the Bain quote,

Speaker: Oh, you think darkness is your ally? You really adopted the dark. I was born in it molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man

Malcolm Collins: and her advice, and I may speak of her in like, kind because sometimes the advice was good advice. Other times the advice was not good advice.

And you could say, oh, well, why aren't you mad about this? Or have any animosity about this? , And it's like, well, but [00:10:00] she's not wrong. I mean, starting a YouTube is a huge time sink. Yes, it's gone well for us since then, but in the early days, , huge variability and potential outcomes. I, I do have a Stanford MBA Simone does have a graduate degree from Cambridge.

Like we could get jobs at McKinsey or something and just make safe money. , I understand why she might have frustration that we don't get that

I will say I love how good she was at explicitly trying to pick at my known insecurities, which makes her such a better troll than the random Internets online. And the emails like the one we read here weren't unique. Here's another one. I asked Simone to sim me some more. I'm going to stop following you and Simone on Facebook.

That video was tragic to see. It reminded me of those. Sad, lonely videos Simone did when she had nothing much going on in her personal life. Even the feathers were back and there were of course no views. Just a couple people desperate to be noticed, [00:11:00] wasting their time. It's as though you two bring out the worst in each other, the most vulnerable and weak parts.

You should be bringing out the best in each other. So sad to watch you losing your momentum in life and making such disastrous decisions. You will be left behind by your classmates and your brother.

but what you can tell within that is what she would often frame the advice around is you will never be rich if you don't do X. And I was like, mom, I don't really care about becoming rich. And she just couldn't understand this.

She's like, but of course. And I was like, no, I, I care about influence and saving the world. Having lots of kids and trying to make the world a better place. And she'd be like, what? You know, if you keep having kids, you won't have as much money and you won't be able to give them as nice of things. And I'm like, well, I don't know if that stuff really matters.

But then other times she would give me really great advice. You know, yeah, she's the one who gave me the advice. When I was bemoaning which college I was going to [00:12:00] choose and I was like, Ugh, you know, this is the, the most important decision of my life. It's gonna affect everything that sort of comes after this.

And she was like pretty sternly. Like, no, it is not the most important decision of your life. The most important decision of your life is who you marry. And at the time, growing up within the urban monoculture. I thought that that was a ridiculous and potentially even a little misogynistic thing to say.

I was like, no, of course it's your career. That's the most important thing. Great.

Simone Collins: We were raised, like all I ever thought in high school was all, the only thing that mattered in my life was what college I got into.

Malcolm Collins: That's what I thought in high school. Yeah. In middle school it was like you're preparing for high school so you can prepare to get into the best college.

Yeah. And then you get into a good college and then your life is set. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And so your mom, your mom gave some really solid advice, but

Malcolm Collins: we'll, we'll get to more of that in a second. Like the advice I got from both sides, but I'm continue being here, but I

Simone Collins: wanted to give that one example. No,

Malcolm Collins: it's, it's a great example for our YouTube fans.

Yeah. She would be quite happy with how things have gone for us. She died during our YouTube [00:13:00] career, and we have an episode when that happened and everything. Yeah, she actually,

Simone Collins: so yeah. As much as she hated the idea of us being on YouTube to begin with, yeah. Before her death, she, she was a huge fan of our podcast, watched every episode, and at that point.

Her feedback, actually, I was just following it today was much more tactical. She's like, Malcolm, you need to get your lighting better. And she'd send us all these tutorials. I'm like, here's the camera angle you're supposed to have. What are you doing with your background? You're too close to the camera.

I, I, I literally just put gloss on because she was like, I, this, the matte lipstick isn't good. You have to wear gloss. And so I still listen to her. I still listen to her.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, to continue here, yeah. A handful of young people I asked either didn't get advice from their parents at all, or they got seemingly blatant, stale and self-centered.

Quote, go into my exact profession type stuff. Oh, interesting. And I saw this too with a lot of my friend's kids. You know? You did. Yeah. You know, I go the, the, the, the one that I saw the most was my friend's kids, was not going to my exact profession. It was, do what [00:14:00] makes you happy.

Simone Collins: That's,

Malcolm Collins: and I think trend

Simone Collins: I saw was that advice shifted from very tactical, like, here's how to live your life, et cetera, et cetera.

And it went from that into. Here's emotional coaching. Here's how I want you to be happy. Here's it. It it sh the values shifted. The advice was no longer about tactical, practical stuff. It was about feelings.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is you know, where I'm thinking of the, the career advice I got from my parents very different my dad's career advice, he gave me one piece of career advice consistently and over and over again, which is.

If you are for, are fortunate enough to make a large amount of money when you're young

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Don't expect it to be easy to make that amount of money for the rest of your life.

Mm-hmm.

IE if you, you know, come into a lot of money when you're young or you make a big business play, which he did when he was still very young.

And he made the mistake of thinking, well, I'll just be able to do this again and again and [00:15:00] again. In terms of how he was spending money, he kind of did though he not realizing he should have. He would like make a lot of money and then lose it all. And

Simone Collins: then

Malcolm Collins: as an early lucky roll of the dice instead of something that he would be able to persistently repeat which is actually really solid advice.

I didn't end up needing it. But because I didn't make a ton of money when I was young. But still really, really solid advice. The other advice that he gave on career stuff is do not overly focus on the degree you get. And that the degree you get should be for status and recreation.

And don't let it sort of narrow the career choices you make or the, the starting career trajectory you make. I don't know if this was good advice. Don't

Simone Collins: create No, no, no. I think that's, that's solid advice. Creating path dependency with careers is. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I got my degree, my undergraduate in neuroscience.

And I got my graduate degree as, as an MBA. Mm-hmm. And I, I went into business, so I, I definitely did that. Mm-hmm. I, I went into neuroscience because I wanted something that showed my intelligence but was also fun. And so, so I did [00:16:00] neuroscience doing a I was gonna do a minor in philosophy, but I found it was so stupid as soon as I started studying it at the academic level, couldn't, I was like, you couldn't take all the meds.

It really, it really is all semantics at the academic level. Like, I was like this,

Simone Collins: so it, that's, I can't take it.

Malcolm Collins: And I was like, what? What, what do you mean? Like, what does X mean? Like, just define it how you want to define it. I wanna understand why I exist, you know? Mm-hmm. But anyway, to continue here and that it was often ignored.

Soft cultures seemed to lose advice, giving entirely advice, assorted differently from support, which I find slightly surprising though it could make sense. If you think of advice as pushing a cultural package for children to unpack after they migrated elsewhere as adults and are no longer in touch.

Probably too much of a story. I don't know. I think less wrong, and this is like the wider rationalist community is a young adv advice young advice pushing culture. But it might have a pretty weak quote. Only take advice from people that you respect slash want to emulate in [00:17:00] quote, discounting meaning they don't do this, which is something I was always told by my mom.

And this is the piece of advice that you really adopted from her, which is never take advice from somebody who isn't in a position that you want to be. Mm-hmm. So if. If somebody hasn't made a fortune and they give you advice on making a fortune, it's probably not gonna be very good. If somebody isn't in a happy marriage and they tell you how to get a wife probably not.

Great advice. And this is actually really important. Within like the YouTube community, as there are so many advice givers on how to be like an awesome man, for example, who are you know, single and childless or in, you know, like divorce number three or like. You know, no, no, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't be.

But people don't look at that. And, and, and so this isn't just a problem with less wrong culture doing this, although I have seen this was less wrong, where they look at you know, advice from people with out proven track records. Oh. Where yes.

Simone Collins: That does happen a lot. What on earth like

Malcolm Collins: [00:18:00] Likeer Kowski, for example, A lot of people take his AI stuff really seriously, even though he's like literally hasn't been successful at a single thing other than writing a fan fiction in his entire life.

The Fanfic kind of fizzled out technical or AI related. And, and yet

Simone Collins: he's, no, he's been successful at raising money. I would take his advice on raising money.

Malcolm Collins: I would take his advice on raising money too. Mm-hmm. And I would take his advice on making a fan fiction popular. I would not take his advice on the threat level of ai.

And, and, yeah. So anyway, to, to continue here. Or at least I feel surprised by how often I have to explain or justify some of this tendency in myself. Like that she's saying she feels even weird. And we've had this as reporters. They go, how dare you give your child expectations? Like, you want something from them.

They're like, well, do you want this? Or we, we got this

Simone Collins: a lot online like that. It, it was tantamount to abuse that we had high expectations for our children.

Malcolm Collins: Any expectations for our children.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I was like, what a psychotic thing. I, I, I think that there are a few signs from my cultural [00:19:00] perspective that are a sign of more disinterest and a lack of genuine love or care for someone then to not have expectations of them.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If you. Care for your kids. Certainly you want a particular outcome for them, right? You like, you just don't want, you know, whatever. You're trying to, because, because if you want, whatever it means you can't even model who they are or what they might want even for themselves. Right. You know? Well, but I

Simone Collins: almost, I, I almost wish that people chose whatever over what I think they actually are, which is choosing, which is happiness.

I just want my kid to be happy. I think that's the worst thing you can hope for for your kid. And tell them. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, well, I mean, 'cause it shows and my father has, has, has pushed for that with me in terms of like what he wants from me. And I see that as not a sign of caring. Like I like my dad and everything like that, but I don't see it like if you're an, an adult and you do this with your kids, like I just want them to be happy.

Know that to a [00:20:00] kid that comes across as disinterest often. Wait, I'm, I'm sure your parents gave you some, I just want you to be happy. Speech or something? Or did they not, like, did they have some bigger thing that they wanted from you?

Simone Collins: I mean, they gave me what I would now contextualize as, as please be more culturally like US advice, you know, like, tell me about that.

Well, because I only wanted to stay at home and study and be by myself and they're like, go out experiment, stay out late, you know, be, be with friends and people. And I didn't want that. You didn't want that. I didn't want that. At least there are some people who are giving their kids cultural advice where they wish their kids would conform more.

And I do think that there are different forms of advice. So I think that

Malcolm Collins: I, yeah. I wanna categorize, let's, let's delineate this. Yeah. I'll give you my categories or you, you used start with your categories in the middle. I think there's

Simone Collins: one, there's the direct advice, like my mom telling me the story of the, you know, having sex is like giving away [00:21:00] JUULs.

And then there is the. I think the bigger form of advice my parents gave me, and I think this is the most important, important advice that every parent gives to their kids, which is the what you do, your actions, and then kids watch your actions carefully, which helps 'em normalize to what is they expect of themselves but also.

What they think ultimately is good or bad. 'cause if they hate something you do or they, they see how you live your life and that it doesn't work out well, they're going to do something very different. So I think that's the most useful advice. And when I think about the advice we give to our kids, I care so much more about what they see us modeling than what we ever say to them, because that can be really discounted by kids.

Then there's the. Cultural institutions with which you raise your kids. So by choosing to put your kid in a certain school or to send them to church, you are implicitly choosing the advice that they're surrounded with by other people. But I think

Malcolm Collins: that this is a huge mistake people make today, is that they try to outsource to cultural institutions that have been, and there's a lot of people who, like, they send

Simone Collins: their kids to like the LDS church or Catholic school, and they're like, [00:22:00] okay, they're covered.

Like, my kid's gonna grow up a Catholic, and then they're like shocked when they turn 18. You're like, wait, the

Malcolm Collins: Catholic school is where a lot of this. Is coming from, and it's like, yes, a lot of this is coming from Catholic school. And, and no, like

Simone Collins: many parents have told us that, like they, they thought they had it all right?

And they did all the things and they sort of outsourced the advice to that institution, be it the church or the church and related institutions. And then our kid, their kids leave as soon as they leave the house. So like, yeah, by the way, I'm an atheist and

Malcolm Collins: I'm, no, because a lot of these institutions mimetic viruses have gutted them and used them for recruitment processes.

Mm-hmm. And they still wear the face. Of Catholic school or something like that, or LDS school or something. When in reality they're a pipeline. Out of these, these institutions, and so I think not just vetting the school, but I generally, unless I was from a large cultural institution that I really trusted, like for example, I think Brigham Young is actually pretty good as a university system implementing LDS cultural values.

Yeah. Yeah, I I would not trust [00:23:00] 99% of Catholic schools. Hundred percent. And implementing Catholic values. I, I think so. I

Simone Collins: think when Catholic schools were still run out of convents, I would trust them a lot more. And like taught like literal nuns leading them. But now there are just so many more, like maybe not even really parochial schools, just like schools that call themselves Catholic.

And there's also a ton of classical Christian schools and also just classical schools, which I think now a lot of parents when they decide that this is their version of like homeschooling light, like, well, I don't really have the bandwidth to homeschool my kid, but I wanna do the whole, like, Western civilization is great.

Raising my kid is a non-progressive thing. They choose. Classical schools, and I just don't, you, you

Malcolm Collins: just don't know. Classic. I I think classical schools are retarded. I'm ret I'm sure

Simone Collins: some are good. You just don't know. No,

Malcolm Collins: no. I mean, as an educational model, and this is just my thought, I understand some cultures are different.

I actually do not think you do a good job of passing down [00:24:00] cultural values by forcing people to read the same books you read as a kid. Because those will be drowned out by wider cultural influences.

Hmm.

And, and this is what people believe. They go, well, if you read. Western classics you will come to respect the Western tradition.

Not at all. It's like the problem is, is you're trying to create a westernized, maybe even Christianized version of a yeshiva. But this is a, a Jewish college thing that you go to for two years where you learn about Jewish cultural history and religion. Mm-hmm. But the problem is, is you don't pair that with pride.

That's, no, that's really huge. I can give a good example of this,

Simone Collins: With Shakespeare. Because I, I was taught Shakespeare in school, obviously, like a, a lot of us were, I don't know if they do it so much anymore. But when I was taught Shakespeare in middle school and high school, I would do things like write essays about how there's documented proof in Romeo and Juliet, that Juliet was brain damaged.

And this is the most stupid story about a bunch of like retarded people who literally [00:25:00] are killing themselves because they're just literally like brain damaged. And then. And I hated it and I hated everything about Shakespeare. But then my mom, she loved Shakespeare. And when she, she would work with me to memorize sonnets, she would go through various elements of it take me to place and then annotate it with me.

And, and then I came to love it. So

Malcolm Collins: think the point I'm making here is Simone, is it is more important if you're trying to influence the directionality of your, your children. Mm. That you teach them what to have pride in more than the specific things that you teach them. Well, more than

Simone Collins: that though, and this has to do with our shelter.

Don't shelter annotate rule. Which is that it's, it's not about exposing your children to information or not exposing them to information or sheltering them from it. It's about how you help them interpret it. And your interpretation is really important. Like the way you translate anything to a kid is super

Malcolm Collins: important.

But I, I'll say I, I do not like your, your [00:26:00] taxonomy of advice categories. I would categorize it quite differently. Okay.

Simone Collins: Go for it.

Malcolm Collins: So, category one is advice that is taught about who you and your family are and what makes you different from other families. I got a lot of this from both sides of my family.

But it was always framed as, well, you're a Collins and that means X or Y. And it's often taught through an anecdotes. About your ancestors. So like, I was taught about the ancestor who had nine daughters. And so he you know, but he didn't let them get out of work. And so he built a special, harnesses so that instead of having to buy animals like, like oxid and, and beast of burden his family would, would pull the plow. And, and this was miles actually. And then Malcolm an ancestor named Malcolm. Was known for having an arm that didn't work because you know, when they, he was the kid, his brother fell off the roof but he was [00:27:00] told to not be playing.

They were sent to the roof by their dad, who was about to have a very important business meeting. And he said, don't play and don't interrupt the meeting. And so we held him so long until the meeting was over that his arm ended up going necrotic and dying to keep his

Simone Collins: brother from. Getting injured, falling off the roof.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and this is a, a story. I mean, obviously these stories are meant to tell you things about our family. Our family is ruthless in, in, in work ethic. You know, work ethic matters above all else. And that they care about family and they care about family above all else. And I was even told this all the time as a kid it's a, it's not about the iq, it's the I will is what my mom always said.

And this was taught through the way they relayed to me. So if something I remember very vividly about being a kid is the only thing I was never allowed to see was any. IQ tests or any major testing results when I was younger. Oh, interesting.

My mom would not let me see any of them, I [00:28:00] presume, because I did very well on them.

Was, was, was sort of my understanding from my later scores on these tests. I mean, I did, you know. Get a Stanford MBA in a, the St. Andrew's undergrad and did very well in both of those institutions. It would be odd if they

Simone Collins: started out as abysmal. Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I was actually, I was in the school, the, the, they don't even have these anymore, but I was in what was called the district program.

Yeah. Where they would take you outta classes and then take you with all the other smartest kids in the school in, in public school. Yeah. They've shut most of these down, which is sad. 'cause they were really good for these kids, I think. Well, and a lot of

Simone Collins: research has found that. That kids with uniquely high IQs are basically just another version of special needs kids.

And when not accommodated, it's like they have higher rates of behavioral problems, higher rates of dropouts. Like they, they, they also need accommodation, but screw them because apparently IQ gives you an advantage.

Malcolm Collins: Is this form of like family. You know, what's expected of you and everything like that, right?

And things that family do. And the other past, through family stories, but also through [00:29:00] expectations, like, as I said the not showing me the, I, my, my test scores ever I think was very clearly my parents trying to say to me remember. You know, a, any, anything you're born with isn't something you should be proud of.

Hmm. You know, if, if you're, if you're born naturally talented, that only means you need to work twice as hard because the world deserves more. You, you know, the, the world needs more from you. And this was something I was, I was actually regularly told as a young kid, and not just by my parents, but by other family members.

Was that like, well. You know, you, you were born in a position of privilege because more is expected of you than is expected of other people. And the, the. I, I thought that that was really interesting. Then the next category of advice I would, I would call like one off like naggy advice which you see across many cultural traditions.

Mm-hmm. And I definitely got this within my family. This is the type of advice that my mom gave there, right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah, you're

Malcolm Collins: gonna fail. You're, you're, you, you look [00:30:00] ugly. Simone is a vortex of failure as she called you the best. You know, I never got

Simone Collins: this, by the way, so this was only something I think you ever got from your mom.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I've seen it in other cultures. I've seen it as depicted in Greek and Jewish culture as well. Which is very much just like, you know, constantly calling you up and being like, Hey, are you doing this right? Are you doing this right? Like, you, you look ugly. I saw you on the news and you didn't have your hair done right.

Fix it. You, you, you know, I'm pro in your hair.

Simone Collins: If we got a dollar every, I

Malcolm Collins: remember. Growing up I had a lisp, for example, and so she'd say something like, if you don't fix that lisp, you're gonna sound faggy and no girl will ever wanna have sex with you. And I love that that's the way she framed it as well.

Mm-hmm. Right. Like, the, I mean, this has

Simone Collins: transferred

Malcolm Collins: a little bit to the way we

Simone Collins: talked to our kids,

Malcolm Collins: right. Which is that she didn't try to like fancy up the communicative language. No, she moved with me. No. She was very. Because again, we're from the backwards cultural tradition, particularly her which is basically American redneck [00:31:00] culture.

And what that means is, is you, you, you don't, you know, overly formalize how you're communicating with your kid, right? Like, and, and you talk in terms of things that you think that they will care about. Like, bet. You know, he's a young man, he wants sex, right? So I will say if you do X, you won't get Y, which is a thing that presumably you want.

Yeah. But you also show cultural values. A a another category is in the things that people say that chafe against the, the system that you find yourself in. So one of the, you know, I was. At a boarding school at one point. And my mom was coming over and she heard I was on, you know, probation and she's like, what are you on probation for?

And I was like, well, I was caught with a girl in my room. And I was, how were you

Simone Collins: that sloppy.

Malcolm Collins: I had girls in my room a lot. Okay. It, it, I, they, you've gotta sneak them in, right? And then sometimes people will walk [00:32:00] in or they catch you sneaking somebody in or they see you walking towards a dorm with a girl.

I mean, if you're climbing through a window, they can see that. Right? You gotta be quite you know, one of my tactics was to dress them up, like pizza delivery. You know, oh my gosh. Yeah, but then what if they don't see the pizza delivery leave? Do they start checking the rooms? You know? But anyway, I was caught with a girl in my room and my mom said to me what?

They don't let you sleep with people or drink. What do they think you guys are doing? You're teenagers. And, and that's very much like. You know, we within this culture, don't, don't care about these types of uptight rules. So, so that's one way that advice is given. But then there's also and I find the naggy advice doesn't really work well.

I've seen it in Asian cultures as well. I've seen it in Jewish culture. I've seen it in Greek culture. I, I don't see it in most waspy cultures to be honest. And or at least when it's in waspy cultures, it appears more. And this might be a backwood saying where I've seen it, it, it appears more [00:33:00] aggressive and mean-spirited.

Simone Collins: Oh, or maybe passive aggressive is a better way of putting No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. And when I've heard it in Jewish culture and Greek culture, it's comes off as very passive aggressive. Like, oh, why? Oh, I thought you were referring to was, I think in waspy

Simone Collins: culture, it comes across as more.

Malcolm Collins: So, so at least within the backwards culture where my mom comes from, right?

Mm-hmm. She'd never say something like, oh, Malcolm, I, I see you haven't brought a girl home. You know, that. When are you gonna bring a, a pretty girl home or something like that, like your brother or something, you know, like, and I, I see that a lot was in Jewish culture. It's like, when are you gonna do x like X person In Asian culture, it's, they, they do this a lot as well.

My mom would never say something like that. It would be something like. I bet you're not getting any because you, you come off like a puss like, you know, if, if you stop and, and would, I really appreciated her advice around like finding a, a partner or something like that is, it was [00:34:00] very outcome driven.

She never gave me advice, like one, like the passive aggressive, like, why haven't you done X? It's like, oh, you need to be doing more y so that you can get more C. Right? Yeah. You, you need to be yeah. Sometimes her plans were ridiculous. Like, I, I need to get invited to more debutante balls, but I wasn't friends was the type of people who had debutante balls.

She was, that was in her generation. I can't go I, I can imagine like more crazy advice to somebody who's going to school in Scotland at St. Andrews and then went to high school in New England where they just don't do that. You know, she was from Texas, right? Of course they do that in Texas.

But I, I, I, I also think that there's another category of advice, which I call like broad life advice. And so, you know, the, the best advice I was given here that was traditional family advice. That was something that my dad did, and I was told by my grandmother and this is advice I would genuinely [00:35:00] recommend to anyone watching this.

If you're, if you're a young person watching this and you're like, what's, what's really good advice? 'cause this is what you were hinting at at the beginning. It's that you should think of your life as divided into life stages. And what you do and want within each of those life stages is going to change and society today, so doesn't prepare kids for this.

In fact, it's so bad as I was reading the Zian article on zz, who has this EA person who went on puberty blockers as a young kid and, and went trans. And the reason they really did this was because they were afraid of going through puberty, would turn them into a different person. And, and that they were so, you know, insistent on maintaining who they were.

And I think that this also causes you know, the ea and rationalist fear that they're not taught about these transitions that you got us through in life of, of, of death, right? Where I don't remember ever really being particularly afraid of that. At all in my life. And the reason is, is because I was taught that [00:36:00] well, you know, when you're young, you have these goals.

Like your goal is to build the best you, you, you are the tool that you all have access to throughout your entire life. Make that tool the best. Tool it can be. And I remember every day when I went to school, that's what I was thinking. Well, after school, when I would study extracurricular things I was like, I am doing this.

As Simone knows, I would listen to lectures constantly, like university lectures. And I got tapes and, and, and courses of them. And I'd go through like 48 hour lecture, you know, every, every week. On deep, like PhD level topics because I, I was told to do this, I was like, you are making yourself the best weapon possible as an adult.

Don't waste your time on anything that won't add to that. So. I really, really, really focused on that. And then it was, okay, well when you're a bit older, you know, then you wanna be looking for a spouse then you want to be having kids and building a career, then you want to be dedicating yourself to public service and growing your reputation within the [00:37:00] community.

And the reason why, even if you don't follow these individual like life stages, that's why I'm not going into the stages in detail. If you wanna read them, you can read the Pragmatist Hydro Crafting Religion. It's for like $1 on Amazon. But. The, the, the wider framework here is that, and this was so important to me, being able to be as happy and successful as I am now as an adult.

Understanding that. It's not just what I dedicate my time to at different life stages, but to let go of the last life stage. Mm-hmm. Like when you're a a, a young person, you know, you might, you know, get status or get self-affirmation by chasing. Sexual partners. And then you become an older person and you say and I see a lot of people, they are still doing this when their biology often, and I, I I can sort of tell this no longer is rewarding them in the way it did when they were younger because our bodies.

Built to shift. It's not just at [00:38:00] puberty that you shift, it's, it's when you get to like three kids. We've talked about this in other videos. It's when you define a long-term partner your biology undergoes many shifts and the things that you get satisfaction from, and if you are. Searching from satisfaction in ways that you found it in the past rather than the way that you are programmed to find it in the moment.

You will often not find it. And if you overinvest in a form of satisfaction for a particular moment like. You know, teenagers get a lot of satisfaction from personal validation. And so many of them get tricked into restructuring their lives around quests for personal validation, which I think a lot of the gender stuff and a lot of the trans movement comes downstream of.

And so they, they, they search for this personal validation or, or pleasure and then they realize, you know, me as an adult with kids, I see the way that they laugh at and interact with the world. And I know that there are whole [00:39:00] ranges of emotion that I will never be able to feel again. And there's no reason to be sad about that.

'cause I'm not that person anymore. That person is functionally dead and it's good that that person is dead because that's what it means to grow up. Yeah, it is a failure state. You know, when I was a kid, I was like a hardcore goth. Not like Goss, but like Goss punky, very J Go jeans. I had my own thing going on, you know?

And I remember when I did all that, I would look at the older punks slash goss and, and the thought that ran through my head was, what a disgusting loser. You know, and. I knew at that time while I was indulging in that form of rebellion that it was. Not even a phase. It was just a form of of culture that I was opting into because I was young, because I was youth maxing, and that what I wanted from myself in my next stage of life had nothing to [00:40:00] do, was what I was doing in this stage of my life.

Mm-hmm. At this stage, I wanted to be rebellious and sleep around. I'm not saying that you should sleep around at this stage, but I was told actually by my mom that I should be doing this. She's like, you're a guy. If you are high status, if you are successful you know, you prove that by sleeping around which was bad advice.

But it was, it was advice that I got from my parents that I took to heart. And I, I will not be giving to my kids. But I, I wonder is, is that like. Intergenerational, like cultural memory there. But I think that that's one of the most important pieces of life advice that anyone can internalize is that who you are.

Doesn't just change in life. It's a failure if it doesn't. Yeah. You have seriously effed up if you are still searching for the things that gave you pleasure and validation in your mid twenties, in your early thirties, or in your, you know, mid forties, right? Like you are supposed to go through a cycle of [00:41:00] self transformation, you know, at least every decade.

You're not supposed to stagnate, you're not supposed to optimize around one particular outcome which I thought was always really good life advice I got from my parents. The other piece of advice, I didn't get this from my parents, but other, the other category of life advice I'd say is advice from an individual's own life.

So, like my dad telling me, Hey, if you make a lot of money, make sure to that's, that's where this

Simone Collins: thing that happened to me and here's how it played out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, here's how you can avoid this thing.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I would, I would certainly I don't, I don't have that much of that type of advice for my kids.

I, I guess, the big category of advice that I would have there for my kids. Comes from annoying things that my parents did that I'm glad that I don't do, and I would be afraid that I can't have that reference point for my kids where I was like, oh my God, I so appreciative of my parents for being so annoying in this way.

So that I never do that. Because clearly I have it in my genes. A tendency to maybe do [00:42:00] that. But this is stuff that may not be, you know, relevant to other people. Like, you know, don't you know, overly bring up in conversations you know, your particular in the moment challenges. Like other people don't care to hear about that.

Right. Do you, do you have thoughts, Simone? Advice?

Simone Collins: Well, I'm, I'm curious to know what you think people should. Intentionally do with regard to advice or lack thereof with their own kids, because I think a lot of people either didn't receive advice from their parents or felt like, feel like the advice they received from their parents is no longer relevant or they didn't really like it.

So what, what do you think, what would you see other parents doing that you thought was meaningful? Because, I mean, I have strong opinions on these things. Like I don't actually care that much about the. I mean, I give, I guess I give our kids advice a lot because I, I will tell them. Like, Hey, if you're unpleasant to be around, no one's [00:43:00] gonna wanna be around you and you won't get things out of them.

So maybe you should try to be a little more pleasant. Or, but I think what's more important is, is us modeling things. Like I said before, I think, and we've seen, I think one, one thing that I really hate is when people try to outsource advice or, or training. Like we've seen some people say, oh, you know, we've hired this cook and we've hired this maid and we've hired this fix it person.

And you know, we, we make a point of having our kids watch them work. So that they learn from them. And what their kids are learning, in my opinion, is that hired help does this stuff. And we, it's so

Malcolm Collins: funny that somebody would, because somebody, you know, told us this is parenting advice and, and someone told

Simone Collins: us as parenting advice, and we've seen parents actively do this and say that that's proudly that they, they have their kids observe them and, and learn.

It

Malcolm Collins: reminds me of there's a South Park episode that's making fun of this

Speaker 3: you got your phones and your ai and you kids haven't learned to be able to actually do anything. So we're gonna take this morning to learn how to fix [00:44:00] something.

So what do we do, it's very simple. You do is you take out your phone and you call the handyman. . Now we rest until the handyman comes.

Are you following

Speaker 4: this at all, guys? Is this seeping in?

Malcolm Collins: But what I actually do, and Simone knows this, is I have a policy that whenever we call somebody to fix something in my house that they I get to watch them and they have to explain to me how they did what they did so that I can always do it the next time.

Now what's really fascinating to me is that. An individual, like a, A man could come to me and say. This is advice I'm gonna give to my kids. And I would say, but wait, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you know how to fix all of these things yourself? Because you had the people come when you were, you know, now and you learned it from these people so that you could teach your kids.

When I teach my [00:45:00] kid how to fix a sink, it is going to be because I personally. Call to fix it guy and watched him fix the sink.

Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. You don't have your kids learn from the fix it guy. You have your kids learn from you after you learned from the fix it guy.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But the, the point here being is you are intentionally signaling to your kids that this isn't actually a cultural value of yours.

Mm-hmm. Or you would've done it yourself.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Actions speak louder than words.

Something I forgot to talk about here is why people stopped passing down their cultural values. And I think one of the core reasons , is society developed a narrative downstream of psychologist culture, , that a lot of, or pretty much all of a person is problems, could be blamed on somebody else, primarily their parents.

, And so. When you can, , you know, sort of externalize any of your personality faults to being your parents' fault, then you begin to think that parenting is this huge, dangerous, walking on eggshells, saying where you might mess up your kids. And then you think, [00:46:00] okay, well if anything I can do might mess up my kids, what I should just do is tell them nothing, , do nothing.

And then this becomes normalized.

Simone Collins: So that's like, that's my big thing. But how, what, what other advice would you give to people as they contemplate intentionally? Guiding their children through explicit or implicit advice.

Malcolm Collins: What would I do? I mean, I, I think that the most important things are one tight, easy to remember analogies or stories.

Hmm. Like the ancestors, your ancestor did X, your ancestor did y very vivid and easy to remember.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The, the other thing that's very vivid and easy to remember are simple. It's not. Iq. It's, I will oh

Simone Collins: yeah, quippy easy. But,

Malcolm Collins: but these come with other things, like if your son comes to you and they are proud, 'cause I remember, you know, like I get proud if I did well on a test or [00:47:00] something like that. And what was always said is, well, I mean, that's the minimum that's expected of you. Like, what, what have you done outside of school? Like, and, and, and also this, this, this belief that you're supposed to show in your work ethic.

Not just in the results. Like, it's not like they, they weren't results focused. It's that they wanted the results but they wanted work on top of the results. And the results weren't the purpose in and of themselves. So like, you know, you, you wouldn't be praised like in some Asian families, I see people be like, praised for good grades.

I don't remember ever in my entire childhood being praised for good grades. And, and I did get, you know, good grades occasionally, and I got bad grades occasionally. I remember being scolded for bad grades. I remember being told, which my mom actually picked up from the movie Clueless. That grades were just a jumping off point for negotiations.

And that was something that I, I really took to heart in the way I related to [00:48:00] grades and teachers. And I cannot tell you the number of times. I got my grade up, I'd say like 80% of the time when my grade was bad. And the teacher gave it to me and I go, okay, you know, meet me after class. We're gonna work on a way to fix this and improve this.

Very you know, depending on your environment. Many teachers, if they have a student who's like, I want to improve this, I want to improve myself, you know, meet with me when they understand. That you will work as long as it takes to, to get that grade up. Eventually they just move the grades up and they learn not to give you bad grades.

That's, that's really what I think I, I learned with the teachers. But it was a form of of, of sort of, you know, training. You trained them. Yes. But I, I think with a lot of people there, the, and then the other thing I'd say is. The other most important thing you teach with your kids is values.

What should they have pride in? What shouldn't they have pride in? Hmm. And then the next is a life path. It was very clear that my parents didn't have like a, [00:49:00] oh, you should, you know, follow this religion or that religion. They really didn't care about that. They definitely didn't say, oh, you should want this or this from a life path.

It was more like, well, you know, we will be disappointed in you if you don't seriously consider. Why you're alive. You know, think about what life path you might want and then build a plan to achieve that. Mm-hmm.

And I think

that, that of all the lessons I got from my parents is the most important.

Think through. It, it, this is like, I, I think adjacent to the, you know, life comes in stages is the think about what you want. Know why you want those things why those things are ethical to want, and then build a structured pathway from how you get from where you are today to where you have those things.

And we've even built like holidays around that. I mean, that's what future day is really about for our kids Absolutely. Is, is, is thinking about the future that they want and then understanding that they have agency over that and they're expected to act on that agency.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Good. I like that. That's [00:50:00] good.

Malcolm Collins: So I really appreciate Megan kicking off this topic and hopefully it helps some young people.

Simone Collins: It's fun topic. Yeah, not

Malcolm Collins: exactly. Great for the algorithm probably because it's, it's not spicy or controversial but I suspect it is likely helpful to a lot of people. And it would be nice if in the comments or the discord when people are talking about this, if they could be like, oh, I was from X culture and I got advice.

In this category and not in this category. Yeah, we'd like to know.

Simone Collins: Like I, I genuinely want other people's opinions.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Love you Es.

Simone Collins: Love you too. Gorgeous.

Yes. You'll be vindicated to know that our. Harsh words about nurses were were largely vindicated. That one person pointed out in the comments, they were like, you're being really mean to nurses, which I don't want to be.

I mean, I have two family members who are nurses and they're great, but. I've also seen nurses say, really bizarrely, you mean other

Malcolm Collins: people in the comments were like, yes, I agree with you on nurses.

Simone Collins: As, [00:51:00] as a retired nurse, yes. As a former male nurse. Yes. Like, yes, I'm finally, someone's talking about nurses and how bizarrely uninformed they are.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on there, but yeah. At least, I think at least three people. Who were current or former nurses chimed in to say, thank you for saying that, which I would expect a nurse instead if this weren't true, to come in and be like, well, maybe there's some field where this is a problem.

But in my field, nurses are very well informed and very thoughtful. About their overall approach to medicine. But I,

Malcolm Collins: I thought the, the, the take on discord from a, a nurse that all that everyone they've met who goes into nursing is either a saint or a complete slut is weird, was very interesting as well.

But I can see nursing be appealing to both groups. Sure. Individuals who want a stable, a decent income job where they can just [00:52:00] heat it hedonism max on their spare time. Nursing works really well for that. Plus it had a bunch of shows that made it look really glamorous. Yeah. Like that came out at the age where people our age would've been watching, you know, scrubs in house and everything like that, and making these decisions with those shows in mind where everyone sleep around.

There's so many hospital shows. Yeah. Yeah. But then for the San person, you know, if you're somebody who wants to dedicate your life to like treating the injured and stuff like that, and is very dedicated to that, I can see a lot of people going into that. But I was surprised to hear about all of the mysticism in the nursing field and somebody was writing about.

The other thing is, is that, that it's, it's like a, a whole thing in the, the, that the autoimmune disorders, they were saying that were weirdly and almost always caused by breast surgery implants. I don't know. Anyway, it, it was weird. It was weird. We're going over the, the episode that we did that you reviewed today, which was, which one was it?

It was the one on the, the progressives who think we're living in a different [00:53:00] timeline. Crazy to look into. Any other interesting trends in the comments?

Simone Collins: No, just people being entertained by the delusional nature of many people on the left. I mean, you know, 'cause it's satisfying. And I, I get it.

Also, people appreciating the Chris Chan references, so.

Malcolm Collins: I've, I've, you know, I sometimes check to see if we yet, you know, with all the press we get and all the, the, the hate we get from the left, okay. Because, you know, we're eccentric, right? If, if we are yet seen as old cows like Christian, if we are on God, what is that site where they, they document them all the time.

New, I wanna say new grounds, but no, it's not new grounds. It's something else. Do you know what I'm talking about where they, I'm so bad with names. Yeah. I'm so bad with names too, that like ALA has a profile on there, but we, we still don't.

Simone Collins: Oh. Yeah, the little cows place. Kiwi Farms. Yeah. Kiwi

Malcolm Collins: Farms.

Yes. I, I, I'm shocked. But I guess we're probably not interesting to people [00:54:00] like that because we're so self-aware and intentional about the way we do all this. That they would find that boring and, and un unappetizing as a source of drama.

Simone Collins: It's good stuff.

Speaker 5: Wow. Are you a gentleman? Are you a good looking dude? Okay. Get the front, get those bangs neat and tidy. Yeah. All right. I am better. Yeah, I have the butter, the, it's, it's giving Kevin from home alone. What do you think? Yeah. Okay. Looking good. All right. Now close it up and you can take it down to your room.

Speaker 8: All right. I cannot take it.

In this episode, the hosts revisit a previously discussed topic with a focus on the happiness disparity between progressives and conservatives. Based on a post by Mike Pesca and Nate Silver, they examine new graphs showing demographic breakdowns of this happiness gap. Conservative happiness levels are consistently higher across various groups, with demographics like young women and particularly bisexual individuals showing stark differences. The discussion touches on influences such as urban monoculture, political engagement, education, income, and religion. They also explore personal anecdotes, societal norms, and mental health perceptions within these political spectrums.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be revisiting a topic that we have talked about before, but with a different question and with some new evidence which is why are progressives so unhappy? Wind contrasted with conservatives, and this is something that's been very persistent since Pews started recording polling on progressives and Democrats.

Progressives have been unhappy, but it's gotten sharper recently. And you also see many more mental health problems among progressives. You can go to our previous episode on this if you want us to just shower you with data on this.

Simone Collins: We gotta help them.

Malcolm Collins: If we

Simone Collins: find out what makes them so miserable, maybe we can save them.

We can pull them out of the dark hole.

Energy to fight the bug. We must understand the bug. We can. Ill afford another clinda. Would you like to know more? What mysteries will the brain bug reveal? Federal scientists are [00:01:00] working around the clock to trope its secrets. Once we understand the vote, we will defeat it.

Malcolm Collins: . Oh my God.

Simone Collins: I,

Malcolm Collins: Get, they're bugman Simone. They defend it. They. They say this themselves, they have videos on YouTube with like hundreds of thousands of millions of views saying that the bugs were in the right that the federation was evil, that this was a false flag attack that, that the federation deserves to be destroyed.

And by the way, we know it's not a false flag attack because we saw the asteroid. Hit the Tai Rega, the, the big spaceship outside our solar system, meaning that it had to come from quite far away. And because it knocked out their you know what? You should watch our Sara Strip troopers episode.

If you care about how we know it's not a false flag attack. Take his word for it, people. No, don't take my word for it. Go watch that episode. We need the watch time, Simone. And it's a good episode.

Simone Collins: Go watch the episode.

Malcolm Collins: But in this [00:02:00] episode we're gonna be going over a post from Mike Pesca and Nate Silver titled what Explains the Liberal Conservative Happiness Gap.

And this is in the, the Silver Bulletin. And he goes over a few graphs, is that I hadn't seen before. Oh. And what these graphs do is they look at demographically where the gap is biggest. And from that and, and just so people know, these people's like political, like. Nate Silver is a, is a very mainstream Centris pollster.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Of 5

Simone Collins: 38 fame. 5 38. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: He, he, he, he's, he is been pretty sane from what I've seen. And so I'd be very interested to see his views on this as somebody who's not gonna have the, you know, charged conservatives perspective that we're gonna have.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Although he, he has been attacked by the left for one of the reasons being that he called Trump 20 20, 20 16 when everyone else, how dare

Malcolm Collins: Impossible that he could win.

No, he didn't even call it. He just said it's really possible and we need to stop saying it's only a one or 2% chance. [00:03:00] And they said that he was like a Trump agent. Trump won of course. But they never went back on saying he needed to be de platformed. Yeah. But they

Simone Collins: defund istre him for saying that it was a very real possibility.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay.

And this is, this is one of the areas where my, my you know, believing the left really began to broke. And I began to move where I was just like, wait, so you are all lying? We not care about that.

And when I think that this is also really different you know, like the left. Yeah, everyone was lying and everyone was just like, okay, this is all over under the bus right now.

With the Epstein files, we've even gone over why Trump is probably actually keeping 'em quiet in an episode and his own side is just like, Nope. Like at a Trump rally recently, like one of his supporters held up a picture of Trump and Epstein together. You know, and they're like, Nope, you actually gotta explain this.

You got some explaining to do here, buddy. Yeah. Why didn't you release those files that everyone said existed? But anyway. Oh boy. Young people in general [00:04:00] report fairly miserable mental health with rates of anxiety and depression, but this is particularly true for young women and assumptions Democrats make about how to attract younger voters may not appeal to men.

Still arguably the SBSQ.

Buried the most interesting finding, which is that conservatives have a much higher level of self-reported mental health than liberals. It's a wide gap according to the 2020 comparative election study, CESA, very large samples of 60,000 respondents that provides the opportunity for highly detailed demographic analysis among people who report, quote, unquote excellent mental health conservatives, outnumbered liberals, 51 to 20.

Literally have over double the rate. Wow. Yeah. Like, yeah, well, well over double the rate of liberals at the, that category. 51 to 20. Even, even if you've doubled the number of liberals in that category, it'd only be 40 to 51. So this is shocking. Just liberals do not have excellent mental [00:05:00] health.

But liberals outnumber conservatives 45 to 19 among voters who say they have poor mental health. So keep in mind how extreme that is. That means even if you doubled the conservative number there you know, you would still be at 38 to 45 with liberals having way poorer mental health. So is this

Simone Collins: a product of, I, I remember for example, when pharmaceutical companies tried to introduce.

Antidepressants to Japan. They also had to introduce the concept of depression because it just wasn't a thing. Is this more a product of conservatives just not believing in poor mental health the same way that the left does?

Malcolm Collins: Progressives are going to say this, but the reality is, is that if you look at the studies around this, if you do not believe in mental health problems, you typically are not susceptible to those mental health problems.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's kinda my point. Is it like. They, they don't believe in the demons, so the demons cannot possess them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What a progressive would [00:06:00] say is well, they're reporting their mental health as excellent, even though they have depression. Oh. Like,

Simone Collins: you're just, you just don't realize that you're dealing with unrealized trauma.

Yeah, you need to see a therapist.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, they there, they're, they just need to go see a psychiatrist and then they'd have it all fixed up for them. Oh, you know

Simone Collins: what? Back when there were still progressives on X, they used to say things like that all the time. Like talk about like the unaddressed mental issues that we.

Undoubtedly have. Yeah. They

Malcolm Collins: say, they say it's not that conservatives have way lower mental health issues. They'd say it's, they just do not acknowledge the issues that they do have.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And I do not think that the data suggests that when you look at things like happiness rates, which we'll get to oh yeah.

Conservatives clearly understand the concept of being unhappy. Yeah. So. You know, do they,

Simone Collins: Malcolm,

Malcolm Collins: do they, well, I mean, I think it's also just like, obviously true when you think of the people you know, and, and like we have a high performing friends on, on both sides of the aisle. And most of the high performing friends that we have who are [00:07:00] progressives have what I would consider is self-imposed major mental health issues.

Simone Collins: Totally. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the ones we have that are conservatives have almost none.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because it's just not normative. Like why indulge in that so much of this is another episode. We won't get into this now. But I'm gonna put the chart on the screen here so you can get an idea of just like how extreme the differences are between these two groups in terms of, of mental health rates.

Hmm. And then they go on to say, here. Could this reflection reflect a spurious correlation? In other words, that voters with characteristics associated with low happiness tend to be attracted to liberalism, but that political attitudes themselves don't tell you much on their own. In short, no. Or at least probably not.

The difference between liberals and conservatives is remarkably persistent. Even once you control for these factors. I'm going to show you a very long chart where I translated the five choices that the CES provided. To a hundred point scale, zero for poor mental health, 25 for fair, [00:08:00] 50 for good, and 75 for for very good and 100 for excellent.

The average American self reports at 60 on this scale. In other words, somewhere between good and very good mental health. But liberals average at 53 and conservatives at 68, huh? I'm just going to ignore moderates for the rest of this post because they're predictably somewhere in the middle. Averaging at 58.

Okay. Taking

advantage of the large sample size in the CES, let's see how this difference holds up across a wide array of demographic and political characteristics. The data is just taken directly from the CES. There's no fancy modeling of any kind. And note here that I guess this is why I hadn't seen it, because he is translating the data in a different way.

And I'm gonna send you some pictures of this so you can also try to find interesting things like that.

All right, so the reason I wanted to do this is because I wanted to go over where some of these are bigger and smaller. Mm-hmm. Because this way we can understand susceptibility. This is, this is looking at happiness here, by the way. Not, not mental health. So we're trying to [00:09:00] understand what is it specifically, like what demographics seem to be most exposed to this gap when you differentiate out their conservative versus liberal voters. And I would note here was in literally no demographic is this trend opposite. And so this actually really matters. 'cause somebody might say something like.

Well, I mean, clearly if you are gay and you're around all gay people and you want gay lovers, you're gonna be less happy with your life if you're a conservative gay person, right? Because, you know, presumably your friends are gonna be less approving of you, you're not gonna be satisfied with yourself. And we see that this is actually not true.

We're not even close. The, the, the gays on the progressive side, were at a 49. And the conservatives who, who were gay were at a 60. So, so not even close to the same level of happiness. So even if you were part of one of these dis [00:10:00] quote unquote discriminated groups you, you see that this helps you a ton.

That's crazy

right here. Like, consider you're black, right? Yeah. 60 if you're a progressive. 68 if you're a conservative. Yeah. So we'll start by looking at men versus women. Okay. What's what's interesting here women seem to benefit more from men happiness wise by being conservative. Yeah. Small thing, one

Simone Collins: point for

Malcolm Collins: tra wives.

If you're looking at race who is it that benefits the most by being conservative? It turns out, equally

Simone Collins: well, no, no, no. White people benefit the most from being conservative. No white people

Malcolm Collins: benefit about as much as Hispanic or Asian because look, their top happiness is a little bit lower. So white people, Hispanics and Asians all benefit about the same, whereas other are mixed benefits by far the most and black benefits the least by about half, which is really interesting.

Why do you suppose that is? Why would black

Simone Collins: the least I, I think that. Of, [00:11:00] of progressives, black progressives are the most distinctive from the urban monoculture. Like they're more likely to maintain their views around like unique sense of culture. Being gay is

Malcolm Collins: bad and like,

Simone Collins: yeah, you're right. So I think it's just resistance to the urban monoculture that we're seeing.

Hold on.

Malcolm Collins: What you're showing here is what's causing this? Oh, it's the urban monoculture. The more seeped in the urban, this is the hypothesis we're going as right now, the more seeped in the urban monoculture. This is the, the culture of the urban elites. The, the, the more affected a group is going to be by going from left to right, the less.

Affected by the urban monoculture, the more it's a sign that they are exiting the urban monoculture to identify as a rightist, the more positively they will be affected by this. Yeah. That is a going hypothesis right now. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So who's affected the least by this age wise? It is the older generations, like the silent [00:12:00] generation.

Hmm. Who's affected the most by this Gen Z? That would work was the urban monocultural theory.

Yeah.

Because Gen Z is gonna be more exposed to the urban monoculture than the silent generation or than Gen X.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, they're functionally not even, I mean, the, the most the liberals of silent generation, that, that was born after 1964, or sorry, before 1964.

Is, is it the same position basically as the most conservative of Gen X, which was born from 1965 to 1980?

Malcolm Collins: It's actually wild. The, the conservative Gen Zs are less happy than the progressive silent generation.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Okay educational attainment. I'm you, you see the lowest amount of impact.

So again, we're going with the urban monocultural hypothesis, less exposure to the urban elite ideology, the urban monocultural ideology. So you would expect okay. No high school or just high school? Yes, they're the least affected by [00:13:00] far. Where you know, some college, four year degree postgrad are all about the same in terms of how affected they are.

What's also notable here is the more education you get, the happier you are. In this graph, if you've No noted that, like with both groups with, with a high school degree only conservatives with a high school degree only are only slightly more happy than progressives with a PhD.

Simone Collins: Oh. All

Malcolm Collins: the good at death you to be more happy. But I'm just, I'm just pointing out here. Okay. Okay. Explain

Simone Collins: opportunities here. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The household income. I guess this

Simone Collins: is helpful in that if you want to stay a progressive, you can look at least at factors that correlate with less depression on the progressive end and yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But let, let's go to the, the household income here, which I also find really interesting. Yeah. Those with the least outcome household income and the most household income appear to be least affected by this. This also aligns with me because you can have the power to resist the urban elite mindset more when you have [00:14:00] a high amount of income and you can just ignore it if you have a low amount of income.

What's really interesting about this as well is that happiness goes up pretty much lock in step was income. But note the top income level here is a hundred K. Now what I find interesting is while it happiness goes up, luck step was income. Having the, the gap in happiness is so high that your average family.

With less than 30 k household income is ex, that is conservative, is exactly as happy as your average family with over a hundred K income. Who is progressive?

Simone Collins: I kind feel like also progressives are way more likely to be urban. And if you're living, let's say you ha you make a hundred K, but you live in Manhattan, you, you're, you're struggling.

Okay, okay. You're struggling.

Malcolm Collins: I'll buy this. Carve out Simone. It's

Simone Collins: very stressful. Whereas if you are conservative and you live in lollipop. Rural Idaho. It's our children that are obsessed with lollipops. [00:15:00] Titan last night insisting that an apple was a lollipop. When? Sh when? When can she just chew?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Our daughter likes to eat like apples and bread.

Like she eats lollipops, which is just,

Simone Collins: she makes no prop. You don't, it won't be consumed that you can't lick an apple and get anything or bread. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: okay. And I'll tell her it's not a lollipop, and she'll go, no, it's a lollipop. It's a lo and pop because she knows way better than we do. She knows way better than we do.

But it, it's

Simone Collins: telling when you look at the religion section that just being religious means you're gonna be happier than if you're not religious. Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: religion's way happier, right? Yeah. And, and also it's, you're happier if you're a Protestant or a Catholic than other named religion, IE, Muslim or Jew.

Yeah. But what's interesting here about religion is that, the, the religious categories are affected by this very little like

Simone Collins: yeah, very small gaps between conservative

Malcolm Collins: have a very small gap between the progressives and the conservatives in terms very interesting. Whereas you see a [00:16:00] much larger gap on the atheist and agnostic category.

Yeah.

Also fun to note here that if you are an atheist. And you are conservative. You have the, around the same happiness level as a Protestant or Catholic, who is progressive

Simone Collins: whatever. I mean, also this, this explains why birth rates are so low among, well, another reason why they're still low among progressives because marriage and children, if, if you are, if you're married.

You're conservative, you're, you're pretty freaking happy.

Malcolm Collins: Married. Oh wow. Happiness rates. This is, this is really interesting. So married or in a domestic partnership in your conservative, your happiness rate is 71. That is really high.

Yeah.

That means that conservatives who are married are like nearly ecstatic.

Which is, which is, which is wild to me actually to see how high that is. 'cause I hadn't seen that broken out before. Now the unmarried or separated seem to have a wider divide between them, but [00:17:00] I don't know if that's like more exposure to urban monoculture. Yeah. I dunno.

Simone Collins: I don't know. What's interesting though is, is if you're conservative and you have children who are grown like you're an empty nester, you are significantly more happy than if you are conservative and you have children under 18 in the household.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: that, that, I think there's just like, they're actually, it's, it's a pretty close rate, 56 versus 65. With 65 being conservatives, 56 progressives. The, I think there, there is stress of raising kids and I think that's reflected in these numbers, which is interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, what's interesting here to me is that the never had children category progressives who never have children, are like so unhappy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Gosh, this really goes to show like being a dink is probably not gonna predict a lot of happiness for you. Yikes. That's one of the lowest rates. I mean, if you look at this, engineer's, one of the lowest

Malcolm Collins: total rates. Does anyone less happy? The only thing

Simone Collins: that could make you more miserable is to be bisexual, but you're probably,

Malcolm Collins: hold on, hold on, hold on.

What can make you more miserable? Is to be [00:18:00] a Gen Z progressive. That's, that's, that's slightly more miserable. Uhhuh we'll get to the bisexual one in a bit because that number is staggering. Yeah. But the yeah, but aren't

Simone Collins: like so many Gen Zs, childless, bisexual, non-religious. No wonder they're miserable.

I'm just

Malcolm Collins: saying here that the, the two number one ways to be unhappy is to be a progressive who's never had kids or a Gen Z progressive. And then, wait, how do you top the conservative on this chart? The top conservatives on this chart are conservatives earning 70 a hundred KA year, who have a postgraduate degree are in the silent generation of, or with, with grown children.

Yes. Or have children or are just married. Yeah, that is wild. But now we're gonna go to sexual orientation. I think this is the most telling, right? So you can say like, okay, if you are like, like which group between its progressive faction and its conservative faction, is this most likely to be a sign of exposure to the urban monoculture, right?

Like Yeah, yeah. Like agreeing with urban monocultural [00:19:00] norms. And I'd say sexual orientation, and this is where you see by far. The largest line in the entire chart in terms of distribution of happiness, and that is. Around bisexual or other progressive, it is only 35, whereas conservatives it's 59. So even on like the, the medium, high end of this, this chart whereas progressives, it's the lowest number on the chart by about 10 points.

Like that is absolutely wild. And, and people can be like, what do I mean by this? If you are a progressive. Other or, or bisexual identified individual, you are almost certainly pure urban, monoculture brain. Yeah. Like everyone I see just 'cause it's an opt-in identity for them. If you are a conservative and you have one of these identities, it likely means that like you are just actually bisexual, but like you do not want to engage with the rest of this nonsense, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you are gonna be uniquely steeled against the [00:20:00] rest of this nonsense, or you are a based traditionalist conservative. So I've heard a lot of like Christian women be like, yeah, I'm attracted to women, like I'm bisexual. I'm just not gonna do that. 'cause like the Bible,

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I wonder if bisexual is, is more a way of, okay.

Like I am actually gay or lesbian, but I'm also gonna get married so I better call myself bisexual. Yeah. Like do you think a lesbian woman or gay man. Who chooses to enter a heterosexual marriage would just call themselves bisexual instead. 'cause maybe that's what's going on.

Malcolm Collins: No they wouldn't and they don't often they often just say, I'm gay, but I, I wanna do this.

Yeah. This would be more like, okay. Suppose like Grimes, who's talked about wanting to convert to Catholicism occasionally or like various forms of Christian, and then she did that and she became a conservative. She'd still call herself bisexual. Like she's not gonna ignore, you know, her arousal patterns or her past or something.

So I think that that's what we're seeing here. Interestingly don't see like that huge of a boost if you're gay or lesbian. [00:21:00] But I assume that's just from being in those communities. And, and here I'd also note that. These, these groups who, you know, your progressive would say, you know, you are trans or you are gay, or you are bisexual person who is in conservatives and in conservative sexual circles and sees themselves through a conservative eye is going to like themselves less, and we can be like, that's objectively not true.

Yeah.

By, by like a huge statistical number. So this is what I mean when I say at the end of the day, the conservative party really is the party of the normal gay

normal gay

as as what's his face? This was coined by JD Vance in that speech at the,

Simone Collins: he, he coined normal gaze.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This was at the, what was it called again?

You know, they have the, the, the mid thing during the campaign cycle where everyone gets together and they do all the important speeches and he, he,

Simone Collins: oh, the. Republican.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And he's like the normal gay support us. He is like the normal, I bet even the [00:22:00] majority of normal gays support Republicans these days or something along that.

Well

Simone Collins: I will say like the conservative gays that we know are pretty freaking happy people. They have a lot of fun. Yeah. And when I, I follow a bunch of progressive gays online and you know, they talk about how they have to not look at any commentary about them online 'cause. It would be too, it would be too.

It's self-harm. And yeah, it just, it's, it's, it's just hard. It's hard being anything and also being urban monoculture because everything's about trauma and pain and suffering here. So of course they're need to list

Malcolm Collins: one that might surprise people. You know, some people are like, I just, I just don't engage with the news because it's toxic.

Like I just, oh, politics. I'm above that. Well, it turns out the more you engage with politics. Whether you are progressive or conservative, the happier you are.

Simone Collins: That's so interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Because I,

Simone Collins: I would've, this surprises me. I would have expected the opposite.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think it has to do with a person's [00:23:00] level of ancientness and vitality for life.

Like do they Oh, yeah. I guess

Simone Collins: being excited about the world, right? Yeah. Because there was, I, I told you about the, when, when the one conversation I had at dialogue where. One of the people at the table was trying to make an argument as to how not engaging with the news meant you were more in touch with reality, and he pulled everyone on like, okay, you know, has crime gone up or down?

Like, what are the rates of this in the world? That, in the world and the people?

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: what,

Malcolm Collins: oh, continue.

Simone Collins: The people who reported watching the news were way more off on all of the assessments of actual reality. Like how much crime is taking place, what's going on than the people who didn't actually consume news.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, and I think that this, what he was asking was mainstream news. But this asks is high interest in news or political interest. I would use that. Oh yeah. So, yeah, because

Simone Collins: there's a really big difference between passive consumption and active seeking. And I think active seeking is a sign of vitality and [00:24:00] interest in, not depression, the opposite of depression.

But

Malcolm Collins: hear news, when he said news, he meant like CNN, Fox, et cetera. Yeah. Uhhuh, it was. Question is worded means like nno and asma gold and us and leaflets. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: doing research on Wikipedia and trying to learn about something, right? Yeah. Okay. Which is

Malcolm Collins: very different than Okay, than thinking you're in foreign because you read the New York Times.

Okay, that's fair. So, so what we're seeing here is even if you're a democrat, if you think that, you know, you can change the future of the world, right? You, you're gonna have a more internal locus of control. Mm-hmm. I think a person's level of political engagement is in part. A level of their age ancientness and their belief in their ability to influence the future and their level of internal or external locus of control.

Do they believe the world is happening to them or are they happening to the world?

Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Which is really interesting. Also, it's really interesting that the, if you have a high news and political interest and you are conservative, that is one of the highest happiness categories on the entire chart.

[00:25:00] That's 73. Higher than conservatives with kids.

Isn't that crazy?

That is actually kind of crazy, right? Like being a highly politically engaged conservative is going to make you very, very happy. I mean, I know this is very similar to

Simone Collins: the research that you covered on the extent to which people were really negatively affected by social media and online.

Engagement only if they were progressives and if they were conservatives, it didn't really matter. Like it wasn't toxic. It wasn't terrible. Yeah. They were fine. And here we go. And then indicates the

Malcolm Collins: urban monoculture is the point of this. But I'd also point out for people if they're like, well, you know, at least if I'm a progressive and I'm really politically engaged, I'm gonna be happier.

And it's like. Technically than other progressives, but you still come in well below the happiness of low political engagement or medium political engagement conservatives. Yeah. You're clocking in a, which makes sense

Simone Collins: because it's such a negative narrative. Like of the world that is painted by most progressive news coverage, everything's horrible, terrible things are happening to [00:26:00] people.

Crime is worse.

Malcolm Collins: You're clicking it at a 57 versus there. 64 or 60.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which, you know, I, I completely, I mean, I understand that they, they try to, but conservatives are all like, look at the terrible things. Look at the, the elitist, you know, PDA file networks. Look at all the corruption in government.

Look at all these incompetent politicians. You know, like, that sounds

Simone Collins: like tittering gossip to me. That's euphoric. Malcolm, that's not dysphoric.

Malcolm Collins: I think both sides get a lot of negatives. It's just conservatives think, okay, well then let's fix it.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that that also differentiate age agentic versus

Simone Collins: communal.

Again,

Malcolm Collins: political engagement groups.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Then if, if, if we go to social media activity, I found this pretty easily. So audience, if you were to predict who is happier. Recently posted on social media or no recent social media posts. [00:27:00] Recently posted on social media is happier, both conservative and progressive.

Which is pretty interesting to me. With recently posted on social media progressives at 55 and conservatives at 69. So really high. Like if you're recently posted on social media conservatives, you're a very happy person. But you're not like that differentiated from those recent post conservatives that's 50 as progressives versus 65 as conservatives.

I found that really interesting. Attended a political protest in the past year. Now this one is really interesting because this is also one of the longest lines on this graph. And I think it also is a high level of predictivity of whether or not you're in the urban monoculture or not. Mm-hmm.

And this is yes, you have attended a political protest in the last year and was progressive. You're very unhappy, 51. And with conservatives, you're fairly happy, 68. But what's interesting here is that conservatives if you did not attend a political event, you're at the exact same level, 68.

Whereas if you're progressive, you're slightly happier, [00:28:00] 53. And what this indicates to me is I think you're pretty much equally likely if you haven't or have attended an event, if you're a conservative that you are outside the urban monoculture. But for progressives, if you haven't, you're slightly more likely to be outside the urban monoculture.

Yeah.

So all of these things taken together, the, the black thing, the bisexual thing, this the age thing. It says to me that this is all downstream of urban monocultural norms. It is the urban monoculture itself, which is destroying people's both mental health and happiness level. Mm-hmm. And we have pointed out this conjecture in the past, but I think that this evidence for me, really confirms my preexisting hypothesis.

And if, if people are like, why, why does the urban monoculture create this mental damage? It's because it's so highly externalizing. And nothing is ever really your fault. Everything is always somebody else's fault.

Yeah. Everything

is always the fault of society, and there's nothing that you can really do about anything but [00:29:00] screech at people.

And then when you go to your friends for support or you try to interact with your own community, they all screech at you because it's this crazy social dominance fight. And worse, you've been coddled and coddled and coddled because they told you the only thing that mattered is feeling good and self affirmation.

And, and feeling comfortable with yourself. And so you've lived this life where you just constantly sought this, whatever pronouns you wanted to use that day, whatever way you wanted to see yourself that day, everyone had to affirm you, which gave you very poor mental robustness and allowed you to quickly mentally de degrade mm-hmm.

When exposed to anything that was, you know, potentially negative or disconfirming.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, so. Yeah, I guess there's not a lot tactically you can do, aside from just abandon mainstream progressive culture if you really wanna feel better, which is hard possible, [00:30:00] I don't know. What would you advise to someone who, what is your

Malcolm Collins: takeaway from this information or thoughts?

Simone Collins: My big takeaways being bisexual is apparently terrible for you. I figured it was like the more chill sexual orientation because you know, it wasn't particularly tied to any controversy, aside from people saying that there's no such thing as bisexuals, and I didn't realize just how. Apparently terrible it is for you.

And I, I still don't,

Malcolm Collins: it's not that bad if you're conservative, but it, it's still not good. Like you're, you're the, the, the conservative bisexuals are less happy than the conservative gays.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Do think, I think pick a aside, progressive bisexuals are, are extra miserable because they're, they're seen as.

Not going all the way with a sexual identity that they really should be identifying as. No, the

Malcolm Collins: category here isn't bisexual. It's bisexual or other. And that [00:31:00] includes all of the made up sexualities and transsexuality,

Simone Collins: everything. Oh, like attack helicopter, but serious.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean that's like 50% of trans people you know.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: well, come on. We, we joke, we had to, I think

Simone Collins: people who identified as attack helicopters would be happy in trans. When I

Malcolm Collins: say attack helicopter, what I mean is somebody who obviously is, is not trans by any definition. Like we always. Like if, if you watch our Fun day Friday episode, I'm like, they keep calling themselves a queer couple, but like clearly neither of them is trans.

Yeah. And they

look like a heterosexual couple to me. Yeah. So what it means is that that one of them decided to identify as a different gender or as gender queer. And now the other one has to identify as bisexual because they're dating a gender queer person. Yeah. And now they're both stuck in the bisexual bubble because, well, at one point I was straight, but now.

You know, you identify as, sure. So all of a sudden, I have to say that I am been actually queer this whole time because I had no idea, you know, I [00:32:00] was dating somebody who wasn't the gender I thought they were, and I found them attractive this entire time. But they saw themselves as a Sure. So now I'm bisexual.

No, this happens so often to progressives in relationships. They're dating somebody, dating somebody, dating somebody, think they're in a heterosexual or gay relationship, and then their partner comes to 'em and is like, actually. I'm gender queer. Now they can say, well, actually I'm still gay. And then the person's like, well, you're not gay because you found me attractive.

So now they're bisexual Oh. Or other in the, in the, in the phylogeny of the progressive left. So this is just pulling people in the more, in the urban monoculture they are, instead of just like regular bisexual They are.

Okay.

I also found the, the political involvement one very interesting, that you're better off being more politically involved.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that runs counter to a lot of the common sense that spreads. So this was useful. Yeah, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: In the end though, I, I think just generally not believing in it, let's just not believe in [00:33:00] it. I don't believe in mental health.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I've thought a lot about it, Simone, and I'm not sure I'm totally comfortable with my gender.

Well then we can

Simone Collins: both, can we both identify as a tech helicopter? Because I think that's the best gender slash sexual orientation.

Malcolm Collins: What's so funny is, you know, we'll go viral on a platform and somebody will be like, oh, look at the way he looks. Look, look at that. Like he's, I, I've seen people like this before and they're just waiting to come out, right?

Like they're just and what they're really just noting there, and I think they're actually noting the you know, in a, in a recent episode we talked about like social class and conservative versus progressive, and we noted that. Progressives often try to code as upper middle class and conservatives try often try to code as lower middle class or lower class.

Mm-hmm.

And because we code as upper middle class people are very, sometimes very confused about like where we stand on things.

Simone Collins: You're uncomfortable, very threatened.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And what they're really saying is, oh no, you look like you've been heavily brainwashed by the urban monoculture. Therefore it's only a few years [00:34:00] before you come out as an attack helicopter.

Or what really happens. And I think that, you know. Hyperbolizing this under underlays. How common this really is among progressives is one day I come to you and I go, well, Simone, I'm gonna be honest. Sometimes I have thoughts that aren't entirely masculine, and so I think that I have a feminine side to me as well, and that I think that I need to identify as something other than just he, which means, and I know you didn't know this.

But you've been sleeping with a whatever this whole time and because he's, oh God, yeah. That would make me,

yeah. That

means you are either a bisexual or pansexual now, or you have to divorce me.

Simone Collins: That is a, yeah, that would, I've heard a lot of people, it's lot of disruption. That's very scary. Just happens.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because it's like the other person is now basically taken ownership of your sexuality in like a really weird and delusional and [00:35:00] aggressive way.

Simone Collins: Without your consent, your sexuality suddenly needs to change or your life falls apart.

You choose.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well not even that there, they're even like your sexuality needs to change, or if you leave me. I haven't really changed on the inside. So clearly you always found somebody who is really a woman attractive. And this is like a huge deal for like gay people, right? Where the partner's, like, actually I know we've been in a gay relationship our entire life, and you've identified as gay your entire life, but now you're bisexual because I decide and the person will be like, well, no, I'm not.

And they're gonna be like, well, I've always been this way and you've always been attracted to me. So clearly you were, or you're just transphobic.

Simone Collins: Oh boy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's it. It's weird how like coercive and gross parts of the trans movement are.

Simone Collins: It's rough. Yeah. It's, and I mean, I, there, when I was a kid, there would be people where my mom was like, oh yeah, so and so's partner.

'cause I, I lived in the San Francisco Bay area, so stuff like this happened all the [00:36:00] time. Like they now identify as a woman. And so now. I guess she's a lesbian. And it, and also like, I think the problem too is that did you

Malcolm Collins: ever think about the, the other partner there where they're like, now she's a lesbian or like bisexual.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That there's, I, well, there's also this requirement that now you have to like, identify with this community because,

Malcolm Collins: well, your kids to have two parents, bisexual or else

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's, it's something. Yeah. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, it's, it's effed up. It's really effed up. The, the whole thing is just so coercive and gross.

I'm like the, when I say gross, I don't mean gross because of who they are. I mean gross because of the way they force themselves on other people. And, and, and this is like a big deal of like you're a gold star lesbian and now somebody saying, no, you're actually not. You didn't know it. And I didn't know it yet, but actually I was a man.

Simone Collins: Well, and [00:37:00] the, I think the other trouble of it is this wouldn't matter. If we didn't make gender such a big deal. And yet since the seventies, gender has been made this its own separate thing and it really was made a

Malcolm Collins: big deal by the alphabet soup crowd. Like,

Simone Collins: exactly. And like if it, if it didn't matter so much, it'd be like, oh, whatever.

Like I just, I so remember that like, I love the end of the scene. Some like it hot or he's just, he's just like, listen, I'm awo. I, I'm, I'm really a man. And he's like,

Malcolm Collins: we can

Simone Collins: make it

Malcolm Collins: work.

Simone Collins: And I think, yeah, nobody's perfect. Yeah. Like that's,

Malcolm Collins: that should be

Simone Collins: how it

Malcolm Collins: is. The modern the way that the gender movement like went we have our episode on the debauched fifties or whatever.

Like essentially like 20% of like young men engaged in like mutual masturbation with other young men like. It just was not a thing back then. You might have had like the odd you know, like murder of like a gay person or something like that. I'm not saying that this didn't happen and it wasn't horrible but there are multiple directions the, this movement could have gone and the direction [00:38:00] of gay and trans identity as a special class versus we need to just stop caring about this stuff.

Mm-hmm. It led to a lot of negative externalities.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's sad 'cause it came from a good place. I mean, I think it, it came from a place of wanting good things and, and assuming this would be good for people people didn't come out. This wasn't the, some cackling like, ha ha, this is how I make everyone miserable. It's all like some sailor moon, I'm gonna harvest all their happiness and it take it from my energy sphere or whatever it is they did.

I never really got what they were trying to do. The evil people in Sailor Moon. I, I didn't get it. I, I couldn't pay attention to the show, and so I was always, I actually have no

Malcolm Collins: idea what they were trying to do either.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. So it's not just me, just like, what, what is, anyway, fine. Go off. But.

Yeah, it just, well-meaning people causing such sad, that's what makes it the worst, is that this was people really trying to make themselves and the world happier and better. Then, even though [00:39:00] we don't really care about happiness like they really do. You know, it's like, so someone really just trying to make a chocolate cake and then like just producing a giant turd even though like all they wanted, nobody, here's this thing.

Malcolm Collins: Some of them and, and many of the OGs. Of like the, the gender movement we've talked about in other episodes of like the electric turning on the trans movement. Hmm. They've come out and they've been like, I'm sorry, I, I thought I was good at making cake, but clearly I wasn't supposed to take a dump in it.

I'm not gonna make you eat that. That was like, horrible. Let's try to find another solution here. And then there's another group. Like, eat it, eat it, or it means you want me dead, eat it. Or it means you wanna kill every one of me. Well, eat it.

Simone Collins: Eat it, and, and if you don't look happy, well you eat it. If you don't smile and slurp down every last bite with a s**t eating grin.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Sorry, I'm not on this, but some people are actually doing that. They're, they're eating it. Like, and the person's like, he and the rest of us are like, bro, that's buddy do. They're like, [00:40:00] don't, no,

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I, well,

Malcolm Collins: all right. Love you to DeSimone. You are the perfect wife. You are my I on this chart.

I'd be a hundred. They'd say, what's your happy? I'm a hundred. I'm a hundred, and it's all because of Simone and my kids. Mostly, totally,

Simone Collins: man. Not now. It's, it's mostly the kids and we both know it. Come on. They're so funny. They're so great.

Malcolm Collins: They're, they're, they're good. I mean, they're certainly not bringing my happiness down.

We'll, we'll wait till they get into more trouble, but I'm looking forward to that. I think they'll get into fun trouble.

Simone Collins: They're gonna get in so much. I can't even imagine. Yeah. Every time we give them a roll. Oh. So it's a boundary for me to cross. Thank you. Thank you for presenting me with this new opportunity.

Yeah. Oh, we're so screwed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. Very excited for dinner tonight because you haven't made Bologne in a year or whatever at least

Simone Collins: a long time. And you want me to tell you, you're just super antis [00:41:00] spaghetti. It has to be. Spirals of bow ties. Any literally

Malcolm Collins: anything else? Bow ties, circles. I'll see what I have.

Circles. What are we making? SpaghettiOs,

Simone Collins: little cylinders. So there's macaroni, there's macaroni works. Macaronis a, a curve circle. And I don't know what we have. I think I might have used our last, I'll, I'll check. I'm pretty sure we have stuff now. If we have choice. Do you prefer macaroon? No little ridges on it.

Do you prefer bow ties or you do you prefer? I think it's called far like the screws. Toasty. Calls 'em screws. He loves the screws.

Malcolm Collins: Screws. I love shells. I love, I also love bow ties. I love all, all the things. The, what I'd ask you to do is make sure you're, you're running from a recipe today. With, with gotcha junk.

It would be like if I was gonna add gotchu to like this, go from like an AI recipe or something like that. Don't just wing it based on like, bologna. Bologna, because your bologna in the past has not been very good. Like whatever you think, a good bologna recipe, what you used to think was one, was not a good recipe.

So I'm just asking you to, to base this [00:42:00] on something other than whatever you're cooking, what kind of recipe

Simone Collins: should I ask for then? Because I was just gonna saute onions and garlic and then add meat and then add gochujang maybe after like. Dissolving it in water a little bit to get it so it doesn't clump and then add marinara.

What would you do differently?

Malcolm Collins: Maybe at some stage, try like coconut milk or like, no cream, more cream, no work. Well, or like ask an AI.

I'll ask an

Simone Collins: ai.

Malcolm Collins: Thank you. We're, we're ending early today. You have time to

Simone Collins: ask an ai Hardly no. Ending on time is ending at giving me an actual interval to take care of Indie.

Go downstairs. Start preparation. So, no, but also like I'm addicted to talking with you, so I can't,

Malcolm Collins: I'm your AI chat addict. This is, this is your.

Simone Collins: I mean obviously because the, the only thing that actually got me engaged on AI chat [00:43:00] platforms was the, the prospect of potentially making an AI chat Malcolm, that I could chat with when you, you know, narcoleptic fall asleep sometimes because you need rest 'cause you refuse to sleep anymore.

You used to take naps after waking up at 2:00 AM now you're just even musk it. Yeah. Well, yeah. Make time because you're not allowed to die. Alright,

Malcolm Collins: I'll try not to die. To never die. Love you to DeSimone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm. I'm looking up a recipe now.

Now we're all a little bit shiny 'cause of the fricking heat, the worst want the darkness. I wonder how many of our viewers also have reverse seasonal affective disorder, where when there's more light, you get more sad, and when there's more darkness you get more.

Malcolm Collins: So we gotta tell an amazing story about our kid yesterday.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh.

Malcolm Collins: So our kid comes home from school. With a Pokemon card. And we didn't [00:44:00] give him a Pokemon card, so we asked him, where'd you get this Pokemon card from? And he goes, well, this other kid, he ripped his piece of art, ripped his piece of art. And so, he told the other kid. That if, if he didn't well, that there were

Simone Collins: consequences for, for damaging his property.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There's consequences. And then he, he, he, he said that he would tell the teacher if they didn't give him their Pokemon card and this worked, apparently he strong armed some other kid into giving him his Pokemon card.

Simone Collins: He blackmailed this other kid. He blackmailed a child.

Malcolm Collins: Which is, I just love where I'm, I'm like, Octavian, what?

And he's like, there has to be consequences.

Simone Collins: Well, and that's I, I like maybe a little bit too much. Hammer this home. I'm like, you did this, you pay the price. Like that's a consequence. Like you lose the toy, you [00:45:00] don't just get a replacement. Now you don't have the toy anymore. You, you have to understand 'cause that's how life works.

I know. You just wanna get them. He, he's

Malcolm Collins: running a protection rack in school now, you know. Well,

Simone Collins: but I also just, he, he sees things through such a commercial and mercantile lens. Like he's like a Kardashian from Star Trek. Although

Malcolm Collins: every single. Person he talks to. It is always like it was his brother and stuff like that.

His brother's like, can I have a a, a toy? And he is like, well, can I have some money? And then, and then what he will do is to, will be like, well, I don't have any money. And so he goes, go tell dad you need money.

Simone Collins: And then sometimes they trade things, which is great. And more like, they also very often just gift things to each other and, and, and they give things away to kids at school all the time.

But when I talk with him about. His friends at school, Octavian Octavian will be like, oh yeah you know, if I hang out with so and so, maybe he will give me. His red gemstone and I will give him a green Army man. And like he just thinks about like, ah, this [00:46:00] trade partner would be advantageous for the following reasons.

I should, I should engage more with them. Which is just hilarious. And I don't know, I don't know to make of it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it, it's a, it's a positive, you know, a evolutionary trait to, to like, or are we hammering

Simone Collins: it? Home too much at home like, 'cause I'm always like, well, what are you gonna do for me?

You'll get it if you do X. Like I'm very, I am also very mercenary about things. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: I've always

Simone Collins: looked at things that way. I don't, I

Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't think culturally speaking that I have any problem with this. Okay. If you wanna hammer this home, hammer at home.

Simone Collins: Okay. Thank you. So our only point of parental conflict still is, is with junk food.

You're like, shovel it in. And I'm like, oh, highly processed food. This is horrible. Can't they just eat whole foods? And, but they. Candy. I want candy except Titan demands candy all the time and then like doesn't eat it. She thinks that everything is to be licked, but [00:47:00] she can't even finish a lollipop. Like we had her on one lollipop for three days and she didn't even get close to finishing it.

Like you could still see it's full structure, like the ridges on the outside. It was like, and she does that with bread. I'll give her a roll and she'd be like, eh, like that's sweetie. No, it's never going to be eaten that way. It's a Hmm. Oh. Just like they drive me so nuts. She just wants to have it. So these days I just, I, I get very quick to dissolve candy and I put it straight into her mouth and so there's nothing she can like, hold on.

Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Cotton candy. We gotta do it this weekend, I guess.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We should do more cotton candy. I'm all for it.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and by the way, you have to find the batteries for the boat. 'cause I checked all around the basement. Like a, I have

Simone Collins: looked all around the basement too, I guess. Is there a chance you, you used to charge it in the kitchen?

Of

Malcolm Collins: the Like that? Yeah. Could it be somewhere? I'll check some other closets.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, clearly we moved it somewhere

Simone Collins: to keep it safe. Yeah. And also 'cause we have to be really careful with the kids, you know, and they'll take [00:48:00] anything. They're little thieves.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they might have broken one of the batteries.

Simone Collins: You think?

Malcolm Collins: Well, because they took the thing that I had to clamp the piece onto off of it. Oh, of course. Because it's unscrewed and the, the shiny golden looking screw. Oh,

Simone Collins: a nut. Okay, well we can find that part at least. Oh yes. The gold nut. Yes. I saw the toasty walking around with that for the longest time.

Malcolm Collins: Do you know where it is?

Simone Collins: No. Of course, these things just disappear. I now, I do have a bag full of all of the loose parts that Torsten has stolen over time because our furniture is basically falling apart. He just takes off all the screws and I try to keep them in one place. And then I have this delusional vision that someday I'll go around the house and screw everything back in.

It hasn't happened yet, so not just we have rickety furniture, but like I, I don't throw it away. I keep it 'cause I know it goes to stuff. And that tourist is just slowly disassembling our entire household.

Malcolm Collins: And our older kid, Octavian, has learned to scare people, which I did as a kid that he thinks is so funny.

He will wait behind corners, go [00:49:00] boo. And now he'll like try to ask like a, like a ghost or something and make ghost noises when I'm using the restroom or something outside to try to try to scare me. So I've gotta act all spooked. The great thing

Simone Collins: is that he, he can't stop laughing when he tries to hide or be sneaky.

Yeah. So,

Malcolm Collins: oh no, he's got me a few times.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. That's great. He's got a lot of patience. That's the thing. He only laughs at first. All right. Get started, Simone.

Simone Collins: All right. Pulling up the outline. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.

Speaker 4: Neck sooner. It's okay. Next one. Maybe I'll get it. Get okay. I'll get it and then I'll play. Alright. The bikes are. Dirt. The invisible bugs are still in there, right? Pretty sure. Yeah. The bugs live on the leaves.[00:50:00]

Speaker 5: What do you think? Torsten? Mommy, did you see birds back there? All right, let's keep going. I see a little white spots.

In this episode, the hosts discuss the contrasting realities and myths surrounding the 1950s, focusing on various social, economic, and cultural factors. They debunk romanticized views of this era by highlighting the real struggles, from economic disparities to social issues, that were prevalent. The episode features detailed comparisons of living standards, employment, mental health, and black Americans' experiences then and now. They also explore how modern advancements and opportunities can recreate the desired aspects of the 1950s while avoiding its pitfalls. Dive into an eye-opening analysis of why life today, despite its challenges, might actually be better than the nostalgically viewed 1950s.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] But yeah, it was like, well, of course, like the thing I can really dunk on is the experience of black Americans in the 1950s, and I'm trying to find all the stats and I look at their marriage rates and I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, in the 1950s, 64% of black women. Or married, roughly comparable to white women.

Malcolm Collins: And and their kids born out of wedlock were fi were were half the white rate today,

At only 5% were at the white percent. Born out of wedlock was 10%.

Malcolm Collins: it's like or so. Yeah. .

Simone Collins: But black infants soared to born out of wedlock, soared to 77.3%,

like, I mean it's obviously there were horrible things about, about.

Like pre-Civil rights but okay, so like fertility is worse out of, out of wedlock births are worse. Mental health is worse, even. Wealth too. , in, in wow, black household income is 58% of white households, which is unchanged since 1953.

Malcolm Collins: , I heard her say all this and I was like, this can't actually be true, right? Like, this doesn't sound true to me. So I decided to start Googling it and oh [00:01:00] my god, it's so much worse than I thought. , If you look at, , this graph by the Washington Post, , which is looking at medium household wealth adjusted for inflation since the 1950s, white wealth has.

, Gone up about three x black wealth. Is approximately the same as it was in the 1950s.

Simone Collins: So also, like I was looking at that, I was like, oh my God, I've just, I've been lied to about the fifties. Like, whoa, so much more expensive.

Except, well, we spent like 15% of our income on clothes. So I

Malcolm Collins: don't know. No,

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: . Hello Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about the 1950s, and obviously we enjoyed tossing rotten vegetables at the 1950s. We point out how trad wives are both unsustainable and a progressive conspiracy. We point out how sexually debauched they were in the 19, oh, hold on, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: We gotta, we, I gotta make a few notes on these things where people haven't seen these episodes, specifically what we mean. Is that the trad wife phenomenon as it is practiced today is more of [00:02:00] a cargo cult than representative of how people actually lived in the 1950s. Yeah. And, and well, and before

Simone Collins: the, the, the real family format that has existed for thousands of years is what's called the corporate family, which is more an extended family group of both right people and unrelated colleagues.

Malcolm Collins: And the modern trad wife is more downstream of BDSM culture.

Simone Collins: And you don't even know Malcolm, but this is trending now online because there are these trad wives who are now. I don't remember what they call them, but there's this one, there's one woman who, who calls it the princess treatment. And then, or experience or something like that.

And then there's this other one who literally wears A-B-D-S-M collar, but calls it like. A a, like, she, she thinks that it's a, a conservative Christian thing, but she had literally bought this color that a day, a day color, I think she calls it a day color to signal her subservience to her husband, not realizing that literally she purchased this caller from A-B-D-S-M site and it's.

So amazing. And the Internet's laughing like crazy. But anyway, yeah, it's such a thing and it's, it's showing up again because it's a [00:03:00] thing.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, it's, it, well, it's so funny because a lot of these people were so hidden from that that they don't realize that it's like, no, these words you're using. Did not come from the 1950s.

They literally came from BDSM culture. Like this is not the things that you're buying these styles that you're adopting. Yeah. Not to

Simone Collins: kink shame or anything, it's just, it's not like the traditional Correct way to do family.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I, I think that that's always funny to get into, but continue.

Simone Collins: Right.

So as much as we like to dunk on the 1950s, there were absolutely major elements of it that rocked, including affordability, employment, quality of life, social stability. There were even some commonly high highlighted shortcomings of the 1950s that are. May, maybe not as short as I thought they were previously.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Oh, and hold on. I should also note for people who haven't seen our episode on the 1950s being debauched mm-hmm. It also was way in, in many ways way more sexually debauched than modern times. Yeah, yeah. Where we point out the prevalence within literature of the period and was in studies run during the period of, [00:04:00] young male mutual masturbation and the prevalence of nudity like, like group showers and stuff like that, that people don't do anymore, and the prevalence of, oh, but it was like,

Simone Collins: it was no homo group showers, you know, it was like they, they people were based enough to not insinuate too much or read too much into it?

Well, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: no, they didn't see it as gay to like. Jack off your friend in the 1950s, they were like, yeah, you're just helping out a friend. Come on. And I love people were like, oh, that was like the, those studies were, were debunked. And I was like, bro, if you have actually read a lot of literature from people who grew up in the 1950s that describe like underground culture, what it was really like you will very frequently.

Fine stories of mutual masturbation among males. I have not read a single like non-gay story where that happens in modern times. I don't have a single friend who has admitted to me, oh yeah, I did this, this thing that, that just, yeah, I think even

Simone Collins: are totally straight. Doesn't get go that far. Yeah.

So

Malcolm Collins: continue.

Simone Collins: Anyway, I wanna make the argument basically that, okay, yes. A lot of things about the fifties [00:05:00] either totally misunderstood or actually sucked, but there are a lot of things that were great, but I have zero respect. For anyone who pines after the fifties, and I will explain why, but basically mid wis crave the 1950s.

And it's because you believe it's all recreated live the 1950s.

Malcolm Collins: So the reason she doesn't care is, is she thinks that you can remake everything that was good in the 1950s was in the modern day.

Simone Collins: Exactly. That's my point.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll push back. So, so make your argument.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, so let's go over what's good.

About the 1950s, right? So, housing and basic goods, the cost of living was dramatically lower, and so that is a clear winner. Housing was affordable with the average hum costing around $15,000 compared to over $200,000 today, plus gasoline, food and cars were also cheaper relative to income, making it easy for a single income to support a family and afford a home car.

I

Malcolm Collins: thought, I thought food was dramatically more expensive. I'll walk

Simone Collins: you through this, I'll walk you through it. Okay? But actually, you know, we recently did a video on AI and social class, and in that video they show. The we show this 1957 video on social class in America that shows the [00:06:00] lives of a lower class American, a middle class Amer American, and then an an upper class American.

And there's this one scene where they show the, the, the rundown lower class house.

Correnet film: David's father is Michael Ben, an unskilled factory worker. Who has a meager education?

Mr. Benton rents the upper floor of a two family house in a rundown section of town.

Simone Collins: Yeah, in the video it's like, it looks so nice. Oh yeah. If it was in

Malcolm Collins: LA it looked like the houses would cost a few million in la I

Simone Collins: know it looked like a $2 million Bay Area house. So yeah, that, like, only the wealthiest could possibly live in these days.

So I, I get, you know, that. Yeah, that has gotten, we have problems there. We have problems with housing. Plus the median American family had 30% more purchasing power at the end of the decade than at the beginning. And the dollars buying power was much greater. So college [00:07:00] tuition was low enough that student debt was.

Basically not a, it wasn't a thing. So as much as even like the GI Bill may have helped a lot of guys, and this, this was something that enabled people who fought in World War II to basically go to college for free. For those who aren't familiar with it, it almost wasn't necessary because school was just affordable.

Another element was that employment was, it was cush. Like there was this really short-lived period where it just like getting a job seemed incredibly easy. And. It, it was at the time unemployment was super low, about 4.5%. And, and low in a way that was like legitimately low. 'cause I think now people are juicing the numbers in all sorts of ways, pretending that people who are one, not counting unemployed, people who've given up and all these other factors.

So, yeah, actually low unemployment. And there were tons of jobs in manufacturing and industry. You didn't need a high school diploma to have a job. The GI bill that I mentioned earlier, helped millions of veterans access higher education and then buy homes. So there was both, both [00:08:00] economic growth and social mobility and incomes went up.

Average family incomes rose from 3,300 and 1950s. To 5,400 by the end of that decade. So 1950 to 1959, it went up from 3,300 to 5,400. Keep in mind that, you know, wages have been stagnant. And then of course, you know, housing and education, childcare, a whole bunch of other things these days have risen more than income.

So it's, it's pretty bad. And then there was also union powers. So labor unions I think were a little more common than you didn't have. You know, Amazon constantly fighting Simone.

Malcolm Collins: The economic argument for the 1950s I've always found to be uniquely stupid. Yeah. So because I

Simone Collins: mean, boomers did absolutely get, and like the greatest generation

Malcolm Collins: got a boost from this.

The only reason why the 1950s appeared so wealthy in the United States is because. The other world center of economic production mm had been completely devastated by a world war. And that [00:09:00] basically meant like, okay, imagine, well, Europe's ramping up for World War iii. Maybe there's Hope Milk. Yeah.

Imagine if the US went around and destroyed. Every factory in China and every factory in Europe. And then they came back and over the next 10 years was like, isn't it great how much money you can earn at an American factory job? And it's like, well, no, you know, that's not exactly a replicable scenario was in the modern day, and that wasn't caused by the culture of the 1950s.

Yeah. That was caused by, and this is why I think it was just chance, it was happenstance. Calling out trad wise as a cargo cult phenomenon is such an apt comparison. Mm. 'cause what created the economic benefits that made the, if you're not familiar with the cargo cults, these were Aboriginal people in islands who during the war.

Had troops stationed in the area that would give them food. And so they had so much w wealth from their perspective, like food and, and, and material supplies and technology. During that period, they tried to bring it back by reenacting scenes that they [00:10:00] remember from that time period. So they'll build like planes out of like sticks and runways, and then do all the things like their religious ceremonies of, of the, the signs that they would make to call down the planes.

Mm-hmm. It was the very same war that led to the,

Speaker: the cargo cult has its temples almost everywhere nearby. This is one, its altar is standing 9,000 feet above sea level. The dummy plane is at the edge of the landing strip at the other end, the control tower.

The natives of the Rosa and Maccha tribes are waiting for some plane to land on their strip attracted by the bamboo model. They believe that planes come from paradise, their ancestors sent them,

Malcolm Collins: you know, we laugh at these aboriginals doing this, and then we, we see, you know, conservative influencers doing the exact same thing. You know, it to recreate this, the economic situations created by that exact same war that were, that [00:11:00] had nothing to do with, the you know, I don't think, well, maybe

Simone Collins: this is why many of them are also so pro-Russia. They're like, come on guys.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, go,

Simone Collins: go do it.

Malcolm Collins: Go create that. And so you could say well. If unions were stronger, you know, we'd have all this No unions worked in the 1950s because we didn't have any competition.

Yeah, there was no

Simone Collins: outsourcing, like Yeah, people didn't have the option to just turn to something else because the union was formed.

Malcolm Collins: True. If unions get stronger in the United States, we simply get out competed by countries with less union regulation. Exactly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which, well, which is exactly what happened.

I mean, I think that's why a lot of companies were like, okay, screw you, I'm gonna do my manufacturing

Malcolm Collins: us in, in a big part. And, and they don't realize. Who killed you? I love it when people are like, oh, well we had such good jobs because of the unions. And I'm like, yeah, but you don't have those jobs anymore.

So why do you think that happened? This is really happening in Hollywood right now where the union, the film act, the, the [00:12:00] writer's union or something decided to make some big stupid push. And well, basically

Simone Collins: everything. In Hollywood is unionized. There, there's, there it is. It is riddled with unions and that has ossified and made, made the industry so financially unviable and, and bogged down that it's.

They're just completely being trounced now. No, they're pretty much over

Malcolm Collins: people. And you, you can read lots of stories about this. The companies are just leaving Hollywood and they're not doing business in Hollywood anymore. Yeah. Even the creative types, because they're just like, we can't deal with this anymore.

Yeah. And so, so I don't think that, no, you can't bring back the economic prosperity. Unions worked in Hollywood when Hollywood had a natural monopoly. IE it wasn't easy to produce films in a disparate region of locations. Yeah. Now it is. Mobility changes

Simone Collins: things for sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so unions only work when you have a captive market.

When you don't have a captive market. Unions have the opposite effect.

Simone Collins: None of this changes the fact that for the people at the time, it felt pretty freaking good. It felt pretty, but [00:13:00] we can't recreate that. And I'm with you on that. But, but

Malcolm Collins: I'm not actually point out, I mean, I go into the actual economics of the food because my understanding is that if you actually look at cost of living of today versus the 1950s, it was, it was actually lower today than in the 1950s for your average person.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I will get into that. I'll get into that. Go. But I'm not, it's, no, it's, it's later. This is my episode. It's later. Okay. Go. We get to do it my way because this isn't, get outta my office. You let me cook. Okay. But so another element of this that was. I mean, it, it was obviously tied to economic growth and whatnot, but quality of life and social stability were both better.

And this is one of those things where I think it should start to become apparent that you can totally recreate this on a family or personal culture level. But there was a perception of positive change, which we should totally have now. Material comforts were improving. The 1950 saw widespread adoption of new technologies, televisions, cars, home appliances, and these rapidly improved daily life.

Like, my grandmother was a French war bride. She grew up. In [00:14:00] France doing laundry with like washboards, you know? And then she just was so freaking amazed when she got a washing machine. She just thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world. It blew her mind. And I don't think people realized just, you know, how amazing that was for people, but also like how low tech their lives were.

Even in the fifties when, I don't know when a washing machine is the thing that is the highlight of your year. Do you really crave to go back to that period? But there was more, more community, relatively speaking in social cohesion. There was a strong emphasis, emphasis on social and, and community life.

And this was the era of setting your kids out to play all afternoon until it was dinnertime or the sunset, and then expecting 'em to come home and everything would be okay. And then of course there was that economic optimism, but also mental health and wellbeing were just. Better. It was normal to start a successful middle class life out of high school, whereas now we infantalize people like crazy.

But yeah, I, I mean in that social class video that I just referenced earlier, the, the middle class character in the video just gets a white collar job straight out of high [00:15:00] school. I mean, can you imagine that happening commonly now? I mean, it's gonna come back to that soon, which is great. And, and cultural and mental health was better.

Emotions were seen as harmful. And, and I can, I can give you,

Malcolm Collins: realizing that it's a better way to deal with mental health.

Simone Collins: I can give you a a, a video clip of there's, there's literally one of those, another one of those 1950s instructional videos where an instructor is connecting emotions to fire.

Just is perfect. Like yes.

Speaker 2: Before men learned how to control fire and put it to work, it was man's greatest enemy. In much the same way, your emotions can be your own greatest enemy or under control, your emotions can make you healthier and happier and improve the lives of people around you. I think of fire in connection with emotions because when you become stirred up, when your emotions control your actions.

It affects not only yourself, but the people around you.

Simone Collins: And it did feel a lot more stable and predictable for people. And [00:16:00] there were stronger community support networks, also clothing. They had mad men. We literally have Idiocracy

Malcolm Collins: like, right, but here's the thing, 1950s, what it had in closing. Yeah. Which by the way, you can still wear if you want.

It lacked in food. If you have ever seen pictures of food from the 1950s, oh yes. Let me

Simone Collins: send you some, let me send you some. Okay. First I'm gonna send you just pictures. Pictures of clothing, just so, because I think you may, we, it's been a while since we've watched Idiocracy. But like when you look at clothing from Idiocracy, it, it might as well just be clothing from today.

Like, we were walking at Walmart this morning. Oh, literally is just, isn't this literally just what you saw this morning at Walmart?

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Right? Oh my God. We actually dressed are not you and me, but everyone else. And we want, we like, why don't you dress like everyone else? Walmart. Doesn't this look

Simone Collins: like the clothing that was on the rocks?

Malcolm Collins: Actually, oh, in the 1950s. So sharp.

Simone Collins: I know. It's so sharp. But yeah. Let me, okay. I'm gonna send you pictures of 1950s food, because people

Malcolm Collins: [00:17:00] may not know this, but I used to always wear a suit and tie. Yeah, you look

Simone Collins: great.

Malcolm Collins: And people could say, why did you stop always wearing a suit and tie? And it's because it made me look younger like too young.

Like I look. Like a kid when I wear a suit and tie. And so I you know, as, as it's funny, many of our, our, our viewers you know, they, they take us out to be, and this is the first time in my life where I've really been surprised by this. Yeah. I think like older, relative to them than we are.

I think many of them perceive themselves as younger than they actually are. I remember one of them was like on our, when our, our episode on four chan, they were like, oh, this is such like a boomer's take on four chan. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on here. Like my generation was the generation that was using four chan as it was becoming culturally relevant and a thing.

You have only lived in the, in the territory. We built like four chan isn't some modern, edgy thing. Four chan is my generation, my college, my high school. Like what are you talking about, man? Anyway.

Simone Collins: [00:18:00] Now you're sounding like a boomer. Okay, boomer. But like I just sent you a picture of 1950s party food. Okay.

And what we're looking at is a spread of like sliced, sliced bread. Some, some like meat patties. God, that looks disgusting. There are two cheese sandwiches. And then there's a, a weird vat of. Red stuff and, and some cheese. Then I sent a picture of a, a very basic modern charcuterie board, which includes dragon fruit, sliced pear, pomegranate fig jam with toasted pita bread slices.

A a container of mixed. Nuts and dried berries. Grapes skewered like, it, it, oh, and star fruit, of course. So there's all these exotic fruits that have been imported from all around the world.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I, I mean, a lot of them are things that you might be surprised, used to be rarer, like pineapples or bananas.

Or yeah, like those things, you didn't get them, you, you don't get the ability to transport things that you do get like apples. You wouldn't get those all year round in the [00:19:00] 1950s. Oh,

Simone Collins: but, but here, let me show you a great example of apples in 1950s cuisine. Check out this beautiful. I, I don't know if it's dessert or if it's a savory dish.

Check it out. It's, it's looking at some with

Malcolm Collins: shrimp inside.

Simone Collins: Yes, there's green jello with shrimp inside. There's maybe cottage cheese in the center of the bunt shaped jello thing, and then some apple tastefully arranged around the side. Doesn't that look yummy, Malcolm? Oh my God. That's, but if you haven't, if your appetite isn't completely surging, now let me show you this amazing 1950s casserole highlighting the.

The beauty of the hot dog. What we're basically

Malcolm Collins: looking

Simone Collins: at is some kind of, that is

Malcolm Collins: horrifying.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. It looks kind of like an ode to brutalist architecture with coleslaw on top.

Malcolm Collins: You can't see because they're watching this on audio. They cut hot dogs. Half and then put them on like the outside of a cake of some sort with

Simone Collins: coleslaw on top.

Yeah. So it's like, I, I think it's a casserole, but it's like a a, a [00:20:00] tall casserole with coleslaw on top and

Malcolm Collins: just me is even the simplest of dishes. They seem to have been unable to cook. No, no, no. This was, this was a fancy dish. No, this was you showing off Malcolm. You know what I mean? Is like, you're like, well, certainly at least they can make good steak or a good burger, and it's like, no.

Apparently somehow they couldn't. Because I've seen pictures of burgers and steaks from the 1950s and they look terrible. They look like a school cafeteria. Food. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and, and people are like, why was food so bad in the 1950s? Few core reasons. They had only just figured out refrigeration.

Mm-hmm. So they were using, overusing it in areas they probably shouldn't have been. Well,

Simone Collins: and, and yeah, also it was, it was really, they didn't have, cold chain, like supply chains where you have refrigerated trucks and then refrigerated warehouses. And so it was really hard to have things like. Frozen meat or other things, or fruits or flowers from far away fish being taken over.

So when you had vegetables, it was quite often canned vegetables or canned meat. The canning was way more common for like the [00:21:00] major source of the food you were eating. Yeah. And then of course there was less globalization, so you weren't getting these foreign things imported from far away. I mean, you had apples because they were domestically produced.

Malcolm Collins: You often couldn't get, you know, you would, you, I, I mean, I, even my dad, you know, grew up after the 1950s you know, many stories about him first encountering things like sushi or curry or

Simone Collins: Yeah.

In media, you'll often see jokes about how bad white people food is. And I think within modern times we can look at this and say, oh, what a silly little racist joke. But in actuality, when you go to these historic examples and you look at these pictures, you're like, oh wow. Before we started adopting ingredients in cooking techniques.

from other cultures, this food does actually look pretty awful

Uncle Roger: Next ingredient. I have this in my home all the time now. Chili Jam. It's what I tell you, it's not Asian ingredient. What he doing with Chili Jam? Let's see. Brilliant for cooking. It's got heat, but it's also got the [00:22:00] sweetness and it's gonna kind of glaze. Oh, no, no, no, no,

Speaker 5: no, no, no, no, no. Putting gem in rice.

This is disgusting. Who put gem? First of all, what is chili Jam? Uncle Roger know fresh chili, chili oil. Chili flake. Never heard of chili Jam. Is this how you treat white people to eating chili? You give them fresh chili, they go, no, no, no. I don't actually like chili. Give them chili jam, and they go, oh.

Malcolm Collins: other things that we might consider a normal part of daily life.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, that these were very foreign, exciting things.

Also, our aesthetic standards, and this is something that, that some viewers of this podcast have, have brought up to me multiple times. Just like the, the aesthetic standards we hold to our interior decoration and to our food are just so insanely high now. So I'm gonna send you two pictures of just one is a sort of a standard 1950s birthday party.

The kids are wearing like, clearly homemade paper hats, looks like from like a newspaper or [00:23:00] something. There, there's like a, a plastic tablecloth and, and paper cups and a chip bowl or whatever. And like someone's grandmother's in a corner smiling look, you know, looking like she's just the best host ever.

Like clearly this is, this is an impressive party for a middle class family. And then I'm also sending a picture of Shirley Temple's birthday party. She's cutting a much larger cake, but I'm gonna be honest with you, it looks. Kinda like a botched homemade cake with it looks

Malcolm Collins: like I what the standard of what I would get from my local grocery store.

Simone Collins: Well, no, no, no, no. Let me actually show you the standards of our local area. So I'm just gonna show you a picture of the cake counter from Wegmans, which is a local. Okay, a local grocery store here. These, now we're looking at perfectly executed fruit tarts cakes you know, elaborately made cakes to look like.

Cups of hot chocolate. This is the future. And then let me show you just a picture. I just chose a random local bakery in Collegeville in this case. It, it's from the, the. Collegeville Cakery. [00:24:00] I think this is just a, just one of their class. And I took this from Google Reviews too, and you can see it in someone's house, like there's like sheets in the background.

Okay. This is not a, a, a commercial photo.

Malcolm Collins: Wow, that's an impressive

Simone Collins: cake. Yeah, this cake ain't got nothing on Shirley Temple's cake. We're now looking at a lopsided recreation of the, of the sleeping beauty cake from the Disney movie that has like all these crazy stacked layers held up by a broom.

Our standards today for food are incredibly high and incredibly luxurious. And

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, I'd even say in women, I think many people who haven't watched 1950s movies. Forget that. Women of the 1950s are just not very attractive. I don't know what, well, movie

Simone Collins: stars look great, but also they're highly airbrushed.

People weren't, people weren't nearly as overweight and obese, so I would actually argue that like women were more attractive because they were not as unhealthy.

Malcolm Collins: Many people would call 1950s movie stars pretty mid by modern standards.

Simone Collins: Yes, but the average person, like when I look at [00:25:00] vintage colorized footage of the 1950s.

Yeah. And I mean, what we have now is a bunch of twos and threes compared to that moving around on the streets and what was strolling on the streets in the fifties and sixties, which a bunch of fives and sixes. So I'm gonna push back on that. And a lot of that was the clothing. But also I need to point out that in the 1950s, people spent nine to 14% of their annual income.

Just to buy fewer than 25 garments per year. But these were investment pieces. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. Not sorry. Go over that, that, that statistic again. That's pretty crazy.

Simone Collins: Nine to 14% of annual income to get how many garments? To get? Fewer than 25 garments per year.

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And more, most clothing was made in the US It was good looking clothing.

You didn't have a lot of it, but yeah, people look good because they spent a lot. And I think this is one of those things where people are like, oh man, like the 1950 was, was so affordable. You wanna guess how, what percentage of annual income we spend on our clothing now Malcolm for? For approximately 70 garments a year, seven zero.

Malcolm Collins: What do you think? Okay. I, I'm [00:26:00] gonna guess like 1%, 2%, 3%,

Simone Collins: around 3%. Come on. But for 70 garments though, so,

Malcolm Collins: but I mean, I, well, and this is, this is for everyone. If you look at families who are being intentional about it mm-hmm. I'd be almost certain our family spends less than 0.5%. Oh for

Simone Collins: sure. Because we're really careful.

We have our kid uniforms. I just bought probably all of our kids clothing for the next. Foreseeable future because on Prime Day, a bunch of Amazon basics and kids sizes came out in like our family uniform. So like the black, everything,

Malcolm Collins: everything I wear is Amazon Basics. Amazon basics. My jeans are Amazon Basics.

My, my wife and no sponsorship. Come on Amazon. Yeah, I wanted Amazon basic Spartan insert ship. I'm, I know, yeah.

Simone Collins: That if, if we could just get that in Coors Light, it would be perfect. It'd be so natural. But yeah. One of the arguments that I do want to make here is that as much as people butt hurt about the fifties being affordable.

We actually spent a lot more in the fifties on certain things, and we spend a lot less now. But here's the [00:27:00] thing that got me when I was doing research for this episode. This is, well, no, I also

Malcolm Collins: point out that travel was basically impossible in the 1950s for you. People spent you know, even, even was it being more expensive in the 1950s, they spent a smaller percent of their budget on it, simply because it was inaccessible for most people.

Yeah, so travel

Simone Collins: wasn't unusual in the 1950s. In general, it was, it was typically domestic. It was car based and it was not luxurious airfare. If you did do it was 6% of annual income. Now, airfare is less than 1% today. In recent surveys indicate that the average American family spends about 10% of their annual income on travel with some families spending up to 15%, whereas a typical two week family vacation by car in the 1950s would cost around 300 to $400, and that was.

Like only seven to 10% of annual income for a middle class family taking a single significant trip a year, a two week trip though and families who traveled less or took shorter trips would only spend two to 5%. So yeah, we definitely spend less on,

Malcolm Collins: I've heard stories about them from my dad. They would get in a car and they'd drive for like [00:28:00] 14 hours to like at some ocean house, and they'd, yeah.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Your family used to drive from Texas to the Jersey shore every summer. Right. And just kind of camp out. Yeah. I think it's like a

Malcolm Collins: multi-day drive. Yeah. I I I can imagine miserable when you don't, keep in mind they didn't have phones to read in the car. Exactly. They didn't have Exactly. You couldn't read a book 'cause you get car sick.

You know, you, you would,

Simone Collins: as they call it these days, raw doggett.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Raw dogged it for multiple day journeys.

Simone Collins: That's, that's, yeah. Without, this was before air conditioning. This was when you had to roll down your windows with a crank. I mean, I

Malcolm Collins: remember how much it transformed travel to have screens in front of you.

Oh my God. To be able to the

Simone Collins: luxury. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, throughout my entire childhood there were no, there were no screens. But so yeah, I mean, so if we wanna talk about. Affordability. It is true for too, like to the point of of housing that housing costs were more, and we can't fix that 'cause in, okay.

In the 1950s, American families spent, we'll say 17 to 22% of their annual income on housing. [00:29:00] And now the percentage of income spent on housing is risen to 25 to 30% for most American households. But given that nine to 14% of income was spent on clothing in the fifties. Whereas 3% is spent today, that alone in savings costs the cover, sorry, covers the cost of, of increased housing.

Like the, it's, it's super unfair that people are like, oh, it was too expensive because now we're spending so much less on other things and people are like,

Malcolm Collins: well, why do clothes cost so much less today? It's in part because we did do the outsourcing thing. Exactly. Yeah. We need benefit. The same reason why we don't have unions.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I want a, a, a, a starving child in China making my shirts. Not some starving child in America.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, America has better, you know, support services for the starving children. There's Snap and EBT and like all, all the, those, you know, in free healthcare in most states for, for children at low incomes.

Whereas in China, you know, they, they need the income. Okay, let 'em, let 'em have it. And also like there, there's a [00:30:00] lot of other sort of misleading things. I feel like I'm being gaslit about the fifties, like technically gasoline and cars were, were less expensive in the fifties, but it's not the full picture because overall transportation.

Transportation today doesn't meaningfully cost more. In the fifties, American families spent around 15% of their household than income on transportation, which included cars and public transport. But in recent years, families spend 15 to 18%, so only as much as 2% want more of their household than income on transportation.

Plus, you don't need any more. To drive to rent a movie or get daily groceries or talk with your friends, because now you have, we have bigger refrigeration units. We, we have deep freezers if we want them that are more widely available. You can get bulk food delivery. You'd like, it used to be that, to do anything, to see a friend, to talk to a friend, you had to drive somewhere, especially if you're in like if you weren't in a city.

So, yeah, I just don't think things are being. Adequately presented. And also to your point about food, if you still prepare it yourself, especially in 1950s [00:31:00] style, like if you're eating canned vegetables and hot dog

Malcolm Collins: towers, I'd also point out that people romanticize the gender relationship in the 1950s.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They're like, oh, as a man, you know, it was so great. You know, when women. Okay, so first of all, in the 1950s women spanking their, their wives was pretty normalized. Can you imagine having to spank your wife, like, outside of a sexual context they, it, it seems like such an effort. Like you, you have what you, you treat your wife like an additional child.

How does that make your life easier or better? Like, do you actually want Yeah, it's hard for me

Simone Collins: to imagine that it actually happened that much. I feel like it had. Into the media is like a cute thing. It happened

Malcolm Collins: in movies. So clearly, yeah, it happened, it was happening in people's house. It was not treated as like a, oh my God, I can't believe he did that.

It was like, that's a normal part of being married. So, you know, clearly it was happening.

Simone Collins: I guess maybe, I don't know. I just don't think most men went. And then

Malcolm Collins: women, you know, you had this big problem in the 1950 of all these housewives being on all these drugs. Enzos Yes, yes. Enzos to get through today.

So [00:32:00] what I, I've got this drugged up childlike wife. Do I need to spank? You need to spank. No deal. To keep in line. Yeah. I prefer that my wife just does this stuff herself and I think that people also as men. Over romanticize the concept of the wife just staying at home and doing all the, the childcare.

I really prefer sharing childcare duties with my wife because I really like being around my kids.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. You'd be missing out if you were being a, a tread wife, dad. And most of the families we know who are really, you know, ISTs, the, the men of the houses love the love spending time with their kids, but.

Yeah. I mean, like we, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No more time with the kids for you. You just I, I can't even imagine, like, I love, think about the world that we're entering today where you have more work from home, you have more gig work, you have more, even if you're, you're earning less and your earnings are not as stable.

Consider what your life would be like if you went every day to work at a factory all day [00:33:00] long. Yeah. And then you came home. And you had a wife and, and some kids and that was your interaction with them. And then on weekends you'd go to, I don't know, barbecues or something. I, which I wouldn't like doing anyway.

I'd have to like talk to people. It's so funny. Parties, like children's parties today because I go to them and other people in the comments at least tell me if this is your experience. None of the parents talk. All the parents just stand around looking awkwardly at their phones or something. And I remember when I was a kid and you had the children play stuff, the the, the parents would do it.

So the parents could interact.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We have video footage of it. Like we have proof the parents are hanging out and talking. Yeah, today

Malcolm Collins: it's, and I want Simone to go with me to one if Simone never goes to any of this stuff, 'cause that's my responsibility. But I want her to go just for anthropological reasons, to just be like, take a separate car.

Just be there for 30 minutes so you can see what it's like, because it's weird.

Simone Collins: I do kind of, I I, I should witness this because I find it hard to believe and people'll

Malcolm Collins: be like, oh, that's horrible. You know, the reality is, is I don't wanna talk to [00:34:00] these people. I don't, I, I've got friends online who I'm better matched for, and I've got my wife at home and my kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but still my point remains that you can, if you want to recreate this life like education, sure. It's, it's, it's unsustainable, expensive now, but it also can be circumvented with ai. And we talked about this at, at length in the AI and social class episode that we released. And same with employment.

A AI is gonna wipe again away the, the need for university degrees. So we're getting back to that fifties. You can start right out of high school or even before scenario. And we're, we're about to hit an age of major wealth opportunity for those who are willing to work for it, which is exactly how it was in the fifties.

You still had to work for it to have upward social mobility. So don't think that people weren't working their butts off to get anywhere in the fifties because they absolutely were. They worked really hard. Then this quality of life thing, this, this, this, oh, well the fifties were this time of optimism and there was all this techno optimism and everything.[00:35:00]

We, you can absolutely unplug from negative media channels and you'll see things are actually getting better and they're way better than they were in the fifties. Just look at those food pictures. And with, with mental health too, you can opt into better mental health stability. Predictably. If you thoughtfully own your objective function, like you know what your values and your life plan are, and you live within your means, you can have a stable and predictable life.

It's all these people who are trying to opt into a, a clearly unsustainable culture that they don't even own, like they haven't thoughtfully chosen it for themselves who are living precariously.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I point out a few things here. Yeah. If you're like, I want cheaper. Rent. Right? Like that's what the 1950s had that I want.

Well, you actually have options for that today. You can totally can go to a rural area and get a house. I mean, that's what we did. We, we got our house in our house. If it was in the Bay Area, my God, what would it cost you, do you think? 13, $10 million? At least 13. And I would, I would guess

Simone Collins: maybe. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But out here it's, it, it was less than half a million when we got it.

[00:36:00] Um mm-hmm. You know, so like. Great house and everything like that. You, you, I mean, and now you might have to go further rural than we went. Or you go to a, a, a developing country, which you couldn't easily do or live in, in the 1950s and you can today.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That is 100% an option. So yeah, I mean, you can live the 1950s fantasy.

You just have to be intentional about it and be willing to break with mainstream norms, which shouldn't be hard given how toxic they are. But I mean, even better than that. You can literally live the techno optimist 1950s feature so you can live the fantasy that people had in the 1950s. Like you can have more sustainable marriages in which most like both partners contribute professionally, and even the kids, you can have greater social mobility.

Because if, well at least if you ride the AI wave properly and, and you can have way more luxury given modern tech. Plus, we need to really be grateful for all the medical advancements that were not available. In the 1950s, like keep in mind the first kidney transplant was in the fifties. That was [00:37:00] experimental and they were not like organ transplants in general.

Were not, were not widespread. We didn't have ozempic, we didn't have advanced antibiotics, we didn't have modern chemotherapy or targeted therapies. No gene therapy. No, IVF. So you know, we would be. Childless and miserable. No statins, no cardiovascular medications that are anywhere close to what we have now.

No modern imaging, so no, no PET scans. No CCE CT scans. No MRIs. There was no endoscopy. So like, you couldn't have a really simple surgery where they just kind of went in with a tiny precision cut. They just, they just had to slice you all the way open. And, and I just. I can't emphasize enough, like also like just advanced antibiotics, you know, you only had some really simple stuff, so I, I just, it's, it's so bizarre to me that people crave this.

When you can have it, you can have the fantasy they wanted. I. And yet you're here, you are b******g about it. No, don't give me that. Like live

Malcolm Collins: it. What gets me is, I think it's the culture of the 1950s [00:38:00] that people want that, that even that, even the thing that people think was really working uhhuh wasn't.

They think, oh, well we had economic stability, which we only had 'cause the rest of the world was destroyed at that time. Yeah. Which changed our economy.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and so, so you can't really pine for it for those reasons. That's pining for something that you cannot recreate. Yeah. Or they pine for it for, oh, well, you know, women back then, you know, really knew their place in a relationship and I'm like, or.

You can find a woman who was in a modern context, who is willing to build the type of relationship that you want to build, right? Like, and, and, and those women are out there. They're Abso. Simone wasn't like when I found because there were a, a number of women I considered marrying before Simone. And not one of them, did I have the issue of them being like progressive brain minded or like, and they were all like progressive to some extent, right?

Like, because back then I was a progressive, right? And

Simone Collins: also most highly educated women are progressive and you pretty much exclusively, like, none of them

Malcolm Collins: were like, oh, I'm against, you know, [00:39:00] women having a different role than men. Or I would expect X or Y Like I, I think what people don't. What often men don't think about is many of the ways in which relationship norms have become more flexible.

Benefit both parties. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Not just women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, imagine if we were super rigid about it, you would have to do our taxes and finances.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: you don't wanna do that. You don't wanna do that. You wouldn't, and you would've had to muck out the sink this morning. Oh my God. Malcolm, like I'm used to mucking out drains.

But the smell of this one, I like almost vomited. It was, I don't know what was going on with it, but it was not good. Hey, at least the drain cleaner worked. I know that thing. Like clean it out like a ramrod. 'cause it basically was family motto.

Malcolm Collins: It was a on a thing my family used to run called Crazy Water crystals on the radio station.

They'd say they'll clean you out like a ramrod.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:40:00] Because what was it called? Healing Springs,

Malcolm Collins: Texas. Crazy water. Crazy water mineral Wells, Texas

Simone Collins: Mineral Wells, Texas. Yeah. They had some kind of like retreat thing and, and product out of mineral. I love that.

Malcolm Collins: My family actually, that'd be a fun thing to bring back Crazy water.

I think that, that, that would do well with modern branding.

Simone Collins: There's literally, like we bought for your brother for his birthday. You can literally find on eBay crazy water crystals, memorabilia, memorabilia, like little pamphlets about it. You can buy. Model train

Malcolm Collins: pieces? Well, because they owned almost the entire town.

So they, they created basically a resort town, like an Aspen before an Aspen. And they, because you could commute to it from Dallas, this was before planes. And they owned almost everything in the town is my understanding. And so it was like, imagine. Imagine of a Malcolm world, like a Hershey Park or something like that.

Come and enjoy yourself at the wonderful crazy town for crazy people.

I was looking up pictures of the town, if you're watching this on audio. And, , the banner over the main street when you enter town says, welcome to the [00:41:00] home of crazy with crazy and giant, wacky yellow font. , And the big company looming in the background that the family owned was crazy. Well, water company.

Um, and so I think, you know, I, I've mentioned before like that the backwards culture or tradition that my family comes from really didn't like attempting to look. Um. You know, pretentious or overly high status or overly like normalized and vulgarity was seen as authenticating, like showing that you don't think that you're better than people, and this is very much the 1950s way of doing that, or the 1950s way of being Malcolm.

Simone Collins: Like the mineral water there just gave you massive diarrhea. It was secure. That's where cleans you out like a ramrod came from. Like you just, I don't know. You took it and it was like a major, it just everything came out. But sometimes you need that

Malcolm Collins: clean yell, like a ri.

That's the way you communicate with Texas audience. We're all Texas audience. [00:42:00] That's great. That's perfect. Clean yell like a ri rod.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, yeah. The, the, the thing is too, I love retro futurism. And, and the funny thing is, is we have that, I mean, I was just talking with you yesterday about how I loved the fact that.

I heard our kids griping downstairs after bedtime, and I was just too exhausted from cleaning up after dinner and everything and making dinner to go down and figure it out, what was going on. But I, I could drop in, I could just like get on my phone and drop in on the Alexa device. It was in their room playing them.

Like sleep noises and just be like, okay guys, what's up? And then, you know, so we, we negotiated what they wanted. Hugs. I was like, well how about I sing you a song and then what song? And I'm just like, this is the future We live in the retro future environment. There, there's all these videos you can watch about the retro, futuristic house the House of the Future.

There were so many of those videos in the 1950s, you know, advertising various things and the power of plastics. And while there's not an exact translation. And Elon Musk loves to quote his son [00:43:00] Saxon who, who once said, why does the future not look like the future? Or why does today not look like the future?

But it does like it, it's not an exact, we don't have flying cars, but that's 'cause who wants to get a pilot license to get a car, you know, like that you don't understand the air traffic control problems you would have with that, that it is just not a practical solution. And, and so yeah, I just, it really, it, it bothers me.

But I'm also, so I'm, I'm bothered by the fact that people aren't just. Living the type of 1950s they want. And this is also a really common complaint that we have about culture in general. Like people get really mad about, oh, like there's this culture and I don't like that they're winning or whatever.

But they don't just, the point about culture is if you see something you like, don't complain about it. Take the parts you like it, incorporate it into your culture, and live it and thrive.

Malcolm Collins: This is, this is I think, a problem with you know, the people who fantasize about the 1950s again, they're like, well, you know, dating would've been easier for me in the 1950s, or, or, or something like that.

You know, they'll say and I'm like, it [00:44:00] reminds me of the communists who are like, I want communism. And I'm like, you understand that? If this was a communist system, you would be the underclass. Like you wouldn't be in the ruling regime. Yeah. You're the same people in the ruling regime. They just have more power.

It'd be Trump as head of the communist, you know, dictatorship. Yeah. You know, the, this, this doesn't put you in a better position vis-a-vis where you are now. You just imagine yourself as somebody who was a position of power within this new ecosystem. Yeah. And I think when people reflect back on the 1950s, they don't realize.

If you're watching this show, you probably would've been one of the nerds playing like Dungeon and Dragons. I don't, I don't think that existed yet, but you know what I mean? Something like that, right? Yeah. You, you wouldn't have been you know, captain of the football team, okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The girls wouldn't have noticed you you wouldn't have had an easier time, you know, they were playing with their own difficulties within that time period as we have within ours.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Although, I mean, again, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of bad stuff that I [00:45:00] thought was really, really, I mean, and it was like, for example, this is gonna, it's just, you might wanna cut this out. But yeah, it was like, well, of course, like the thing I can really dunk on is the experience of black Americans in the 1950s, and I'm trying to find all the stats and I look at their marriage rates and I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, in the 1950s, 64% of black women. Or married, roughly comparable to white women. Marriage rates were higher before the 1960s was 61% of, of black adults married in 1960.

Malcolm Collins: And and their kids born out of wedlock were fi were were half the white rate today, it's like 86% or so. Yeah. By 2008,

Simone Collins: only 32% of black adults were married.

A 44% decline from 1960. And there was a much smaller drop among white adults. They just went from 74 to 56. And also fertility and out of wedlock births. Way worse after the 1950s and the 1950s, only 4% of US births overall were out of wedlock. And for black infants, the rate was approximately 70 to 25% in the early 17 to 25% in the early 1960s.

Note she misspoke [00:46:00] here. I went back and double checked, , the amount of black births in the Americas in the 1950s where they were born out of wedlock was less than 5%. I.

By 20 23, 20 4% of all US births were out of wedlock. But black infants soared to born out of wedlock, soared to 77.3%, up from 25% in 1965. So, I mean, and also like in, in, in the 1950s, mental health stigma was severe. But also like people didn't, they didn't make it a thing. And there's this, there's just

Malcolm Collins: some like, which is actually mentally healthier than making it a thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I mean, I think some of that still kind of lingers in, in black culture today. Like, I actually think black culture today is more resilient to the mental health toxicity that we see, especially among white. Women, white, urbanized female. Yeah. Gyno culture today. And there's, there's this YouTube shorts channel called Subway Takes where this guy talks about like, white [00:47:00] people need to stop, like.

Calling people autistic and just like, sort of medicalizing everything. And he, he describes like an autistic, like if, if there were like a black dude at like a black or a black household with someone who's autistic, they'd just be like, I don't know, that's Clark. Like, whatever. Like, that's just him. Like what?

Like he's, he's, he's doing him, you know, like he's just, they just leave it alone. They don't make it a thing. And when I, when I think about all the autism, autism interventions we've, we've had for our kids so far. I mean, I kind of feel like just helping them deal with life in a, in a more normal way is, is just as effective as like the really expensive therapies we've tried.

Well, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, it makes an interesting point, which is the integration. Of and, and sort of destruction of black culture in the United States since the 1950s. So it can be completely subsumed by the urban monoculture.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's really broken the idea of a unique Black American identity. Oh my

Simone Collins: god. Yeah. No.

Speaking of Subway takes, I'll share this with you. There's another one where [00:48:00] the, this, this woman is, and it's a black woman and she's like, no, bring back segregation. Like, I'm serious. Like one I wanna know if I'm not welcome. And two, also like. White food sucks. Like bring, bring the spice, bring the flavor.

Subway takes: So what's your take? Bring back segregation. A hundred percent disagree. Dead at, bring it back. I wanna know where. I'm not welcome. Okay. Put them signs back up. Colored only, whites only. Let's do it. All right. Rip the bandaid off. Especially for a restaurant. Are you kidding me? Whites only? What do I wanna do in there?

Speaker 4: Okay. You were saying that the black excellence Absolutely. The segregation is to get the, the

Subway takes: colored excellence. Okay. Okay. What's the playlist in the whites only spot? They playing Carry Underwood and Kid Rock.

We playing Babyface and Diggable Planet. Ain't no overhead lighting. . Black people spend over a trillion dollars a year. I would love for the government to force us to spend it on our old people.

You know, this is, this is very good. Yes. I like this a lot.

Simone Collins: Like it's sort of this, this, this desire to bring back black exceptionalism as well. And yeah, you're right. This like forced integration that [00:49:00] and therefore cultural erasure, homogenization. Yeah. Like, okay. So now like, is is, is black culture better off now? Like, I mean it's obviously there were horrible things about, about.

Like pre-Civil rights United States and post civil rights. I mean, systemic racism is real well, et cetera. You know, I, I acknowledge all of that, but okay, so like fertility is worse out of, out of wedlock births are worse. And, you know, having two parents really does make a difference in kids' outcomes.

So like, this is kind of a big deal. Mental health is worse, even. It's not as bad as, as white mental health even today. Wealth too. The, the, the black in the 1950s, the black white wealth gap narrowed after World War ii. So, it, it, it actually improved a lot in the fifties, but how, how

Malcolm Collins: is it compared to It hasn't

Simone Collins: improved really.

It remains entrenched. And in, in wow, black household income is 58% of white households, which is unchanged since 1953. So despite all the improvements, like black families

Malcolm Collins: are more wealthy Oh yeah. The, the, the black people have [00:50:00] it so much better than in 1950. That is wild to hear that They actually, the, the wealth gap has not improved since 1953.

It actually, I like, I heard her say all this and I was like, this can't actually be true, right? Like, this doesn't sound true to me. So I decided to start Googling it and oh my god, it's so much worse than I thought. , If you look at, , this graph by the Washington Post, , which is looking at medium household wealth adjusted for inflation since the 1950s, white wealth has.

, Gone up about three x black wealth. Median adjusted household for household is approximately the same as it was in the 1950s. Then look at this graph, which is median net worth. Adjusted by household. Again, you see the same thing, , and this time it more than triples for white wealth. And black wealth again, goes up by significantly less.

, Maybe one 10th.

I then thought to myself, well, okay. Maybe when in relation to whites, [00:51:00] blacks were better off than they are today, , and in relation to their relationships or probability of being born out of wedlock. But certainly that's offset by the risk of racial violence. , And so then I decided to go back and say, okay, so what was the actual rates of racial violence in the 1950s and throughout the 1950s, there were six people, , killed by lynchings.

, That's. A lot less than I thought. , And so then I was like, okay, well what if we then move that to all forms of racial violence against black communities over the course of the entire 1950s? You then get 24 victims, , which while a tragedy is significantly less than I had been led to believe by popular media.

The same AI that gave me that 25 number for the 1950s when I asked it how many blacks had been killed in the past 10 years, , due to racial violence, it gave me a number of 50 to a hundred anti-black hate crime homicides over the last decade. Which, okay, it may be that it [00:52:00] is more sensitive. What counts as an anti-black, , murder today than back then? I will give it that, but I think it at least challenges this preconception we have that, . Hate crime has gone significantly down, , or racial inequality has gone significantly down over the last 50 years.

And what I'll find funny that I'm sure some people will take this to be a racist point for us to be saying actually racism hasn't gone down as much as is publicly perceived, which is just hilarious to me.

Also I.

Malcolm Collins: To put that in context for you, if you take that higher 25 number there, if I contrast that with the number of kids and I send my kids to a public school every, every weekday, the number of kids who have died in school shootings in the past 10 years, , that number.

Is . 188 children have been killed in school shootings in the last 10 years, so since 2024.

Simone Collins: No, no. But like there, but like culturally, all these things are worse. And this is [00:53:00] after. You know, really after like a lot of white colonization to, to be honest with you. So also, like I was looking at that, I was like, oh my God, I've just, I've been lied to about the fifties. Like, whoa, so much more expensive.

Except, well, we spent like 15% of our income on clothes. So I

Malcolm Collins: don't know. No, but I mean, when I talk about the, the colonization, this is important to know, like within the BLM movement, when they said they were fighting for. Like black values being normalized and they listed among them non-standard marriage structures like polyamory and everything like that.

When, if you go back to 1950s, black communities were more pro that stuff than white communities were.

Sorry, that was a little unclear when I said that stuff. I was referring to marriage and traditional family structures. Black culture was more pro traditional family structures than white culture was in the 1950s.

Malcolm Collins: Right. You know, so they, they're using the black communities. Corpse as a skin suit to push values that are [00:54:00] antithetical to the historic nature of these communities I think shows how much it has been sort of slain and puppeted by the very people who deteriorated it in the first place.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. It, it, so yeah, I just, again, take what you like from any period of time, from any culture, integrate it into your own. Stop complaining, like if you want it, take it. And, and, and, and, and don't believe the 1950s propaganda. Good or bad? Basically, like if people are talking about the fifties being great.

Okay, well, yeah, but it wasn't that great. Just, just think about the hot dog tower. Okay. And the jello, the shrimp jello.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Imagine having to eat that. It's like, oh. In the 1950s, women cooked for their husbands and they came home to a warm meal. It's like, yeah, but what did that meal look like? Okay. No, I, if I not be so excited, if I knew I had to eat shrimp inside of some weird jello thing.

That's the thing is

Simone Collins: like, so yeah, [00:55:00] like the Okay, yes. You know, we're talking about like, yeah, you had a job, but these were lar like a, a huge, there was a lot of industrial jobs. So these are jobs that were, were so rough that remember like ayla writing about her experience working at a factory before she sort of found her career.

Was so miserable at her factory job that, you know, she, she would like drink herself to into a stupor every night. You know, it was deeply unhealthy and now it makes sense. Why? So everyone thinks there's this like fantasy of like, oh, you work all day and then you come home to your beautiful wife who gives you a kiss on the cheek and you know, takes your shoes off and you put on your slippers and you kick up your feet.

And you, you drink your cocktail as she's making dinner while your kids prattle around. But like, no, you're getting blitzed. 'cause you are miserable in your fricking factory job, which is just so boring. And you're not listening to podcasts while you're working on the factory line at all.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Your, your wife gives you jello shrimp.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: And finally, dinner's ready and like, thank God you're [00:56:00] blitzed, because now you need to eat your green jello with infused shrimp. And this is on a special day. Malcolm and over

Malcolm Collins: cooked steak with ketchup.

Simone Collins: It's your birthday. No, you don't get steak on them. No, man, that's a, that's very special.

Maybe you get some

Malcolm Collins: spam

Simone Collins: with ketchup and ham. Ketchup and ham. Yeah. Maybe, maybe on, on a special day. But yeah, like

Malcolm Collins: proof that 1950s food sucks. If, if you're like, what was, how, how bad was 1950s food? The food that in America that we eat on holidays, because it's traditional, it often tries to mimic the food of the past.

Yeah. That's often like honey dry Turkey would've been like the peak of food back then and I find it to be quite boring for me. Or like, Turkey. And you eat that today and you're like, this is disgusting. Why are we eating this on Thanksgiving? Because that used to be the best of the best.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Yeah, man. At least the British had it right with like beef Wellington and Christmas beef [00:57:00] Wellington. Still

Malcolm Collins: beef wellington's still pretty dope. Yeah.

Simone Collins: You know what I'd love to try is beef wellington with wasabi instead of fo gra, lightly light just a little bit inside the pastry crust.

Malcolm Collins: I think it could be pretty good, but it's hard to get good wasabi.

Like remember we tried to, for our sushi, I know

Simone Collins: the, the counterfeit market's too big. I mean, I'll stick with blue cheese. I think blue cheese instead of water is the

Malcolm Collins: counterfeit market. I just don't, it's hard to get anything that's like, even that sort of crumbly, wasabi. You get a Japanese restaurant.

Yeah, you

Simone Collins: would even take good counterfeit wasabi, but you can't. Yeah. I don't know why you can't get like restaurant counterfeit, wasabi. Yeah. Well

Malcolm Collins: anyway, love you Simone. You are an absolute princess. This was a great topic. You did a very good job talking about it, getting into the spiciest of topics.

Yeah. I, I, yeah. I wouldn't even go with a how much worse was I? Well, but wow. Good job. You have educated me. For dinner tonight. I just want [00:58:00] reheats. Yeah.

Simone Collins: So we're doing one taquito guacamole, and. Rendering Reheated. Sauteed. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: With, do you want rice or no rice? I think I would just say some corn chips.

Do you have corn chip? I can, I can open a new bag

Malcolm Collins: if you need more. I can Corn chips. I've got corn chips.

Simone Collins: You should, because I, oh, I can also make some with MSG, sea salt and corn tortillas if you want. But if you have a bag

Malcolm Collins: open, we should, that sounds, I've got a bag. Don't worry about it. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

'cause I don't, and I, heating the oven right now doesn't sound appealing. It's so hot down there. So hot.

Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry, Simone. You're such a diligent worker on behalf of the family, making me food every night, my meal of the day.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You're, that's

Malcolm Collins: why it matters. I really don't wanna, I, there's the pressure.

I better understand how other people eat three effing meals in a day.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I can't either.

Malcolm Collins: I, what? What? And a

Simone Collins: snack that's like considered super normal apparently. Get. I mean, okay, who am I to talk because I'm eating constantly in this pregnancy. I can't get [00:59:00] enough.

Malcolm Collins: Well, good. I mean, you do need to eat with this pregnancy and, and yeah, but I mean, I'm a guy, right?

Like I shouldn't be so indulgent.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: you must

Simone Collins: be stoic and minimalist and. I don't, I don't know what, whatever it is, guys do. Did you do that? All right. That's perfect. Perfect. Guying. Oh yeah. Go get your helmet. Go get your pretorian. Oh yeah. Yeah. Love you. Love you too.

It's a star that looks big because it's so close. Do you know what the sun is? No.

In this video, we dive into the concept of Communal Narcissism, a newly identified phenomenon where individuals within leftist communities exhibit narcissistic traits. Through an article by Brett Parley and Keith Thompson, we explore how communal narcissists seek validation through their contributions to social groups rather than personal achievements. The discussion highlights the surprising presence of grandiosity and entitlement among those previously considered healthy. We also touch on the dynamics of in-group signaling, the historical context, and the broader implications of such behavior for societal discourse and power structures. Join us in unpacking this intriguing topic!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going over an article called Communal Narcissism, which dives into a new phenomenon that scientists are discovering where it turned out.

That the way, say that they scientists change their methodology a bit and go, oh my God, I, I, I found something shocking. It turns out that there is narcissism within leftist communities. How did I. How did, how did all of our old studies not pick this up? But it is a, a new phenomenon and so we're gonna be going over an article that was written by Brett Parley and Keith Thompson that explores this phenomenon and how it is being sort of tracked and elucidated by scientists.

And obviously I'm gonna do what I normally do, which is not read the entire article, just read the parts that I think are interesting to, to learn about. 'Cause obviously it starts just talking about what we all know is that the left is shockingly narcissistic in many ways and like going into when they all put up black squares or like pride flags over there.[00:01:00]

There are pictures. Do you remember when that used to be like a thing? And in college, I remember like when it would happen, I'd be like, afraid not to do it. I'd be like, oh my God, I have to do it. Or everyone's gonna say because if all your friends have it up, everyone's gonna be like, ah, this is proof that you are homophobic.

I already had suspicions that you might be a conservative or have conservative sympathies. And so, you know, trying to start my career I had to, I had to go as the go, as the flow. I love some people, like I would never do that. And it's like, well, you know, I, I do support like general gay rights, right?

So I, I should, I guess change my profile. But let's continue here. Examining the literature on clinical narcissism in the time of Trump, we discovered something surprising. Researchers had been certain that they would be able to distinguish healthy individuals from those suffering from the new condition.

What gradually dawned on them was that many of the individuals they had been scoring as normal were in fact, exhibiting vanity, grandiosity and [00:02:00] entitlement the hallmark traits of self-centered narcissistic displays. Very overtly and actually even more overtly than the ones who they were categorizing as narcissists.

Of course, the pathological aspects of the new condition announced themselves in markedly different words and gestures. It had previously been assumed that these characteristics were healthy, unlike the well-known characteristics of over art narcissism so readily apparent in people like Trump remark, and I would say that people are like, oh my gosh, how dare you call Trumper?

Nurse. I mean, come on. Like we can be conservatives and still be like the guy's a little narcissistic. But anyway, to continue here remarkably the experts nearly missed telltale signs of what they would go on to characterize as communal narcissism, communal indicating that individuals seek validation and admiration through their perceived contributions to social groups or communities rather than through personal achievements.

So. What this new form of narcissism is, is [00:03:00] narcissism about like. I'm always a good person. I always do good things. I always contribute to my community in the night, in, in the correct way. Mm-hmm. And it is through constant signaling of, of sort of in group when you are. Convinced that that in group is the only group that really matters.

Mm-hmm.

Which you see among you know, progressives was like Hillary Clinton calling the others the deplorables. You, you really, as somebody who used to be a progressive, I remember the way that they think. And it is really that the other, anyone who isn't within their social. Alignment, this urban monocultural alignment is really sort of not human.

Exactly. Not really. Absolutely. Worth considering or thinking about.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Subhuman like too, too ignorant to be really considered a peer. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But is that not like classical narcissism? To, to consider only this one group as mattering and dedicate your life to this one group and everything that they [00:04:00] do is axiomatic good because they are the ones doing it.

To our surprise and that of the researchers themselves, communal narcissism turns out to be the equal and opposite variant of the self-centered, overt type in which individuals boast about being quote unquote the best. Joshin Gerber's 2012 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychiatry introduced the agency communal model distinguishing agentic narcissists who boast of their intelligence and achievements from communal narcissists who claim to be the most helpful or virtuous.

Isn't that a fascinating way to, to, to delineate the two groups? Basically, if you have this narcissistic trait and you are age agentic. You become this sort of overt narcissist. Yeah, I'm the best, I'm the greatest. Right. Because you are, you both think that you are the greatest and you think for yourself which is in a way morally superior to the communal narcissist who is non-ag agentic, but thinks that they are great and everything they do is good.

[00:05:00] So they just align themselves with a preexisting, often what they see as the dominant cultural group. And well, it seems to

Simone Collins: me like a, this is a new. Iteration of the Karen, what you're describing, because the Karen is also that like, I am the HOA president, like I represent our community. You are ruining this.

You can't park here, you can't do this. And the, the classic Karen archetype is someone who believes that they are in the right and speaking on behalf of their community. And not based on some individual evaluation, but based on what they believe to be normatively correct.

Malcolm Collins: I really found the way she put this interesting. This is a form of narcissism where instead of thinking you are the main character and the most important person and nobody else's thoughts, feelings, perspectives really matters. You think that your community is the only one that really matters and no other community, thoughts, perspectives, et cetera, matters, and that you are an avatar of that community.

[00:06:00] Well, yeah. I think that the Karen is a version of this, but I think that the higher version is the Twitter person or something like that, because the Karen had to go out and run for office and everything like that.

Mm-hmm. She wasn't just reflexively reacting to whatever group she thought was the biggest in her environment. I think that the the, the better proto iteration of this. Was like the Satanic panic bomb, the the Christian Pearl clutching mom when Christians were the dominant social group in America.

And, and instead of the urban monoculture, and this individual would just, and, and these likely exist, was in some communities where, where Christianity or Mormonism is still the dominant group where they just reflexively. Pearl Clutch and, and, and pull themselves back to Well, my community is the morally righteous community.

My community is the, is the correct community because they are the dominant community that, like, they, they align themselves with this community because it's dominant. And I think of many people. [00:07:00] Personality structure switched which community they were supporting as the urban monoculture became dominant.

And I think, right. So like,

Simone Collins: yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying about agentic versus not agentic, in a sense, they flock to whatever the dominant community is because they, they need something. To stand behind as authority since they aren't incapable of or not confident enough to develop their own.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, these are the people who make fascism work.

You know, like the moment, like the Nazi party seems to be gaining power. They all flock to it because it is now creating. The new moral standards and they act as moral police for the community to prevent people from, from deviating or defecting from the community. Which is actually sort of really good for the human gene pool right now because these individuals are being completely weeded out of humanity in a big way.

When this behavior used to actually be quite because the urban monoculture has so low fertility rates used to be quite successful as the fertility strategy. Yeah. Just align yourself [00:08:00] with whoever looks powerful.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Actually.

Malcolm Collins: And then be narcissistic. Yeah. Yet both groups share the same essential needs for affirmation and validation.

Kins. Okay. Work and, and. Oh, sorry. No, sorry. I need to be clear here. His last name is Okay. They're not, they're not putting shade on his work. They're not saying kins. Okay. Work. I was wondering why they wrote like that. I was like, what? And enhanced our understanding further, the communal narcissist, warm glow conceals a sense of entitlement and special status for such individual's.

Feedback or criticism is commonly experienced as an attack. Yes, I have noticed this, this is true of narcissist feedback or criticism is an attack, and it's true for many progressives when you're like, Hey, like, do you not see how imperialistic your community is acting towards external groups? And they're like, how dare you?

I can't, you can't. Like, when I pointed out that, well, when they said it was monstrous. And the, the, [00:09:00] the groups that use corporal punishment are monstrous. Like when we were skewered for this, I'm like, well, you know, depending on the study you're looking at, it's like 85 to like 90% of like, black Americans spank their kids, right?

Like, this is way more dominant in African American communities. Are you saying they're monstrous and they're like, oh, but how could you the conservative say that we are racist? And I'm like, well, because you're doing something racist right now, right? Like, you're, you're, you're assigning. A, a true value to something that is just like a, a choice around parenting practices.

Mm-hmm.

And not even a choice, but a culturally bound choice around parenting practices. Exactly. And so, but like, you see their brains break down in some of the pieces where we said that, you know, it's like they don't even counter argument. They were just confused and enraged that us and the conservatives could point out something that they, the progressives were doing was racist.

While communal narcissism can be detected in many social movements both today and in the past, it most closely mirrors the ethos of the progressive left. [00:10:00] In fact, it plays a key role in the psychosocial dynamics driving that ideology. Although I note that I think it used to be a driving force on the right.

I used to think that your, your standard communal narcissist in the, in the 1950s or 1960s in the United States would've been a rightist and the right displayed these tactics when they held the dominant culture. I don't think that this is intrinsically I leftist thing to do. I just think that this is a strategy that is sometimes employed by some cultural groups to maintain power.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And probably for the past 2000 years, it was more common to see people. Doing this through a church which I guess we exactly argue is more conservative leaning. So this is not exactly a partisan thing, it's just that right now it happens to be mm-hmm. A progressive thing. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Communal narcissism exists on a spectrum at its mild, and individuals earnestly advocate for social justice, finding quiet satisfaction and camaraderie in their omni cause of supporting [00:11:00] the intersecting grievances of marginalized groups when less.

But, and, and note they put marginalized and scare quotes. When less benign individuals become dogmatic and antagonistic as when the view hosts engage in their anti-Trump vitriol. Prioritizing moral posturing over dialogue. At its most severe, individuals try to justify violence such as BLM riots, assaults on Trump supporters.

And the firebombing of Tesla vehicles. Perhaps most chilling is selective compassion as seen in the silence of many progressives after the recent murders of Yin Lavinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram. Despite the victim's dedication to peace, many self stylized champions of universal values, withheld outrage, revealing, who are these people

Simone Collins: who were killed?

This was the

Malcolm Collins: two Israeli diplomats who were killed, I'm guessing. Oh,

Simone Collins: oh, oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Thank you. One was about

Malcolm Collins: to go home to propose Really sad that this happened.

Simone Collins: I know. Yes. Devastating.

Malcolm Collins: Revealing a [00:12:00] disconnect between their benevolent self-image and their deeper ideological purity. And I did note this, you did not have much progressive hand wringing after those murders, after the Holocaust survivor was burnt alive in another American attack with a Molotov cocktail.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Right then that was more recent. Oh my gosh, that was

Malcolm Collins: more recent. And the left and the mainstream media just has not been covering this stuff much. Which I think shows their you know, true ideological bent, which is quite chilling to me. Yeah. But you know, I, I guess I'm glad I'm not Jewish.

Like it's, it's a scary time to be Jewish in America right now. Yeah. I can see why they, they, they feel they need their own country to stay safe. But anyway, the progressive left pivot away from violent revolution in the sixties, and its subsequent long-term march through institutions echoes this pattern from campus.

Protest to corporate boardroom Activists demand systemic change, but their need for validation often overshadow the very goals they want to [00:13:00] achieve. Thomas Sowell's, the vision of the anointed. Unpacks this delusion where, quote, unquote, good intentions habitually resist disconfirming facts leading to blind spots, unintended consequences, and lack of course corrections, which I think we saw probably most blindingly.

When Greta Thornberg, when, when she was. You know, taken in by Israeli troops. They, they tried to show her the videos that Hamas had filmed of themselves, of what they did on October 7th.

Yeah.

And she refused to encounter this information. Yeah. And when asked to justify this, she was just like, well, you know, I, I didn't wanna be.

What, what she said, like brainwashed by their propaganda or something. Yeah. I think it was just a choice. Not engage at all. Propaganda.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They want you to know

Simone Collins: what they're about. Like, that's, that's the, that's the point. So many Israelis keep trying to make of like, th. They're really clear about what they want.

Why are you writing this? I

Malcolm Collins: honestly, the level of cognitive disconnect. I was looking at pictures from a [00:14:00] pride parade recently. Like I wasn't even just looking at, was looking at the pictures and they had a whole section of the parade that was like pro-Palestine. And, and, and it like dotted amongst all of the other pride stuff was pro-Palestine stuff and like, Hamas flags and you know, stuff like that.

And I was like, what the, what? Like, they, you, you, Hamas, it's like. But we have said we plan to kill you. Right? Like, you understand this as you're, as you're protesting for us. Like, we're not shy about what we do to gay people. Yeah. It's not, we're not shy that we want this to be illegal, you know, and I, I find this very like weird, the level of like cognitive disconnect and inability to see through the wider.

A cultural malu. I, I, I guess, yeah. Totalitarian movement thrive by manufacturing consent. Ordinary people are forced to cooperate with permission structures designed by elites with power and authority as consequence. They come to believe things that they would [00:15:00] not otherwise have entertained. Allowing men to compete against women in women's sports, approving sex changes for minors.

Opening borders to unvetted illegal immigrants, defunding the police and decriminalizing crime. Radicalize radical changes in policy are facilitated by media and institutional narratives that provide scaffolding for fast shifting beliefs. That is also interesting how quickly the progressive beliefs have shifted.

Like the ban on police thing, like came outta nowhere, like that would've been considered some weirdo fantasy, I think like five years ago. And then it just became normal. Like it wasn't like it became normal. Slowly it became normal. Like one month it was like, okay, now. But I'm

Simone Collins: still so not clear on like, who, who actually wants this?

Because it, it seems like this wasn't exactly a black community thing because so many black, no black communities. Like no,

Malcolm Collins: actually, what does less than whites do, like black voters work with less than white voters. So it's not, it's, it's the Carly it's a [00:16:00] oppo. No, it is. I think the communal narcissistic patterns are more prevalent in women than men.

Mm-hmm. Potentially because women are less agentic. I don't know.

Simone Collins: Or women. Well, women are more, they're more sensitive to social cues and they're more conformist. Yeah. Which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because women are more dependent on their community support networks to survive because they spend, assuming they're reproducing a non-trivial patient of their lives.

True. And women get

Malcolm Collins: way more genetic benefit from striving to be average than men. Yeah. In that if women strive for the safe average option, so long as a woman survives broadly, she's likely gonna do genetically okay? Because she's likely going to be able to find a partner if she wants one and have kids.

Whereas for men, I mean, this is because historically a lot of women what were like. Multiple women to a, a partner or something. Whereas for men it was often harder. Like you, you had to sort of go for broke. Yeah. Which would've pushed you know, less conforming actions. So as a woman who was usually genetically [00:17:00] safer to conform with group norms, whereas a man, it was usually genetically safer to try to look for what is objectively true.

Simone Collins: Totally. Yeah. Men are go big or go home. Women are, let's stick to the center of the bell curve.

Malcolm Collins: In private Trus public lies, Tamara Koran introduces the concept of. Perfect preference falsification, where individuals publicly affirm politically correct quote unquote truths while privately remaining skeptical.

Unlike overt narcissists who shrug off social norms, communal narcissists require moral approval from the anointed, rendering them more susceptible to social pressures and more likely to falsify their preferences. They readily adopt questionable ideas that the narrative insists are fair-minded and true.

In 1957, Carl Young warned of. Collective possession driven by a quote unquote overwrought. Emotionality that is immune to reason. He spoke of [00:18:00] psychic epidemic fueled by utopian delusions, psychic epidemic fueled by utopian delusions and collective possession or overwrought. Emotionality. God, that actually is really a.

I, you know, I, I usually don't think much of, of Carl Young, but that, that is very predictive. Today's progressive left was chance like no human is illegal risks falling into this trap. Arguably it already has yet a path forward exists. And I. It illuminated by two men who were both assassinated at the age of 39.

Malcolm X experienced a crisis of phase after discovering abuses within the nation of Islam, but found clarity in his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he prayed alongside blue-eyed blondes and black skinned Africans. Upon his return, he offered the following statement. I'm for the truth no matter who tells it.

I'm for justice no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human [00:19:00] being first and foremost, and as such, I stand for what benefits humanity as a whole. Martin Luther King likewise sought to combine the disparate values, compromising his big tent, love for the Southern Baptist. Congregants and the Ian will to power from secular allies.

In his most famous service sermon in 1967, he forged a synthesis. Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love. Implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power, correcting everything that stands against love.

God, I find that to be incredibly stupid. Sorry. I, I know that some people have, can be like, oh, this is this great Baptist sermon or whatever, and I'm like

not so much. I,

I, I think that niche philosophy is actually probably closer to right than this philosophy. You can look at our video on niche, niche, niche and philosophy.

Is actually just broadly correct on in, in many [00:20:00] areas. And I think that there's this drive whenever someone is popular to be like, well, you know, not like them. You know, because that makes you look cool, right? To, to be sort of edgy and to have alternate perspectives. But. Nietzche is mostly right, this person.

No, I, I think equating love as a guide to goodness leads to incredible immorality because first, you know, progressives just define all their actions as driven by love. That's how they justify them. They say, well, I protect this community because you know, don't you love your fellow human? I you know, distribute money to everyone because don't you love your fellow man?

You know, ob obviously I don't personally, I take other people's money and distribute it, but you know what I mean. I, you know, it's this, this it, it allows you to justify anything. 'cause you can just say, I'm doing it for love, but you, well, this is

Simone Collins: similar to the toxicity of contextualizing yourself as a good person, because therefore, you know, if you're a good person, then nothing you're doing is bad because a good person wouldn't do a bad [00:21:00] thing.

And I think that's a really common problem with narcissists of, of course this is the right thing to do because I'm doing it and I'm right and good.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, I, I do good things because of course, because I'm a good person

Simone Collins: and good people do good things, therefore. It's, it's, it's ironclad logic, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: But I also think that even if you do this correctly, like you actually just do whatever creates this love emotion in you, you didn't evolve the emotion of love to define like moral truth.

I, the, the oldest or one of the oldest stories that humanity has there's older stories in the Bible in Gilgamesh, but one of the oldest that we have is, is the story of choice. And the point. Of the story of Troy is that love can lead a man to do truly evil things.

Simone Collins: Oh, I don't know. Or, or the pursuit of hot women.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I, I do, I I, I don't think that in the story it's framed as he's only doing it 'cause she's hot and I don't think that they really differentiated [00:22:00] hotness and love back then. But I, I, I think that even somebody can be like, no. That was just because he found her hot. And I'm like, well, could he have done it for love?

And they're like, well, yeah, he could have done it for love. And then it's like, okay, well then it still stands, the lesson still stands. Love can cause people to do evil things. It's one of the earliest stories that mankind needed to write down and teach other people. And yet people have just forgotten this.

Because it makes them sound like they're the good guy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It is really annoying. Even like, people like Lex Friedman do this where they're like, well, what about love? Like, they just seem to think that bringing up love or acting like we have to talk about love or that love justifies things, makes him look morally good or sophisticated.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I unfortunately now I need to bring this up whenever Lex Friedman comes up because I, I, I do feel that he is intentionally and misleading about this. Lex Friedman is not a professor at MIT. He has taught classes. Night classes off [00:23:00] season at MIT which I have done at Stanford and Harvard.

And at, well, carne Mellon, I really only did it fully at Stanford and Harvard. Simone did it at Harvard, actually. You did it at Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon. We did, we only did like a, a, a guest lecture thing, but yeah. But, but I could claim by lecture Friedman standards that I am a professor at Stanford or Harvard.

And so you're like, oh, well, if he hasn't actually done anything with Stanford, where was he educated? And the answer is, all of his degrees are from Drexel. So I, I gotta call him Drexel Freeman. Going forward well, no, it gets me if you're gonna brand yourself as this like big intellectual, I don't mind because like there's other intellectuals.

I don't effing know where they went to college, but I still find their work interesting. Like for example, I've never thought about where short fatto talk. Went to college or his affiliations was any sort of intellectual institution. And yet for a long time I really liked his work. I recently, you know, he's you can, you can watch our video on [00:24:00] the, the why it, it you should, it matters.

To take aside like why FIS isn't good. We think he's, he's gone too far into the fence sitting place that it has, has corrupted some of his logic on issues. In an effort to be a fence sitter. Because some people define fence sitting as like morally good.

Speaker 8: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

Malcolm Collins: Right. You know? But the point I'm making is like, I don't care where a person, a lot of people, I like Cat Girl Kula I love but yeah, cat Girl Kula does really good intellectual stuff and I've never thought to ask, you know, what is this person's affiliation? But l Friedman leads with this MIT connection.

Simone Collins: Well, and also, like there are, there are people out there major, oh, typically conservative intellectuals who actually have really impressive credentials, but don't share their real name or their face or their credentials.

And actually go outta their way, like,

Malcolm Collins: Bronte with Yale.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:25:00] Yeah. But you, he would never say that and he, he intentionally grammatically screws up his writing, so. Yeah. Yeah. I see your point.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I think that that you, you see this repeatedly is that's, that, that gets me right? Like the, the, and, and I, I am willing to say this because, you know, we've met.

Lex Freeman, and he never responded to my text about doing a show sometime. And I've been, I've been on P Morgan. Okay, you can have me on Lex. I'm not, you're not too good for me. Sorry. I have a lot of pride justify about influencers who I hang out with and then don't work with me. I'm like, come on man.

But hey, we weren't, well, I know we were already pretty famous back then, so that was. Well, back

Simone Collins: to the concept of love, though. It is dangerous. It's dangerous. Well, but I think hiding behind anything, be it love or be it, I am on the winning side. I'm on the good side. I'm with the church. I'm with this political party, I'm with this [00:26:00] university like.

Falling back on any of this, and this is one reason why we also don't really like referencing philosophers and that that's maybe the thing I like least about the SIA article. And I know you're saying like, oh, this nietzche philosophy is solid. Maybe it is, but leaning back on these people instead of articulating concepts, using plain English is another way of hiding behind something without making your point and owning it personally.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, even the writers of this article, I mean, I'm, I'm struggling to tell from the, the context if they support this love sentiment. 'cause the next thing they say is such wisdom offers an anecdote to the communal narcissism of today's left authentic compassion rooted in universal truth. Western civilization must return to these values, duty, honor, rationality, and openness to debate.

Now those are some values I can get behind. I need to do the Starship Troopers team here, courage, duty, honor. When you, what, what is it? It's a good day to die when you know the reason why. [00:27:00] Mm-hmm.

Starship Troopers: A good day to die when you know the reasons why citizens, we fight for what is right, a noble sacrifice. When duty calls, you pay the price for the federation. I'll give my life duty honor.

Malcolm Collins: This is this is the world that we wanna build.

Yeah.

But I, but I actually like this, this, this alternate one duty honor, rationality, and openness to debate.

I think sounds good. Yeah, absolutely. It was s Scott Fitzgerald who noted that the mark of first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time without losing the ability to function. For instance, accepting that there are differences between individuals and groups.

A wise culture resists the what Ian called the. Persistent Utopia lie distinguishing authentic from performative [00:28:00] compassion. We must teach our children that genuine goodwill comes from personal decency, not external validation. Only then will we be able to reconstitute the principles that have guided humanity for centuries.

And that's the article. I thought it was interesting. I, I, I thought it was interesting to go into this new concept. I, I, I do think that the way that you fight this is by, having kids who are proud to be other and different and do their own thing. Which in part means that if you are, and I think that this is one of the big trap that many of the traditional Christians do, is they teach their kids to obey because they were taught to obey.

And being taught to obey does a great job. Your cultural group is the dominant cultural group. Because when the kid is no longer with the parent, who do they obey? They obey the person was the most power, which is the culture was the most power.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Right.

Malcolm Collins: But if you, well, that's a

Simone Collins: big problem with especially American parenting, is that rather than let kids [00:29:00] suss out problems on their own and resolve their own conflicts and really just fight it out you encourage them to appeal to authority and that that produces this kind of culture.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And, and again, as I was saying, I see this so much. In conservative circles where they're like, oh, my kid is so obedient to look at them. And I'm like, you shouldn't bring them to be maximally disobedient.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you should be. You should not like that. That's a bad

Malcolm Collins: moral. It's a bad sign. Moral disobedient is what you should, or it at least what we optimize for.

And again. You know, culturally this may change if you're from a different cultural tradition because cultures, I believe, sort of co-evolve with, with us. And so you may find

Simone Collins: no, I, no, I just, I, I, I really don't think obedience is a good thing at all. What we encourage is teaching our kids that certain actions have consequences and so that they can make rational decisions.

Obedience means. Following a rule regardless of whether the rule is logical or beneficial or good. [00:30:00] And that's not,

Malcolm Collins: well, some cultures have operated off of that sentiment for a long time. Yes. I think, for example, many Catholic cultural groups have, have operated for a long time on a is is he talking obedience model?

Obedience model. Right? Hmm. And I think that it's uniquely challenging within a modern context, but I think that they're likely going to be better off of finding a way to just make sure that their kids know who they need to be obedient to, which is God in the church. Rather than trying to build something because like you look at our kids, right?

They're not like, like their disobedience and intentional sort of trolley predilection is very obviously in a large part genetic. Yeah. We're just providing framing for it. If you don't have that fire already lit, you're gonna be easier trying to protect what you do have in your kids. Which is, you know, when you talk about you, the video, if you.

Apparently Jordan Peterson, your kids are gonna be Sims. But I admit that like his parenting model [00:31:00] may work for people who have co-evolved with obedient, optimized cultural frameworks. You know, sitting the kid down and attempting to break their will may work for kids who like biologically have very weak wills and just really want something to follow.

Whereas our kids, oh my God, they even, even like the youngest ones. They will look at us and, and be like I'll be like, Hey Titan, you might knock that bowl off the table right now. And, and then she'll like start pushing the bowl and I'm like, Titan, if you do that, I'm going to come over there and bop you.

And then she'll like get a big smile and knock the bowl off the table. And then I have to go over and bop her. And then she'll, she'll like whine for like 30 seconds and then go back to whatever she was doing. But I think a lot of people, maybe this is why people don't understand what we have to do, is it our family structure is, is just the kids don't care, you know, otherwise usually.

[00:32:00] Usually if there's a threat of bops, the kids won't do it. But very frequently there's this with the kids and you know, it, it's just like the cat. This like, even my little infant, I can be like, Hey, don't do this. And it's clear that she understands no now. 'cause when I say no, she gets so excited. She'll, she gets immediately try to do it and start laughing.

And I'm like, oh my God, you're an infant. So obviously I'm not gonna punish you, but. I didn't, I didn't teach you to think it was funny to immediately try to do the thing that you were told not to do. And I fear that that is just the genetic destiny of my family, of to, to want to break the rules.

Malcolm Collins: My favorite incident of this was my little girl. We were eating outside and I had a bowl of macaroni in front of me on. The, , the sort of patio where there's an overhang. And so she comes over and knocks it off the overhang and it falls over, and I'm like, Ugh, that's a bummer. You know, but we've got more macaroni.

But then she runs down to where the macaroni fell in the bowl, [00:33:00] and she starts putting the macaroni back in the bowl. And I'm like. Obviously I'm not gonna eat it now, but that's so sweet and cute that she's gonna come and bring it back to me. And then she gets the macaroni back in the bowl and she walks it back to me and then she holds it up like she's gonna give it to me.

And she was three at the time, no, two younger, probably two and a half at the time that she did this. Like she's gonna give it to me and then slow motion. Moves the bowl so it's over the edge and slowly spills it out exactly where it had fallen before, before giving it to me and just starts laughing. And obviously at that age, there's no way we could have taught her this behavior at that young of an age.

But and this is why, and people can be like, well, why do you even punish them if like, you know, this is genetic or whatever. And it's like, look, breaking the rules isn't any fun if the rules aren't even enforced. Exactly. People with these inclinations like frameworks to break because what they're trying to [00:34:00] do is figure out where the boundaries of the rural system are.

Mm-hmm. That's what this behavior is. It's saying, okay, I can't get away with this, but can I get away with this? Oh, okay. Maybe if I try it and I look cuter while I do it, you know, they, they are trying to find the boundaries of what they can get away with. And you need to like a Roomba operating in a room with no walls.

It just won't learn anything if it doesn't hit the wall occasionally.

Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly.

Malcolm Collins: And I wonder, I mean, I, yeah, there must be some people, I mean, I could have played with other kids where I didn't see this behavior yeah.

Simone Collins: At

Malcolm Collins: all.

Simone Collins: This? No. Our kids are the first kids I've ever met who can't meet a rule that isn't meant for them to break.

That isn't like an opportunity for fun through breaking,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Rules are just an opportunity for fun. Come on.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's just an invitation for a fun tussle. So, yeah. That's interesting. I mean, how would you counter this, because this kind of [00:35:00] communal narcissism as it's described. Hurts communities, doesn't it?

Or do, or do you think there's some kind of technical benefit to this? I mean, you were saying it's what makes what did you say it like, I think you're thinking about

Malcolm Collins: it wrong. I, I, I, I think that it's probably mostly genetic. Okay. Who is susceptible to this? And I think that these individuals should just be thought of as like.

Because they're, it, it, it's created specifically by being both narcissistic and non-agent. And being non-AG agentic basically in my mind, makes you an NPC. And so you should think of these people as like random NPCs that are spammed into the environment and are just always gonna follow whatever the dominant cultural group is in this really predictable way.

And you just need to think about them as. People to navigate around, not like actual players in society. I know, but

Simone Collins: in terms of like, okay, if, if we were. There are all these conversations about how do we get the left to win back? Young men, how do we [00:36:00] get the left to win elections again? How do we root out the gerontocracy running it?

Should there also be a conversation if the left wants to win more about rooting this out, or does this army of Karen's. Help the left in some way.

Malcolm Collins: They do help the left. I think I, they, they've caused a lot of their problems, but they also help them maintain sort of their internal not cohesion, but conformity.

Now this internal conformity is what has turned a lot of people away from them. But it's also what turned people away from the right as well. Any group that ends up courting these individuals. This is actually a good point. It ultimately ends up failing because these individuals make the agentic people in society angry.

Like, like if nothing is more age agentic than just shut up and follow the rules, stop trying to think for yourself. And that's, you know, what the Christian Karens used to do in, in the eighties and the seventies. Right. And I think that that drove a lot of the age agentic people. That's why the [00:37:00] tech bros of that time period were all.

Progressives and today, you know, the, the, the competent tech bros are moving more and more to the right because they're being pushed out by this group. And so the question is maybe just if, if you're a culture build that culture in a way where it never accepts this level of syco fancy. And this is why we internally build things like Lemon Week, which we do for our kids, where every year is a holiday.

You have to find something that offends you and spend a leak learning to steal, man it because we see a fence as a sign that something threatens your wider ideology by being potentially credibly true.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Does this exist on, I think it does still exist on the right. I think it exists in more isolated, it always will exist in isolated church groups, religious groups.

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: in isolated church and religious groups, but I think it also exists in some isolated, especially old guard Republican groups.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely it does.

Mm-hmm. [00:38:00]

I mean, when, when, when an individual on the right goes out and thinks they're going to look good by signaling something that shows, you know, very little actual thought has been put into it.

Mm-hmm. Which, which we often see. You know, oh, I'm the, the most right wing. 'cause I say we should ban gay people. And I'm like, well, how does this help anyone? Right? Like,

yeah. If,

if you're, if, if, if. You think that being gay is okay enough that you're gonna get married to another guy? You obviously don't hold the beliefs that you hold, so you're not like helping them get into heaven or something.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so, and you can watch our video, you could say like, well maybe it leads to like broader societal degradation or video do gay destroy civilization, where we went over this in detail looking at historic examples and it doesn't seem to

Yeah.

It appears that in many cases it was actually.

That leading into societal collapse that you had stricter sexual norms? A good example of [00:39:00] this is the Rowans where they were looser before their golden age than at the height of their golden age or during their decline. So, you know, I think a lot of people just have this like vague memory of like, well.

The Greeks and the Romans at some point in their history allowed for gay people. Therefore, before the decline, it's like, well, no, you should look, because they also had an ascent. Right? And so, I, I think that there's just like no logical reason to really be going out and pushing for this. Yeah. And, and yet people push for it and, and, and it wouldn't even win.

It wouldn't even win if only conservatives were voting. If you look at like, modern conservative beliefs in the United States, it's, it's, it's just like an aesthetic belief that people, I think push as part of dominance, hierarchy fights. Hmm. Or to affirm because they think that like being conservative is like tough and cool in some way to affirm that about themselves.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. And then,

Malcolm Collins: and I think, I think calling these people out, we should have like a word for this, like calling these people out as like [00:40:00] lame, like, like what is this? I, I think it's sort of like. Stop masturbating in public is, is what you should say, like, because that's what they're doing. They're just trying to masturbate sort of this, this position in a pecking order instead of creating a, a real argument that would do anything to help the wider party.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Can people recognize this in themselves? Like how would someone even realize it? Or is this, I mean, I guess do narcissists even know they're narcissists?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think can you see it in yourself? That's a, that's a good question. I mean, I think the question is, do you. Like if somebody said, Hey, spend a week seriously engaging with every idea that you find offensive as if it was serious and probably true.

This, this is the best way to find this out about yourself. And I think the number of things that, that you find too offensive to engage with is a sign of whether or not you are a person like this. [00:41:00] If, if the term like that is too offensive to seriously engage with.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: It actually applies to this

Simone Collins: ever is uttered by you.

What, if you ever feel that way, you know you're in trouble.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because offense means that you should engage with it more intellectually, not less. Absolutely. It's threatening to you. Yeah. So I think that this world belief is, is defined by too much yeah. Fear of en engaging. Is things that are offensive to you.

That's, that'd be the easiest way. But I don't think that these people can be broken out of this or anything. I think even on the left, the people know the people who have this, and they find them tiresome, but they're, they're like, what? They're part of the alliance, so let's try to make this wider thing work.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh boy,

Malcolm Collins: star, I love you, Simone. What are we doing for dinner tonight? You know what I would like for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: What would you like?

Malcolm Collins: It's just some pizza. Not pot stickers. Oh, you've got pot stickers? Yeah, I've got pot stickers. I haven't done pot stickers in a while, actually been

Simone Collins: [00:42:00] ages. And I, I'll do that thing where I do a mix of them.

I'll make fresh za dipping sauce. Seems like something you'd enjoy. Yeah. Let's do pot

Malcolm Collins: stickers. And we can also do a little bit of kimchi because I'm done with the,

Simone Collins: yes. Let's do kimchi. Good gut bacteria for you? Yes. Good. Okay. I'm excited for that. It'll be fun. And we're about to have our first ever monthly hangout for Patreon paid subscribers at our $10 level.

I'm super excited. We might do them on weekends. We might keep. Doing them on weekdays, we're gonna find out from the people who show up and we'll ask people over the weekend. But huge thanks to those who support us on Patreon. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast and hanging out with us occasionally and soon, we're gonna start releasing exclusive episodes on the platform.

Check it out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm, I'm very excited for this. You know, get to know what people think we should be doing more of, especially the people who like this, the best.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because we don't wanna get stuck in like a vortex of the episodes that perform the best [00:43:00] on our channel seem to be, oh my god, women are the worst.

Oh my God. Progressives are the worst. Oh my god. Juice are the something. Just anything that draws out.

Malcolm Collins: Anything that looks like we might be saying something Anti-sematic or racist? Yes. Immediate popoff. Immediate. Yeah. Or or anti-woman. Or anti-gay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then, you know, the rest, like we try to throw in some, you know, oh, like history.

Oh, tism. And it just doesn't perform nearly as well. But we don't wanna end up in just a silo like that, because then that's gonna be boring even if you do like that stuff. So.

Malcolm Collins: And people can be like, oh, well this is a sign of your audience. I'm sorry. I actually, I'm friends with some progressive influencers and they're like, yeah, it's the exact same for me.

Simone Collins: Really? Oh, that's, that's dark

Malcolm Collins: movie. I know. I don't know who it's, who said this, but yeah, it's a a, it is a influencer who our audience almost certainly knows, and they're, they've said, yeah, my god,

classic.

Love you [00:44:00] to death alone. You are the most perfect wife, any man. Could ever have.

Simone Collins: No, really just you, because there's a lot of things that other guys could, oh, sorry.

Just me. For me, you're a better match than anyone, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'd be a nightmare to a lot of people, but thank God you love me. God, I love you. All right, love you. Bye.

And I'll join this thing. Where do I go for it? We need to adjust it a little. I don't, I don't know, like,

Malcolm Collins: well, to the audience, can see my two Father's Day gifts. Now I got the one helmet over there and then I've got my Roman helmet too, right over there. I need to

Simone Collins: get a stand for that, don't I? I do.

Malcolm Collins: I think so.

Simone Collins: Note to self

Malcolm Collins: stand.

All of my amazing exploits of the, the One Civilization video obviously inspired this.

It was only ever Rome. If you, if you haven't seen that video and you like our videos, that is probably one of my most [00:45:00] controversial takes in one of the most long research takes to do that, that required like a month of research to put together and is incredibly offensive. Anything new today that you learned, Simone?

Simone Collins: Gosh, I, I did learn, I, I guess, okay. I, I was watching, I was trying to understand the reasoning behind Zohan mom's interest in providing government run grocery stores in New York City. And it, it's bizarre to me that he hasn't really addressed the shortcomings of all the past experiments of government grown grocery stores.

'cause you have to keep in mind this is like a 1% margin kind of industry. Meaning that this is one of those industries where the corporate players in the space are deeply incentivized to be efficient and to provide the best possible. Like product and, and efficiency that there is, [00:46:00] and government bureaucrats are not incentivized to do that.

Malcolm Collins: Is that what he just hasn't thought about it? Apparently. I guess he

Simone Collins: hasn't. Yeah, I, I was trying to find like maybe there was something he thought of or would contribute to this idea that had not been tried. There is.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so you don't know this part of the story. He said that what they would use to pay for the government grocery stores was $31 million that he thought was going to corporate grocery stores as government subsidies.

But he misread in where, where he got that information from and they're not actually getting government subsidies. So he doesn't actually have the money that he needs to do his little project. But when, you know, whatever, even

Simone Collins: if you provided government run grocery stores though, which would maybe artificially depress the prices, that would just put normal grocery stores at greater risk, like eat at their margins and then cause grocery stores to shut down at a higher rate and then create more food deserts.

It just, it's a terrible idea. Yeah. Oh, well,

Malcolm Collins: no, it's, it's hilarious. But I'm, I mean, I'm, [00:47:00] for him, I wanted to speed run New York, you know, I think. When people understand that metropolitan areas can actually economically collapse, because I think right now there's this perception Mm. That no matter what they do, things are gonna be fine.

Yeah. And the new will always come back. Yeah. And I don't think that, that, like, I, that's been one of my most persistent and I think controversial projections.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is that Manhattan is going to economically collapse?

Simone Collins: Well, it was. I mean, it used to be. I don't know. I as a teen somehow, because I, I watched mostly movies that were made around the height of crime in New York.

Like, I can't remember the name of it, but there was this amazing like, punk gang Subway, New York movie. Oh, yeah. You're

Malcolm Collins: talking about like when New York was in the slummy state of like the 1980s. When I say that New York is going to collapse, I mean something far more drastic. The

Simone Collins: Warriors 1979, it was good.

This style was great.

Malcolm Collins: Far more drastic than [00:48:00] that. Which, which I, I could totally see happening. I was working on for our fab.ai, which is now live on the website. Yay. If you wanna play it there. It's, it's still at a very alpha stage right now, so I don't know, maybe wait another week or something.

But putting together a giant list of all of the competitors. So I've tried every single paid chat app and I'm putting together a review of. All of them for the site because, you know, good for SEO but also it's something I want to exist. And I don't think that the audience of this show wants to hear me go through and rank every single paid AI chat app because I think they're so fun that I'm trying to build a better one now because I'm like, well, all the existing ones kinda suck and in various ways where they could be improved.

So that's really exciting. One really confusing thing about this, and it almost feels like a conspiracy to me, is that the most popular ones. Like, you know, replica character ai are by far the worst. Even when you're talking about the ones that are for like narrative building, like, AI dungeon which, which seems to get a lot of attention [00:49:00] and has an active community.

It's just not very good when contrasted with other ones like Tri Spellbound. Yeah. I tried

Simone Collins: character AI at your behest and was. Shocked.

Malcolm Collins: She didn't believe me. She said, you're using it wrong or something. It can't actually be that stupid. I was sure. I'm like, no, it is. It is. Like actually confusingly bad.

Simone Collins: Worse than that. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: worse. And then you try it and you're like. Oh my God, this is confusingly bad. By the way, if you're wondering what I think are the best ones right now, and I still think that both of these are better than what we're putting together, but we'll hopefully be meeting them soon.

It would be GPT flow, the paid model the highest tier paid model or try spellbound. Which Trice fell down is interesting, but it doesn't appear to have like a giant community or anything like that. Mm-hmm. And it, it looks like it's made by one person and yet it's incredibly good. So I'm a bit confused by that.

Although they're, they're really good model broken now they're on like an average model, so we'll see. It's still better than the other ones, but anyway, I'll get started.

Torston Collins: To me. Okay. Dr. Torsten. [00:50:00] Dr. Octavian, how are you? Curing Titan? Oh, we're just putting in In a big napkin. In a big napkin. You made a big bandage. No.

Yeah. Get up the said and then I hooked it up through the medical can. Now we can see his heart. Better or not. Then we call, wait, wait, wait. What's up daddy? No, wait, no. Let's do blame. No people put down, down, let's it's words. Okay. Yeah. You should sweep by now. Okay. In the hospital.

Put one on here too, [00:51:00] because we wanna take out his brain. Okay. Are you gonna give her a brain scan? Yeah, I look, I look for that. Okay. You're, you're the ambulance driver now? Yeah, I'm, and Tristan, are you a, are you the doctor? Yes. Tostan. Are you the doctor? Like Andre? Yeah. What his brain is. Okay. Looks like.

Simone Collins: Well, thank goodness. Yeah.

Torston Collins: Not beating Well, what do, what are you gonna do? We gotta retreat.

Okay.

This is the primary for her. Oh yeah. You're gonna, we need to take out his heart and then put in this new heart that, oh, you're gonna do a heart transplant. [00:52:00] I know. Oh yeah. Spread a heart transplant. Wait, I'll take out the heart. Oh, she's cured. Is she better? Why? You forgot something. I need to take out your heart and I put it in a new heart.

Simone Collins: Aww Titan. Do you feel better? Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Yeah.

In this episode, we discuss the unique phenomenon of high Jewish fertility rates amid urban settings, contrasting it with the global trend of prosperity-induced demographic collapse. We explore historical and cultural reasons behind Jewish resistance to declining birth rates, and investigate the future implications of Jewish population dynamics on global geopolitics. The conversation dives into the role of Jewish culture and how urban monocultural values impact other groups. We also touch on ethical considerations, cultural evolution, and differing societal norms across various populations. The discussion delves into historical contexts, the importance of cultural adaptability, and the future of urban and rural specialization.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about. The Jews replacing everyone else. And by this what I mean is Jewish populations seem to be the only population that is persistently resistant to prosperity induced demographic collapse. Yeah. EEG. Everywhere else in the world you go when you begin to get wealth fertility rates fall and these populations end up disappearing.

And a lot of people. They'll look at groups like the Amish and they'll be like, oh, look at this Amish group. Like they are super high fertility, so certainly they'll inherit the future. And I'm like, not if there is a, a militarized group nearby them that wants their land. I mean, even my fa like, and I think that a lot of people forget this is so much of the lack of violence we have within Western society today is not downstream of man being more evolved.

It's the p de Romana of the urban monoculture. And as the systems and governments begin to [00:01:00] collapse like a government made up of all Amish wouldn't be able to police itself. Even this basically happened with the Quakers in Pennsylvania where you would get like pirate raids and they, they'd meet and they'd be like somebody, we should probably do something about this.

And, and the Quakers were like, no, no, no. We can't risk violence against the people pillaging and gring.

Simone Collins: Well, and we, we know this has happened to Mennonite groups. First they were tempted over to Canada. From largely Russia, Canada saying, oh, we'll grant you religious freedom. You can educate your kids however you want.

And then around the 1920s, they were like, okay, you need to go to Canadian schools now. So then a lot of them went to Northern Mexico, which in turn was like, come here, we'll give you productions and freedoms, and then. Suddenly all this, these gangs started attacking them. And then so a bunch of them have gone to other countries in, in Central and South America, and some have stayed, but like, yeah, they, you, they're not really able to build a strong base and they're not really able to protect themselves and therefore they're kind of stuck escaping from unstable places.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: it's, it's [00:02:00] not just that it, it, it is also, you know, people, you know, a lot of right wingers, they're like, oh my God, aren't you so afraid of like Muslim birth rates, for example? And it's like, Muslim birth rates are only high in regions that are incredibly poor. Actually at higher rates of wealth, Muslim fertility drops faster than Christian f fertility.

And so really what you're seeing is just poverty and people in poverty, if that is what is motivating their fertility rate, they don't have the ability for e economic or power projection geopolitically speaking. And, and so they don't, particularly in terms of like the future of humanity, they're not major players.

This is the same with any region that has high fertility because of low income. Like Africa for example. Africa's fertility seems to be mostly high just because of low income. But, but if that's how they're doing it, then that's not relevant for future power projection in terms of who matters in the future.

And, and this, this matters like the, the Jews will replace [00:03:00] everyone. We'll, we'll get to why this is the case in a second. Matters more than I think a lot of people think, even in terms of short term geopolitics. So a friend of mine from Europe was asking me because he knows I support Donald Trump and he goes.

You know, don't you care that he's breaking these strong alliances United States has with European powers? And I'm like, not particularly because you guys have super, like the new fertility stats for Germany just came in and they're at 1.38. Italy's, oh my gosh, like 1.18 now like these countries.

Their social security systems are going to crack within our lifetimes. And when those crack their welfare state collapses their, their other systems start to to crack. And in addition to that, they're not even, they've passed these dictatorial laws that prevent their data from being used in AI training data sets.

So they're not even really relevant in terms of AI influence. Europe right now is, is like a, a, a big [00:04:00] ball is being rolled off of a ship and a bunch of people are chained to it. And I have cut the chain and the guy next to me is like, Hey, why are you cutting that chain buddy? It's like, I don't wanna, you know, and when I said this, he's like, well then geopolitically, who should the US be investing in, you know, in terms of future world power players?

And I'm like, obviously Israel obviously and so, because Gwen high fertility rates, but also high technology and also, a, a level of, of sort of, ancientness was in the world stage that I don't think any other country shows. Which e except for the United States of course. Which is really much more than something like China.

Like people are like, oh, you know, you should focus on, on China. And it's like one, China was in a, a sort of a, a as the world becomes more polar. One it's got the problem with, its its whole economic house of cards thing around real estate. It's got a problem with its demographic situation. It doesn't really have a solution for its water situation.

You can [00:05:00] look at our, what happens to the future of East Asia, but it's got a lot of problems coming up. But even if those problems don't end up. Sort of cracking its back as Europe fades as a relevant world power. It leaves the world in more of a unipolar power structure between the United States and China, which unfortunately makes a key alliance with China much harder when you're the only two major powers in the room.

That just doesn't happen. So, again, that means better to invest as the Trump administration is in, in Israel in terms of power plays. Now in terms of. Actually, how much better is their fertility rates? Just so we can get an idea here? Yeah. Because a lot of people are like, oh, it's only the Hasidic people who are keeping this up.

It's only in Israel that this is the case. These things are, are, are not true. You know, while the US has A-A-T-F-R, you know, child per woman up around 1.6, and in Ger Germany it's like 1.38 now, and in Italy it's like 1.18. And, and you think of the uk it's like 1.4 something. For [00:06:00] us Jews, it's 1.9.

And this was by Pew to two. So they're almost at replacement E even outside of Israel. A US non-Orthodox Jews. Okay. How bad is that because you're like, okay, they're, they're non-Orthodox. The Orthodox Jews in the US are just keeping the number high. It's 1.4 to 1.7, so still above the average. Us and, and keep in mind that that's including reformed Jews as well who, who are basically we wouldn't consider Facebook guess internally what.

Simone Collins: We wouldn't count as Jews.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically US Ultra-Orthodox Hawaii Jews 6.6 fertility rates. Nice. Israeli Jews overall have a fertility rate of around three which is insane for a, a wealthy technologically advanced country. Israeli secular Jews have a fertility rate of 2.1 to 2.2, so at repopulation rate, which is wild for secular population.

Yeah. Israeli traditional Jews have a fertility rate of around three is, is Israeli [00:07:00] religious D Jews have a fertility rate of 4.3. Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jews, but fertility rate of 6.9 only slightly higher than their US brothers. And Israeli Arabs and Muslims have a fertility rate of only 2.2 to three.

So. There have been many proposed reasons why Jews have a high fertility rate, and I'm going to throw another in the ring, which is that they are better at not caring as much for their kids as other cultures. And this is gonna really surprise people, but I have found a number of sources of evidence of this recently, and I think that this is actually a very important cultural trait to adapt if you are going to survive the fertility crucible.

Would you mind reading that post that,

Simone Collins: yeah, I have it right here. So big thanks to Diana Fleischman who sent this to me knowing that we would find it really interesting. This is just like a one off post, like not a full out substack

Malcolm Collins: essay. This, this person's name was written in Jewish characters, so like, yeah.

Simone Collins: But it's a, he's a substack author called Cul Bina, who [00:08:00] has a substack called Non Zionism, and it covers Israel, Britain and broader themes around politics, Jewish identity, and ideological critique. So he actually is really interested in this kind of stuff. Yeah. And you know, that, that kind of puts us into context.

But he wrote in a sort of one-off Substack post, sorry. The nine year-old brought Oh. And he's, he's a parent of quite a few kids and, and he's in Israel I think. So for context, he wrote the nine year-old, brought a friend around the other day. This is one from a good family? Yes. A racial dog whistle, but not exclusively such.

Said he was hungry. Wife says he can have some old spaghetti we have in the fridge. Kid proceeds to eat the spaghetti with his hands. He is aware of the fork provided, but he uses it to scoop the spaghetti from the bowl into his hands. Most oddly, somehow there is now spaghetti all over the floor. It's not even just under his chair, but maybe a 50 centimeter radius kid just gets up, apparently oblivious to what has happened.[00:09:00]

People from low fertility societies sometimes wonder how Israelis managed to raise so many children while having jobs and stuff. In particular. It is extremely rare for an Israeli mother to be a stay at home. The typical answers are either they rely on extended family or that Israel has prenatal social norms and institutions.

That's true, but a big part of the answer is simply that they don't. Most children go to an institution from about three months old where they blare tra music at them to put them in a stunned silence or failing that just drown them out. Children arrive with poop in their nappy. Some of these places are better, but some are actually worse with kids being taped to the wall or overstressed staff attacking them, the education system continues like that constant chaos, acceptance of absolute rock bottom discipline standards.

8-year-old children organizing mob swarm attacks at break or trashing the classroom is considered regrettable, but normal rather than indicative of some kind of crisis, [00:10:00] et cetera, et cetera. Now, it's important to say that this isn't ultimately, as bad as it sounds, most traits are majority genetic, and even if the nurture part isn't mostly a result of technical nurture by adults, but all sorts of environmental effects, people go to the army, which sorts them out a bit, or they sort themselves out because eventually you have to get a job.

However, some things are a result of nurture, and the truth is that in a high pressure, high fertility society, you just have to learn to do without them. And each generation gets worse as ambient social standards progressively fall away. Assuming this whole thing doesn't unravel over the next few decades, it'll be grimly interesting to see just how far the process will go.

I'm just gonna add, because there were comments on this that he followed up on. On daycare in his own family. He writes, quote, we personally don't use it, but it involves a lot of sacrifice and compromise on our other values. End quote. So he, I think this is why [00:11:00] he, he's, he's casting shade on a kid who's throwing spaghetti on the ground.

Yeah.

He also writes in, in response to someone else's speculation. Quote, faithful replication of elevated social norms requires a high level of parental investment, and there's no time for it. No doubt. There are many other factors too. Zionist ideology always favored casualness. Informality. And that's, that's important to your point, Melva.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I'm gonna note that the, the person is saying something here that I think that a lot of people get wrong mm-hmm. About parenting and extremely wrong. Yeah. That the replication of social norms requires a high amount of parental investment. Yeah. This is factually and I, and I mean, very factually wrong.

Yeah. I picked up on my family norms even though my parents were basically never around, and I was almost entirely raised by nannies or, or staff. I, I, in some cases don't even remember their names, even though they were, were my primary care providers for years of my life. Yeah. And, and I never thought, oh, I'm [00:12:00] queuing to their social norms.

Yes. And so I think that yes, there's danger in stuff like public school and things like that but. It's not just Jews who are able to replicate social norms intergenerationally with high fidelity without a high degree of parental investment. Mm-hmm. And this parenting style that he's talking about here, decided to go and read some Jewish parenting guides.

Oh, interesting. Okay. In a Jewish like way, I mean, it is downstream of direct advice that is being given by Jewish figures in terms of how you parent. Okay. So Mus,

Simone Collins: Gina's experience here is, is is fairly representative per your view. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In this one I went to, that was rules for, for being a good Jewish parent, and number seven was take risks.

Letcha, letcha, Genesis 12, one, go Forth. God told Abraham when it was time for him to leave his father's land and venture out into the unknown. This phrase, which literally means go to yourself, teach us that the capabilities to [00:13:00] go are precisely within ourselves. In order for our children to learn confidence in their abilities to triumph over life's challenges, we must allow them to venture out into the world and work things out on their own.

In the process, we must be mindful to praise and encourage their efforts and talents, man was created to toil. Job five, seven, toil not produce. As Rabbi Tron says, you are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it. Ethics of our Fathers. 2, 2, 1. When we encourage effort, we foster what Stanford University psychologist Carol Deckers refers to as gross mindset, which results in more patience and willingness to take risks and experiment with different tasks.

When our children are being rambunctious, we wish them to be angels. Yet angels are standing stagnant. Beings Ahmadan who don't grow or move. Zechariah three, seven humans, AKA, our rambunctious active kids [00:14:00] are haum movers, unlike angels. They climb and can reach higher. They can fall and get up again. Let them move, let them swim, let them grow.

And so this is like active, like this is how you be. This isn't like this guy being like, Hey, we're cutting corners. It's don't expect your kids to be like angels. And I'll note this isn't true is in every culture in some of the evangelical cultures, is that I am more familiar with the idea of kids acting like angels is actually very strict.

Like kids must obey all the rules at all the time. Yeah. And that is, this is, this is not my own cultural background, which is the backwoods greater Appalachian cultural background like hillbilly, redneck type. But. This is a cultural background that was nearby where I lived in Texas. And you would see this pretty frequently.

I'd also note that the hillbilly redneck cultural background seems to be also like the Jews particularly resistant to fertility collapse. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Also the spaghetti thing so resonated with me [00:15:00] because. I'm, I mean, you, you see me, you, you witness me. I give forks to our children when we serve them spaghetti.

I show them how to spin the noodles. I make sure that they repeat it to show that they know what I'm talking about and they can do it. And then I turn my back for 30 seconds and then I turn back around and it's worse than with this Israeli kid. It, it like, not only does the child have a fist full of spaghetti that they're eating out of their hand, and there's spaghetti all over the floor, but they still have the fork in the other hand, and they're using it to stab holes into the table always.

I have seen this, I have seen this, and

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: I'm

Malcolm Collins: like, wow,

Simone Collins: that's

Malcolm Collins: relatable. So, yeah. No, but, but, my point here is that if you are going to survive fertility collapse you and you're not Jewish Jews seem to have a path through this. You're going to need to adapt your culture in some specific ways. Yeah. And learning from cultures that do seem to be able to get through this without [00:16:00] sacrificing engagement with technology is really important.

And one of the most important traits is to either learn how to make high control of children work with, with higher fertility rates or adopt to be lower oversight. Yeah. Diana Fleischman, she filmed an episode with us that I've actually never ended up airing that one. I just didn't think it would do well in the algorithm.

We, we can send it to the Patreon or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Run it on

Simone Collins: Patreon. I wanna see it.

Malcolm Collins: Low effort parent. Because she was like, sure, you guys, so low effort. Like, she's seen us as parents and she's like, you guys just do not like care that much. And, and we, like, I'm very much like I, I watch my kid constantly and I make sure that I'm out there with them, but they're mostly doing their own thing.

And playing together and playing in ways that I mean I remember we were punishing one kid. And we told him to stop, you know, running away and going to this other playground. Right. And so, you know, I, I tasked his brother, I go, go get him his older brother. And so his [00:17:00] older brother just goes and drags him back screaming and everything like that, and sits him in a chair and then is like, Hey, toasty, you can't go back out there.

And Torsten hops up to try to run again, and Octavian slaps him and sits him back down in the chair. And the other people, this is at a 4th of July party gasped at the event. Like, he had just done something horrible. And I was like, what? Toasty broke the rule. Like, yeah, what do you, I can't have him running away.

I need my kids to, so I, I realized then that I actually let my kids be significantly more aggressive with each other. Oh, we do.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like I was telling you last night Torsten and Titan were brawling in the kitchen during dinner for like a good five minutes until. And I didn't do anything to stop them until toasty finally clocked Titan with a toy.

And then he, then they got in trouble because I'm like, you could have broken that toy a toy. Like, so they get in, they do get in trouble, but only for like a damaging property. Yeah. Never for fighting. Never for fighting.

Malcolm Collins: No, not for [00:18:00] fighting. No. And they love fighting.

And I will note here that the backwoods tradition, this positive aspect of Jewish culture, which I think is protective of fertility rates, which is not being overly concerned about kids being, you know, , looked after and imperfect, is, even higher, at least within some context. Within my own cultural tradition.

I remember we had some, , of our Jewish friends' kids over to play, , and they came off as incredibly, , sort of. , Timid or docile when contrasted with our children. Like they were scared of dogs and insects and, , other like, gross things in the environment. And it felt very much like that scene from Wolf Children.

Wolf Children: Your's just so cute. Yours is cute too. Keno. I found a four leaf clover. Neat. Huh? How did I, Hey Yuki. Find anything cool yet? Mm-hmm. Lucky. Ah, other girls didn't think that snakes were a particularly [00:19:00] lucky find. In fact, they were terrified of them.

Malcolm Collins: Now here I note that I think a lot of this is downstream , of my kids,

, Coming from a rural based culture. And so even if you are adopting this lower, . Hovering strategy. , It, if you're doing it within an urban environment, in an urban specialized culture, kids just aren't gonna have the exposure to these sorts of, , natural phenomenon and therefore be more timid around them, which may cause this sort of illusion.

Like if I put my kids in the middle of a city, perhaps they would act, , much more timid as well.

Wolf Children: My it, my mom gave me her old jewelry. I got this one from my parents on my last birthday.

I love it. So whatcha keeping in your treasure box ready? Yes. Ta.

Other girls also didn't collect mummified lizards in the bones of small animals, and that I was very much [00:20:00] alone.

Malcolm Collins: To be honest, in the nature of both sides and things, I think I might be underselling things here. I remember myself growing up, , that I, my parents told me that they'd been told that other parents', kids were told they weren't allowed to play with me anymore after they learned that. After I found out that there was this magazine that you could get that was like a science magazine for ordering scientific equipment.

You could order animals to dissect. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. So, , I would regularly have dissections prepped in my room. To learn about the natural world, because I thought that that was normal. And apparently to many other kids, this looked very scary., And so th this was just a natural part of, not just my own kids growing up.

And, and again, keep in mind I didn't like teach my kids to like this stuff. This is just who they are. I think a big part of this. Is, , not just cultural in terms of [00:21:00] transmission of values, but there's a biological element to this.

A Jewish kid wants to learn about the world. He picks up a book, a backwoods culture. Kid wants to learn about the world. He starts cutting open animals. , It the only difference being, and I'm, I'm not saying one of these is good and the other one is bad, is that one is condoned by the urban culture and the other is not.

Wolf Children: Don't laugh at me, I'm in the middle of the crisis. But why do you wanna act like someone you're not, honey? Because when I act like me, they all run away screaming

Malcolm Collins: I should note here for people who are new to this, , podcast, the backwoods cultural tradition I'm referring to is the greater Appalachian cultural tradition in the Americas, which you might think of as truck nuts, conservatism, or redneck or hillbilly culture, , is the culture that I'm from. I.

But the point I'm making here is you, you can learn to adopt this, but I think it is notable that Jewish groups and, and there are other reasons, they're high [00:22:00] fertility among them, did adopt this.

Mm-hmm. And if you're looking for the key truth or reason why Jews are less affected by fertility collapse than anyone else. Mm-hmm. It is evolutionary in boast a cultural and likely biological sense. So I'll explain what I mean by that. That's really

Simone Collins: interesting because, and, and we can, I, we can talk about this.

If you, if you. Masina actually has, he wrote a whole Substack article on why Israel has higher fertility and it's, he actually says it's not genetic. He thinks that that's a red herring. So go on and I can present you his, his argument if you wanna.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well present me his argument first. 'cause I'm actually kind of surprised that somebody would make that argument,

Simone Collins: I'll summarize for you with some quotes, summarize

Malcolm Collins: his argument. Come on, let's go. Come on.

Simone Collins: And you recognize it because it went kind of viral in like the fertility nerd space this time last year. It's, it's from a Substack essay he wrote under Non Zionism July 20, 24.

So last year called Why is [00:23:00] Israel Fertile? And , he writes lucky

Malcolm Collins: one that says It's all because of thees, this piece. Okay. It is a bad argument, but go ahead.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I liked his arguments against other reasons why people thought. Fertility, he would, you would actually appreciate a lot of the other things that he pointed out.

One of the arguments you'll often find, and I think it was in this piece, but I don't remember a hundred percent, , against, , our claim that this is mostly a cultural phenomenon. , Which despite all the evolutionary stuff we're talking about in this one, I do think that this is mostly a cultural phenomenon and I think that it's Jewish culture that protects him the most.

, But , they'll say something like, oh. Well look at people living in rural Guatemala, like their fertility rates are dropping. They haven't been exposed to, , the urban monoculture, western cultural exports. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? Like, I've lived in rural Guatemala. Yes, they have.

In fact, I'd argue that the rate that they're exposed to it isn't particularly, , you know, when you take their local cultural colorings into [00:24:00] account, , different from people living in rural America.

And a huge afterthought, and I dunno where to put this, but some people will say, oh, well, Jewish fertility rates are high because they had an attempted genocide on them recently and they're trying to get their numbers back up. And it's like, yes, that's probably a factor. But there are other groups that have recently had attempted genocides against them that actually have uniquely lower fertility rates than neighboring populations.

In fact, I'd argue that most groups that have had attempted genocides on them recently have uniquely low fertility rates.

Like he points out how a lot of people point to housing policy and that's a big bugaboo of yours. And , he points out that a lot of, well-meaning American writers, Fred, about affordable family formation, which is basically about how easy it is for young people to couple up find stable well-paying jobs and buy or rent child appropriate housing in safe neighborhoods.

Affordable family foundation is a good thing, but Israel is an extremely crowded country and the Bank of Israel has deliberately stoked house price inflation since 2008. The average young couple lives in a badly [00:25:00] furnished flat on the fifth floor of a modernist monstrosity in a new build neighborhood drawn up by town planners whose modus operandi appears to be watching YouTube videos on good urbanism, and then just doing the exact opposite and the photo that he shares of like.

A representative Jewish young family neighborhood is amazing because it would make, I think it would give more birth to an aneurysm. Yeah. Let me show you like, this is, this is what he would say is like, the antithesis so ugly. I know. It, it's horrible. And, and that, I think actually it looks pretty spacey.

They've got a view. They have a view, but he's against high rises. I think he's very much for like, suburban houses with yards.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. But my point here being is what is his argument against the evolutionary argument? I'll read it.

Simone Collins: Okay. And, and I'll just, I'll get to the, the basic.

Basically he argues yes, that like the, the most pious high fertility Jews in Israel do have a trickle down effect. [00:26:00] But what matters is. Like you, you also have the Amish in the United States that are high fertility, but they don't trickle down because they're not admired by the rest of, no.

Malcolm Collins: This isn't an argument against evolution. What is his argument against evolution? Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. I'll get that. Yeah, sure. '

Malcolm Collins: Cause it, it, it, I, I remember correctly the argument against evolution he gave in this piece was that Jews in the US don't have a higher fertility rate, which is factually wrong.

Simone Collins: He says finally right-wing futurism.

And some others contend that once contraception is widespread and women achieve some basic level of legal and practical equality, TFR is a function principally of genetic predisposition to want to marry and have kids and its culture. And institutions are inva. Apparently not because Jewish TFR in America is below replacement, even with the Orthodox bumping up the numbers.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so he's just wrong about this. I just read the numbers. The, the Jewish fertility rate in the United States is incredibly high. And it's not, it's, it's lower than it is in Israel, but you'd expect [00:27:00] that I still

Simone Collins: think that he is onto something with the most admired. Culture or like the most pious, most like optimal role model culture being one of high fertility and that having a trickle down effect.

Malcolm Collins: Right? I don't care about that. The point being, why don't you think that's compelling? I still think that matters because it's not, it's just not true. Like, the, the the secular Jews in Israel do not admire the ultra Orthodox Jews in the way that he is framing them as. Mm-hmm. Maybe some of the general conservative gurus are Jews are on like, friendly terms with them.

But I, I think that he is creating a framing that is trying to be convenient for his preexisting worldview. Well, he also

Simone Collins: talks about how people generally just look around and see what other people have in terms of kids and lifestyle and generally copy that so it normalizes.

Malcolm Collins: I agree.

And here I would point out that the secular Jews' [00:28:00] admiration of the Ultra Orthodox Jew is not. Higher in, at least in my experience, than the mostly secular Muslims, admiration of the very conservative Muslim. , Nor could you claim that there isn't a pipeline of very conservative Muslim to slightly less conservative Muslim to slightly less conservative Muslim to secular Muslim that could drive the very high fertility rate of conservative Muslims down through Muslim culture.

And yet we don't see a convergent phenomenon within Muslim cultures.

But when people look around in the modern world, what they're actually generally seeing isn't the people who live around them.

It's what's on movies and tv. And that's not affected by ultra Orthodox. It's what's in the ads, it's what's in the art, right? I don't know if

Simone Collins: you're going grocery shopping or you're going out to eat, or you're going to the doctor and you just to see all these huge families, would that not,

Malcolm Collins: I could see it having some effect, but I don't think it's gonna have a dominant effect in terms of what you think to [00:29:00] strive for.

Mm-hmm. Normalization is created through culture and media and stuff like that. And your family network. Not, and, and the thing about the ultra orthodox and variety community is they are a distinctly separate community in terms of their cultural values and norms. It would be like saying that you know, today we saw a large Hispanic family at Walmart.

That doesn't make me want to have more kids. Right. Like, I'm like, oh, they're different. They're Hispanic. Right. Like they're different cultural. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: he is arguing that because they're all roughly. Jewish, and he does seem to think that there's at least some level of respect or admiration that, that the, the less religious Jews in Israel still want to kind of be

Malcolm Collins: like his argument's not wrong, that there is some degree of directionality there.

Thank you. I don't think at all. It's the secret to why secular Jews in the United States have unusually high fertility rates. Secular Jews in the United States do not love Hasidic Jews. They don't look up to [00:30:00] Hasidic Jews, and they're not influenced heavily by Hasidic Jews. So why is their frac fertility rates so much higher than you would expect from a normal secular population?

Why is the general Jewish population's fertility rate in the United States so much higher than you'd expect? So his answer I just think is baloney. I think that the actual reason is again, is what he

Simone Collins: touched on in his daycare post, just like neglectful parents.

Malcolm Collins: So don't look. Jewish populations in the world today.

Mm-hmm. I think when I ran the numbers on this last, it was something like 98% of them live in an urban center which for a cultural group is absolutely effing insane. That is huge.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's, it's basically unheard of mo almost all of the high fertility populations are super rural.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And in addition to that, this is, and it's also really weird in Israel, and I've noted this before, that when you go to all Jewish rural settlements, they cluster into like micro urban centers.

Mm-hmm.

That look really weird from the perspective of somebody who grew up in American rural settings. Yeah. [00:31:00] Unless you

Simone Collins: grew up in Korea and they do the same thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like in America, if you're out in the countryside, it'll be like a, a 10 minute walk to the next house, you know, or a 20 minute walk to the next house in, in areas like where our family's ranch was.

Right. Like, but if you go to a Jewish settlements just aren't structured that way and people can be like, well, there's a partially religious reason why they're not structured this way because you need the, whatever, the community of 12 guys who meets regularly. Fine. Except we have early Jewish settlers who settled in regions without other Jews in the United States.

So we know that Jews are capable of living outside of these. It's just a, a high preference for not. So the question, so first just framing here, Jews are urban specialists, even within a modern context. Mm-hmm. In, in an ultra modern context. Now, what's interesting is that they were also historically urban specialists.

If you look to the cases of the pogroms and stuff like that, a lot of these were Jewish quarters of cities where Jews were rounded up and everything like that. In in, [00:32:00] in this context, this is really important because if you look historically at the birth rates of cities they were really, really low.

This is not a modern thing. You can go to the Roman Empire and see incredibly low fertility rates was in cities themselves. Yeah. You see this in the medieval period as well. Yeah. Cities have

Simone Collins: always been fertility shredders except

Malcolm Collins: for with the Jews. Well, so basically people like the reason why London had more people is because the Brits who were culturally British who were having kids in the countryside sent their kids to go live in the city.

The Jews were never like this. They weren't leaning on maintaining their urban population by getting immigrants from external rural populations. They had to find a way to continue to exist, to exist within a totally urban setting. And I'll note here as well and we argue this extensively in the private society crafting religion is this is not.

Something innate about Judaism's historical [00:33:00] ancestor. If you look at Judaism of the time of, of, you know, the Bible and stuff like that it was more like other cultures. Actually I argue it was a lot like modern day Islam where it had a set of rules around how the government worked. And it had carve outs for non-Jews living within Jewish territory and how to do business with them.

And it was very similar to, to Islam in that sense. And we also pointed out that it was actively proselytizing religion back then. Hmm. You can look at our video on the question that breaks Judaism for a lot of evidence on this particular thing, if you're willing to go into like a four hour ran.

But what happened was, is when the Jews became stateless they set up in a bunch of different regions. And when those regions decided to have pogroms against them, there were multiple Jewish cultural groups that we know of from this period. There were some rural groups. There were some that functioned almost entirely like mercenary bands.

And then there was the descendants of the surviving group, which was entirely city Jews. Mm-hmm. So if the government [00:34:00] decides we're gonna kill every one of this category unless they get out if you're a rural population, you're living on land that is likely farmland. If you get out, you need to go.

Kill and take somebody else's land to continue to survive, basically. If, if you live in a city you you, you know, suppose you're a jeweler, suppose you're a a, a banker, suppose you have one of these skills, right? You could just gather your supplies, go to another city and rent there, right? Maybe, maybe buy a place, but that's the, the most that you're losing.

Mm-hmm. And so the ones who became the city specialist group survived at much higher rates because you're saying there's

Simone Collins: basically lower locational switching costs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The ones who lived in rural areas they were only able to survive by hiding their Jewish identity. Mm-hmm. And this is where the crypto Jews come from.

This is, they, they're a Jewish group that moved to Latin America mostly. And they really want

Simone Collins: there to be new, like new version of crypto Jews. It's just. Crypto

Malcolm Collins: bros lived in rural Spain and stuff like that. Anyway, they're mostly died out at this point of like a distinct cultural [00:35:00] identity. But the, the point here being is the non-urban based Jewish factions died.

And so Jews through living in urban centers for very long periods of time became specialist at these types of environments. And and, and, and keep in mind when I say became specialists, what I mean is the cultural traditions that Jews in these communities had that led to higher fertility rates and led to higher cultural fidelity ended up replicating at a higher rate than the Jews who had traditions that didn't do this.

And you likely had a degree of biological specialization as well.

Mm-hmm.

And so what this created was sort of a, a, a pressure that no one else in the world really had to deal with. And. When you had the industrial revolution, which is when fertility race began crashing for everyone, what you have during that century is the urbanization of the world.

[00:36:00] The entire western world in a non-Western world was turned into something closer to what life was like in an urban center in the medieval period than what life was like outside of urban centers in the medieval period.

Hmm.

Even a small town like where we live, like Phoenixville or something like that is closer in lifestyle to you know, ancient London than an ancient medieval hamlet.

Hmm.

And it's the same with the media we get because the media is created within urban centers almost necessarily. It normalizes urban cultural norms. And so, and, and in many ways this is in part. Sort of like we are getting the media that the Jews were resistant to and made resistant to because they had much earlier and longer exposure to these sorts of cultural norms than anyone else.

And so when people talk about when somebody's like, okay, what, what, what sort of norms are you talking about here? Where this [00:37:00] might be against another group's biology or ability to act? An example here that you're gonna get in most city populations and you get uniquely within Jewish populations, you can go to our episode for more evidence on this called Why did Jews Have Friends, is the normalization of the concept of friendship and friend networks which is not actually universal.

It, it, for example, is not a part of my cultural tradition. In the backwoods cultural tradition you, you have friend networks, but the first network that matters and really the predominant network you focus on is your clan and your family. And this was, I remember, really made, clear to me when we had a, an orthodox Jewish friend over to our house and he was talking to our kid and he goes, who are your friends?

And my kid's like, well, my brother and my sister. Yeah. I mean, who are your friends other than your family and I friend. Why would he want friends that aren't his family? And I was like, but what do you mean? Like brother and sister aren't the friends that those are the only friends. I hadn't even thought about my kid making friends that weren't family.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We've made zero effort on [00:38:00] this front.

Which isn't to say we go to kids' birthdays when they get invited and we bring presents and we, we participate. We're good. Well, I mean by my

Malcolm Collins: cultural norms, which, which again likely evolved alongside my culture's biology. Friendship is not that normal a thing.

Yeah. Outside of, outside of clan networks, it's your family and your clan.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that. If you look at media, like if a kid who goes to like the power of friendship and all the shows about what we all came together as friends and made this work, you know, you see this beaten, this is the way you should live.

This is the way, when I'm perfectly normal, being a mostly hooky, kaori, I talk to people other than my wife. Like, like about something other than business maybe four people a year. You know, outside of like direct networking events or something like that where I'm just like, ugh, I have to group all the networking.

Okay, let's go to a city and like do all this talking. And this is shamed by society right now. Right? And so I can do one of two things. I can [00:39:00] attempt to adopt this behavioral style, right? But if I grew up in a culture that wasn't designed to be commensurate with the concept of friends, and I have a biology that's not designed to run that, maybe one I won't get satisfaction and I'll end up neurotic and I'll end up looking for validation in places where I'm not gonna receive meaningful validation.

And I can just from a, either a biological or the rest of my culture isn't built around this concept. So I add this concept to my culture and it begins to break a lot of other things. And I didn't, and, and that might be true of you, for example, and you don't even realize it. The reason why you don't feel like you don't have time for another kid is because you're investing in maintaining this friend network that none of your ancestors natural maintained.

Yeah. And it's not culturally normative for you. Whereas Jews have, you know, 500 years of cultural evolutionary pressure around maintaining friend networks that it's going to make it easier for them to juggle a wide friend network and a large family. And, and note here, like this is not like, [00:40:00] this is all I, I'm saying like, it's important to stay friends with the Jews because they're.

Powerful now, and they're likely going to grow in their power going forwards, given their high technology and, and, and, and high fertility. But it is also saying that when people say that Jewish cultural values are being exported by Hollywood and media and the advertising agencies they are one right, that Jews disproportionately work within these industries.

So it would be a little insane to say that they're not gonna have disproportionate Jewish cultural values. But I think part of what they're wrong is it's not Jewish cultural values that they're seeing it's urban cultural values that they're seeing.

Simone Collins: Huh. And,

Malcolm Collins: and Jews are just adapted much more for urban environments.

Simone Collins: Hmm. It's still just so notable that there is a high fertility urban

Malcolm Collins: culture. Well, I mean, I think that this is going to, in many ways, like when I look at what does the future of human civilization look like, [00:41:00] I think it is somewhat obvious that Jews will end up and, and if things are functioning correctly, given their high fertility rates and everything like that dominating these urban settings.

And, and something I wanted to note here is if you look at Jews and you look at like the Orthodox Jews who follow their traditions with more fidelity, the, these evolved traditions with more fidelity, they have the highest fertility rates, right? Mm-hmm. So the people who are, who are following these traditions with higher fidelity, often the more conservative Jews have more.

Kids. Of course you see this without throughout traditions, but it seems to be even higher in Jewish communities. And you actually see an antithesis of this. We've noted that in one of our users did a big study on this In Mormon communities, the very most devout Mormons actually have less kids than middling devoutness Mormons.

Hmm.

So, so the actual highest fidelity cultural conservatism doesn't always lead to a higher fertility rate. But anyway, what I was saying about the future is we might end up with a future in which the urban centers are Jewish dominated and the people who migrate to them, which is in kind [00:42:00] of what we may have had historically speaking.

Don't really expect to continue surviving. They don't really expect to continue high fertility rates. And, and people can be like, what a horrible thing to say. And I'm like, but it's kind of already true. Everyone I know who lives in a city who is above replacement rate is Jewish fair outta all of our friends.

Yeah. Everyone who lives in a city who's above repopulation rate is Jewish. And the Jewish ones are often quite above repopulation rate. So when these other people move to the city, because I, I asked 'em, I go, why are you going to another city? Why are you moving to a city? Their goals never include a big family.

When I ask my Jewish friends who move to cities, why are you going? Their goals always include a big family. And often in part. It is because of a preexisting Jewish community within that city. There, so it's also about cultural fidelity there. And so, you know, I can say, well, the, the people who move to cities are basically like, well, they may achieve equal status.

The cities are forward, the Jews, right. This is already [00:43:00] becomes sort of the norm. And then I think it can lead to good cultural partnerships for the cultural groups that are more urban special, I mean, rural specialists. And I'd also note here that the urban versus rural specialist cultural optimization function mm-hmm.

May lead to less of an intrinsic power imbalance going forwards than it led to historically. Well, how so, so, so his historically urban centers became the centers of economic and political and, and artistic output. Right. Which often gave Jews an advantage within these fields because they were already in the cities.

Right. But that was because the ways that cities helped speed up human interaction and communication. You needed the cities to be. Right. And companies to be at one of the big studios to be at. One of the, when we look at the ways the internet has changed, this changed the way people make friends. They build interpersonal relationships with people outside of their networks the [00:44:00] ways that they build wealth.

I don't think cities are as big an advantage today as they were historically to power or wealth accumulation. Mm-hmm. You can accumulate that perfectly fine outside a city even today. Also interesting thing I'd note about rural specialist cultures, we've mentioned this before in other videos, is that it's very normal for rural specialist cultures when they live in a city to often have, as my family did growing up, a separate rural property that they commute to regularly like a ranch or a lake house or a and I've seen even fairly families of fairly modest means.

Have these sorts of things.

Hmm.

If they don't have that, they often have a camper or RV that is meant for regularly taking the family out into a rural environment. Yeah. That is quite

Simone Collins: a thing, isn't it? Hmm.

It

Malcolm Collins: is absolutely a thing, and I don't see it very frequently among my Jewish friends.

Yeah. Having the, the camper or having [00:45:00] the, the ranch or having the

Simone Collins: well, I think so much of that's because like the, the, like if, if you are employed, you are spending your weekends in the Sabbath with your community and your communities in your local area, in the city. Yeah. Well, so you don't have these free weekends where you go off to your lake house or your ranch house or a campsite or a cabin.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that this is a very inefficient cultural practice you know, as, as, as sort of a holdover, but what I, I know, it gets

Simone Collins: you to dig into your local community and help each other more. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, I'm saying having a ranch is a very inefficient culture. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. Yes. Yeah. Yes. That, that, that I'm with.

Yeah. Having

Malcolm Collins: this piece of external land and, and what I'm seeing

Simone Collins: specifically non-productive external land that just takes you away from productive work. 'cause it's for, it's purely for and by design, it, it, it forces non productiveness unless you're going away and writing for your job. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, no, I mean, the reason the, the land is often bought is [00:46:00] for child rearing.

It's, oh, well, my kids need to grow up in, in these sorts of environments. Right. And if they don't grow up, and I've noticed here if you hear this and you hear, oh, my kid needs to grow up around nature, it's very different than the way the urbanite means when they say, my kid needs to grow up around nature.

Mm-hmm.

Because I, I, I, I hear there is some like urbanites who think, oh, nature is good. I like. You know, going on walks in the park and stuff like that. When people in rural environment or, or rural specialized cultures say, my kid needs to grow up around nature, what they mean is they need to hunt and they need to fish.

And they need to know the basics of growing food and they need to which, which historically did serve a lot of value for these cultures. 'cause that was how they survived.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And I think we're seeing within our generation, many people from these rural specialist cultures go back to rural settings.

And yeah. As cities begin to collapse due to their, their in long-term incompatible tax [00:47:00] structure. You know, as I pointed out, like if New York drops to half its population, it doesn't cost half to manage its water supply or sewer system, or its electrical grid or its street maintenance. And it's not even just that these cities are leveraged to high hell you know, they're paying for previous populations as we've mentioned.

They don't even

Simone Collins: need to lose half their population. They need to lose. A significant number of their top taxpayers, which may very well happen if Mom Donny is elected. Yeah. It was

Malcolm Collins: something like I think around half of New York taxes are paid by around 4% of their population. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: about, I mean, the, the proposition seems to be to tax them to high heaven.

Um, so, oh no, sorry.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's not four, it was 0.4. Yeah, it was, I think four or 5% of their population makes up something like 80% of their tax base or something. It's some

Simone Collins: insane amount. Um, And already I'm hearing people who are New York residents declaring that they're absolutely moving out if Mom Donnie selected.

So it could be even faster is all I'm saying.

Malcolm Collins: Could be [00:48:00] soon. So even these cities and I, and I mean, I know when I'm in New York and I look around and I see all the empty buildings, because you can see it from the high rises. All the commercial space in Midtown is like emptied out now. They, they. It might not be the enviable thing to not want to live within existing urban environments within this next generation.

You know? Yeah. This might actually be a bit of an albatross around the Jewish population's neck as they have to personally repopulate these cities. But I can definitely see that in the future. And I think it's something that we as a society need to get better at accepting that we are different and we do have different specialties.

Mm-hmm.

And that through those differences, we actually become better at living symbiotically then by attempting to enforce everyone to have everyone else's cultural standards. Um, Absolutely. Yeah. It, it's better to allow the, you know, clan, rural groups like us to live on a farm and be productive in our, in, in [00:49:00] our own way while still engaging with technology.

And the Jews, even Jews or our friend live in the city. Like what, why is that, why is that a bad thing to just be like, Hey, maybe we shouldn't be normalizing urban cultural values for groups that for the past 500 years have, have barely lived in an urban environment at all. Yeah. And don't have norms around large friend networks and you know, many other things.

Malcolm Collins: A big one here that gets forced down other group throats is the omni power of love as an emotion and as like a guiding force or as a reason to live or as a reason to get married. We're within most rural traditions. , Love just has not been a particularly important emotion in terms of guiding major life decisions.

And yet when I say, yeah, love's just not that important to life, , people will freak out because they're like, no, you're supposed to. The man on the TV said it's love and friendship are the two most important things. And I'm like, no, I don't think [00:50:00] so., My ancestors didn't think so.

Sorry, I should clarify here. This isn't just a rural culture thing. In fact, most cultures throughout human history have not placed a particularly high value on love. Like, for example, you can look at historic Indian culture is, , one example I remember here. , It, this is just an urban monocultural thing that I don't even think is downstream of like Jewish culture.

, I just think that it's, , one of these weird things that the urban monoculture adopted from somewhere.

, I've noted one cultural norm that we share with Jews but that other groups don't share is loving debate, right? Like, this is something that Jewish cultural groups have that would give you an advantage within urban environments. That would help with the development of like verbal intelligence.

Which we actually see an outsize was in the Jewish population. Look at our Jewish IQ is not actually higher. It's weirder. Or we point out it's, it, it is actually weirder than that. That, that like why should we force this like debate sort of, normalization on, for example, Asians. You can look at our Asians or Snow People video or whatever we call it, like ICE Asians where we [00:51:00] point out that that actually this form of debate is, is less comfortable for people with those types of cultural traditions.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Which is a different type of urban specialization. But unfortunately it doesn't seem conducive with modern environments. As to why Asians are low fertility you can look at our video on Asian low fertility. Is it genetic? Again, we think that there might actually be a big genetic component to that.

Specifically the, the lack of forced marriages and their commonality in historic Asian populations because they were incredibly common in Asian populations historically. And, and so if you have co-evolved with a culture where, you know, the way people bred was the wife is put in the house one day and then you tell the guys okay, now you need to go out and find a wife.

And you tell the women, okay, now you need to be horny enough to, you know, find a guy and accidentally sleep with them and stuff like that. They're gonna be like, no, what? Why would I do that? I'm not, I'm not particularly driven to, because they didn't need that drive for the past [00:52:00] 10 generations. You know, so of course that's gonna hit their fertility rate, you know, uniquely badly.

So here what I'm saying, and, and this is why the fertility. Fixing it for you needs to be such a personal thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

This is why when people can say, well, if the urban monoculture, if this sort of attempt to culturally unify all of humanity is the core thing that is upstream of declining birth rates, why do some areas of the world that appear to be have have less of this urban monoculture appear to have a more of an impact on declining fertility rates?

So here I could point to something like. South Korea, somebody could say South Korea is affected less by the urban monoculture, , than the United States. , So why do they have a higher crashing fertility rate? , And I would say, , it's because the Native Korean culture. , That they evolved alongside is less adapted to urban monocultural norms than [00:53:00] the cultures in the United States.

This is actually widely why cultures. Remember how I said like the Jews have lived alongside the urban monoculture for a long time and it's helped them adapt to it, so have the backwoods tradition, but they've stayed in , the outskirts. , So have. A lot of northern Europeans, which is why they've been more resistant to fertility collapse in other groups.

, Whereas, you know, groups like Koreans and Japanese and Chinese haven't, and they're being hit much faster by fertility collapse, , which is important to remember,. While the threat, this urban monoculture is the same all over on earth, , the way that you adapt to it and patch your culture for it is going to be completely unique to your cultural and biological history.

So this explains the mystery of. Oh, why is it that you know, people in rural Guatemala, , that their fertility rate is falling so much faster when they have so much less exposure to the urban monoculture? [00:54:00] And my response to them is, yes, but what is their ancestral rate of exposure? To urban culture versus, or the urban monoculture, , versus what they're being exposed to right now.

Oh, it's incredibly low and they just haven't had to deal with this at all. Okay, well then that explains their falling fertility rates.

It is a bit like saying, oh, well, explain to me why when there's so much less smallpox disease in the Americas than in Europe. Are Americans dying at such a higher rate? It's like, well, because they have no resistance to it. I.

Also here, when I note, when I say, oh, you know, it needs to be unique, the solution, even though the threat is the same, if it turns out that our hypothesis that one of the reasons for uniquely falling fertility rates within Asia is the norm of, , arranged marriages within that region, , historically speaking, if erasing that norm.

, Through the urban monoculture is what's causing their fertility collapse. [00:55:00] And then you could say within, you know, sort of the backwoods fertility collapse, if that's caused by being forced to have these large friend networks. . Well, the solution is technically the same in that it's adopt your ancestral culture to work within the modern context rather than homogenizing yourself.

, The, the particularities of the fix go back to arrange marriages or find some other solution that pairs people better. , Find some other solution. To not have to maintain big friend networks or find a way to make big friend networks cohesive with your cultural tradition, , is really divergent.

Malcolm Collins: and be done within the context of who are you really like? , And a person can be like, I don't know that much about my ancestors. You don't need to know that much about your ancestors.

Sit down and think about yourself without the context of the society being the, the, the waves of society crashing upon you think. Do I actually want friends, for example? You know, does [00:56:00] love need to be part of my relationship? Does do I need to, you know, one of the things that people always crash out for is sleeping in different rooms.

But why, what's the utility in sleeping in the same room? You know, there's actually a ton of utility from rural cultures in history to sleep in different rooms when people are rising at different times and you have kids in different rooms. So it's totally normal within any mini cultures throughout history.

But today it's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna have one culture and one way of doing things

And the reason why Jews have been resistant to this is twofold. One, their culture was already more like this one culture that's being enforced on everyone now. And two, their culture had a long time to adapt and evolve, strategies to maintain its fidelity, uniqueness, and high fertility rates in spite of that one culture because they have been adjacent to it for so many generations.

sucks. Simone,

Simone Collins: I totally agree with you. And I mean, I think people can, they don't seem to be able to wrap their [00:57:00] heads around this as easily, and yet anyone can understand that if you move from a very hot climate to a climate that gets to.

Below 20 in the winters, you're probably going to die if you don't change your outfit and make sure that you live in an insulated home, like you can't sleep out under the stars at night. And this is just how it is with modern culture and society. People are walking into cities which are the equivalent of like super hot weather climates, you could say wearing stuff for the winter tundra, like all these layers of furs.

And they're just expiring and wondering, why am I expiring? Why is this not working for me? Well, obviously you're not wearing the right clothing. Yeah. So you have to adapt.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'd also note that one of the, the cultural trends here that I think can be pretty toxic for individual decision making.

Is the ization of humanity [00:58:00] that happens fe in urban centers. Mm-hmm. So, by this what I mean is this elevation of humanity is this like ultra special thing. You know, people get offended in our videos where we say LLMs function very similar to the way the human brain functions. Mm. Architecturally speaking, you can look up our video on this, that, that the, you know, and I was thinking today LLMs are thinking machines and humans are thinking animals.

And was in a rural cultural group, or at least the one that I'm from the, the sort of clan based backwards group. This is a very normal sort of a thought. Like, yes, we are. But a degree from the world of tooth and claw. You know, the, the hu humanity is just a thinking animal. And this really frames the way I see things like LLMs quite differently than the way I see things like humanity.

And note here, if you're gonna be like, oh, well LLMs are just token predictors. You can go to our episode on this. And we argue with extensive neuroscience evidence that the human brain works on a token predictor model as well. [00:59:00] Yeah. Um, But. For some cultures they really struggle with this. Like, Catholics hate the idea of saying like, humans are, are just thinking animals, right? Like they're, they, they, they believe that there's this big difference from, from the external world and other individuals.

And if you're like, well, Catholics only think that because the Bible says that, and I'd point out, I'd be like, well, no. It's one interpretation of the Bible that says that I would argue that Ecclesiastes three 18 to 21 pretty clearly says the exact opposite, that we are, , tested by God , to make sure that we do not think of ourselves as, , different from animals.

, Even if we are above animals.

You know, when they look to me and they're like, oh like also a clan based focus. They're like, don't you care about people? Recently I was talking with somebody and they were saying, Hey, don't you care about like, the people in Africa who are gonna get AIDS and die because they don't have this, this, these programs that US AIDS was providing.

Simone Collins: Pepfar.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, pepfar. And I'm like. [01:00:00] No. Like, why would I care about that? Like, they're, they're, they're not relevant to me or my descendants. They're, you know, they, they're like, well then why do you care about, like, Israel, for example? Like, what happens there? And I'm like, because they are relevant to me and my descendants, right?

Like, this is a, an incredibly high technology society that is going to continue to be impactful going forwards. That, that we are in active economic engagement with. I'm not like engaged with these cultures in an economic sense. I'm not engaged with them in a cultural sense. I'm not like there.

Why would I be sending my money to them? And they're like, well, we, you know, everybody matters. I love the people who are like, everybody matters. I'm like, okay. So when this program was shut down you started donating to them, right? It's like, no, no. Who did though?

Simone Collins: A lot, a lot of effective altruists actually did, which is great.

Malcolm Collins: That's great, but for a lot of people they didn't, they were just okay with somebody else's money being sent to these people. Yeah. And that's,

Simone Collins: they have no right to talk about it

Malcolm Collins: because a [01:01:00] lot of their moral architecture is a fae moral architecture, right? Mm-hmm. It's not a, a realistic moral architecture.

It's you could actually live by in any sort of meaningful sense. Yeah. And I think it's important, you know, when you're building a moral architecture, you expect to be intergenerational and stuff like that. To. Consider it within the context of you know, what can be actually intergenerationally durable in, in terms of actionability and internal consistency.

Mm-hmm.

And this I've realized was in like the nature of the way my family acts and thinks about things is very cogent with the way that we act and think about things. Did you know, like all of our moral decisions are, well, what moral decision would future humanity have wanted me to make? You know, and, and is the marginal dollar going to this location going to do more than the marginal dollar that's spent on like technological advancement to people in the future?

And the answer to me is almost always, oh, technological advancement matters [01:02:00] more than you know, saving people in a random part of the world because there's, there's, there's horrible things happening all around us. You know, there's a, a. A coyote eating a a, an animal alive right now, you know, probably miles from our house, right?

Like, thi this is something that happens in the world every day. Our jobs is humans is not like the suffering police. Our job is continued advancement and looking at how we build the alliances that are necessary for that continued advancement is, you know, what I see as my daily. Ethical goal.

A note here, I'm laying out the way that my ethics,, which are in part inherited from my cultural tradition, differ from the ethics that the urban monoculture attempts to impose on me and then gaws and wants to treat me like a monster when I have any differing ethical beliefs from their general utilitarian ethical beliefs that they come to me and they go, don't you care that these people are [01:03:00] suffering?

And I'm like, not particularly. It has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my descendants. It has nothing to do with shaping the future of humanity. So, no, I don't, , and I'm, and I'd point out here that I don't really believe that you do either. But if you wanna go out there and make yourself the, , world police of suffering and just wipe out all suffering in nature and in other humans, you, you go do that.

You go have your fun little urban monoculture quest. But I don't really believe that the urban monoculture cares about these things. I think that they just like to signal that they care about them, , which is why. They care so little about so many of the, for example, big genocide that right now is happening in Central Africa.

, They just don't care. They just don't care because it doesn't fit any of their existing agendas right now. , And so when they come to me and they go, well, why don't you care about these people? I go, don't you care about the big genocide that's happening? They're like, there's a genocide happening. I'm like, yeah, you should probably, you know, be doing something about that.

Or [01:04:00] they'll make this big stink about slavery. And I'm like, well, there's more slaves right now than there have been at any point in human history. What are you doing about it? Oh, nothing. So you would've been somebody who did nothing about it during the time of slavery, I know my ancestors literally put their lives on the line to go to war against the government, to try to, to end slavery.

As we've pointed out of the free state of Jones, , 15 of the 50 founding members were either, , ancestors of mine are brothers of ancestors of mine, or , children of siblings of ancestors of mine. , And so like.

I, I understand that from the position of this moral hierarchy that the urban monoculture tries to pick, where anyone who had the non utilitarian value set is deemed as evil. , You know, you would prefer to look down on me, but I'm pointing out that this broad suffering police, moral authority that, that you believe to be a superior one is also a sterilizing one.

Because it is fundamentally incompatible with human thriving and ultimately leads to negative utilitarian , values, which you can look up our videos [01:05:00] on that.

Two good little side notes here. One is, it's funny to me that because the free state of Jones today is framed to an urban monocultural lens, it's framed as like a group of do-gooders who wanted to stand up to this, who randomly came together based on shared values review. Look at like, somebody's like, how could so many of your ancestors have been involved in this?

And it's like, well, because it wasn't a random group of do-gooders, it was a backwoods family clan that was mad at the government. , And. Today we don't think of things in terms of clan networks. We think of things in terms of ideological alliances.

And I don't hear when people are like, well, , I like the, the perception of the urban monocultural value better. And as I've, as I've worded here, I don't think the urban monoculture actually believes its value system. It has one value system that it signals to people where it's actual value system is see yourself is as good a person as possible, whatever the cost.

To others, you don't actually need to [01:06:00] go out and fix problems. , Whereas my signaled value system, while it may seem less moral to you, is at least my real value system. I.

And that is why when people say, why do you, why are you so pro Zionist? Right? Because it's this, the guy is apparently an anti-Zionist. Because I think that,

Simone Collins: I don't, I don't think he's an anti-Zionist,

Malcolm Collins: but like non Zionist Judaism. Well, I mean, like, I think because if I look at the future, it's going to be a future where Jews have even more disproportionate influence than they have today.

And building systems for working with them is critical. If you are a group that plans to survive. Mm-hmm. I, I believe, you know, and not just that, but even today, they're outcompeting within an existing context. They outcompete with business, they outcompete with wealth, they outcompete with. Within the arts.

And you could say this because it's nepotism. I'm like, well, everyone else is allowed to be nepotistic. Like what? Like, Mormons are nepotistic. Catholics are nepotistic. Like, why, why if, if this group is doing well, I should [01:07:00] try to learn from them. It's, it very much as I've said, reminds me of, of this progressive sensibility where it's like, oh whites in America are earning more than blacks.

It must be because they're doing something unfair. Yeah. It

Simone Collins: is so bizarre to me that a lot of people who otherwise identify as conservative have this butt hurt about this particular group doing well. Well, because they like, copy them do better. Like, that's, that's the, the normal conservative response.

Yeah. Learn what they're doing and do better. Right. You know? Yeah. Take what you like, take what makes them succeed and do it yourself, but better, your own flavor.

Malcolm Collins: But as to the, the, the, the Zionist point, it's because historically Jews did not have their own state and people kept killing them. And like it wasn't just the Holocaust, it was a lot of times.

Yeah. And then if you look you know, even, even now, people are like, oh, people wouldn't do that today. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I see people marching through London and New York chanting from the river for the sea, or death, death to the IIDF at like these giant, like I can understand why a Jewish person and many of my Jewish friends no longer [01:08:00] feel safe in the United States.

Simone Collins: Like, oh my gosh. Yeah.

And you could be like, well, they're only saying it about the IDF, but it's like, yeah, but then they're chasing Jewish kids around schools to like attack them. So clearly they have animosity towards just like Jews as well.

I think some, , conservatives because they notice the similarities that Jewish culture has to the urban monoculture simply from living alongside it for so long, that they think that the Jewish culture is the urban monoculture, when in reality the Jewish culture is as much victimized by and has a genocide mandate against it from the urban monoculture as our own, , as I point out, because.

The urban monoculture says that all differences between groups. If there's any difference between two groups, it must be because of systematic unfairness. And because Jews outcompete in many categories, it will always turn against Jewish populations in the end. , And so we should not confuse them as anything other than allies in our struggle against this force, even if they have [01:09:00] aesthetic similarities to our enemy, because our enemy does want them dead.

And I find it uniquely ironic that the very progressives who say, oh, Jews don't need their own state to be safe, will also chant, you know, we need to ch kill all the Jews, you know, from the river to the sea, or death, death to the IDF, , you know, at their major events or chase them through schools proving, , the need for such a thing.

I was just watching YouTuber with non-trivial following, have butt hurt about where bread tube has gone on YouTube and how it's all gone downhill and contra points isn't doing enough work, and how instead we should be looking to the people at places like Glastonbury who are saying what needs to be said.

And that's the place where they were like. Chanting again. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Killed the Jews. Yeah. Yeah. Like what? But the point I'm making here is, is the threat that Jews face from being in a non-Jewish state still exists within the world today and is likely going to get [01:10:00] worse in the future. I think it is very hard to consider yourself a real cultural ally of the Jewish people and want a destruction of the Jewish state.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that this also, like the way I think about groups as I've defined in here, you know, I think about, oh, how likely are they to be allies of my descendants and how likely are they to continue to technologically develop and economically develop you know, in, in terms of like what it means to be human and continue to advance that.

When I look at the groups that Israel is in conflict with, and I have to be like, which group is more likely to do this? You know, I'm like, oh, it is this group. Therefore it makes more sense for me to lean culturally in their direction,

Than in the direction of the other groups. And I'm not saying anything here about like the ethnicity of these groups or the religion of these groups.

I'm just saying I can look at the economic data of these regions. I can look at the startups coming out of these regions. I can look at what's being built in these regions. And I can make an educated guess.

Simone Collins: [01:11:00] Yeah.

Nothing to add on my end

Malcolm Collins: and I love, well then people are like, oh, well no, come on. These regions are only poor because of Israel.

And I'm like, oh, they're only poor because of Israel. Then how come people with similar cultures are also desperately poor when they live in other regions that aren't right next to Israel? Like, like why? Why is it that this culture where it is practiced without extreme levels of oil wealth or, or just like, an easily capturable wealth source lead to extreme poverty so frequently?

Like can't you just say, oh, it might have something to do with the cultural system. And, and that doesn't mean that we have a right to go in and change that cultural system. I don't think we do. I think they have a right to, as we've said in our video, on is, is it Islamophobic to ban child marriage, which was argued by Pakistani religious court.

You know, I was like, look, they have a right to do things their way. Right. And, and I would fight to protect that, right? But when there is a conflict between two groups, I'm going to side with the group that is more likely to, to do the [01:12:00] things that I want for the future of humanity.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I don't know. I probably went way too offensive on this episode because everybody wants us to be antisemitic. They, they saw our episode on, finally somebody created Mecca Hitler, and they were like, what? They're not antisemites.

Simone Collins: No. Just a lot of people in the comments were trying to warn the anti-Semites in the comments that we were actually pro-Israel.

Just, you gotta warn the people. So, yeah. Yeah. I think

Malcolm Collins: our positions on, on Jewish stuff really surprised a lot of Jewish people. 'cause like in our, the question that breaks Judaism, we have a lot of questions about Jewish theology and a lot of problems was like the nitpickiness of it. But in terms of like the Jewish culture overall in the Jewish state, like we're very like strong Zionists and stuff like that, which I think surprises a lot of people.

Simone Collins: It shouldn't be surprising. I mean, we're a different flavor of this, but there are so many Christian Americans who are like, I mean in, in an almost insensitive and mean to Jews kind of way. They're like, they, they wanna use the Jewish [01:13:00] people as a cudgel too, what do they call it to make the second coming happen?

All that nonsense there. So yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: that's not why we like them.

Simone Collins: I know, but I'm just saying like, it should be normalized for Jews to be used to Americans who like Jews, but don't like Jews, if that makes sense. Not that we don't like Jews. We have. Philosophical quips, or not quips quibbles. ​

But yeah, it just, it's normalized.

I love you too.

.

Malcolm Collins: How are people commenting on our episode today?

Simone Collins: They like it. I think if there's any particular theme, there's not really like a unifying theme among the comments, which is, I think a good thing. Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, it shows we didn't mess up in any way that they can like easily call us out on

Simone Collins: No, no.

Like there, there wasn't anything. Yeah. I, I, I think people agree that networks are really important. I, [01:14:00] yeah, no, it, I don't know. I enjoyed the episode. Some people were like, we could do our own episode just on. Different social classes. Oh, is did you get the new helmet? It, it arrived. It's outside. Oh

Malcolm Collins: yeah, it did, but I haven't gone out and gotten it yet.

Okay, so we'll show it tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. So second Father's Day present, that helmet back there was the first one, but she also got me a Roman one as well. So just all of the historic helmets for that's necessary, man reasons I need them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, because men aren't constantly thinking of Sparta, they're thinking of Rome.

So

Malcolm Collins: I disagree. I think I actually, I'd be interested to know this, they asked how often do men think about ancient Rome? And this went around, but I wonder, is there an equivalent, how, how often do men think about ancient Greece? I think about ancient Greece more than I think about ancient Rome.

Simone Collins: Same actually, the more interesting people like the mystic, they

Malcolm Collins: had a, and it had [01:15:00] bigger like.

There's no ro I mean, there's some Roman characters, Rome wishes were Alexander Greece.

Simone Collins: That's the thing. It's like you, you kind of can't think about ancient Rome without also thinking about ancient Greece. 'cause Rome just wishes. Just wishes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The Romans only thought about ancient Greece. This is the question ancient many times Did Roman on

Simone Collins: Twitter at, at the forum hanging out?

What's he thinking about? You're like,

Malcolm Collins: how, how many times a day does the average Roman citizen think about ancient Greece? Yes.

Simone Collins: That's it.

Malcolm Collins: That's it. The, the average Roman male five times a day. And the Roman women are shocked at this. Oh my goodness.

Simone Collins: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: I, I love you death, Simone. But, but all, all true, all true.

You know, you know the way to a guy's heart. .

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. And what's that? And a drink. Don't pick up the alcohol. And what's that? This, it's a compass. A compass. This, ah, this is a duck call. Wow. This, you're a duck.[01:16:00]

Why is not doing on blow into it. You blow it, buddy. Blow. Blow it with your mouth.

I put it in here. Are you load the gun titan all the way?

I like yelling like the duck? Yeah, that's to get the ducks to come so you can shoot 'em. Right. Toasty. Another one. Yeah, another one too.